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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (3722)	1/28/2001 2:18:36 PM
From: E	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

<<Legally speaking, I think it is.. For millennia we've had birth as the bright line for when human life begins.>> To commence juridical citizenship when one is born has been a reasonable custom that i'm not arguing with. This isn't the same thing as saying that for millennia we've accepted that "human life" begins at birth, though. "Human life" isn't the same as "a human being." The religious right declares that they are identical, of course! -- because they believe that as soon as an egg is fertilized, voila, it has a soul and should have legal standing. That's an article of religious faith that they are fighting to force down the throats of citizens of different faiths. I'm trying to avoid a reductio ad absurdum at either end of the gestation cycle, because though I may not know much about legal history, I do know these things: 1. A fertilized egg is not a human being, it's a blueprint for one. 2. An eight month fetus is not a blueprint for a human being, it's a human being... (its lack of a yet-established national citizenship based on the Declaration of Independence or Constitution notwithstanding.) <<<Just because we've always done it that way doesn't mean we have to keep doing it that way, but when something is already established, it sticks until there's a compelling reason to change it and a workable way to implement the change. >>> IMO, there are very compelling reasons to change it. A couple of reasons compelling to me: We haven't had the infanticide discussion, and I don't like decisions on such significant moral issues to be made without discussion. I oppose legalizing infanticide. I also oppose performing it without giving it its name because the Constitution sensibly ties citizenship with birth. People "know" the difference between a legal condition and a "real life" one. In "real life," an eight month old fetus is a child, whatever its right to inherit or apply for a passport. Which leads directly to a second reason compelling to me. If these late term abortions continue, providing ammunition to the right, we will lose the fight to preserve a woman's right not to be forced to carry an embryo inside her body until it develops into a dependent human being.

To: Lane3 who wrote (3722)	1/28/2001 2:30:28 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Post Script thought: A woman who was involved with the Roe v Wade decision (she was very active in Planned Parenthood) told me that the reason the cut-off was made so late was to "grandfather" women who had been waiting for abortions. I've never heard about this from any other source, but have felt that such a predictably ultimately self-defeating provision had to have some unusual explanation. My other (no doubt paranoid) thought was that the religious right was very smart, and went with provisions that would enable their side to be able, ever after, to change the subject from embryos and early fetuses to babies, since what they're concerned about is cells-with-souls, which aren't marketable to most voters as grounds for depriving women of a right to safe and legal abortion. The right surely does favor those pictures of late term fetuses, however minuscule a percentage of abortions they represent! There's a reason for that. Seriously, though, this seems to me a good example of (regarding those that elected to go with the late cut-off the standard for Roe), "with friends like those you don't need enemies." You also asked about how to make workable new regulations with an earlier cut-off for legal abortions. That's a new and very interesting subject we can talk about another time. I'd like to hear others' thoughts about this. I assume the discussion would involve definitions of personhood, or of "a human being." Edit: I assume also that there's a lot of scholarship out there. Wouldn't it be fascinating to read a transcript of the discussion that preceded Roe v Wade?