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

To: TimF who wrote (4220)	1/31/2001 8:41:37 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

BTW I would like to thank you for being polite and repectful despite our strong difference on this frequently emotional issue. I infer from this that you are game to carry this discussion further. <g> It may not be apparent but I've been learning from reading your points. (I know you recognize that's not the same thing as changing my mind.) I thought your early point about abortion rights and the Constitution was well taken. And I think I understand how, if people really see abortion as mass murder, they would feel like they could singlemindedly run roughshod over everything and everybody to stop it. I'm not saying that I approve of that, but I can understand it. Earlier today I said I could relate to how you could just know some things were true, but upon further reflection, I think we're talking about two different things. My truths are the terminal and instrumental values that define the world as I would like it to be. So when you come down to it, all my truths are selfish. One of my truths is that it's wrong for me to take more than my fair share. I operate that way because, if everyone would do that, the world would be a fairer place and that suits me. The same is true with liberty. I want the opportunity for self-actualized for myself and everyone else. I'm civil to others because I want to live in a civil world. I know that I have to tolerate the oddities of others before I can expect them to tolerate mine. I may express that as a ethical concept or a virtue but it's really just an instrumental value on the path to the world as I'd like it to be. I think you're talking about more absolute truths than that. There's a point in here somewhere. If you lived in 1850 in South Carolina how would you react to a slave owner making such a statement? Over the last couple of days I've tried to put myself in one of the historical scenarios you've described, but none is a close enough parallel to inform my thinking on the subject. I was a young woman involved in the civil rights cause when Roe v. Wade came to pass. I remember spending some time pondering it and its implications. I remember thinking that some day people would look back on abortion the same way we look back on slavery. I also remember thinking that we weren't ready for that yet. I just checked your profile to see how old you are and I see that you like sci fi. Do you remember the Star Trek episode where Dr. McCoy gets amnesia in WWII US? He falls in love with a woman who has to die because otherwise her ideals would delay the US entry into the war and change history for the worse. I'm old enough to have seen that in its first run and it made an impression on me. Change comes in its own time. I think that the ethical vegetarians will be shown to be right, but I wouldn't outlaw meat now. I think that pacifists will inherit the earth, but I wouldn't unilaterally disarm now. We talked about slave labor over the last couple of days. I think that slave labor is an abomination but I won't boycott all Chinese goods. The slave labor problem will fix itself over time as China gets richer and more global. And I wouldn't outlaw abortion now. We're not ready for it. In the world as I'd like it to be, people wouldn't have children they weren't equipped to raise. The population wouldn't be expanding to the point where society suffers from overcrowding and natural resources are being exhausted. There would be the technology to obviate the possibility of pregnancies that aren't planned. When the world gets there, then we can elevate the status of a fetus. Doing so now is like McCoy's girlfriend. Karen