On Topic Discussion A serious talk about the value of human life...

[peeonme]

A man I once new back in the '60's took a trip to a 3rd world nation. In a letter he wrote that "life is pretty cheap around here".

Has life become cheap in the United States?

We allow capital punishment. A few other nations do this, I am not proud to be a member of that club.

We recognize a woman's "right to choose" while ignoring a baby's right to live. If the "fetus"
didn't take a breath, it was not "alive". Just toss it out.

We have a broken system for caring for children without parents or from dysfunctional homes. Foster care is a roll of the dice when it comes to care.

We have hungry children that go without proper medical care.

We have people living on the streets. As a boy I heard of a place called "skid row". It has grown, now we just look through the homeless as though they are invisible. It is not a problem to be fixed, it's just a part of life... a cheap life, without value.

We have a high incarceration rate, right up there with N.Korea.

A highly disproportionate number of minorities are incarcerated.

We have a band aid health care system, a health insurance policy that has a out of pocket
maximum of $5-7 thousand dollars is a national disgrace.

Do I need to speak of public education? There are great schools in the "rich" suburbs, as you head to Detroit the quality and the classroom size changes. I guess cheap kids really don't need expensive public education.

There is more to gun deaths and mass shootings than just guns. Assault rifles and 100 round clips make it convenient for one to express their frustrations with life, it doesn't take an IQ above room temperature to realize that we need to make it more difficult to kill people.

Another JUBer mentioned in a thread that the problem in the UK was knives, he had seen a lot of knife attacks. If they had assault rifles, I am sure they would use them.

Some frustrated disenfranchised (so they see themselves) use cars or trucks to get even with a world that sees them as trash (speaking from their perspective).

We as a nation need to take a look in the mirror, stop executions, stop seeing pregnancy as a "mistake", stop seeing "rich kids" as more important than the child in the city. Stop letting race equal jail space.

And, maybe start using manners again, a please and thank you can make a huge difference.
Quit cutting people off in traffic and quit flipping off who do. A nation that values life begins with us and how we treat others. Maybe it will work it's way up.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Not for nothing, if we value life that has to include women's lives, when we banned abortion before women were dying because instead of having it done in a medical facility they were doing it in living rooms and basements. It almost seems backwards to insist that every pregnancy be carried to term knowing that many of those children will be shuffled into a foster care system that you yourself admit is broken almost beyond repair. But I guess it's easy to be wax poetic about how precious life is when you yourself aren't responsible for that life.

I like this kum ba ya song myself but the reality is most people on value those closest to them and those who look/talk/walk/act/think like them, everybody else be damned.

 

[NotHardUp1]

There can always be a long laundry list of ills of any country, but part of it is the framework that causes you to see the issues the way you see them.

One example is the way you phrase the death penalty. It's been discussed ad nauseum on the forum, but as usual, mostly among a handful of those to the hard left who phrase it just as you have, we "allow" it. No. That is not true. It has always been the law in this country.

Of late, there are those who disallow it now, and have changed their laws to that end. That is certainly a valid change for those whose population are voting that way, but please don't rewrite the status quo. The states that have the death penalty didn't just add it, didn't add it post-Civil War, and didn't fight any wars for it. It was part of the criminal code in the vast majority of countries.

It's given for murder, not for selling pot. Hence, it doesn't go away easily where murder is prevalent.

And to answer your first question, life hasn't become cheap here, as it always has been, but it matters if you live in a white-flight gated community or a normal working class neighborhood and fare among the masses.

 

[peeonme]

I would love to find stats. on back alley abortions. I believe that the demand came during the sexual revolution of the '60's. When we fool around with mother nature we get into trouble. China has a problem with young men finding a bride, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_China, the one child policy led to sex selective abortion. In the USA it's race selective, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/abortions-racial-gap/380251/

As for the death penalty, it's now administered before incarceration in many cases, if our cops are trigger happy, should we be surprised when frustrated boys of any color are the same?

How many cops are convicted when they kill an unarmed citizen? An idiot on neighborhood watch gets a free pass.

We should be angry and horrified, there should be marches, protests and people should be writing to the government and demanding action.

A national emergency is treated like yesterdays news.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

I would love to find stats. on back alley abortions.

How many women need to die before the ban is considered a bad idea?

How many cops are convicted when they kill an unarmed citizen?

Deserving of its own thread, an unreasobly select few.

We should be angry and horrified, there should be marches, protests and people should be writing to the government and demanding action.

A national emergency is treated like yesterdays news.

Bingo. Most people's are apathetic and have a sincere disconnect from problems that don't affect them or their loved ones. The amount of guff they'll allow for those closes to them is almost the polar opposite of what they'll tolerate happening to people outside of their socio-political circle.

 

[eastofeden]

Some pregnancies are a mistake...and some women should NEVER be mothers...

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Some pregnancies are a mistake...and some women should NEVER be mothers...

This. My uncle had a relationship with a drug-addicted prostitute and they had (at least) 6 kids (that we know of). When all my cousins were little their mother tried to burn them alive in their apartment (don't ask why, I'm not familiar with crazy crack hooker logic). They were shuffled around foster care until my grandma took them all in but the damage had been done. It was all she could do to keep them out of trouble.

