[geeks] Socialized medicine [was Re: nVidia 8800GT for Apple Mac Pro]

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: "Jonathan C. Patschke" <jp at celestrion.net>
>Date: 2008/06/02 Mon PM 10:21:39 EDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Socialized medicine [was Re: nVidia 8800GT for Apple Mac Pro]

>On Mon, 2 Jun 2008, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>
>> Fine, wait nine months and then ask the baby if it's OK with being
>> terminated - you are punishing the fetus for not yet having the powers
>> of cognition and communication. The woman's rights trump the baby's
>> because she can hit the "buzzer" first when the question is asked...
>>
>> I am not a fan of that logic...
>
>It's the logic that puts roast in my oven and bacon next to your fried
>eggs.
>
>If cows and pigs had the same degree of self-awareness that we do, do
>you think we'd slaughter them and serve them up?

Don't follow:

We raise cows/pigs to be slaughtered - are you saying that there are humans that get pregnant to have abortions?

When we slaughter cows/pigs, we use nearly 100% of the carcass - we dispose of the fetus as medical waste.

No matter how long you wait, a cow/pig will never be human - given a relatively brief period of time (40 weeks in the womb), every law I am aware of would hold that fetus as human, and protected. (To varying degrees based on gender in some location, but that is way, way off-topic ;^)

It is against the law to murder humans that are under-developed, either mentally or physically (though it was a popular theory in the first part of the last century - it's called eugenics[0]) - why treat a fetus differently - because it can't breathe air?

>The legal argument is that until a child develops that self-awareness,
>it's no-harm/no-foul to terminate its existence.  Without a
>consciousness, it may feel pain at some chemical level, but the
>experience will be even more limited than what we put our livestock
>through at the slaughterhouse.

See above assertion regarding under-developed humans...

>If it's merely the capacity to develop that self-awareness that grants
>human rights, onanism should be a capital crime.

While a certain percentage of earth's population may like to say "it has a mind of it's own", I find it hard to follow this argument... That unique activity has as a happy by-product a near 100% guarantee that no fetus will be developed as a result of this "activity".

It's quite a leap to equate "target practice" to murder...

Also, it's onanism - minor typo.

Lionel