Thank you, PROLIFE, and bless y'all's, too. I grew up in North Carolina and "y'all" was my commonest pronoun until my family moved to Brooklyn.
I shall take this moment of perhaps ersatz comity to post a PM exchange I think might be of interest!
After I provided the link and text to this article
tnr.com]
I got a PM from someone I hadn't talked to before, Janet. Here is her PM and my reply and her reply to me. (Janet was PMing on her husband's account, and suggested I use her name instead of his.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
E
Thanks for posting the article about abortion. I have always been adamantly pro-life
because it has been impossible to pin point when life begins and I would rather err on
the babies side. If it becomes possible to tell when sentient life begins I would be able
to accept abortions obtained previous to that time. I think there are a lot of people,
from both sides, that will be very open to a discussion based on this information.
Thanks again. Janet
To: Janet (who wrote)
From: E
I felt the same way when I read that article, in that I had known at some level that the
issue came down to when sentient life began. But I didn't know how to determine that.
My imperfect, imprecise way was to say that I knew what I held in my hand when I had
a miscarriage wasn't a sentient human being, and I knew that when nurses wept at a late
term abortion, they had witnessed infanticide.
So all I could say is that I felt deeply that the first trimester should be a private
decision and I felt deeply that the third had a rightful claim to state interest, being
infanticide, and since I didn't know when in the second semester sentiency began, I
arrived haltingly at a personal comfort zone. It was at about four months, and I
understood it to be based on my intuition of when sentiency began (five months) minus a
margin for error (one month).
And that was the best I could do to determine what was moral, and compassionate, and
fair, with the limited information I had.
If neurological studies determine that sentiency begins later than four months, I will
feel comfortable with that date, and also relieved that the government will enter the
picture later rather than sooner.
Thanks very much for writing to me, Janet. I've spent too much time on this, and your
note made me regret it less!
To: E (who wrote)
From: Janet
E,
I see we think very much alike on this issue, I just set the
beginning of life at the very beginning. I still don't like any abortion, but I could live
with the 4th or 5th month if I was sure there was no pain and no awareness. My
objection is not on religious grounds, I am an agnostic, but on my own moral code. I
think that the acceptance of the taking of life leads to some very negative
consequences. That leads to a whole other discussion. |
