<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif"">Good Morning Visionaries:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif""><br>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif"">After a break to get on top of my taxes, I want to return to
the abortion debate. I thank Keely for
her article. I've only read a couple of
pages, but the author is making some of the same points that I made 30 years
ago in my article at <a href="http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/abortion.htm">www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/abortion.htm</a>. I will comment on it after I give it a good
read.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif""><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif"">Paul: the scenarios you lay out (fetus with a fatal disease;
threat to the life of the mother) have been discussed for years and they have
been used to argue the pro-choice position.
I have always criticized the position “It’s my body so butt out,”
because in most cases these women have not addressed the personhood of the
fetus. I’m convinced, however, that
established law (even Canon Law before 1917), science, and moral philosophy can
survive the incoherent and mostly uninformed arguments of the
anti-abortionists. I’m sure that these
discussions, as they have been for centuries, will not be mere bantering as Jay
so sarcastically suggested.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif""><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif"">Jay: I’ll try to make my points without using FULL CAPS,
which I think distract and therefore weaken the force of your arguments.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif"">I want to stress that my position, unlike most anti-abortionists,
is consistently pro-life. After rain storms I frantically pick up worms on the
side walk and place them on the grass or ground. I have come to the conclusion
that all living beings that can experience pain should not be harmed or killed. We need to respect even those such as worms, which probably do not feel pain.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif""><br>
</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif"">I have yet to see an argument that establishes a moral and therefore legal difference
between their lives and ours. We already have laws on the books that prosecute
people who cause animals unnecessary harm, so we can’t say that they don’t have
any rights.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif""><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif"">That is the main point of my using the chimp fetus
image. You claim that it is somehow a
trap and you avoid it by saying that you would not protect the life of this
being. Yet it looks just like a human
fetus (most people don’t notice the bigger hands), it feels pain, it has a heartbeat,
and it has brain waves equivalent to a second trimester human fetus. Of course it is an animal; that’s what we
are too!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif""><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif"">What is your reason for not protecting its life? If you don’t have any, then you are
committing the fallacy of specieism—a moral mistake as wrong as racism and
sexism.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif""><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif"">The hundreds of people who tell me that they would protect
the chimp fetus’s life have made the emotional connection of which you speak,
so I’m not persuaded (even with all the caps) by your long paragraph attempting
to make this point.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif""><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif"">You seem to say that it is important for the state to force
women to make the “connection” between their fetuses and their feelings about
them. Here there is a gigantic
disconnect in the conservative principle of personal responsibility. When it comes to people or companies acting
in the financial markets and the environment, we hear cries of “leave them
alone, let them take care of their own business.” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif""><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif"">Bush II was notorious for voluntary controls
on businesses, but the economist who was appointed by Bush I to sort out the
S&L crisis has said that there were at least a million cases of financial
fraud that Bush II failed to prosecute.
The effects of the Great Recession could have been mitigated by vigorous
prosecution by the Justice Department.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif""><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif"">But when it comes to reproductive rights, conservative male
legislators do not trust women to make their own decisions. There is no laissez-faire here. To the contrary there are attempts to invade
women’s wombs to make sure that they agree with the views of their
attackers. It is not certainly unreasonable
to call this a war and a frontal assault on the personal autonomy of women in
the most fragile moments of their lives.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif""><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"">I
can’t believe that you continue to beat around the bush about low rates of abortion
in Western Europe. Your argument about
low birth rates simply does not wash, because, according to date from Index
Mundi, out of 20 Western European countries there are actually two with higher
rates and the rest are with range of 2 percent of the U.S. rate of 11.4 births
per 1,000 in 2009. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif""><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"">You “wonder” about abortion rates in Greece, Portugal,
and Spain, and their thesis is not supported.
They are 12.1 percent, 10.2 percent, and 11.5 percent respectively. The U.S. rate was 19.6 in 2008. Let me stress that teen pregnancy rates, even among white girls, is two to three times higher than Western <br>Europe and 4 to 5 times higher than Japan and Korea. Christian America has failed its young women miserably.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif""><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"">The
comparison between protesting against killing people in war (or the death
penalty for that matter) and abortion is wrong-headed for a simple reason:
there is no question in anyone’s mind that Afghanis or Iraqis are moral and
legal persons, but there is no consensus at all that the early fetus is. In fact, established law going back many
centuries and the science of fetal development leads us to conclude that it is not a
person. Yes, it is obviously a human life, but I've argued ad nauseum why that is not morally relevant.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Georgia, serif" size="3"><br></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"">Thanks
for the dialogue,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif""><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"">Nick</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif""></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif""> </span></p><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 8:30 AM, keely emerinemix <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kjajmix1@msn.com">kjajmix1@msn.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div><div dir="ltr">
Good morning, Visionaires,<br><br>For those who are convinced that their Christian faith, or the faith of others, requires a militant "no-abortion-under-any-circumstances" view on reproductive rights, I'd like to recommend the following article from the Religious Coalition on Reproductive Choice:<br>
<br><a href="http://rcrc.org/pdf/RCRC_EdSeries_Personhood.pdf" target="_blank">http://rcrc.org/pdf/RCRC_EdSeries_Personhood.pdf</a><br><br>This explains better than anything I've ever read what I mean, for example, when I say that while abortion is the ending of a human life, it is not the "murder" of a PERSON -- and the decision should not be the provenance of government to make. It's a long one, but well worth the effort, and evangelicals will recognize some names -- Stott, Criswell, Waltke -- who held to views of abortion that might surprise them.<br>
<br>Good stuff that results in a profound reverence for life -- something lacking in the "pro-life" camp that's come to define evangelicalism. <br><br><font color="#8064a2"><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><font face="Verdana">Keely<br>
<a href="http://www.keely-prevailingwinds.com" target="_blank">www.keely-prevailingwinds.com</a><br></font></font></font> </div></div>
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