What Obama supports
As we’ve been discussing the past couple days, Barack and Michelle Obama fully support partial birth abortion.
In fact, they’ve gone so far as to attempt to raise money by fear-mongering about the Partial Birth Abortion Ban, calling it a “legitimate medical procedure.”
Obama should be proud of his support of pba. Commenter Cranky Catholic photoshopped a perfect ad for his consideration. But then again, if he’s ashamed even to wear an American flag lapel pin, I doubt he’ll go for this.
May.22, 2008 11:56 am |
Obama, Partial birth abortion, Political anti-life bias |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
OMG, He’s not ASHAMED to where a flag pin.
Yeah, he’s prostituted himself on the flag pin issue, Hal, but so far he’s resisted pressure to disassociate himself from the practice of stabbing an unborn baby in the back of it’s skull and then sucking it’s brains out, purely for convenience sake. There are some principles he just won’t abandon, ya know?
Obama hate-o-rama No 51, only 166 (at least one a day, every day) to go until Election Day. It never gets old.
And faking photos, so clever!
Yes, anon, very clever.
Clever indeed.
Well, anon,
Lets be honest and show EXACTLY what Obama supports. The picture does exactly that. After all if you are going to elect him prez, you might as well have everyone know right now what he believes in.
No crying later – you get what you paid for…
Fake photos…political cartoons… what’s the difference?
And let’s not forget that Obama doesn’t put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance. My guess is it’s because he’s heartless.
and I hear he’s one of them muslims
Boy, I can’t wait to see you flip your lid when he is elected president.
Are you kidding, reality? That’ll be four years of blogging material!
Who Ever You Are:
You mean Obama doesn’t support the murder of a live (that’s alive, not a non-sentient, non-viable glob of tissues and cells) baby in the birth canal by sticking a pair of scissors into the back of the baby’s skull and then sucking out its brains as long as that was the wishes of the mother who was probably feigning some sort of life threatening condition like post-traumtic fornication syndrome? You mean to tell me this altered photograph of Dr. Obama holding the baby he just murdered is not accurate, or at a minimum allegorical or euphemistical or esoterical or even hysterical. Where’s SoMG when you need him? Where’s the outrage?
You mean to tell me that this doctored photo does not accurately represent the views of person who wants to be the leader of the free world? How dare pro-lifers question the great hope of pro-aborts (or his wife)? How dare pro-lifers sink to the level of pro-aborts using their same tactics? Something must be done, NOW and not later. NARAL, where is the pro-abortion, pro-Obama, anti-defamation league when you need them?
I am absolutely shocked that pro-lifer’s would represent the views of a man by producing a photo that accurately represented his views. I am equally shocked that pro-lifers think that picturing this view graphically may in effect change the way many decent people think about what abortion truly is…THE HORRIFC MURDER OF AN INNOCENT CHILD.
I am equally abhored that pro-lifer’s would try to gain some advantage against the pro-baby murdering movement by unfairly and unequally portryaing the turth in all it’s gory detail. They could have at least shown the dead baby with a flower stuck up it’s behind and teh caption instead read….Male Love Not War or It’s a Punishment, Not a Baby.
Jill, I am very dissappointed in you that you would use such effective tactics against pro-aborts. I mean aren’t you just in this for the millions of dollars you are making via your blog? Oh I can see the donation money rolling in now. And the way you skew the truth Jill. I mean this really would have been more effective if the dead baby were African-American, don’t you think? What, you trying to be fair? Oh, so you didn’t want to risk being crucifed as a race baiter even though Planned Parenthood takes donations that specifically targets precious black children in the womb. Or maybe you don’t like black babies?
And just think about this injustice. If Hillary wins, with the marvel of bits and bytes, the photo can be easily altered to put her face on the suit and don;t forget to leave hte suit. Oh my, the outrage, the unfairness, the bigotry, the hypocrisy. How dare pro-lifers try to put a face on pro-deathers.
“If Hillary wins….” You listening to Rush again?
No one else thinks the race is still going on.
True Cranky Catholic!
Except….you won’t be ALLOWED to actually blog it. If one can’t criticize anything that Barry says or does now as a candidate, what makes anyone of us think we’ll have the ability to express free speech after (perish the thought) a Barry presidency? Dem’s duh berries!
Hal,
Look at the picture of the baby. LOOK AT THE PICTURE OF THE BABY. Look.At.The.Picture.Of.The.Baby.
Can we agree that this procedure is barbaric??
Carla, I don’t know if the procedure is barbaric without knowing why they were doing it. (and what they were doing) Was the baby already dead? Was the mother in a terrible car accident and cut in half? I don’t know anything about the circumstances of that photo.
I don’t know anything about the mother either or the circumstances of the photo. BUT BY JUST LOOKING AT IT I see the lifeless body of a tiny baby. I see blood. I see body parts. Come on, Hal. Stop looking with your eyes and look with your heart.
HisMan-
Do you mind me asking you what your occupation is?
Anon,
Why is opposing or criticizing Obama a hate-o-rama? I have no hatred of any kind for the man. I vehemently oppose him as inexperienced and an empty suit, a lot of talking but saying nothing. I believe his foreign policy plans are naive and dangerous. I also find him petulant and thin skinned. This is a man no more ready to handle the presidency than I am.
Please enlighten me. Tell me of all the “change” he plans to bring about and how he will do it. Exactly what does he mean by “change”?
“We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for”. Please explain this expression.
Three prominent Democrats, one of them Sen. Joseph Biden, have criticized his foreign policy plans which include talks with dictators and terrorist supporters without preconditions. What has Obama said about foreign policy that you truly support?
Obama talks of “hope”. That’s fine but it means what?
How could Obama sit in a church 20 years yet be totally clueless as to what his pastor preaches or believes. Do you find this a tad peculiar?
For political expediency he has since thrown his pastor under the bus. Your thoughts on this please.
Let’s discuss the real issues Anon instead of whining about “hate”.
That picture serves to highlight, in a visual way, just how contradictory and shallow Obama’s position is. Good work.
Hal,
That was truly the most pathetic thing you have ever posted on this blog. It’s really really sad.
You don’t if the procedure is barbaric without knowing WHY they are doing it? Oh my!! So if they were doing “it” because the mother didn’t want to be pregnant anymore – that would make it NOT barbaric? Or if they were doing “it” because the baby had a genetic condition – that would make it NOT barbaric? Or if the mom had an important interview? Or got mad because she couldn’t see her toenails anymore?
I think judging by the picture, Hal, this baby had the back of his/her head punctured and looks like there is a missing arm too? Does the baby look like it was cut in half Hal?
Carla,
It’s useless. Hal’s heart shut down years ago and he knows why. You are in denial Hal.
Acctually I’m curious to what a lot of you pro-lifers occupations are…
…Or, we could elect McCain to finish Bush’s third term, and end up with 100 more years of this: http://irregulartimes.com/dead.html
Plagus:
What’s yours?
