Columnist’s argument flawed, lays foundations for its opposite

Mr. Kessinger, if your goal was to argue for your pro-choice view by reductio ad absurdum of the opposite view, I believe your argument is flawed. (“”Pro-life display isn’t pro-life enough,”” Feb. 6, 2009) You only dealt with one particular pro-life view, and besides that you actually laid the foundations for a fairly solid anti-choice argument.

Please consider the following: as you allude in your letter, the line between a human and non-human begs to be drawn in discussions about abortion. I would agree with your apparent view that the “”distinction … is blurry and difficult to define.”” We simply don’t know where the line is or if there even is a line.

I would even go so far as to suggest that the only logically sound argument would start with “”we don’t know,”” which is more intellectually honest than making a priori assumptions about a fetus’s humanity based on personal feelings or judgments. In any case, I think you would agree that we cannot say with any honesty that we know a fetus is or is not a human being.

If one starts with the assumption that “”we don’t know,”” however, and one is pro-choice, then one is saying that people have the right to cause harm to what may or may not be a human life. But why would inability to answer the question of a fetus’s humanity imply an imperative to allow harm to what may be a person?

Certainly that view of rights is not seen anywhere else in modern life. In no cases whatsoever do people have legal rights based on their ignorance of whether they’re directly causing harm to others or not. Read that last line carefully. (I am willing to admit that exceptions could be made, one such example being in the case of danger to the health of the mother, for instance.)

Along with you and many other students, I am not a fan of the massive displays put up last week. But I am a big fan of intellectual honesty when it comes to analysis of potentially serious issues, and I would encourage you to be certain of the inevitable outcomes of your own position before dismissing all others based on one person’s (or group’s) opinion.

Michael A. Schaffner

systems engineering freshman

Proposed light rail an ‘asinine’ waste of money

As Arizona faces enormous budget deficits across all government agencies, especially in the education and health care sectors, the proposed light rail is an asinine project by city transportation officials to waste millions of taxpayers’ dollars. The cars’ route goes from downtown, dilapidated by construction scheduled to be complete TBA, to the UA, which is going to probably see a decline in student population due to doubling tuition rates (among many other things) for the next school year.

Unlike the Phoenix light rail, which connects other burroughs using 20 miles of tracks, the proposed one will connect nowhere to nowhere totaling a few miles of track at most. In addition, the proposal to add more traffic lights at minor intersections will only exponentially increase already congested traffic on campus, specifically up and down Park Avenue.

The city should use the money allocated for this worthless and ridiculous project to improve existing roads, existing public transportation services, and existing problematic intersections.

Ryan Parks

undeclared graduate