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Pastimes : The Boxing Ring Revived -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (3560)	1/7/2003 3:52:23 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7720

Since you do have not troubled yourself to see what I think, you are not in a position to point out anything. I am sorry, your protestation of "30 seconds" is utterly disingenuous, and I am busy with other things. Maybe later......

To: Solon who wrote (3560)	1/7/2003 7:54:56 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7720

It seems to me that his answer was responsive. What forms of human cells are entitled to what legal protections is necessarily a matter of societal belief, which belief gets passed into law by the mechanism of the particular society. The societal belief is in most cultures religiously based, though in some it is based on morality divorced more or less successfully from religious belief. But it is never based purely on reason. It can't be. And, perhaps most important, it changes over time and culture. The legal rights accorded to women, minorities, slaves, the insane, etc. are very much a matter of time and culture. In some cultures today, any abortion is a crime. In others, some abortions are a crime. In others, no abortions are a crime. It is impossible to say which decision is "right" in any absolute sense. It is purely a matter of belief, as Neo has made clear. His parallel of anti-abortioinists to abolitionists is an extraordinarly accurate parallel, since both center around a) what rights, if any, are to be accorded to a sub-set of the human species; b) what those who differ from society at large might to do change the beliefs of society at large; c) the belief that just because at the present moment society may believe in the rights of slaveowners to abuse their slaves or the rights of women to abort their babies doesn't make those things right, and d) there is absolutely no way to prove without any recourse to arguments of religion or morality, whether overt or hidden, that blacks should be accorded the same rights as whites or that fetuses should be accorded any rights at all.