Student/Day Care Worker – fall/spring semesters
Summer Camp Counselor – Summer
Patricia, many of those you circumstances you mention would make it barbaric. I didn’t mean to be pathetic. Maybe there are other explainations that even you would say were not barbaric. I’ve seen lots of really horrible photographs of people and body parts. Terrible things happen to people sometimes, it is often very sad, sometimes very unnecessary, and sometimes, but not always, barbaric.
Barbaric: brutal, fierce, cruel, savage, crude, vicious, ruthless, coarse, vulgar, heartless, inhuman, merciless, bloodthirsty, remorseless, barbarous, pitiless, uncouth
Mary,
Please enlighten me. Tell me of all the “change” he plans to bring about and how he will do it. Exactly what does he mean by “change”?
I think this video might help to explain what Obama means by change and hope, and the future. LOL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szS1pPd2Rp4&watch_response
Barbaric: brutal, fierce, cruel, savage, crude, vicious, ruthless, coarse, vulgar, heartless, inhuman, merciless, bloodthirsty, remorseless, barbarous, pitiless, uncouth
Partial Birth Abortion: brutal, fierce, cruel, savage, crude, vicious, ruthless, coarse, vulgar, heartless, inhuman, merciless, bloodthirsty, remorseless, barbarous, pitiless, uncouth
Sounds about right.
What a shock that no one can answer me.
Maybe you’d like to know why I ask, perhaps that will stir up some answers…
I was just wondering what types of qualifications, attributes, qualities, and so on and so forth that you people think you possess that make you feel like you have some kind of right to tell a women what to due with her body (Ex. forcing her to complete a pregnancy).
And before you all jump on me with your pictures of partial birth abortions, little hands and feet; know I’ve seen tham all, you people use them in such obnoxious amounts, all the shock and horror are completely discredited.
I just want to know where you get off?
Bethany 3:27PM
LOL. I would say that sums it up.
I would still like to know what “we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for” means.
I’ve heard of people looking for and finding themselves, but waiting for oneself is a new one,
for me anyway.
Plagus,
I work in the medical area. I’m an advanced practice nurse.
Mary-
Advanced, You say? Now that’s a pretty big deal, does the fact that the word advanced is included in your title give you the right to tell a women what to do with her body?
Okay, Plagus. How about this: My professions are social work (B.S.W & M.S.S.W.), but I’m currently pursuing a doctorate in public administration/policy so I work as a university researcher, although I practiced between my masters and the present.
So how am I, trained in social work, qualified to tell someone that they can’t dismember their babies in utero? With the same qualifications that allow me to tell the parents of born children that they can not dismember them. After all, that’s not the woman’s body those hands are holding, it’s her baby’s body. Where do you get off telling that baby that he/she had no right to live?
Alos, where do you get off looking at that decapitated baby and saying that a parent can and should have the legal right to do that to a child? Where do you get off saying that women by virtue of their uteri can do barbaric things to their own children as they are exiting their bodies?
Did you perhaps receive a certificate granting you permission to do just that upon passing your national licensing exams?
Welcome plagus,
Where do you get off coming to a prolife blog and asking prolifers where they get off?
Oh boy…
It’s a shame I have errands to run for right now…
please look for a reply later.
Till than, find another reason.
I can’t do this- I can’t believe that people can look at abused (dead) children and argue in favor of it.
Plagus- Is this really the adult you wish to grow into, or do you wish to be a merciful human being that protects the weakest among us rather than arguing in favor of their deaths?
Plagus-
Advanced, You say? Now that’s a pretty big deal, does the fact that the word advanced is included in your title give you the right to tell a women what to do with her body?
Look at the picture. You’re in college. You’re smart. So tell me, is that rubber glove holding the body of a pregnant woman or a baby? Is the pregnant woman’s body killed, or is it the baby? Is it the pregnant woman’s body that dies in the abortion (well, sometimes).
So, how is restricting the murder of unborn children telling a woman what to do with her body. We’re simply telling people they can not legally kill their unborn kids like we tell them they can not kill their born kids.
By the way, do you intend to say anything substantive or simply spout a mantra and defame people’s credentials when you’ve yet to earn any of your own. Because all the pro-lifers here currently out-rank you, so I’d take a different route with the personal attacks.
plagus – another proabort who takes off when confronted
spineless
and btw, none of your damn business to your question
Hal,
I’m sorry but it’s pretty darn evident just what happened to that baby
I know the definition of barbaric but do you?
Plagus,
I find it interesting that your job is to take care of children and yet you support their demise as well. Don’t you think, just for the sake of maintaining your job, you would support women carrying babies to term and giving birth? Job security after all.
Plagus,
Where do you get off saying WE don’t have a right to our opinion if it isn’t YOUR’S? Please do grow up. I can’t believe you work with children, babies even, and see the picture of that aborted baby and it doesn’t make you tear up. It could have been any of the babies/children you take care of, but who cares right?
For everyone that screams that photos of aborted babies are fake, I encourage you to read medical textbooks and see diagrams of abortion procedures. I then ask you to read unbiased sources and view photos of fetal development.
And then, ask yourself what a baby looks like after it’s been curette’d, cannula’ed, forcep’ed and stabbed in the back of the head with scissors. I’d venture to say that the image would look a lot like the pictures you claim are fake. What do you think the babies look like?
And before you all jump on me with your pictures of partial birth abortions, little hands and feet; know I’ve seen tham all, you people use them in such obnoxious amounts, all the shock and horror are completely discredited.
If you aren’t shocked and horrified by those pictures and continue to support the killing portrayed in them, perhaps you are beyond hope.
Plagus,
You asked me what I do and I told you. “Advanced” is my job description, not a big deal or a moral endowment.
What gives any of us the right to say something is immoral and should not be legal?
You see this as an issue of the woman’s right and her body. At one time a man’s home was viewed as his castle and any abuse he inflicted on his wife or children was a private matter.
In both instances the rights of the victims are not considered. In fact they’re not even viewed as victims. Its the right of the one person to choose what they will do to another.
By the way this was one of the reasons our feminist foremothers or the late 19th and 20th centuries opposed slavery, spousal abuse, child exploitation, and abortion.
I see a victim in the unborn child just as I am certain you see a victim in domestic violence.
Since abortion was legalized I have seen only more and more barbarity, particulary partial birth abortion. I have seen abortion become a form of birth control. Legal abortion only enabled hacks to hang out their shingles and practice with the full blessing of the law.
The fact abortion advocates insist on being called Pro-choice speaks volumes. I remember the days when they simply called themselves “abortion advocates” or “pro-abortion”.
What do you suppose happened? What’s wrong with abortion that people do not want to be called “pro-abortion”?
Maybe you can answer that question for me.
Go Mary!
Hal –
What do you mean “Was the baby already dead?” You mean it wouldn’t be barbaric for a baby’s head to be ripped off AFTER it was already dead? I mean that IS the baby’s head to the right, is it not?
