On May 23, 2005, at 6:05 PM, Robert Seeberger wrote:
John D. Giorgis wrote:
In light of our recent abortion discussion, I'm wondering what some
of the Brin-L'ers here think of the NH law requiring that parents of
a minor be notified 48 hours before an abortion. Should this law
contain an exception if the health of the minor is at risk?
Perhaps not, but there should be an exception if the father of the
fetus is a family member (incest/rape).
The intersection of the subjects of abortion and incest is a pretty
sick neighborhood.
[...]
Yes -- once again there are exceptions which suggest that laws, which
can't be created in such a way as to take into account all exceptions,
can in enough circumstances cause sufficient suffering to lead to the
conclusion that it would be best to eliminate the law in question
rather than rewrite it.
Or, better still, not make the law in the first place.
There's a hell of a lot of heavy-handed moral authoritarianism in some
US laws. Ludicrous penalties for pot possession come immediately to
mind. We get insipid commercials with young adults prating about how
drugs destroyed someone's future -- the self-righteous asses who make
these ads refuse to admit that it's the *penalty* under *law* that
destroys the future of a drug user, not the drug itself.
I sense a similar trend with abortion legislation. The best, the very
best course of action to take is to keep the legislators the fuck out
of the gynecologists' offices entirely. Any step toward regulation is
likely to inflate rapidly and hand down endless and pointless misery on
the heads of complete innocents.
I like to think the world is moving away from situations that allow
this kind of child abuse to occur. I'm probably wrong.
It's being forced under wraps, I think. That makes it *more* dangerous
and *more* toxic.
The consideration of this subject causes some internal turmoil for
me. On one hand I feel that kids like those I knew should never have
been born. On the other, I feel some guilt because I am condoning the
killing of innocents. And guilt again because I feel that those kids
were something less than human in ways that I recognise in every other
person I have known.
And it is these very thorny issues that I simply cannot accept are
reconcilable with something so facile as judicial fiat. A simple
definition of "human" does not exist, "human rights" are extremely
plastic terms of convenience -- nothing more -- and one man's murder is
another man's abortion of a child of incest.
There is no way that any kind of law can ever be written to deal with
these kinds of issues. Which suggests to me that trying to develop such
a law is an exercise in hubris and, ultimately, futility. While we're
at it let's make it illegal to be stupid.
--
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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