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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: steve harris who wrote (126634)	10/20/2000 6:37:52 PM
From: milo_morai	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578970

OT:Steve I think he was poking fun about people killing Sperm, but contraception is the prevention of fertilization and abortion is the termination of life. I tend to agree that abortion is not a method of birth control.

To: steve harris who wrote (126634)	10/20/2000 7:50:34 PM
From: dougSF30	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1578970

steve, WAY OT re: The miracle of life begins at conception. To equate an 8-week old fetus with a fully conscious adult is, to me, a horrible, unethical lapse of reason. Before you say something like "all human life is equal", allow me to dispel that notion. Let's play a game: Choose a person X at random. They are forced to decide whether: A. 8-week old Fetus Y is aborted. (OR) B. Random adult Z is killed. They can flip a coin, if they like. I believe the results of this cruel game would clearly show the adult to be 'more valued' than the fetus, for good reason. Begin replacing B with 'less valued' things: A 2-year-old child dies. The family pet dies. A terrible illness for random adult Z. Random adult Z gets to roll dice. If a 6, they die. Random adult Z forgoes the rest of high school. and on and on... Replace A with: a 4-week old embryo, a 3-month old fetus, a newborn with a severe, terminal disease. It's not about when life begins. My thumb is alive. It's about trade-offs, and who gets to make them. How would you play the game? Would you really flip a coin between a fetus and an adult relative? I doubt it. The vast majority wouldn't, if actually forced to choose, despite previously spouting pleasant-sounding pap about all human life being equal. Doug p.s. The typical pro-choice argument of it being a "woman's right to choose" is deeply flawed, unfortunately, for pragmatic reasons. Were a fully conscious adult to be conjured up inside a woman as a result of pregnancy, the ethics would be quite different. It is both because of the significant life-changing (perhaps threatening) effects on the mother AND the inherently lower value of a fetus (as compared to an adult) that women should be primarily entrusted with the decision. The critical second reason goes largely unspoken, because it is politically unpalatable to most people. So yes, abortion should be legal, but the reasons provided by most pro-choice folks are insufficient, and omit a crucial factor.