I think any trama that would have done that in utero would have killed the mother making the PBA moot. Right?
Plagus,
are you against rape?
In fact Plagus, how does being a Student/Day Care Worker give you the right to tell me that I don’t have the right to “tell a woman what to do with her body”?
“For everyone that screams that photos of aborted babies are fake, I encourage you to read medical textbooks and see diagrams of abortion procedures. I then ask you to read unbiased sources and view photos of fetal development.”
I never said this photo was fake, only that I had no idea of the circumstances under which it was taken, whether it was a “partial birth abortion,” and if so, why was that procedure used.
Plagus,
Are you sure you don’t mean Darth Plagueis?
Honey,
I have the right to stop women from killing their children because I belong to the human race. I don’t need any other qualifications. I am not an animal. I am human. Human beings don’t do that to their offspring.
I am not forcing anyone to be pregnant. I didn’t make them pregnant (don’t have the right parts) and I don’t even know those 45 millions women, so I could hardly FORCE them to be pregnant. Neither do I own a gun. And I’m not very strong.
I didn’t force them to take their clothes off. I didn’t force them to let a man enter their bodies. I didn’t force them to consent to sexual intercourse. That would be called a “choice”…you should know all about choice.
If they find themselves pregnant, and abortion is illegal, they can still have an illegal abortion. Pedophilia is illegal, but pedophiles still manage to have sex with children.
Now, what gives you the right to kill other people? What gives you the right to giver “permission” to people to kill their children?
Do you have some special license? Some special degree? Some special certificate that makes you qualified to decide who is allowed to live and who will be put to death? Cuz I’d be very curious as to which university you got that degree…unless of course it was from the proverbial cracker jack box!
Hal,
I never said this photo was fake, only that I had no idea of the circumstances under which it was taken, whether it was a “partial birth abortion,” and if so, why was that procedure used
Well we know one thing FOR SURE. It WASN’T to save the life of the mother. Because it is NEVER, EVER, EVER necessary to do that to a child to save the life of a mother.
Can you think of any other reason why it might be acceptable in your eyes?
“Are you sure you don’t mean Darth Plagueis?”
That’s what I thought too, MK :)
MK, I don’t know enough about it. I know some people say it is sometimes necessary and some peole say it is “never, ever, ever necessary.” I’m not a doctor, I haven’t studied this question, and I don’t know. I’m open to the possibility that it is never good medicine and it should never be performed. If that’s true, should it be outlawed? I know a doctor should never stick a knife in my chest without anesthetic, but I don’t think there is a law banning that. The medical profession deals with stuff like that, and civil lawsuits.
All,
I would appreciate it if you could fill out my voting survey. Please click on my name for the link.
Mike
To all pro-lifers – great posts.
I don’t care what the circumstances were of this baby and the mother. Why can’t you listen and read what is posted here about PBA Hal?? It’s not necessary.
You don’t want to take the word of elected officials to ban the procedure, but will take the word of elected officials to support the procedure. Can’t have it both ways.
Hal, if the mother was cut in half why o why would a dr. decided to get his kicks out of this type of mutilation?
If this baby died in the womb, why is it ok to dismember it this way? Do babies who have died in the womb not get the same dignity and respect in death as we all should?
And BTW Laura, get out. Get out. Go away.
Sorry, but the photos you posted are no more horrific than the baby shown in this thread.
“You don’t want to take the word of elected officials to ban the procedure, but will take the word of elected officials to support the procedure. Can’t have it both ways.”
I agree with you. I’m not taking the word of one side over the other. I don’t have the time or expertise to figure out if this is necessary ever or never. I certainly won’t take the word of the very nice people here who have an agenda. I don’t know. Isn’t that a valid response anymore?
Hal,
You don’t have the time or expertise. Neither do I. And yet, if I really wanted to, I would make the effort. I see something like that and I would at least try to get to the bottom of it as far as I am able.
Motivation.
Do you have it? Or do you even want it?
Plague:
Do you mean to ask what my occupations are? My calling or my avocation, grasshoppa?
Christian, Pastored by Joyce Meyers’ pastor, Tommy Barnett
Husband of One Wife
Father of 5 Champion Children and Warriors for God
Football and Baseball Coach
Rabid Pro-life Activist and Blogger
Commssioned Minister to Men
Aerospace Engineer/Scientist
Registered Professional Engineer
Board Certified Building Inspection Engineer
Certified Home Inspector
Entrepenuer
Gun Collector
Knife Collector
Watch Collector
Race Car Collector
Sports Memorabilia Collector
Football Academy Commissioner
CTV Board Member
Avid Reader
Real Estate Investor
Lead Guitar Player
Degrees: BSME, Master in Theology and Doctoral Candidate
Member: NSPE, ASME, NABIE, ASPE, ASHI, BIECI
I love softball, golf, fishing and big game hunting and the beach, especially Maui. I’ve hiked the Grand Canyon six times. Traveled the world building homes for poor people.
My name is written on space vehicles that travel the Universe. I’ve met Janis Joplin, Frank Zappa, SteppinWolf, Vanilla Fudge, Cream, Frank Sinatra, John McCain, Bobby Kennedy, Peter Rose, Mike Ditka, Don Shula, just about every retired NFL great, Misty Hyman, JDHill, Jentzen Franklin, TD Jakes, Joyce Meyers, Jon Kyl, John Shadegg, Jeff Flake, JD Hayworth, George W. Bush, oh yes and I did meet Bill Clinton at an Air Force Academy Graduation but I refused to shake his hand, and on, and on, and on.
I love going to museums and aquariums and caves.
……..and that just on the weekdays.
Why do I keep growing? ‘Cuz I’m going to live forever and I’ll never know enough about my Lord and the Universe He created in six days.
Why do you ask and what’s the point? To me, what I do and the titles I have and the things I’ve accomplished and the people I know are irrelevant and I count them as rubbish compared to the unsearchable riches of knowing my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Well plagarist, another college age pro-abort victim of the feminst/baby holocaust movement? And only 20 or so years ago you were just non-viable, insentient, glob of tissue and cells (your group’s definitoin of who you were) and you want to come on this site and debunk 6,000 years of the Judeo-Christian ethic? Well, when you can raise the dead, heal the sick, walk on water, live a sinless life, die and rise again, maybe I’ll listen to your opinion about why I shouldn’t defend an innocent child in the womb. Until then, I’ll listen to the Author of Life and not to pro-aborts like you and all that have taught, misled and misguided you in the way of perdition.
And by the way, if I ever have the oppotunity to defend any innocent person with my life I will gladly lay it down and not you or any other liberal college wimp pro-abort professor is going to tell me otherwise.
Yes, and I’m an apologist for my sick, selfish, and perverted generation who gave us legalized abortion, kicked God out of schools, wants to normalize gay marriage and demonize Christians. I stood by and let the first two things happen not realizing how destructive they would be with over a billion children killed worldwide and the moral decadance that the world has not seen since Sodom and Gamorrah.
I will be silent no more.
