File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9801, message 486


Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 17:29:55 +0000
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Britain's abortion row


In message <Pine.3.07.9801230018.A15432-c100000-AT-login>, Justin Schwartz
<jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us> writes
>
>James ends up in the position, more or less, of the philosopher Michael
>Tooley, who argued that it's the possibility of having an interest in the
>future that makes one a person--this is a bit different from having social
>relations, James' theory, but it comes out in the same place. That place
>is that one is not a person until sometime _after_ birth, probably four to
>six months. Infanticide of small babies is therefore not murder in the
>moral sense, although it is in the legal sense.

That's not my view.

>Second, James says the definition of persionhood is easy. It's not. His
>sketch is promising, but necessarily contested. Questions like this never
>get settled answers or even answers to which most people agree, and the
>more you think about it, the less agreement there is. 

Straight-forward and uncontested are not the same thing.


But let's agree to differ.

All the best
-- 
James Heartfield


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