Abortion

[Kulindahr]

and you finally admit that is useful.. yaaay!

Which of those things did I claim was useful?

 

[opinterph]

and you finally admit that is useful.. yaaay!

Which of those things did I claim was useful?

Why are we whispering?

 

[wundersteve]

People may say they want programs but when it comes down to brass tacks they refuse to pay for it.

Also, I am absolutely blown away that you are here on a gay site using polling and popularity numbers of if certain rights should be granted or revoked to individuals! You can't be serious. For crying out loud if gay people or black people or even slaves had to wait until it had "majority" backing or the permission of everyone else, they/we never will have equal rights.

Good lord. I think I've seen it all now.

I would add defenceless unborn children to that list. It is a possibility that a future majority may decide to deprive the unborn of their rights. That won't make it right to continue doing so. What I was pointing out is that is was described earlier in this thread that it would be "unAmerican" to limit a woman's right to abort her child. I guess that means that around 60% of US residents are just interlopers and not Americans.

 

[bankside]

Which of those things did I claim was useful?

Why are we whispering?

Because we're off-topic, yet not off topic. For those who support prohibition of abortion at some stage in the process, it would need to be done with laws, restricting choices.

Oh, wait! No, there is my authoritarian streak again. We could use libertarian pixie dust!

 

[Spensed]

There isn't a resolution to this issue that's acceptable to all sides.

To large extent, it depends on the language one uses to frame the issue. Being pro-choice doesn't mean you're pro-abortion or want to kill "unborn children". Being anti-abortion doesn't mean you focus your energies on things like sex education, contraception and adoption choices that might actually help prevent abortions.

To me, it's a phony issue. The rich are always going to be able to have abortions at will. Making abortion illegal isn't going to stop abortions. All it's going to do is add more women to the list of the dead. It's an issue on which reasonable people can differ and it's foolish to pretend that one group can dictate morality about a disputed issue to another.

It doesn't seem an accident to me that many of the same people,who want to ban abortion, also want to ban gay sex. I suspect it's a creepy and distorted way for some folk to stay close to the subject of sex that they otherwise find uncomfortable.

There are thousands on thousands of miscarriages a year and now thousands of frozen fertilized eggs that go unused and are discarded. Where are the funerals for all those "unborn children"? One's almost in Monty Python territory where every sperm is sacred.

Really this is area that, if you really are against abortion, you can take concrete steps in terms of education, contraception and adoption to work to stop it. Otherwise, IMHO, we really need to mind our own business.

 

[yeeeaaahhh]

The students who ran the AV department when I was in high school did an annual contest for the "Best Movie Backwards" -- every movie that came through the department for classes or assemblies or whatever got run backwards, and the AV students (and guests) voted on them.

One year it was "War in the Pacific", because of how kool it was watching kamikazi planes emerge our of flaming ships and zoom backwards to their carriers. But the most memorable, all-time winner was "Emergency Childbirth", where we got to repeatedly see doctors, policemen, fathers, etc. ramming newborn infants back inside the mothers.

The subtitle appended to the winning "Htribdlihc Ycnegreme" was "Still Just as Gross".


All of which is a lead-in to say, if we're going to ban things because they're gross, ban childbirth.

Hahaha, this is fantastic!!

 

[JB3]

This remains the hottest social issue in America after decades of debate. Some would argue that Roe v. Wade is responsible for prolonging the culture wars. I think it would be no matter who won on that day. It will still be contentious another 36 years from now. You don't need to be religious or conservative to be against abortion, albeit most are. Why? Because at the core, the debate is more about definitions than morality. Who is a human being? When is it human? Who's the victim?

I agree with you there. The biggest single issue with this is that neither side can agree when 'life' begins and when the fetus should be considered a person.

Unless there can be an answer to that (not likely any time soon) the argument will rage on.

 

[boogalee]

I disagree on that. For me the biggest single issue is providing safety for women and their doctors. When will the guardians of the law go after these terrorists so women can visit their healthcare providers without intimidation, violence and murder.

http://rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009...acting-clinic-escort-protecting-womens-rights

The rest, while an interesting philosophical topic for discussion, over some wine or beer...isn't number one for me.