Give me all you’ve got bud.
TD Jakes. He’s a trip.
*eyeroll @ HisMan*
HisMan, I was about to be like “You’re part of the Association of Magazine Editors? ME TOO! We have something in common!”
And then I remembered there’s also an Association of Mechanical Engineers and that ASME is probably the one you’re a part of.
Oh well. :)
Sorry, I meant to type “American Society of Magazine Editors” and “American Society of Mechanical Engineers” but I was thinking faster than I was typing.
Eh, they’re all associations anyway.
“HisMan, I was about to be like “You’re part of the Association of Magazine Editors? ME TOO! We have something in common!”
And then I remembered there’s also an Association of Mechanical Engineers and that ASME is probably the one you’re a part of. ”
LOL
Welcome, Plagus.
I know you’re coming on strong, and we’ll react as such, but hang around long enough and you’ll see that we are an amusing bunch to hang out with. Just ask some of the choicers who have been here for awhile. We even end up inviting each other for pancakes and mullets, don’t we MK? (Or was it lemmings?)
Just bring it down a notch and we can dialogue.
And if you sincerely want to know, I’m a former elementary ed. teacher, with a degree in Music Theatre as well.
As Hisman said, it doesn’t mean diddly compared to knowing, loving, and serving Him.
Anyways, have a seat. Cream with your coffee?
Hehe, Rae, I lurves you. :)
@Elizabeth: I lurve you too (of course, we’re “feminists”, therefore we *must* be “lesbians” too).
@Carder: That was v. nice of you. :) Did you teach music when you taught?
plagus wants to know what gives “you the right to tell a women what to do with her body?”
Hey plagus – If it’s only her body, does that mean she has 4 arms, 4 legs, two heads, four eyes, two hearts and perhaps a penis?
Is there only one body or two? With all those arms and legs up there, I kind of lost count – so what’s it gonna be plagus…
What are the unborn? Are they human?
Inquiring minds want to know…
Hehe, Carder, that degree in musical theatre was pretty useful huh?!
Rae,
No, I didn’t teach music to the kiddies, but we sure did dance quite a bit. And role-played.
And I’m still jealous of you aquarium chicks. The pictures were darling.
Bobby,
I just came back from my sons Baccalaureate Mass.
Can you say Liturgical abuses?????
Yep, Rae, I’m a big, huuuuuge lesbian.
That’s how I got to be a single mom you know.
Only….not.
Let the perversion begin.
tehehehe…
Well, ya know Carder, you can always come to the aquarium next time!!
Lemmings??
MK invites people over for… LEMMINGS?
Yep, Edyt, Pancakes…and lemmings. lol.
But they’re so CUTE. :(
MK, I’ve lost all respect. I can’t speak with people who eat such adorable creatures.
And any of you who even THINK of eating them I lose respect for YOU TOO.
Rae,
Did you teach music when you taught?
Aren’t you the one that just got (almost) straight “A’s” in courses I can’t pronounce? What’s with that sentence? lol
Mk,
OUCH..burnnnnn! heheh.
So Edyt, would you call yourself pro-lemming?
@MK: Oh snap.
Sorry. But you know- working so hard for my classes has fried my brain- grammar was the first thing to go…my sense of humor and my sanity.
@Edyt: No, we don’t *eat* the lemmings. They *join* us for dinner- like dolls to a tea party.
Now Edyt,
It all started when we were discussing the merits of Latin names vs common names. As in fetus vs baby.
I brought up that you don’t order a Olea europaea Agaricus bisporus pizza from papa johns. You order an olive, mushroom pizza.
Tie that in with a seperate conversation concerning people blindingly following the crowd even if it means going over a cliff and the next thing you know we were adding Arvicolinae to the pizzas…
We might have been doing shots that night. I believe it was around the time Cameron married a queen, or was it that we discovered that Cameron was a closet queen. Anyway, he and smog hitched up and Val was found in the garage with Johnny Depp and I believe it was Rae that puked on a math book. Obviously the Arvicolinae did not agree with her.
And that’s how we got the crazy idea of eating lemmings.
But don’t tell Jess.
Fark.
I meant to say: “Sorry, but you know- working so hard for my classes has fried my brain. Grammar was the first to go- my sense of humor and sanity are next.”
Bugger it.
Rae,
Let’s sit the American Girl dolls next to the lemmings at our tea party.
Rae,
No problem. What’s really scary is that Carder understood you and answered! lol
Eh, they’re pettable.
I had a prairie dog as a pet for awhile. She was rescued from the wild. And lots of hamsters. Lemmings look a lot like hamsters, but hamsters are only okay pets. So… I don’t know. Jury’s still out on that one.
Definitely not pro-eating lemmings though.
Oh yay! I like the idea of lemmings in fancy hats and white gloves. The fur was always so hard to digest. Viva la lemmings. Let the rodents live!!!!
Do
LOL… MK, that’s ridiculous…
Did you guys take dolls to the American Girl Place? They used to offer (they might still, but it’s been like 12 or so years since I’ve been) these seats that hook onto the table so the dolls would sit next to you at the table and they’d give them these mini meals and tea and stuff. It was adorable.
They can sit at the little table with Molly and Samantha. hehehe.
Edyt,
We looked around in awe at all the gorgeous dolls. No tea. Then we went up to the Bitty baby area..and I got Gabriella a bitty baby that looks just like her. She lurves her baby. I thought the Doll Hair Salon was so cute too.
@MK: Yeah- I puked on Bobby’s calc textbook in protest of the class.
@Elizabeth: I think Felicity likes Earl Gray tea (we talk a lot in my quiet li’l apartment- lol).
I know everyone says it was a doormouse, but I know from a reliable source that it was actually a lemming. Do you think we could get them to wear boas???
Pity they’re closing the theater. The American Girl Revue was (as I remember it) wonderful.
Edyt,
Ridiculous???? Hah! That was just the first ten minutes of that party. It went on for hours. Then Jill got mad cuz we’d left her blog looking like a bomb exploded.
We had to do major cleanup in aisle 5.
Actually, as I recall, as with many of these debates, Jill started the whole thing by playing a Queen song…and then she left. Guess she should have taken the rum with her!
Rum? What? Can I have some??
Elizabeth,
NO! You’re a mother now. Don’t you have to get up in the morning????
Okay, but only one shot. Rae, Edyt? You guys in?
Pinkies out…on the count of three…WAIT! Is that the count of three, or three shots??? I can’t remember!
Okay, everyone gets one shot at three shots when I count…ready?
Go!
MK,
That image for some reason reminded me of another childhood favorite – Beatrix Potter.
*hic*
excuse me.
Edyt,
That wolf looks suspiciously like he’s carrying lemmings in that basket!
Actually Edyt,
I thought of Beatrix Potter too when I went searching for lemming tea party images…ahhhh, great minds!
Haha, it’s a dog! That’s Beatrix’ dog Duchess and it’s from the story “The Pie and the Patty Pan.”
