From: J. Hughes (jhughes@changesurfer.com)
Date: Sun Jan 05 2003 - 05:33:49 MST
> *Before* the fact, and
> only before the fact, a parent has a responsibility to give birth to
the
> best possible child, with the highest potential and greatest
probability
> of happiness. *After* the fact, any child, once it exists, has a
right to
> go on living.
Your position is perfectly consistent with the majority of bioethics.
The only people who argue for equal rights for the unborn are (a)
Catholics who argue on the basis of potential for personhood (but even
they stop at conception) and (b) the disability rights hardliners who
implicitly argue that any selection against disability, even
pre-conceptive, in the next generation is a crime against those future
disabled people. Aside from that I know of no philosopher or ethicist
who has ever argued that all possible people should be born.
> The odd idea that I am trying to make the unborn my own political
> constituency probably comes from reading too many far-left political
> tracts.
Likewise I know of no left-wing or far-left party or thinker who has
ever made such an argument, and its not an argument that would have much
appeal for a leftist since it is anti-aborion rights.
--------------------------------------------
Dr. J. Hughes
Producer and Host of Changesurfer Radio
www.changesurfer.com/eventhorizon/
jhughes@changesurfer.com
860-429-4932
Produced at WHUS Storrs
U-3008R, Storrs, CT 06269-3008
www.whus.org
"Who ever thought that this particular model
of the body is forever? A little, mammalian,
furry body, it forever? Sometimes I notice
my body. It has little fur, little fangs,
ears still slightly pointed. We are
spiritual beings still in animal bodies and
it always struck me as weird."
Barbara Marx Hubbard
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