virus: RE: Abortion (formerly AIDS Meme)

Hakeeb A. Nandalal (nanco@trinidad.net)
Tue, 29 Oct 1996 20:44:00 +0000


Ken Sartor wrote :-

> ..............
> ..............
> No, but neither would i support a church "Order of the Sacred Egg".
> I do not see abortion opponents as having tyrannical sentiments.
> If the government was to allow infanticide during the first 13 (i like
> odd numbers ;) ) months after birth, would you oppose or support this?
> Why?
>
> Perhaps some subjects are difficult to come to agreement on? Neither
> side dishonest or evil or tyrannical - just disagreeing.

The point of the right to abortion is the privacy of a woman's body. Killing someone after birth, regardless of
how many months have passed, is a different issue entirely as in capital punishment.

Slavery was abolished because society (not the slaves) decided that it was unacceptable to own someone.
Similarly, it is wrong for the State or anyone else for that matter to tell a woman "you have no say in what
goes on in your body". Every tenet of our civilization points to the sovereignty of the individual's body. I
have not found a single cause for forcing a woman to have a child which she does not want which is so critical
to the State's interest that it necessitates enforcement by the law. All anti-abortion laws previously in
effect were the result of legislation passed by Christian legislatures with Christian popular support.

Every anti-abortion group, to the best of my knowledge, is rooted in religion. There are no valid secular
reasons to prevent abortions. By thinking of a fetus as a baby, we are using hindsight, we see a happy child
playing in a field and our parental instincts cause us to be repulsed by the thought of then "killing" that
child. This is crooked thinking which must be straightened out by clear logic : a fetus is not a child, its
rights do not exceed the mother's. To give a fetus superior rights, we're declaring the mother's rights null
and void. In every other aspect of civilization the rights of a woman are paramount except when she is
pregnant. To me, this sound like a form of punishment for an unfortunate biological-function albatross.

Have you ever seen a religious fanatic shouting in the face of a scared woman trying to access an abortion
clinic? Would you say that that behavior is a tad tyrannical? If all the anti-abortionists did was stay home
and brood, I wouldn't even bring up the subject. The problem lies with people being physically obstructed and
mentally abused. The famous "gag" order preventing federally funded clinics from advising women on abortion is
part of the abuse.

The abortion issue to me is pure memetics : any time a membot seeks to inflict his beliefs on others even when
it's clear those views are not appreciated, we have tyranny. When the membots start influencing the laws, we
have State-sanctioned tyranny.

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* Hakeeb A. Nandalal *
* nanco@trinidad.net *
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