Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Assume you can't. Reasonable people can, it seems to me, differ about abortion. Actually, I don't pro-choicers think that "feti ain't people" -- rather, they think that they are human but different, and sufficiently different from, e.g., babies, that they can be treated differently. I don't know anyone who isn't bothered by the idea of an abortion. If you aren't, something is wrong with you, IMHO.
There is a substantive difference in that feti physically depend on another, and slaves didn't. I don't really want to pursue this line of thinking right now, but I note.
I don't think reasonable people can differ about whether slaves were people. This was the great moral argument of the first half of the 18th century, and there were smart people on both sides, but the pro-slavery position could not hold up on its merits. When you look at, e.g., the jurisprudence that evolved in the South over the treatment of crimes against slaves, it's just monstrous. It was wrong.
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I understand exactly what you're saying, as this has historically been my outlook too.
But, more and more, I think it's a tenuous line we draw with such imprecise and value-laden explanations. I can't help but wonder if, in two hundred years, the verdict is again going to be "it was monstrous, and wrong", and our heirs will be learning in school about the evils that our generations inflicted, and speaking of NARAL the way we speak of the Klan.
