The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #104170   Message #2136875
Posted By: Amos
30-Aug-07 - 10:24 AM
Thread Name: BS: Mutual respect
Subject: RE: BS: Mutual respect
Dear Bruce, old chum:

Well, the simple answer to your heated post is that my position is that those who equate murder with abortion are simply off-base, and confused about the nature of the individual.

I suppose you could argue that anyone who excises a tumour is murdering an incipient organism, but no-one would use the term murder, because it is disproportionate.

One of the reasons behind all the nuttiness hinging on this issue is the conflation of potential with absollute actuality.

Another is the somewhat bizarre notion (to me) that an individual is a body, and then by extension, the notion that even a potential body is the same as an individual.

I think people get desperate about this sort of thing when they lose confidence in their ability to assume a new body, because of an excess of past traumas, or perhaps guilt, on the issue. But, ya know, I am not in the mainstream here, and of all the folks who read this I expect perhaps four will understand it. I expect I have lost hundreds of bodies down the centuries, and while it is never pleasant, it is really not so serious a thing; about on the order of having to replace a totaled car or throw out a well-loved suit. If you endow your car or your clothes with life, something that anyone is capable of doing, it all of a sudden becomes a much larger issue, but that is because of the endowment. I am sure this will place me firmly in the marginal nutball category, but hey, I've been there before.

There's an important distinction, of course -- in the case of zygotes and foetuses, there is a point where an individual does connect up with a body and establishes some clear communication line. When that occurs, obviously, common respect for that individual's game in progress would suggest avoiding termination of the pregnancy if at all possible. Thus my "position" mentioned upthread. But hell, if we were going to be governed by such nancy postures, we would never go to war, would we? Hmmmm?


A