[Vision2020] Compassion for All Life

[Tony]

    Tom, our egghead up the hill has repeatedly evaded the point I made about his irrelevant distinction between humans and persons.  As was pointed out clearly, the declaration of Independence states plainly that human beings are endowed by their creator with an unalienable right to life.  Now, Tom, children growing in their mother's womb are human beings, as Dr. Egghead has acknowledged.  Therefore, as our founding documents pledge, they are deserving of protection.  He can attempt to divine the thoughts of those who wrote these guidelines of he wishes, but he cannot rewrite these documents or change their unequivocal meaning.

Thick, juicy, char-broiled rib steaks forever!   -Tony
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Nick Gier 
  To: vision2020 at moscow.com 
  Sent: Saturday, January 27, 2007 9:58 AM
  Subject: [Vision2020] Compassion for All Life


  Greetings:

  Thanks, Tom, for your post.  The number of U.S. abortions has decreased since the 1970s and they would go down even more if so-called pro-lifers would not place so many obstacles in the path of women who want them.  The earlier they have them, the safer they are.

  European countries have much lower abortion rates than we do primarily because of good (some would say "graphic") sex education, the absence of a Religious Right, supportive social services, and free health care.  European countries also have lower teen pregnancy rates, and much, much lower STD rates.

  With regard to our founding documents, I would say that even ETs would be protected under our Constitution.  The premise of the movie ET is that ET was a person, and the corollary was that it was the children, not the adults, who recognized this basic moral fact.

  This hypothetical clearly shows that there are persons who are not humans (ETs and God), and human beings who are not persons (Terri Schiavo and fetuses up to 25 weeks).  Our visionary down the hill has recently defined God as cosmic intelligence so even he has to agree with this, after evading the question in an earlier exchange.  Therefore, the person/nonperson is the only relevant moral distinction to make on this topic.

  By the way, my rant about militant vegetarianism was simply a demonstration that most pro-lifers are not morally consistent.

  Soy Burgers Forever (touche, Paul!)

  Nick


  "Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to human affairs."
  --Ralph Waldo Emerson

  "Abstract truth has no value unless it incarnates in human beings who represent it, by proving their readiness to die for it."
   --Mohandas Gandhi

  "Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot be discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each part by itself. . . .We must keep our attention fixed on the whole and on the interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our intellectual life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between science, religion, and art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its various parts." --Max Planck

  Nicholas F. Gier
  Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho
  1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843
  http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/home.htm
  208-882-9212/FAX 885-8950
  President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO
  http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/ift.htm





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