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Hi Alan,
Most of the article is not about babies but family planning. There are some mixed signals in the article, too, right? Still, this seems to be a very strange case. It appears that there are some political movements who do not care what is the LAW of the LAND in the United States of America. They will pursue their agenda anyway as if to say the Supreme Court are not Supreme. But the fact that President George Bush is my President depends solely on accepting the Supreme Court's authority, as it was their action which gave him the Presidency. Now, I don't see why he denies funds for UN programs which are perfectly legal if being administered in the United States.
I mean, huh? Am I reading that wrong?
Regarding the abortion part, if it applies to the article above, and it BARELY does...
We've talked about this before and I will tip my hand now...
I like your ideas sometimes....and sometimes
I wonder if you're almost too skillful as a propagandist to examine a situation in all its
context ...Before determining what conclusion your data will serve! And maybe you're even a better learner than I, if you have processed our earlier exchange and raced ahead of me this time!
In anthropology, the better practice, I think, is called cultural relativism, where the anthropologist does not evaluate the merits of the culture being studied, for that would interfere with the deeper, longer-term and more valuable activity of truly understanding the culture and how they developed the culture...in response to which perceived needs and how their values were achieved over time.
In considering our own nation's cultural values,
I agree with you that it is better not to become pregnant if one does not plan to have a baby.
Where we previously disagreed was that I believed
an expectant mother, while still early in the pregnancy, has dominion over her pregnancy that church or government or unmarried spouse cannot usurp, regardless of how strongly they feel.
The opposition view countered this idea of
the "woman's dominion" with a claim that a person acquires rights as a citizen and a demand on the parent's next 18 years (or more?)....at the moment of conception or while still the size of a hummingbird...etc. and at a time when I've seen no evidence that person has ever made an ethical decision or registered an opinion. Personally,
I do not want many things to occur in the world which are leading us down the path to destruction, but among the most urgent or tragic had not seemed to me to be an expectant mother's choice, in the first three months or so of pregnancy, to have a carefully performed abortion, though it bothers me not a little. It's a big choice and event for the woman and her support group if she chooses to consult them, and I hope she can.
If we determine first that our values
are "A" and then all our studies arrange our data to support that "A" then we have short-circuited our process of choosing values. Most such times, we are obtaining our values from an imprinting of authority and values we received as children or as
our brains continued to hook up. If those values were universally true, then why wouldn't others have them? At least, we should defer judgment while assembling data into the picture they create. The picture I see is that all human beings have their rights granted by the art of the possible...made possible by good management and good regulation. These proceed from good process of consensus-building, based on first principles which extend dignity and rights to most higher life forms in various degrees. Do they extend to
human or pre-human foetuses three months after conception? So far, the law of the land is that the woman carrying them has lawful and proper dominion over the entire issue...moral or otherwise. I don't think anyone has a right to
tag others with the slander that they are "immoral" when they are just trying to manage their own personal physiological and family affairs and are not in violation of civil or criminal statutes.
Mike |
