Chris
This post is off-topic for this list. I wouldn't have bothered with
pointing out such obvious facts, except that Jones (and perhaps others on
this list) does not seem to be aware of them, judging by *his* off-topic
remarks.
Stephen
>http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000928/sc/health_memory_dc_1.html
>[More evidence that language is `hardwired' into humans? And more
>ethical problems for what is euphemistically called `pro-choice'? See next
>story]
><snip>
>http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000928/sc/abortion_approval_dc_6.html
>[Orwell would be proud of these euphemisms: "choice" - not saying
>what is chosen, i.e. to end a potential or actual human life. And "Planned
>Parenthood" which is really planned *non*-parenthood!]
Chris
This last is often not true, since *many* people who go to them *are*
parents or *become* parents.
Though the term "pro life" may not be a euphemism, it, too evades an issue:
the issue of *whose* life, and what *kind* of life (when "human life" is
defined in terms of mere physical attributes (such as genetics and the
nature of the physical tissues), then something is *seriously* awry. Such a
definition of human life shows the hidden gross *materialism* of the "pro
life" proponents, who reduce human life to such a level that a fertilized
ovum is considered to have the same "human" status as a full-grown adult
human being (but without the right to vote or buy alcohol, of course).
Further, it is claimed (by implication, if not explicitly and honestly) to
have an absolute *right* to the use of the mother's body, thus denying the
woman's rights to own body and thus to her life (if you don't have a right
to your body, you have no right to life at all), thus "justifying" the
enslaving of any woman who becomes pregnant. But, since there is no
fundamental difference between a pregnant woman and one who is not, the
same line of "justification" can be extended to a woman's life generally,
and, of course, to the lives of *men*, as well. Thus, what starts out as a
claim about the rights of an alleged unborn human being becomes a flat-out
rejection of the concept of rights in any logically coherent sense. If the
alleged rights of one "human being" can be used to totally deny the rights
of another human being, the concept of rights itself is reduced to logical
nonsense -- exactly where many (both Left and Right) would *like* it to be,
because it makes such a "flexible" concept, one that can be used to
pseudo-justify anything that a person happens to *want* at someone else's
involuntary expense, whether there is any rational basis for it or not.
People who think in such terms are hardly in a position to be lecturing
others about "ethical questions."
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