[Peace-discuss] Re: [UCprogressives] Re: Pro-choice [wasRe: letter to my former comrades]

Tue Nov 16 10:02:20 CST 2004

Well said, Esther and Ken! Paul too.

Mort

On Nov 16, 2004, at 9:49 AM, Esther Patt wrote:

> Should the government have the power to force you to make a
> medical decision that threatens your life?  Should the
> government have the power to force you to make a medical
> decision that threatens your health?  Should the government
> have the power to force you to make any medical decision at
> all?  Folks who oppose abortion because of their religious or
> personal moral beliefs often confuse, as Carl does, a
> personal, moral decision with the question of public policy.
>
> Carl may believe that a woman should be willing to die, lose
> a kidney, undergo major surgery, increase her risk of stroke,
> or any number of other risks rather than stop a zygote or
> embryo from developing into a fetus and ultimately a baby.
> If he were the one who was pregnant, I would support fully
> his right to make that decision without government
> interference.
>
> The public policy question is whether government should force
> every woman who becomes pregnant to carry to term because
> some people believe that a zygote is a human being.  Most
> people in the U.S. are pro-choice because they do not want
> government to have that power.
> Esther Patt
> Proud to be Pro-Choice
>
> ---- Original message ----
>> Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 09:34:52 -0600
>> From: "Ken Urban" <kurban at parkland.edu>
>> Subject: Re: [UCprogressives] Re: Pro-choice [wasRe: letter
> to my former	comrades]
>> To: <cge at shout.net>, <ppatton at uiuc.edu>
>> Cc: prairiegreens at lists.groogroo.com,
> peace-discuss at lists.groogroo.com,
> ucprogressives at lists.groogroo.com
>>
>> There are enough REASONABLE people who disagree with the
> Pro-Life's
>> ideas, both scientifically and spiritually/emotionally, that
> they cannot
>> be discounted.  We need to DEBATE the issue and CONVINCE
> people one way
>> or the other, not legisislate it.
>>
>> He's an analogy:  I'm a vegan; I believe that all life is
> equally
>> sacred, either created by God or evolved by Nature the same
> as we.
>> There is a large body of scientific evidence that humans
> evolved/were
>> created  to be herbivores.  Should the government outlaw all
> meat
>> eating? I won't mind, but I'm not even proposing that, I
> think it's more
>> important to CONVINCE people, and set an example for others.
>>
>> I think that government should not be the driving force of
> individual
>> morality.  It should not behave immorally by executing
> people, or
>> starting wars. The death penalty and war are societal level
> actions, an
>> abortion is a personal level decision.  Extinguishing
> fisheries is a
>> societal level problem, eating a fish dinner is a personal
> decision, so
>> protecting fisheries (non-human life) is not the same
> enforcing
>> veganinsm on all.
>>
>> Outlawing abortion will not change the mind of the
> reasonable people
>> who disagree, it will only force them to use extra
> governmental means to
>> do what they feel is proper.  (We men need to be especially
> careful
>> here!)
>>
>> Ken
>>
>> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> -
>> Ken Urban
>> Assoc. Prof., Computer Science
>> Parkland College
>>
>> Office: B129A
>>           (217)-353-2246
>> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> -
>>
>>>>> <ppatton at uiuc.edu> 11/15/2004 9:12:28 PM >>>
>>>
>>> I agree that it's quite worthwhile to consider the elements
>> of choice and
>>> personal responsibility in this debate, Ken.  But your
>> conclusion ("it's
>>> wrong for the government to forbid abortions") depends on
> an
>> unstated
>>> premise: namely, that abortion does not end a human life.
> I
>> can't think
>>> of many cases where you would think it wrong for the
>> government to forbid
>>> the taking of human (or indeed a good bit of non-human)
> life.
>>>
>>> Regards, Carl
>>
>> Carl-
>> I agree with you that a woman's right to control her own
> body
>> is not, by itself, a sufficient argument that abortion
> should
>> be allowed.  I think the central issue is the question of
> the
>> humanity of the fetus during the first and early second
>> trimesters of pregnancy, when most abortions are performed.
>> The question we need to ask is what traits do humans
> possess
>> such that killing them is wrong.  Given an answer to this
>> question, we can then ask whether first trimester fetuses
>> possess the needed traits.  I think it is especially
>> instructive to imagine what traits a non-human (such as an
>> intelligent machine) would need to have before we would
>> consider destroying it to be murder.  I would like to
> suggest
>> that the valued traits include self awareness, higher
>> cognition (the ability to anticipate the future is of
>> particular importance, since killing a person thwarts all of
>> their future plans), the ability to learn and use a
> language,
>> and the capacity for emotional experience.  Note that I am
>> not suggesting that a person must possess all of the valued
>> traits, just some of them.  A person suffering from aphasia
>> (the inability to use language, usually due to damage to
>> Broca's or Wernicke's area of the cerebral cortex), for
>> example, can still anticipate the future and experience
>> emotions.  A person suffering damage to their cinguate
> cortex
>> may exhibit a loss of emotional affect, but can still talk
>> and think.  Developmentally disabled people still exhibit
> the
>> valued human traits to a degree, and often possess "islands"
>> of surviving normal human cognitive ability for particular
>> tasks.  All of the valued traits that I have mentioned
> depend
>> on the functional integrity of the cerebral cortex.  Many
>> states recogize the special importance of the cerebral
> cortex
>> by defining death as the irreversable cessation of cortical
>> function.  The cerebral cortex is a late developing brain
>> component.  At the end of the first trimester of pregnancy,
>> the cerebral cortex is little more than a sheet of
>> proliferating cells.  The entire body of the fetus, at this
>> point, is smaller than a newborn baby's brain (size matters,
>> because it is a rough indicator of complexity).  An
> organized
>> cortical electroencephalogram isn't detectable until late in
>> the second trimester.  I'm pro-choice because I don't
> believe
>> it's reasonable to equate aborting a first trimester fetus
>> with murdering a fully formed human person.  It's more like
>> removing the feeding tube from a brain-dead patient.
>> -Paul P.
>> ____________________________________________________________
> ______
>> Dr. Paul Patton
>> Research Scientist
>> Beckman Institute  Rm 3027  405 N. Mathews St.
>> University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  Urbana, Illinois
> 61801
>> work phone: (217)-265-0795   fax: (217)-244-5180
>> home phone: (217)-344-5812
>> homepage: http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ppatton/www/index.html
>>
>> "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the
> mysterious.  It is
>> the
>> source of all true art and science."
>> -Albert Einstein
>> ____________________________________________________________
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