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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (42568)	6/28/1999 11:39:00 PM
From: E	Respond to of 108807

<<<If you can kill the fetus via abortion methods, can you also perform scientific experiments on it, and disfigure it if you desire?>>> Michael, as you put it there, the answer would seem to be no, on the face of it. Especially the "if you desire," part. In a way, it is almost as though you asked the question, "can you also poke it with a stick or see how ugly you can make it look, if you desire?" But is that the way such questions usually get raised, really? Isn't it usually situations like (I am approximating, read it metaphorically, I don't know about the science of this) trembling Parkinson's patients whose shaking might be stilled by injections of some cells of a fetus that are now being discarded? Isn't that more usually what would cause the question to be raised, "What more can be done with fetuses that are going to be aborted?" Maybe you mean, if you can remove the fetus, which of course kills it, can you do those other things. I think this is complicated, but I suspect not so very. For one thing, for me, the fetus we are talking about is three months old, or less. For another, I personally have an extremist position about women causing birth defects in their children, which is like your 'disfiguring' example. If a pregnant woman takes drugs, or places her child at risk of developing fetal alcohol syndrome, I think she ought to be aborted before three months, before the fetus develops into an infant, or incarcerated until a child has developed undamaged by her, and is born. If her husband kicked her in the stomach and caused the baby to be born with brain damage, it would be seen as the criminal assault it is. This is a very unpopular, extremist position. And I know it is complicated. What about smokers? What about the nightly glass of wine? Maybe it is not possible, practically, to do, or to draw the lines. It's what feels right to me, though.