 

[Spensed]

Contraception doesn't always work, and it does lead to abortions. My Mother was still taking the PILL while she was 3 months pregnant with me, therefore, I am a survivor of the PILL. Oh, and Condoms are not 100% effective against pregnancies.

What does that have to do with the price of the tea in China? Contraception works most of time and the benefits in preventing unwanted pregnancies and disease far outweigh the occasional failure.

 

[Kulindahr]

Also, have you noticed those same people who are staunch, raving, anti-abortionists are always opposed to childrens' healthcare spending, against funding orphanages, expanding social services to help case workers place kids with foster homes and or better adoption programs, and the like.

They want to force a woman to have a child, yet don't fund safe sex education, nor programs for infants, and young children. It's a stance on rhetoric, and rhetoric only.

Most of the ones I know are in favor of all that stuff -- they just don't want the government doing it.
It's a stance against government behaving as God.

Also, how many staunch anti-abortionist women come to mind off the top of your head? Why are they usually always men? Things that make you go.... hmmmm......

Most of the staunch anti-abortionists I've ever known were women. I was even rebuked once by a female anti-abortionist for poking my nose into women's business.

I am not pro-abortion. I am pro-choice as a legal basis. Anti-choice opens the door to tyranny as much as anti-guns does. In fact, moreso, because, obviously, the complications are too subtle for too many people's brains and they just let things pass. They're just women, after all. We have to get past the scratch in the LP and accord women full dignity and full sovereignty. Encourage wise choice; but do not invade the dignity of women to make that choice.

Just as anti-choice opens the door to tyrannies we don't need, it also closes the door to a greater happiness for all, the happiness of doing what's right because it's right and not because the Big Man says so.
We've had enough of that and it's disrespectful to previous generations to want to go through still more of it.

Don't be morally lazy. Too much blood has been shed for us to continue to be that way.

Being against citizens being armed is on the same side of the divide as being pro-abortion (on demand): it means you want to subject the innocent to the will of those who would kill them.

We must have a sound, reasoned, common-sense and science-based definition of a person. Any other route means that we have handed the State arbitrary authority over who is and who is not a person -- a position that is monstrous.

Granting authority to end the life of a person to some based on anything other than a potentially mortal risk to a member of the 'some' is tyrannical. Basing that decision on anything other than reason is what's morally lazy.

I hate right-wingerism and am glad I emerged from it.
Right wing philosophy is misery-dependent and misery-conserving. It has segregated itself from America's greater maturity won from battles and battlefields of all kinds.

That's a nice distinction, between right-wing and right-wingerism.

Right wing philosophy rests on individual freedom and the greatest individual choice for all. Right-wingerism rests on making everyone conform to your comfort zone, and allowing freedom only within that zone -- and that's where misery enters in.
The left isn't immune to that; many, many regulations in this country serve only to require people to conform to the liberal comfort-zone... and misery enters in there, too.

Why should women object to your discussing the use of her uterus?? Is that your question? Not exactly your question but it's what your implication leads to. Is it really the case that there's something that doesn't feel wrong about that?
19th-Century humanity was haunted by the tragic absurdities of their time. It is high time to leave it all behind. Jesus died for that shit, too.

Ah... "feel"!

That's moral laziness at its best: basing moral decisions on what "feels" right or good. It describes many of the ReligioPublicans quite well; they don't apply reason, they apply "feeling".
You look at pictures of an unborn at twenty weeks, and "it looks like a baby", and so killing it "feels" wrong. You know that the unborn prior to that will look that way soon enough, so killing it "feels" wrong as well. So when you ponder the just-fertilized egg, what's in mind is that latter stage that looks like a baby... and so killing a just-fertilized egg feels wrong, too.

When you invoke "her uterus", you're basing your decision about when it's okay to kill a person on the location involved. That's irrational, and exhibits arbitrariness once again (besides that, it isn't really her uterus, once there's an established pregnancy; it operates at the demands of the unborn).

BTW, if you're going to invoke Jesus, you ought to leave off selfishness as the basis of a moral argument -- after all, He's the guy who noted that no one has a greater love than to lay down his life for another.

