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Pastimes : Impeachment=" Insult to all Voters" -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: the gator who wrote (1131)	12/31/1998 9:02:00 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 2390

The anti-abortion movement, as you term it (I don't necessarily accept the "movement" term for it; I think it is something quite different from that) arose, as I recall, basically when abortion began to become medically, socially and legally acceptable. Prior to that time, our basic moral (not religious, since it transcended religion) social code, backed up by law, was sufficient to enforce a prohibition against abortion, and no responsible doctor would perform an abortion. Thus, there was no need for an anti-abortion "movement." But when society and its laws began to deny the rights of the unborn, there was a vacuum into which people who had respect for that form of life, too, had to step. I submit that the question isn't when life begins. (If life truly begins at 40, can I abort my teenagers? PLEASE?) (Oops--I'd better add a <g> lest some weirdos on this thread take me seriously.) Nobody can doubt that a fetus is alive in at least some sense of the word. The question is when that form of human life deserves to have legal rights. That is always the question -- what legal and social rights are accorded to what forms of human life? What rights do children (a good example I didn't use in my original message), women, blacks, immigrants (who are now losing rather than gaining legal and social rights in this society), etc. have at what points in human history? The multiplicity of pendula swing wildly. In the 1890s when we needed immigrants to grow our country, build our railroads, etc. we gave (at least certain) immigrants significant legal rights, including the right to cheap or free land from the US government. These days, however, when we perceive that immigrants are taking more services than they pay for (though most studies I have seen actually show that immigrants pay more in taxes than they cost in services, but let's not let facts intrude into our political discourse) we are denying them rights they have a few decades ago. Their pendulum swings away from rights, as does that of the unborn; meanwhile the pendulum of children swings the other way (merely to be accused, without proof, of child abuse today is sufficient to destroy a person's life--the modern equivalent of the Salem witch trials, and children are beginning to be allowed to sue their parents for wrongful life and other causes of action). There is a basic theory of life that every person has to have some other class of persons to look down on. There is a probably apochrophyal (sp) but nonetheless meaningful story of the German after World War II who was living in the gutter, without decent clothing, food, disgraced, the lowest of the low, who, however, when commiserated with about his condition, had one final source of pride to point to: "At least I am not a JEW."