Now, surprise surprise, they're all project hoodrat baby mamas with 20 kids from 50 different dudes, they're all dating drug dealers and abusers, I can't imagine there's anything in their lives that even remotely resembles actual living. I love my cousins but I wish they had been aborted because everybody doesn't grow up with a nice mommy who has a plate of cookies ready when you get home from school. Their parents were fucked up. They're fucked up. Bet the barn their kids are gonna be fucked up, and their kids, generational misery is very real and strikingly absent in conversations about abortion.

 

[peeonme]

Some pregnancies are a mistake...and some women should NEVER be mothers...

Most pregnancies are not planned, I would venture to say that most sex isn't, even in a marriage. My parents had sex for his or her own pleasure. I was the result.
My dad was 49 when I was born, my mother was a mentally ill person. I have been told by relatives that my parents should not have had children, my reply was "I'm kind of glad that they did". Life has not always been kind, but I am damned glad that I have had a run at it.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Most pregnancies are not planned, I would venture to say that most sex isn't, even in a marriage. My parents had sex for his or her own pleasure. I was the result.
My dad was 49 when I was born, my mother was a mentally ill person. I have been told by relatives that my parents should not have had children, my reply was "I'm kind of glad that they did". Life has not always been kind, but I am damned glad that I have had a run at it.

An important distinction here is that you are glad that you were given a chance at life. It's great for you but should hardly be considered when discussion a national policy that will affect medical care for an entire group of people which you aren't even a part of.

 

[eastofeden]

(peeonme) My mom was a monster...truly...a monster....

My reply is opposite of yours.

I believe I have a soul and my soul would have been fine waiting for another body...

...and the people who believe "God" is in charge...why the hell would "God" send a baby to a drug addicted set of parents...or a pair of sociopaths or psychopaths... who tortures them..maybe kills them?

 

[peeonme]

An important distinction here is that you are glad that you were given a chance at life. It's great for you but should hardly be considered when discussion a national policy that will affect medical care for an entire group of people which you aren't even a part of.

The group of people that I speak of are human beings that have value. I find it odd that some abdicate for people of color when it come to immigration and yet put no value on those in gestation.

 

[eastofeden]

An important distinction here is that you are glad that you were given a chance at life. It's great for you but should hardly be considered when discussion a national policy that will affect medical care for an entire group of people which you aren't even a part of.

This!

 

[luckynumbah7]

How many women need to die before the ban is considered a bad idea?

All of them. The worries of the incubators were never high on that particular list.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

All of them. The worries of the incubators were never high on that particular list.

I was hoping for at least a ballpark estimate. Me personally, I say one is one too many. But what do I know?

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

The group of people that I speak of are human beings that have value. I find it odd that some abdicate for people of color when it come to immigration and yet put no value on those in gestation.

Human beings that are already alive and active in the world =/= a glob of cells.

 

[peeonme]

(peeonme) My mom was a monster...truly...a monster....

My reply is opposite of yours.

I believe I have a soul and my soul would have been fine waiting for another body...

...and the people who believe "God" is in charge...why the hell would "God" send a baby to a drug addicted set of parents...or a pari of sociopaths or psychopaths... who tortures them..maybe kills them?

I don't want to go "religious" on this, be it by design or by evolution it is obvious to me that a zygote, embryo or fetus is kind of a lottery situation, about 250 million sperm cells and one ovum. If one of the swimmers had beat the one who got to the egg when I was conceived, I wouldn't be here today. So, if God is to be included in the equation Hid factor can only be seen as the "clock winder"

Most who "should not have children" for the reasons mentioned will do it anyway, mant will seek to end a pregnancy because "they aren't ready".

 

[peeonme]

Human beings that are already alive and active in the world =/= a glob of cells.

The "glob of cells" has a heart beat after 4-5 weeks.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

The "glob of cells" has a heart beat after 4-5 weeks.

Heartbeats can continue after a person is clinically dead. And if that glob of cells is being brought into a world where it can either live with an ill-equipped parent who doesn't want it anyway or a foster care system where it may end up in a home where it's used to push drugs or for sex trafficking, the anti-abortion commercials practically write themselves.

 

[eastofeden]

Most who "should not have children" for the reasons mentioned will do it anyway, mant will seek to end a pregnancy because "they aren't ready".

...and maybe they aren't....and maybe they shouldn't.....

The day we pass a law that states a woman's womb is all of our property is the day we deserve to be eliminated from the planet IMO....

As a race..we freely push to extinction and kill off tons of other species who also deserve to live on a continual basis...

As it is...overpopulation and global warming are doing the job faster than might otherwise be expected. Why, exactly, should we insist on billions more babies come to a planet who can't sustain them?

 

[peeonme]

Heartbeats can continue after a person is clinically dead. And if that glob of cells is being brought into a world where it can either live with an ill-equipped parent who doesn't want it anyway or a foster care system where it may end up in a home where it's used to push drugs or for sex trafficking, the anti-abortion commercials practically write themselves.

So your saying that if we "terminate" this glob of cells we are being humanitarian? We should not let "it" have a chance? Well, "it" even coming from the best home might be incarcerated, shot and killed, molested, develop cancer or some other horrible disease. Why expose any glob of cells to such a messed up world?
Abortion is aimed at minorities as a means to cull the herd. It is time we call it as it is, murder.