response 152 of 404:

Oct 24 03:44 UTC 1998

I think Kenton needs to read cmcgee's resp:137 carefully.

Your wife was given a choice - to protect her life, or to protect her
baby's life.  She made a courageous choice.  Suppose instead the doctor
had said "Your pregnancy is endangering your life, but it's against the
law to abort it."  She would have been spared the opportunity to make a
courageous choice, because the government would already have decided to
courageously risk her life for the baby's.  I believe it was right for
your wife to make the choice she did, and I applaud and respect her for
it.  But that does NOT mean that I think it would have been good for the
government to make the choice for her.

It's true that most pro-life people would allow abortion in cases where
the life of the mother is endangered, so even under those laws your wife
would not have been robbed of her choice.  However, medical problems
aren't the only kinds of problems which might make giving birth to a
child an extraordinary act of courage.  Bringing a child into this world
is a huge responsiblity, and for many people find it unimaginable that
they can stretch far enough to do that.  To go ahead requires courage
from them, just as it did for your wife.  I believe they too should be
allowed a choice in the matter.

Like Rane, I find your arguements about when the soul enters the baby
irrelevant.  But they aren't irrelevant because I don't believe in
souls.  They are irrelevant because even if I agreed with everything you
said (and I do agree with much of it), it wouldn't change my mind about
abortion.  The reason I believe in abortion being a choice is not
because I think babies don't turn human for three months.  You can harp
on that point forever and it will never change my mind about anything.

My reasoning works like this:

 - First, it is important to understand that the viewpoint of the law
   is not the viewpoint of a person.  The law must be impartial.  Good
   people are partial to their friends and family.  The law must serve
   the good of society as a whole.  Individuals serve other individuals.
   The law must protect the freedom of individuals to seek fulfillment.
   Where the interests of individuals conflict, the law must favor those
   whose actions strengthen society instead of those who weaken it.
   (That is why it's good for the law to strongly discourage murders,
   while being relatively friendly to farmers).

 - From the viewpoint of society as a whole, there is no shortage of
   babies.  Quite the contrary, most of our problems would be much
   reduced if population growth was slower.  The capacity for babies
   to make a contribution to society is extremely limited.  On the
   contrary, the effort involved in raising them costs society quite
   a lot.

 - Of course, for society to try to restrict the birth of babies would
   make a lot of individuals very unhappy, causing depression and
   revolutions and such.  Individuals like you and me want our babies
   very much, no matter what they cost us to raise.  A sane and stable
   society will respect our desire for babies.  And after all, society
   does need enough babies to make a new generation, and if there are
   people willing to do the work of raising them, that's terrific.
   Here, the needs of the individual and the needs of society are in
   perfect harmony.

 - However, babies that their parents don't want have very little value
   to society.  To force a productive member of society to bring yet
   another baby into a world with too many babies doesn't do any good.
   Not only is it a burden on an over populated world, but it isn't
   even as good a risk of becoming a productive member of society as
   a baby that is wanted by someone.

 - The right to life is not something that comes for free just because
   you have human genes.  You need to provide some value to someone.
   Some people, like the folks who recently beat Matthew Shepard to
   death, or the folks who bombed the federal building in Oklahoma
   provide more negative value than positive value, and their right to
   life is generally consider low to non-existant.  We generally try to
   give everyone a lot of benefit of doubt when judging their worthiness
   to live, be we do make those judgements.

 - As far as value to society goes, a baby is a zero, or in these days
   of overpopulation, even a slight negative.  However, my unborn baby
   has some non-intrinsic value - I value him.  I am personally
   committed to doing everything in my power to raise him to be a
   useful and positive contributor to the society of man.  His existance
   adds to my personal desire to make this a world worth living in.
   That's where all of the value of that baby to society resides, and
   it is primarily on the basis of preserving that value that I claim
   that society should aide me in protecting the life of that child.

 - An unwanted baby does not have that kind of value.  Its parents
   are not prepared and willing to make the effort needed to ensure
   that it will be eventually worth the food it eats.  True, there
   are lots of potential adoptive parents who'd like to adopt the baby,
   but they would be equally happy to adopt any other baby.  There
   really are plenty of babies in the world.  We don't need to bring
   more babies into the world for people to adopt.

 - Babies are human from conception, but they aren't part of human
   society until they are loved and wanted.  When a parent says, "I
   want this child," then that child gets the rights of a human being.

 - The rule allowing three months to decide on an abortion is not
   because the baby somehow gets a soul at three months.  It's because
   three months is adequate time for a woman to find out she is
   pregnant and make a thoughtful, considered choice.  Once that time
   is past, society assumes the parent has made a commitment, and will
   hold them to it, holding them responsibile for the child.  It's
   a reasonable time period to make an informed realistic choice.  It
   has nothing to do with the time it takes to grow a baby.  It has
   to do with the time it takes to grow a parent.

 - Pro-choice means that if you ask someone why they became a parent,
   the answer will never be "well, I got drunk and the condom leaked."
   The answer will have something to do with wanting a child, and
   wanting to be a parent to the child.  In an overpopulated world,
   we should always have good reasons to add another baby.

Yes, I really believe that the value of humans is socially determined. 
I expect there will be questions about vegetables and homeless people
with no ties to anyone.  I can answer those, with arguments deriving
from the complexity of society and humans and the many kinds of value a
person can have and the difficulty of judging that value.  Unborn babies
are uniquely simple in their social connections.