Duchess eats the pie I think. Man, now I have to go visit my parents and get those books back.
The story is online!!!
The Pie and the Patty Pan
I had a prairie dog as a pet for awhile.
I LOVES prairie dogs. But you must never boil them. A slow roast is the best way to go. Unless you just invite them to the tea party…
Okay then, LET THE PRAIRIE DOGS LIVE!
(Keep this up Edyt and I’ll be a vegetarian soon…!)
Which is actually why I switched to mullets. (The fish, not the haircuts)…I saw them on vacation. They jump in the air and smack the water…and no one knows why. It’s a mystery…
*hic*
excuse me again.
Haha, it’s a dog! That’s Beatrix’ dog Duchess and it’s from the story “The Pie and the Patty Pan.”
Never trust a dog named duchess. She only says it’s a Pie in a Patty Pan. But I know better. It’s lemmings. You can see their tails sticking out from the napkin….
Wait, so we get three shots?
Okay. :)
“I will come very punctually, my dear Ribby,” wrote Duchess; and then at the end she added–“I hope it isn’t mouse?”
HAH! See? Foreshadowing! Mouse my foot…IT’S LEMMINGS!!! RUN RIBBY, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!
@Edyt: That dog looks like a pomeranian.
Which is actually why I switched to mullets.
I think this sentence should stand on its own.
There’s really never any justification, MK, for switching to mullets.
@MK: I think it’s past your bed time…
Did Johnny have a good birthday?
@Edyt: I had a real hair-mullet when I was 2…
Rae,
I think we might need to see a picture of that one…
Rae,
Your parents should be ashamed of themselves!!
@Edyt: I had a real hair-mullet when I was 2…
How did it taste?
Johnny’s birthday was smashing! He’s still hung over. Oh you mean MY Johnny (Thought we were still talking about Depp and Val)…his was great too.
And you’re right. It is soooo past my bedtime. But I had that late mass for Kevin and all…
Ho-hum…yaaaaaaaaaawnnnnnzeeees…
Okay, *hic*, goodnight. But I’m not cleaning up in the morning.
Rae, take out the trash.
Edyt, your in charge of all mullet bones and animal byproducts.
Elizabeth. Go to bed. Yer a responsible adult now.
Night everyone…I’m so tire I could fall asleep on my fee…zzzzzzz….zzzzzzz…*hic*…zzzzzz….
psh…responsible adult…i’ll go to bed after my 3 shots.
@Elizabeth and Edyt: Behold- the MULLET!
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=44999657&l=97a3e&id=13956917
Awww, Rae…soo cute!
Dear Jill,
I had nothing to do with it. I was in bed by 10:00.
You can even ask my lemming. I mean husband. *hic*
After the police left…I mean after I left, I was absolved of all responsibility. Please send the bill to Rae. Or Elizabeth.
Kindly,
MK
Rae,
Re: the mullet do…uh, you have lemming on your face.
I don’t know who this guy is, but he’s got talent.
Dang it Doug,
I was off to bed…almost made it too. I knew when we mentioned rum you’d show up. Well, grab a boa.
And pass the beer…if there’s any left (You can’t fool us, I recognize you from your other pictures!) Now SHARE THAT BEER!!!
@MK: Nein- it’s spaghetti.
@Doug: Look! I’m a zit!
*puffs out cheeks with mashed ‘taters…slaps cheeks and spits out ‘taters*
“Osama Bin Shoppin!”
My kitty is the cutest!
Now Doug,
I know I said I had nothing against homosexuals, but that guy CANNOT come to my party! Heck, he ain’t wearing a boa!
WAIT! Does he have more rum?!?!?!?
Rae, you have good taste in movies!
And, stiff-tailed pups are pretty cool.
Edyt,
Oh how sweet. I see your kitty likes calamari!
Ummm… yes, MK… he does like…. are you wearing your beer goggles already?
MK, I think that guy’s a muslim, so rum would be doubtful….
Awww Doug! Puppy septuplets!
DAMN, Edyt, that kitty is flexible.
Doug,
Yeah? Well all I have to say to that puppy at the end with his tail between his legs is..
“What did you dooooo?????”
@Edyt: Awwwwww Kittuuuuuuuuuuh! What is your feline nibbling on?
Young sheep get their tails docked…
Rae
It’s a graduation tassel. I got two. Wore the gold one at graduation and framed it and the silver one became a kitty toy. :)
@Edyt: Ooooooh! Smart feline! Lol. :)
Ahoy, Plagus. If you’re around later to read this, I’m pro-choice but I did win the national nose-picking contest one time.
Doug,
Gotta hold onto those small victories, wherever you can… pick ’em.
Holy crap, MK!
Doug,
I thought it was calamari….Edyt “claims” it’s a tassel. *wink,wink*…
Yeah, nice tassels Edyt…*snicker~cough~lemming*
Doug, LOL!!
Doug,
That’s me and Rae and Elizabeth and Gabriella at the Aquarium Saturday!
Speaking of feminism, or perhaps more correctly women’s political imvolvement:
I imagine the local drunks are all broken up about that…
I’m so proud of my… lemming/calamari catcher?
(He also catches bugs and eats them. Sometimes I think about getting a mouse for him to play with, but then I remember that would be mean.)
MK, you guys wore your bathing suits to the Shedd? What, did you think you were going to go swimming with the fishes?
MK, didn’t Elizabeth tell Rae that she was a big, huuuuuge lesbian.
I was thinking that I now like “big women,” in that case.
Amazing how fast Gabriella grew up, no?
Edyt,
MK, you guys wore your bathing suits to the Shedd? What, did you think you were going to go swimming with the fishes?
More like the Belugas!
and hey, those weren’t bathing suits. They were evening gowns…size 8’s!
MK,
Maybe next time try them on before leaving the store?
Doug,
MK, didn’t Elizabeth tell Rae that she was a big, huuuuuge lesbian.
We prefer the word healthy, thenk yew.
“Lips that touch Liquor shall not touch ours”
Quick, pass the rum!
Sometimes I think about getting a mouse for him to play with, but then I remember that would be mean
Heck yeah! Mice can be mean little buggers. Protect the cat!
:passes the rum to Mk:
RAAAAAAEEEE,
Doug and Edyt won’t let me go to beeeeed! They keep making funnies! Do something!
:passes the rum to Mk:
*hic*
excuse me again, again.
What, chu guys don’t like our outfits? I think we look gawwwgeous!
Gimme that bottle, you lightweights!
hehe, it’s a froggie with a hat!
That mouse is the KILLAR BUNNEH’s (from “Holy Grail”) COUSIN!
HOLY CRAP!
(TIme to sleep- need to work in the morning…)
Sheesh – in real life I’ve got blood tests tomorrow so ate and drank nothing all day – lord have mercy I could slug back a few and eat several meals right about now…
Froooooooooggie!!!!!!
Cyooooooooooooot!