 

[Kulindahr]

This remains the hottest social issue in America after decades of debate. Some would argue that Roe v. Wade is responsible for prolonging the culture wars. I think it would be no matter who won on that day. It will still be contentious another 36 years from now. You don't need to be religious or conservative to be against abortion, albeit most are. Why? Because at the core, the debate is more about definitions than morality. Who is a human being? When is it human? Who's the victim?

Definitions are the foundation of morality.

When it says, "Thou shalt not steal", we have to know what stealing is. When it says, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife", we have to know both what coveting is and what a wife is.
So while you're right that the core of this is a matter of definitions, that is essential to the morality. Isaac Asimov did a good commentary on this sort of thing in some of his robot stories and novels, addressing the issue of what constitutes being human, and what happens when a society changes the definition. Ultimately, we comprehend in our guts that it is wrong to arbitrarily kill another human -- which is why societies have gone to great lengths to define some as non-human, so they can be mistreated.
Historically, the definition of human has been "one of us", i.e. part of our group. It was okay to kill those others who looked similar but weren't "us", because since they weren't human, it didn't count. But at the present, we are aware that such a definition is flawed -- except that in the abortion debate, it's still being used by late-term on-demand proponents who grasp at arguments which give circumstantial definitions of what makes a being a human parson, in a way that will justify the killing of undesired unborn.

To me, it's a phony issue. The rich are always going to be able to have abortions at will. Making abortion illegal isn't going to stop abortions. All it's going to do is add more women to the list of the dead. It's an issue on which reasonable people can differ and it's foolish to pretend that one group can dictate morality about a disputed issue to another.

Murder isn't a "phony issue". If those being killed are human persons, it's murder. Saying that outlawing it won't stop it is like arguing we shouldn't have laws against anything at all, since having the laws doesn't stop those things.

It doesn't seem an accident to me that many of the same people,who want to ban abortion, also want to ban gay sex. I suspect it's a creepy and distorted way for some folk to stay close to the subject of sex that they otherwise find uncomfortable.

Interesting conjecture. I think it's just a matter of wanting to outlaw anything that gives them the creeps.

There are thousands on thousands of miscarriages a year and now thousands of frozen fertilized eggs that go unused and are discarded. Where are the funerals for all those "unborn children"? One's almost in Monty Python territory where every sperm is sacred.

I love that vid.
I was once at a RC Mass where prayers were said for the souls of those who never got to be born, including the naturally aborted....

Really this is area that, if you really are against abortion, you can take concrete steps in terms of education, contraception and adoption to work to stop it. Otherwise, IMHO, we really need to mind our own business.

"Mind your own business" is the reason a lot of Americans walk right on by when they see a crime being committed....
It's necessary to establish definitions, so we'll know if a crime is being committed or not -- then we'll know whether certain actions are our business or not.

 

[Kulindahr]

I disagree on that. For me the biggest single issue is providing safety for women and their doctors. When will the guardians of the law go after these terrorists so women can visit their healthcare providers without intimidation, violence and murder.

http://rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009...acting-clinic-escort-protecting-womens-rights

Looks like a Pink Pistols moment, to me. If I lived there, I'd gladly offer my service as an armed escort for women, so long as the unborn they meant to get rid of had no brainwaves indicative of a person.

The rest, while an interesting philosophical topic for discussion, over some wine or beer...isn't number one for me.

You want to find a country where there is no crime? North Korea. There is no crime in North Korea. Why? because people are actually too afraid to commit one. The unfortunate side dish to freedom is the existence of crime.
But don't act like the law is not enforced in the United States. We have a very stable law abiding society for the most part. Don't allow isolated incidents and sensational stories to disturb your peace of mind. If you do you will be living in fear for the rest of your life.

There's not really much crime in Switzerland, either -- because not only can everyone have a firearm, they're required to. That's a rather chilling climate for criminals!
So it's possible to have freedom and nil crime, if everyone is willing to be seriously responsible.

