Re: [rain1 at airmail dot cc] Delete abortion joke

[DJ Delorie <dj at redhat dot com>]

Wow, I check my email once while on vacation, and this is what I find...

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> The point of this joke is even more important now than it was when I
> first wrote it.

I know many people who have been through various pregnancy-related
traumas, including abortion, and on their behalf, I strongly object to
having this text - or any similar text - in the manual.  My own
daughter's birth was problematic, and I can't imaging thinking "gee, I'd
like to read about this in a programming manual some day".  It's never a
case of "some day you'll laugh about it" because I never have.

Loss of a child, for any reason, is NEVER a joking matter, directly or
indirectly.

> Please do not remove it.

Censorship from RMS?  Ironic.

> GNU is not a purely technical project, so the fact that this is
> not strictly and grimly technical is not a reason to remove this.

The fact that it's utterly tasteless and irrelevent, is.

As for the argument that certain words might be triggers, well, words
have multiple meanings and *any* word could be a trigger.  There's
little we can do about that, other than to be respectful and tactful
when considering our documentation needs.