Rae, I hear ya – goodnight. Gotta be back here at work in 6.75 hours meself…
Me too Rae. Thanks! Okay Chitlins, all good frogs, lemmings, mullets and black pomeraniansposingaswolvescarryinglemmingpittypanpies, must go to bed. No arguments. The cat can stay up.
Elizabeth put the rum down. Doug, no more rhyming, I mean it…and don’t say anything about peanuts.
Edyt, It’s been a pleasure.
G’night, G’night, G’night…
Elizabeth…put it doooooooown….
*hic*
:)
I think we’re all gonna get a lecture tomorrow…
Ok, I’ll save it and put it under my bed for later.
Doug,
Hope you studied for those tests! :)
Rae,
That mouse is the KILLAR BUNNEH’s (from “Holy Grail”) COUSIN!
Twice removed on his mothers side.
Elizabeth…last warning!
What? Are we gonna stand in the doorway sayin’ goodnite til the sun comes up????
G’night. sleep tight. most likely kill you in the morning.
Elizabeth, long ago, so long that I was a little punk kid riding around the neighborhood on a bicycle, an old guy who almost never left his porch gave me some good advice, if not an actual lecture:
“Keep your bowels open and your mouth shut.”
I think we’re all gonna get a lecture tomorrow…
MK, g’night, Sis.
Lol, stop the funniesssss!!!
I can’t take it!
Just so we’re not accused of going off topic…on a pro life note…g’night…
Elizabeth, when I was in college, two guys down the hall in our dormitory had their room fixed up really nice, and the Dean of Admissions asked if he could show it to some prospective students and their parents on a visitation day.
They said okay, but being devilish dudes, they had an evil plan…
On the appointed day, down the hall comes the Dean with a couple families, so the two guys left the door ajar, took off their shirts, and got into the same bed…
:wipes cat hair off lemons:
mmmmmm. yummy.
Okay..maybe I should put the rum down for real.
haha, doug, that’s AWESOME!!
Mk,
That kid’s gonna have buck teeth from all that thumb-sucking.
Yeeeeahhh biker chicks!
Goodnight MK
shhhhhhhh…you’ll wake the bucked tooth baby…
:giggles:
Ok, srsly, I’m going to bed too.
I think it’s funny that Mk thinks that posting that one picture will help save us from being accused of going ridiculously off-topic…
This cat got a mouse, for real.
Okay, Elizabeth, I too gotta give in and get a bit o’ sleep.
Everybody drink up!
Uh oh. I spot some underage drinking. Bring back the prohibition ladies!!
Do you guy(s) get paid to come on here and redirect these posts into meaningless whatevers? How much do you get, Trolls?
Lisa,
You might take a lesson from this post. While it may seem like trivial whatevers to you, it was actually 2 pro choicers and three pro lifers treating each other like human beings instead of the enemy.
Every once in a while it helps to let your hair down and get to know each other.
Sometimes, the good times just happen.
And no, I don’t get paid. Although Jill has doubled my salary twice now. Of course 2 times nothin’ is still nothin’!
Really Lisa, lighten up. Have a shot. and keep your voice down…people are trying to sleep ;)
I think it’s more like… trying to prevent people from coming to this blog and reducing something as horrifying as the original picture to puppy dogs and kittens.
If there really are pro-lifers on here towards the end, don’t fall for this crap. Wake up! You aren’t going to change these trolls, they are here for the soul purposes to badger pro-lifers and misdirect posts.
Lisa,
Obviously you haven’t looked at previous posts otherwise you would see that for the most part, people here actually have meaningful conversations.
You also do realize that quite a few of those photos were posted by pro-lifers, right? It’s late, they had serious talk earlier, and they went to bed on good terms. It doesn’t always have to be serious, tooth-and-nail fights, you know.
no one is badgering anyone.
I’m the only troll here, and I only attack you, Hisman, and Jasper. and Hisman and I are bonding a bit of late
Why badger anyone? Why not have an intelligent debate on the issue at hand? Badgering only ticks people off so things get personal, but then again, maybe that is your goal. If you can’t win a debate with facts, resort to emotions and personal attacks. Then nothing gets solved making everyone looks bad and scaring off any newbies who don’t have a thick skin thus limiting the debate.
Hey,
Who posted that photo of me in those blue high heels?
And that’s my favorite mini-toga.
Hal, you like my color combinations?
Guys and gals:
We do spend too much time bashing each others brains in don’t we?
I’m sorry, especially to Edyt. Edyt, I just want you to love God and I just sometimes express it real, real wrong.
Yes, I do have a soft spot even for pro-abort atheists. They’re people too!
MK:
Thanks sis. I think your the only sane one on this site.
Hey, life is precious. You know Steven Curtis Chapman lost his little girl today when his teenage son actaully ran her over at their home. Let’s all be thnakful for the people in our lives that God has allowed us to love and be with even for just a short while.
Hey guys, just dropping in briefly during my work break. MK, as a Star Wars fan I LOL’d at your Darth Plagueis reference earlier. And I guess Plagus didn’t have anything constructive to add to the conversation since they didn’t come back. Oh well. Got to get back to work, talk to you all later!
More from the satanist country of Denmark via the satanist pro-abort conspiritors who run the New England Journal of Medicine:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/7/648
Conclusions We found no evidence that a previous medical abortion, as compared with a previous surgical abortion, increases the risk of spontaneous abortion, ectopic pregnancy, preterm birth, or low birth weight.
A while back we were talking about the FDA’s approval of RU-486. I just read the following in the New England Journal of Medicine:
“By the summer of 2000, mifepristone had been used to treat more than 500,000 women in nearly a dozen countries in which it had been licensed.”
From http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/353/22/2317
Also from the same source: “Mifepristone was one of 18 new molecular entities approved by the agency that year. Its 54-month approval time contrasted with the median total approval time of 15.6 months for all new molecular entities approved that year. ” So much for it being “rushed through”.
Do you guy(s) get paid to come on here and redirect these posts into meaningless whatevers?
Lisa,
No, but the fringe benefits are admirable.
\_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/
Have a half-dozen drinks and you’ll feel better.
; )
Star Wars fans, here is a truly scary character.
Darth Tater
Doug 10:53PM
In the dark all cats are grey!
Lennie: Why badger anyone? Why not have an intelligent debate on the issue at hand? Badgering only ticks people off so things get personal, but then again, maybe that is your goal. If you can’t win a debate with facts, resort to emotions and personal attacks. Then nothing gets solved making everyone looks bad and scaring off any newbies who don’t have a thick skin thus limiting the debate.
Very well said, Lennie, but we do have to talk about getting Squiggy released.
In the dark all cats are grey!
Mary, indeed, but looks to me like those temperance ladies didn’t want to pussyfoot around….
@Doug: That frog picture is *still* cracking me up.
And the Minnesota Science Museum is having a Star Wars exhibit this summer- and I’m reeeeeeally excited!
Ya’ll COMPLETELY insane!