Perhaps there should be a non-coercive method to deal with abortion. I think that would please a lot of those who don't want to criminalize it, and those who do, to a point. What if there were a support group funded by anti-abortion and pro-choice activists to provide support to women who are considering having an abortion. If nobody steps up to the plate, how about a government provided plan? Perhaps lining up an adoption, or providing monetary assistance. I think it would be a good first step towards reconciling the two views and ending this socially divisive debate. I'd have to say that birth control and effective sex ed would go along way towards preventing unwanted pregnencies in the first place. But that is another bone to pick yet.

I'll add to that one item: bringing back orphanages. Many of those were little more than warehouses for children, using them as a way to make money, but there were also many good ones. Keep them small -- a few dozen kids -- to make it more like a family atmosphere.

 

[Spensed]

There's not really much crime in Switzerland, either -- because not only can everyone have a firearm, they're required to. That's a rather chilling climate for criminals!
So it's possible to have freedom and nil crime, if everyone is willing to be seriously responsible.

That last statement may be true. But your generalizations about Switzerland are misleading and the notion that the low crime rate in Switzerland is due to responsible gun toting is just your projection.

Everyone in Switzerland isn't required to have a firearm. The number of firearms approximates to a third of the population.

Although some urban centers do have severe drug use problems, the crime rate is low, but that's largely because the country is, for the most part, rich, small, homogeneously Caucasian and geographically relatively isolated.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1566715.stm

 

[ricktg]

i dont agree with it at all.
but there are so many situations that the parent(s) can find themselves in. these people who do go through with it have to deal with the 'what ifs' for the rest of their lives. they are the one ones who have to think 'have i made the right decision'.
only they can tell us the answers of why they have done this act of 'murder'.
in my mind, if you dont wants kids, practice safe sex for goodness sake, or turn the telly on.

 

[Kulindahr]

in my mind, if you dont wants kids, practice safe sex for goodness sake, or turn the telly on.

No kidding!

There are a number of birth control measures available these days. None are 100% effective, but who says you have to use just one? People who are determined to not have kids, but still have sex, can accomplish that, to a golden* degree.

















* better than 99.99 fine

 

[Ddouble]

There is a video on YouTube called Silent Scream where they videotaped a fetus in the womb "screaming" when it was being aborted... It was one of the most horrendous things I've ever seen... One look at that, and you'll forever change your mind about a fetus being a mass of cells...

 

[Ddouble]

I did mention about that video, but didn't know that it was on youtube. Could you please post the link.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjNo_0cW-ek[/ame]

 

[boogalee]

The Facts Speak Louder

The Planned Parenthood Critique of The Silent Scream


Introduction

Those who seek to restrict or eliminate access to safe, legal abortion in this country have launched another attack in their desperate attempt to win the hearts and minds of the American public. This approach consists of a "documentary" film titled The Silent Scream, which allegedly portrays the performance of an abortion done under ultrasonography.

The film represents an attempt to shift the focus in the abortion debate to the fetus and away from any concern or compassion for women in need of abortion services. It is an attempt to deny the desperation that once forced American women into the life-threatening, humiliating experiences of the unsafe and often lethal abortions.

The Silent Scream, which was hailed by President Reagan, sent to every member of Congress, shown in part or in total on television news and other programs across the country, and whose text was read into the Congressional Record, has been treated as factual, when the opposite is true.

Read the rest at this link...
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/is...activity/reports/anti-abortion-video-6136.htm

 

[boogalee]

Yeah, don't let facts interfere...use emotions that's the ticket.

 

[Kulindahr]

For the sake of argument, I'm going to take the video at face value, and skip the dispute over its validity. So I'll grant that there is a scream that is a reaction to pain.

That does not mean there's a human person present. Small animals scream when they're in pain, all the way down the vertebrate ladder -- will anyone dare to argue that the screaming of a shrew establishes it as a person?

Physical reaction to pain doesn't require a very sophisticated nervous system; even the lowly Annelid Lumbricus terrestris exhibits such. Since that organism -- the common earthworm -- fails to even have a true brain, it's clear that reaction to pain is not demonstrative of personhood, only of a very primitive nervous system.

Planned Parenthood's dodging the issue by its own emotional appeal aside, what that video shows just doesn't supply us with any facts about personhood. At best, it shows that a nervous system no more complex than that of even a fruit fly is at work.