Ecology Crisis
Gow, Haven Bradford
"Ecology Crisis" By John Klotz Concordia, $2.75 This work is an attempt to resuscitate man's sense of responsibility for what has been entrusted to his stewardship....
...This world view causes us to assume that man exists apart from nature, indeed, that man is above nature...
...Fraser's book is marked not merely by shallowness and the Manichean spirit, but coyness and heavyhandedhess, too...
...Ecology Crisis is recommended to those who want to read a serious book concerning the eco]Fogical problem, one that is 'free from the paranoid rhetoric of the ideologues...
...Laws against killing, stealing, raping, mugging, defranding, extortion, etc...
...they don't have to be perfect deterrents to be worth having...
...Nor does he deal with other realities, such as: What happens to a co tmtry with so successful a people-control program that it ends with an "old" population and a few young men to run things (apparently Japan is now con...
...Mostly it's about pollution and the misuse of resources...
...For implicit in our willingness to exploit and cause havoc to our environment is, I believe, the scientific world view which provides us with an intellectual justification for our deeds...
...It is expressed in the familiar terms of so-called geometrical projection, always referred to by Fraser as "exponential expansion...
...Ramsey, Finnis and Noonan each deal with the problem of when it is advisable or right to make a wrong act a crime...
...The risk of death from even a legal abortion multiplied by the number of women who seek abortions indicates there will still be women's deaths, and there will be situations in which women decide to have abortions by non-professionals...
...Others have remarked on the Manichean bias of people-control zealots...
...many people, outside academia, equate "it's illegal" with "it's immoral" and "it's legal" with "it's moral...
...That is, the doctors have already extended life expectancy to the near-limits of the human life span and a lot of folks who, a few decades back, would already be dead, are going to be dying pretty soon...
...If you aspire to an understanding of the abortion issue, lay aside the glossy mags and buy or borrow Noonan's outstanding book...
...After adopting rather permissive abortion statutes, Denmark and Sweden both experienced an increase in legal and illegal abortions...
...it is persons, individual persons, who are to be "controlled...
...Yes, we all know that men and women go to bed with one another solely to produce offspring, never to express love, or because it's an intense pleasure...
...The "problem" is simply stated to exist...
...John M. Finnis, professor of law at Oxford, notes that the maternal death rates (per capita) from all abortions were not statistically different in England, where abortion was generally illegal, and Poland where abortion had been '"liberalized...
...Well, it does seem likely that a baby today stands a better chance of living to be a hundred than did his grandfather, but he has no better chance of living past that age...
...If all abortions were legalized, there would thus probably not be a significant decrease in deaths to women from abortion, while the number of unborn children killed would increase...
...if abortion is illegal, one cannot be ordered to get one even if your local social worker thinks it a dandy idea that your "undesirable" or "superfluous" child not be born...
...If I hear another proponent of legalized abortion tell me "you can't legislate morality," I may scream...
...All show a level of insight lacking in the "you can't legislate morality" school of thought...
...The scientific hubris leads us to believe that the gods of science and technology will -- when the chips are down -- rescue us from our sins...
...One gathers that he regards people, and the "problem" they are said to present, in the same spirit with which he would consider the viruses in his electron microscope and the troubles they cause...
...Legalizing abortion will obviously not save the lives of the aborted and may not even decrease the number of deaths to women from abortion, which have been at a level of about 500 Americans per year...
...before the killing or altering of inconvenient or imperfect members of the human species becomes accepted by the law, those who favor this course should acquaint themselves with the arguments of their opposition...
...Then, from time to time, during the recounting of the pollution facts, we are reminded of the "problem" with a statement like: "Every hour we are adding 8,000 people to the human race...not just births, but births minus deaths...
...Haven Bradford Gow ABORTION (continued from page 13) symmetry...
...The law educates...
...According to its author, John Klotz, there are many reasons for the ecological crisis among which are overpopulation (though, it seems to me, that the author is unsuccessful in establishing a nexus between overpopulation and environmental decay), an upsetting of the balance of nature re-resulting from an inordinate and indiscriminate introduction of dangerous chemicals into our environment, the exploitation of natural resources and the scientific world view...
...are all attempts to "legislate morality...
...As reported above, the book scarcely deals at all with the actual "problem" alleged by the title...
...Fraser reveals his not only by his title hut when he can remark, for instance, that social attitudes are less lenient regarding premarital sexual intercourse than mere necking because "the difference (between the two) is quite simply that hand-holding does not bring babies, fornication does...
...it is certainly not a serious examination of the alleged "problem" referred to in the title...
...Fraser is identified on the book jacket as a virologist...
...Legislation has several purposes...
...Fraser, after briefly acknowledging this bit of reality, does not face it...
...Sources in Noonan's book indicate that eighty to ninety percent of the illegal abortions are being p~formed by M.D.'s already and that legalization can be expected to increase significantly the number of women having abortions...
...The law limits the state and its minions, whose motto (the Bureaucrats Law) often seems to be "all that isn't forbidden is compulsory...
...As a result, instead of trying to interact with our environment, we indulge in a ruthless and unthinking exploitation of our natural resources...
...This should be kept in mind while listening to the claims of the coathanger-brandishers that opponents of complete legalization are "dooming women to die...
...Finnis looks at the results of the restrictive and permissive approaches to controlling abortion in various countries...
...The "problem" is people, in the view of Fraser and others like him...
...of the genetic double helix and the awesome power of the chemical balances which do so much to shape the fates of men...
...Some human errors should be prescribed by law, some should not...
...One supposes that his students, for students' reasons, have encouraged him to believe he is witty...
...The heavy hand (and the shallowness)shows in a statement like: "Today's wars are over far more serious matters (than the wars of ancient Greece), such as which of two groups of scoundrels shall rule and rob a natiorl that, by and large, could not care less...
...Douglas Cooper Lightweight, no more than a compilation of material garnered from a handful of books and clippings from a few magazines (Sciende, Sdience News, The Sdiences, "Ameri(an SCientist, Sdientific Amerwan), Dean Fraser's book is another recounting of the better-known facts regarding pollution, and these recounted on a superficial level...
...Fraser does do us a service by titling his book as he has...
...Terms like population explosion and population control always were too abstract...
...That's suitable...
...The coyness begins with the subtitle, "What You Should Know About Growing Population and Vanishing Resources" (you're supposed to tack on, "But Were Afraid to Ask...
...Legalizing abortion opens a Pandora's box of problems, ethical and practical...
...We have adopted the attitude that we can manipulate nature with impunity and force it to do our will...
...14 The Alternative December, 1971 By John Klotz Concordia, $2.75 This work is an attempt to resuscitate man's sense of responsibility for what has been entrusted to his stewardship...
...Harvard professor George Hunston Williams proposes a new framework for viewing the interests of the community, the mother and the fetus...
...Of special interest to me is the author's notion that the scientific world view has contributed to the ecological crisis...
...Punishments generally deter by raising the risk or "cost" of certain acts, yet they are never perfect deterrents...
Vol. 5 • December 1971 • No. 3
