Inevitibilities
A note to Martin McPhillips and Charles Krauthammer:
I’m gratified that in spite of how intelligent and well-meaning some people are; in spite of how well they can express their views on a variety of issues; and in spite of how complex those issues can sometimes appear, they just don’t matter much.
There’s a reason that abortion is here and here to stay for at least as long as contraceptive methods aren’t effortless, free, and foolproof, and it has nothing in the world to do with all the twisted ethical arguments that seek to establish bright-line standards where none are possible.
The simple and plain fact is that individuals who have a personal interest in the matter can plainly see the difference between fetuses and human beings—in spite of the difficult time you gentlemen seem to have with it.
…And you think that you have a hope in hell of getting people to accept the sanctity of pre-fetuses (embryos)?
Technology advances rapidly, and human cloning—particularly for the manufacture of spare body parts—is an absolute certainty. You can mark my words. You may even mark your own as quaint, once yours or a loved one’s life is saved over the next few decades as this technology comes to market.
There’s another part of this that really, really irks me. I’m just sitting here thinking, and I can state unequivocally that I’ve never once in my life heard of some scientific or technological advance being sought by rational people where I had the slightest or remotest thought or feeling that their quest should in any way be impeded, monitored, or "regulated."
Go for it…and to hell with the sissies, busybodies, and the nattering nabobs of negativity.
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Free The Animal is an eclectic writing project about everything since November 2003. 23 years, 5,500 posts, 5 million words.
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Thomas Sowell, one of my favorite modern thinkers, once wrote somethig along the lines of this: We consider someone dead when their brainwaves stop, maybe we should consider somone alive when they start.
While I understand people have a difficult time with the morality of abortion, I've never understood why people see cloning or growing body parts immoral. I suppose they have these maniacal sci-fi horror scenarios in their head, but really I'd like someone to make a logical case for impeading such technological advances.
Read some of Niven's stories on organlegging to examine the flaw in your thinking. Of course, if you have an extra kidney, stay out of parties in hotels.
I can't even begin to list all the reasons that fears about organ theft are just total nonsense as any sort of major threat anyone should spend time worrying about.
Of course, if it was to be a threat, the surest way to render it impotent would be a market in spare body parts brought on by cloning technology and rendering such parts to inexpensive to be worth stealing.
Okay, speaking as a person who has had a personal interest in two children of my own being conceived and brought into this world, which they were, successfully, I can say that the difference between a fetus and a baby is this: A fetus is inside the mother and a baby is outside of it. Other than that, there is no moral difference between the two.
Just when does a fetus become a person? Since no one knows for sure, shouldn't we err on the side of caution? Or is your logic that since we don't know for sure we get to err at the extreme which is most convenient to us?
Either way you post really says nothing, other that you are biased toward farming fetuses.
Gary:
"We?" Who, exactly, are you referring to?
I wouldn't dream of trying to change, much less force you to modify you and your wife's values in this regard.
I'm not sure why you'd want to attempt to exert your force upon others who don't share them in precisely the same way as you, yet otherwise seem to be satisfactory individuals in society.
Perhaps _that's_ the crux of the matter. If I wanted to extend my values to force anyone, I'd be damned not to wonder what the hell I was being motivated by.
I saw nothing in Martin's post that said he wanted to force his values on anyone.
If his opposition to abortion and emryonic research is about _persuading_ others, and stops short of advocating the imposition of those valus on others through state coercion, then I've got no argument with him.
However, if he truly believes that such things are unjust killings, which more recent posts seem to indicate (see the one about Condi), then I wonder how he could be consistent if he didn't advocate that such activities be stopped by some means.