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Politics : To be a Liberal,you have to believe that..... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (646)	9/7/1999 11:51:00 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6418

>My argument is that although the doubt should be reflected in less severe penalties, there is no difference in logic between the development that ensues from conception to the third month, and that which ensues from infancy to adulthood, they are all just developmental stages, and therefore (this is where you jump the logical tracks imo) the procedure should be illegal. To use the analogy I made a while back, suppose that one shot into a form of uncertain status, not knowing if it were alive or dead? What would be the moral status of the act? Pretty obviously, one would have done wrong....Cobalt mentioned brain activity as a good developmental marker, and there is something to that. However, we do not consider those in a coma to be Unpersons, we only consider depriving lifesupport to those in a persistent vegetative state, and we only deem those with clearly irreversible, flatline brain damage to be dead. Since the embryo will develop neurologically under normal circumstances, it is hard to make out that it is much different from any other developmental stage...< The preceding is only true if you first define killing as wrong- or this specific kind of killing as wrong. And then you have to support why you believe that. Mentioning atheism as you do I assume yours is a religious argument. The Bible clearly does not posit that all killing is wrong as the God of the old Testament smote people right and left and helped other old testament figures to smite people. Killing is fine in the Bible as long as it is the right kind of killing. I do not recall anything in the Bible that really applies to this particular kind of killing. Of course that would not make any difference to me anyway. I was merely curious.

To: Neocon who wrote (646)	9/7/1999 12:03:00 PM
From: E	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 6418

I'll reply to the substance of your post later, when I have more time, and when I've gotten an answer to a question that is important to me; it is a little personal; but that should be entirely acceptable to you, under the circumstances. I would like to know if you could look inward and tell me why it seemed a good idea to you to inform this thread that I am an atheist. (As you know, I am not shy of identifying myself as an atheist, in spite of its being an inflammatory word in some circles-- such as those here. This doesn't mean I am not quite aware of the dynamic when another does so for me, however.) I believe I know the answer to the question, and I certainly know that my being your "favorite" atheist has nothing whatever to do with it; you have produced a naked non sequitur; but it would be useful for me to hear from you why you wanted that information posted here. I ask because it is my belief that if you speak fully and truthfully, it will reveal that your opposition to abortion at any stage is solely a product of your religious beliefs, and that you are working from that starting point to build a non-religious sounding rationale for forcing your religious beliefs onto atheists and others who don't share them, and proposing to get the government to help you do so.

To: Neocon who wrote (646)	9/7/1999 5:52:00 PM
From: Edwarda	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 6418

Neocon, amazingly, you have written just what I was going to write this evening and expressed it more clearly. It is what I was aiming for in my posts, the need to show logical cause for exclusion from personhood and why I do not feel safe philosophically in excluding the unborn at any moment after the embryo has attached to the uterine wall. My position here does not stem from religious tenets, nor am I ignoring the agony that unwanted pregnancy can cause, including unsafe illegal abortions. Damn it, E knows quite well, since I posted it on "feelies" a while back, I myself had an abortion when I was in college, terrorized into it by the fear of being "forced" into a marriage that would have been a disaster (although the loving friendship has persisted all these years). I regretted it within a minute after the procedure started and wished I could have stopped it immediately. I knew then that I had underestimated myself and my ability to withstand pressure and make whatever other choices I could and should. I have no children--a jest of God, no doubt--but every time since that I have thought I might be pregnant, I have known that I could not terminate the pregnancy, no matter how appalling the consequences might be. By my own philosophical standards, I had chosen my life over the life of someone else, a someone else who could not speak for himself/herself. So I am not merely mouthing off "family values" or whatever, nor am I speaking as a person who has no idea of how a woman feels and what the pressures may be. I am speaking as someone who has come to a philosophical position because of the experience itself.