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herewiss13Having purged, last entry, I now reflect.
Am re-reading "Brothers in Arms" by Bujold and came across Cordelia's theology. In short: "Principles come and go, but people and their immortal souls are forever. Therefore people are to be valued above principles."
All well and good. Wise even. But my internal satanic advocate then has to speak up: "Ok, so who's got a soul? What's a person? To wit: how do you apply this to abortion?"
Yes, he's a cantankerous one, my advocate is. Fortunately, I have an answer.
I don't know where the line between person and non-person can be drawn. And neither do you. So I'll concede on abortion. Full-term pregnancies for everyone not threatened with death and then easy adoption afterward (hey, I can concede that, it's not like I'm ever going to be pregnant ;-)) In return, however, since neither of us can say what is or is not souled, you have to give me full rights and recognition for the great apes. Among other species.
::blinks::
Unfortunately, the musing went downhill from there. Smug with my clever loophole victory, I was then caught up in the logistics. Each species would get a U.N. representative (because to do it any other way would just be too confusing). Chimps, Bonobos, Orangutans and Gorillas. Only you'd have a big hoopla over whether or not to have separate reps for mountain and lowland gorillas; the two camps being the biological nit-pickers and the people to whom they're all just big hairy monkeys.
At this point we arrived where my subconscious had been planning from the beginning. After all, what are you to call one of these reps but Speaker to Simians.
...and the crowd breaks up in disarray and flees the scene.
Am re-reading "Brothers in Arms" by Bujold and came across Cordelia's theology. In short: "Principles come and go, but people and their immortal souls are forever. Therefore people are to be valued above principles."
All well and good. Wise even. But my internal satanic advocate then has to speak up: "Ok, so who's got a soul? What's a person? To wit: how do you apply this to abortion?"
Yes, he's a cantankerous one, my advocate is. Fortunately, I have an answer.
I don't know where the line between person and non-person can be drawn. And neither do you. So I'll concede on abortion. Full-term pregnancies for everyone not threatened with death and then easy adoption afterward (hey, I can concede that, it's not like I'm ever going to be pregnant ;-)) In return, however, since neither of us can say what is or is not souled, you have to give me full rights and recognition for the great apes. Among other species.
::blinks::
Unfortunately, the musing went downhill from there. Smug with my clever loophole victory, I was then caught up in the logistics. Each species would get a U.N. representative (because to do it any other way would just be too confusing). Chimps, Bonobos, Orangutans and Gorillas. Only you'd have a big hoopla over whether or not to have separate reps for mountain and lowland gorillas; the two camps being the biological nit-pickers and the people to whom they're all just big hairy monkeys.
At this point we arrived where my subconscious had been planning from the beginning. After all, what are you to call one of these reps but Speaker to Simians.
...and the crowd breaks up in disarray and flees the scene.
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no subject
Date: 2003-08-12 05:09 pm (UTC)There actually _are_ counter-arguments, I think...but you get into the messy world of DNA-chauvinism (as opposed to DNA based chauvinism) which hasn't actually been invented outside the pages of SF so far as I know.