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

To: Bald Eagle who wrote (37056)	11/16/2001 8:25:02 AM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

We separate parasites from dependents - by nomenclature. The key difference is in our choice, as thinking beings, to remove the one and to support the other. If a woman has a growth, a clump of cells, which feeds on her for its nutrient, then if she wants that growth she may call it a baby. If she does not - presumably the case if she wants an abortion <g> - then it is, effectively, an unwanted parasite, even if she may not view it quite so blithely... It isn't that pleasant or easy, because of the emotional commitment we place upon children and most especially the bond a mother is genetically meant to feel towards her offspring. But equally, if a pregnant woman feels and decides that she does not want the child - that's ultimately it. No one else should ever have the right to remove that choice, to force a woman to be a slave, a brood mare to suit their desires or beliefs - without the right to decide what grows in her body. What's so hard about that? Since babies cannot live independently for quite some time after birth(even over twenty years in some cases in the USA!), that means they are still parasites by the definition that they cannot "live independently". Good straw man. J.C. seems to be similarly confused as to why we ban 'post-natal abortion'... The difference is that after birth, the baby is no longer a part of its mother's body. It is surely still dependent - but need not be on her. It can be fed, cared for, paid for by anyone. I'd thought that was really quite clear. It meets one rational, simple and immediately visible criterion of independent life; it is no longer feeding parasite-fashion, linked to the blood of its single and only host. So we protect it in law --- as we do not that clump of cells with no independent life of its own. Now we might be able to keep said clump of cells - tumour, myoblast, embryo, foetus, parasite - alive in vitro, ad infinitum. But the fact that some flesh can, with advanced science, be kept alive and developed outside its host when nature unaided would not support it, does not mean that it must be sustained.