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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PROLIFE who wrote (17445)	4/24/2000 4:41:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Defining life is uninteresting. The stuff under my soapdish is life. Nobody will contradict that an ovum is continuously alive as it develops into a born baby. But that's not the point. <edit> On rereading ... You've satisfied me. I believe your original statement was that life began at conception. I'll go you one further ... that ovum was ALIVE since the mother was, say, a five-month fetus. But was it a person? That is to me the more vibrant question. The equation of abortion with murder works only if a person is being killed. In every abortion something is being killed ... but also with every menstruation, miscarriage, even nocturnal (or otherwise) emission. I do not think it is ... prudent, balanced ... to grant a zygote full personhood status. We all agree that a born baby, or a seven-month fetus, has personhood status. (However an unborn seven-month fetus does not have current legal status equivalent to a born seven-month fetus.) The debate as to when an ovum, zygote, embryo ... attains personhood is very difficult. I would not place it too early (as many religious lobbies do) or too late (as it might be argued is current law).

To: PROLIFE who wrote (17445)	4/24/2000 5:00:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Respond to of 769667

Two hundred years ago you could find perfectly credentialed scientists, eminences at the top of their fields,who would and did sincerely assert that if a human was made to move faster than a horse's gallop he would surely die. The threat of deadly speed came from Steam. Before Gagarin and Shepard flew almost forty years ago, there was an organization of concerned physicians who expressed worry before Congress that the sheer speed of orbital flight would prove an intolerable stress and kill the astronauts. Both claims appear ridiculous today, but at the time they were honest opinions coming from perfectly credentialed people. I respect Dr. de Mere's statement about personhood and conception, but I reject it. I won't need to retract my rejection unless/until the field has been advanced beyond the conjecture of wise men in armchairs. It would be interesting to read the opposing testimony. But I don't want to oblige you, and I won't look for it either.