On May 18, 2005, at 9:26 PM, Robert Seeberger wrote:
Got an explicit example of this occuring exactly as you lay it out, or are you simply engaging in supposition?
To be fair, I think we should talk about the hypotheticals, even the ones that seem (to some of us at least) only remotely feasible or not particularly relevant, because if something is reasonably possible, eventually it'll probably happen.
It seems to me that a lot of Dan's concern is based in the extremes -- the fringes, the things which happen rarely if ever, but which (to him at the very least) seem to pose some serious ethical or moral questions.
That an eighth-month abortion because of "malaise" has not yet (TTBOMK) happened doesn't necessarily mean it won't, and if (as I suspect is the case here) one feels an infant's soul is in peril or something like murder might be perpetrated, discussion of hypotheticals becomes crucial, if for no other reason than respect for the sensibilities of those involved in the discussion.
In this light, overlooking the very rare late-trimester abortion circumstance on the grounds that it's very rare is a little like ignoring the Earth-orbit crossing asteroids on the grounds that they've only caused three or maybe as many as five mass extinctions in 500 million years. The costs of failure may be far too great to be careless about precautions; amortization of risk is literally impossible when the very uncommon eventually does happen, as it eventually will, and when the results are potentially so devastating.
So Dan doesn't necessarily have to provide a cite to have a legitimate concern that is worth discussing, I think. If what we're really talking about is a subset of ethics or morality, one of the best ways to do so is to talk about philosophical posers rather than history (at least to exclusivity), or so it seems to me. It seems more prudent to discuss "what if?" than "what happened?".
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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