HisMan 1:27am
I’m surprised that such a slave to fashion as yourself would not know enough to have a matching blue handbag. Some colorful jewelry would add some splash. Also, try shaving a little closer. I hope I won’t need to give you any more fashion advise!
HisMan, those shoes really show it off!
Rae, be careful – that frog looks a little communist-Chinesey….
Also, try shaving a little closer.
LMAO
@Doug: It’s Frogerov- fierce dictator of teh Swampz.
*giggle*
A while back we were talking about the FDA’s approval of RU-486. I just read the following in the New England Journal of Medicine:
“By the summer of 2000, mifepristone had been used to treat more than 500,000 women in nearly a dozen countries in which it had been licensed.”
From http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/353/22/2317
Posted by: SoMG at May 23, 2008 3:49 AM
And we should be proud of this! Imagine the money the drug companies have made off the bodies of women, who have no idea the consequences of this drug on their bodies.
Also, I can find many studies to support my position too SoMG:
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/32/3/449
Conclusions: Induced abortion by vacuum aspiration is associated with an increased risk of first-trimester miscarriage in the subsequent pregnancy.
Seems no one was quite interested in you last night…
hehe, it’s a froggie with a hat!
Posted by: Elizabeth at May 22, 2008 11:11 PM
Nah…it’s a hat with a froggie!
I hope everyone had a good time last night.
Clean up looks like it went well.
Has anyone seen Lisa? I noticed the duct tape and rope are missing. I hope no one did anything foolish…
SoMG: try these
Maternal death rate from abortion is almost 3x higher than the maternal death rate from childbirth: (strangely enough this comes from a journal specializing in obstetrics SoMG!!)
Gissler M, Berg C, Bouvier-Colle MH, Buekens P. Pregnancy-associated mortality after birth, spontaneous abortion or induced abortion in Finland, 1987-2000. Am J Ob Gyn 2004; 190:422-427.
and a few others:
1. A study of reproductive factors and the risk of primary liver cancer, conducted in Northern Italy between 1984-91, found a 2.1 relative risk for liver cancer for two or more induced abortions and 1.6 relative risk factor for one abortion compared with women with no abortion history.”
C. LaVeccia et al., “Reproductive Factors and the Risk of Hepatocellular Carcinoma in Women,” Int’l Journal Cancer, 1992, 351, quoted in Strahan, NAIRVSC, Winter 1993, 7.
2. A case-control study published in 1984 in France showed a 2.3 relative risk for cancer of the cervix for women with one abortion and a 4.92 relative risk for women reporting two or more induced abortions compared with women with no prior abortion history.
M-G Le et al.,”Oral Contraceptive Use and Breast or Cervical Cancer: Preliminary Results of a French Case-Control Study,” quoted in J. P. Wolff and J. S. Scott, eds., “Hormones and
Sexual Factors in Human Cancer Etiology,” Excerpta Medica, New York (1984) 139-47.
3.A case control study of cervical carcinoma in situ was conducted by a standard questionnaire among 133 women aged 15-50 years between 1979-85 in Santiago, Chile. The 254 controls were 2 women in the same 5 year age group as the corresponding case and who also had a normal Pap smear closest in time to the abnormal smear that led to the carcinoma in situ diagnosis. Several sexual variables were associated with an increased risk of carcinoma in situ. These included history of prior miscarriages, any prior aborted pregnancy, including spontaneous and induced abortions, total number
of pregnancies, number of sexual partners and age at first sexual intercourse. The relative risk for carcinoma in situ for women with no abortion history was 1.85 (1.20-2.86, 95% C.I.). The relative risk for carcinoma in situ for a woman with an induced abortion was 1.38 (0.84-2.27, 95% C.I.) compared to women with no induced abortion history.
R. Molina, D.B. Thomas, A. Dabancens, “Oral Contraceptives and Cervical Carcinoma in Situ in Chile,” Cancer Research, 15 February 1988, 1011- 1015.
4.The unadjusted mortality rate per 100,000 cases was 27 for women who had given birth, 48 for women who had miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies, and 101 for women who had abortions. Thus, the mortality rate from abortion is 101/27 = 3.7 times higher for abortion than for giving birth.
Fissler, M, et al., “Pregnancy-associated deaths in Finland 1987 – 1994–definition problems and benefits of record linkage,” Acta Obstetricia et Gynecolgical Scandinavica, 76:651-657, 1997.
5. The cause of death from legal abortion during 1979-1985 was hemorrhage (22.2%); infection (13.9%); embolism (15.3%); anesthesia (29.2%) and other (19.4%).
H.K. Atrash, H. Lawson and J. Smith, “Legal Abortion in the U.S.: Trends and Mortality,” Contemporary OB/Gyn, February 1990, 58-69.
6.A Finnish study disputes claims by abortion advocates that abortion is safer for a woman than childbirth. The results are startling. A woman’s risk of dying within a year after an abortion was four times higher than the risk of dying after miscarriage or childbirth, according to the study. The study involved maternal post-abortion deaths of 9,192 Finnish women, aged 15-49, during the period of 1987-1994.
The study results were released in 1997 by STAKES, the statistical analysis unit of Finland’s National Research and Development Center for Welfare and Health.
7.According to renowned obstetrician and gynecologist Matthew Bulfin, the reason that . . .estimated figures are so skewed is that Planned Parenthood and the various other agencies that measure maternal complication rates are ‘missing vital input for their mortality and morbidity studies by not seeking information from the physicians who see the complications from legal abortions–emergency room physicians and the obstetricians and gynecologists in private practice. The physicians who do the
abortions, and the clinics and centers where abortions are done should not be the only sources from which complication statistics are derived.’
Matthew J. J. Bulfin, “Complications of Legal Abortion: A Perspective from Private Practice,” quoted in George Grant, Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood, (Highland Books, 1998) 84.
8.A Danish study conducted in 1974-75 concluded that women with a history of 2 or more abortions had twice the risk of a premature infant compared with women with one past abortion.
E. Obel, “Pregnancy Complications Following Legally Induced Abortion With Special Reference to Abortion Technique,” Acta Ob Gyn Scan, 1979, 147-52, quoted in Strahan, NAIRVSC, Winter 1993, 6-8.
9.Regarding increased risk of ectopic pregnancy: “A study of women at the Boston Hospital for Women found that the relative risk of ectopic pregnancy to be 1.6 for women with one prior abortion (reduced to 1.3 after control [adjustment] of confounding factors) and 4.0 for women with two or more prior abortions (reduced to 2.6 after control of confounding factors.)
A. Levin et al., “Ectopic Pregnancy and Prior Induced Abortion,” American Journal Public Health, March 1982, 253-56, quoted
in Strahan, NAIRVSC, Winter 1993, 6-8.
This is tiresome so I’ll stop now.
Lisa,
I think it’s more like… trying to prevent people from coming to this blog and reducing something as horrifying as the original picture to puppy dogs and kittens.
