From: Desoto-AT-pseud.pseud
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 20:10:03 -0600
Subject: Re: M-INTRO: A couple of thoughts: Healthcare and Socialism


In merely stating, "abortions do not constitute live births" you do not prove
anything.  You are merely skipping over the fact that a living infant is
killed.  A living being's life is ended through the abortion.  You can argue in
circles all you want that the infant wasn't a person because he or she didn't
take a "breath of life" (in the case of partial birth abortion, or enen if you
want to call it dilation and extraction, has actually happened) or wasn't
officially named a person by the state through the issuance of a birth
certificate or social security number or whatever.  You can argue this until
you are blue in the face although it is too bad that it was actually the infant
who ended up blue in the face.  You can't change the fact that an infant human
being's life has been terminated which has everything to do with infant
mortality.  Could you point out differences between abortion and taking the
life of a human who has been born?  Yes, but regardless of similarities and
differences, it is still taking life out of a living human organism.  Action
can be taken through the legal system to call abortion something other than
taking life, but this does not change what has been done through an abortion
anymore than passing a law that states that the freezing temperature will now
be 100 degrees would.

Whether or not you still want to disagree with the previous paragraph, you
cannot argue that abortions, in terms of quantity as well as other factors will
affect infant mortality rates.  There are many examples in life where it is
possible to improve performance figures simply by "aborting" prematurely.  One
very morbid example would be that deaths as a result of cancer would decrease
if a policy was implemented to execute cancer patients.  They sure wouldn't be
left around to die of cancer, would they?

Sorry, for the diversion, but I had to respond to this one.  I'll  get back to
discussing Marxism.  If anybody knows for certain what Marx might have to say
in relation to this issue, I would be interested.
  
Quoting bsw8-AT-pseud.pseud:

> Desoto wrote
> "The example of health care rankings not accounting for depression is an
> excellent one."  Where does depression come in?  Do you mean deaths caused
> by
> suicide?  I doubt the suicide rates are high enough to make much of an
> impact,
> or at least higher enough relative to other industrialized nations.  You
> could
> argue that crime/violence might cause these rates to be higher.  To get a
> better idea deaths related to the inadequate health care you would probably
> need to factor out murder.  Of course the level of violence in the US is yet
> another problem that set the US a part form other industrialized nations. 
> It
> is curious that we continue hold up non government invention as the standard
> when nations that take interventive steps into dealing with poverty and
> healthcare seem to have much healthier societies.  
> 
> "The data collected on infant mortality rates doesn't show anything beneath
> these including whether or not a high abortion rate led less infants dying
> or
> furthermore if parial-birth abortions were counted as infant deaths or not."
> 
> 
> 	
> Abortions do not constitute live births therefore are excluded from such
> data. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 





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