*
If there really are pro-lifers on here towards the end, don’t fall for this crap. Wake up! You aren’t going to change these trolls, they are here for the soul purposes to badger pro-lifers and misdirect posts.
Posted by: Lisa at May 23, 2008 12:04 AM
Honey, not only were prolifers on here but MK is a moderator and basically started the whole thing!
As to not changing trolls…reaaaaaallllly????
Pip, Samantha, Alyssa, Rae???
Seriously, you have got to lighten up…it was all harmless fun. You can’t take life that seriously. Yes, abortion is horrible and that picture/post is horrendous. It was discussed at length. No one was disrespecting the seriousness of abortion. We were simply celebrating each other.
And quite pickin’ on badgers! And trolls!
sweet mk!
hey Cranky Catholic,
Is your obama image available for other prolife users ?
It’s cool!
———————–
Say it again, Patricia:
>>>”7.According to renowned obstetrician and gynecologist Matthew Bulfin, the reason that . . .estimated figures are so skewed is that Planned Parenthood and the various other agencies that measure maternal complication rates are ‘missing vital input for their mortality and morbidity studies by not seeking information from the physicians who see the complications from legal abortions–emergency room physicians and the obstetricians and gynecologists in private practice. The physicians who do the
abortions, and the clinics and centers where abortions are done should not be the only sources from which complication statistics are derived.'”
Speaking of Cranky Catholics “pic”…I think last night was perfectly on topic. Considering the whole thing started with a picture and ended with a whole lot of them…lol
Thank you Patricia. As one of the most ardent pro lifers on here, even you recognize the value of communication. Sometimes building a relationship outside of the abortion topic is the best way to lead into an honest discussion about the abortion topic.
There are at least 4 people on this blog that started out as pro choicers that are now pro life. And I’ll bet that everyone of them will tell you that light hearted conversations helped ease them into listening to the pro life sides view.
Defenses go down, and it ceases to be about who “wins” and starts to be about “the truth”…
When people are attacked, they defend…when people are treated with respect and invited to tea parties, miracles happen.
Lisa @ 11:41 PM
Lately the amount of serious discussion has been severe and there’s a lot of tragedy – including Maria Chapman.
I can’t blame folks for laying things aside temporarily and just getting silly without seriously insulting each other.
You get a chance to see the lighter sides of folks and what humors them.
Sort of like a “Life is Beautiful” moment.
Doug,
That Mr. Potato Head Darth Vader was priceless!!!
Last night was a blast…but I’ve got a hangover today!!
I missed the partay!! :(
I am glad you guys had a chance to blow off some steam and post some crazy photos and be silly!! Abortion is just too much sometimes and I am thankful that ALL of us can have some fun sometimes!
Patricia, you cited: “6.A Finnish study disputes claims by abortion advocates that abortion is safer for a woman than childbirth. The results are startling. A woman’s risk of dying within a year after an abortion was four times higher than the risk of dying after miscarriage or childbirth, according to the study. The study involved maternal post-abortion deaths of 9,192 Finnish women, aged 15-49, during the period of 1987-1994.
This was the study that included deaths by car accident and other causes which obviously had nothing to do with abortion.
Anyway, for each small study you cite, there’s another study somewhere in the literature which shows a protective effect–that abortion PREVENTS whatever cancer it is you’re talking about (or ectopic pregnancy or whatever). By selectively citing the studies that show harmful effects of abortion and leaving out the ones that show beneficial effects, you are engaging in one-sided amplification of statistical noise.
And journals like Am J Ob Gyn are nowhere near as convincing or important as NEJM.
Remember, GOP/Repubs are PRO LIFE!!!
BAGHDAD
Patricia, FYI, usually journals with the word “International” or the name of a country (“American Journal of whatever”) are low on the academic totem pole. Not always, but usually.
You cited : “A case control study of cervical carcinoma in situ was conducted by a standard questionnaire among 133 women aged 15-50 years between 1979-85 in Santiago, Chile. The 254 controls were 2 women in the same 5 year age group as the corresponding case and who also had a normal Pap smear closest in time to the abnormal smear that led to the carcinoma in situ diagnosis. ”
133 women, and 254 controls. That’s so small it’s virtually meaningless. Whatever web site you copied that off of should be embarrassed to cite it.
I’d go through and critique each of the references you cited, but you can do it yourself. You’ll learn more that way.
NAIRVSC appears to be a right-to-life political organization.
mk, if you are the moderator and even you are trying to insult me by posting a picture of the church lady, then I guess the message from this blog is clear. Sorry for wasting space on here and I’m sorry I wasted so much of my time.
Lisa,
That wasn’t an insult. It was an illustration. Getting so caught up in fighting abortion that you stop seeing the “people” you are dealing with.
After awhile it becomes just words and a caricature of Christianity.
Obviously, you didn’t hear one word any of us said.
We all tried to tell you that we take the abortion issue VERY seriously. But we also take the souls of pro choicers VERY seriously. And we respect them as human beings.
You on the other hand, called them trolls.
Your inability to deal with people has human beings does way more damage to our cause than our joking around did.
Just ask any pro choicer on this site. If they were going to listen to an argument for life, would they listen to someone that is willing to respect them, hear them out, and not treat them like filth, or someone that called them names, insinuated they were less than human (trolls) and were unworthy of friendship and compassion?
If you choose to leave, it will be your loss. There is much to be learned here at Jills. On both sides of the street.
The message from this blog IS clear. We are a family. Sometimes we fight. Sometimes we cry. And yes, sometimes we laugh. We have grown friendships and relationships and some of us even love each other.
Why just last night, both Doug AND Hisman called me “Sis”…can’t tell you how that touched me. It means I’m doing something right.
This isn’t an ego trip. This isn’t about who is “right” and who is “wrong”…it’s not a boxing match. It’s a conversation. It’s about changing hearts. Not about bullying or berating people into seeing your side.
You should stick around and see if you learn something. Remember, the first words you spoke on here, were condescending and cruel. In all the jokes last night, there were no insults, or mean spirited words. Until you came on…Think about that.
If the picture of the church lady upset, I apologize. It was meant to make you think. Think about how upset our guests felt when you accused them of coming on here just to stir up trouble..
They are not trolls. They are my friends. Their names are Doug, Amanda, Alyssa, Midnite, Hal, Edyt, Leah, Erin, Jess, Dan, Alexandra, Enigma, Laura, Sally, Reality, Heironymous, phylosopher and yes, even SoMG…They are people. They have feelings. I’d thank you to respect that.
I came across this site while doing research for a thesis paper. Keep in mind I am on the fence when it comes to the abortion issue, I neither support it, nor am I against it. But to the pro-life advocates on the site, I myself, think that partial birth abortion is horrific and unacceptable, even though I sit on the fence, I do feel like abortions administered in the first month, before one could thrive outside the womb on it’s own, is ok in some situations. But to get to my point, don’t you feel as if it is distastful in general and disrespectful and degrading to these babies undergoing partial birth abortions to parade their pictures across this website/blog?
Hi lg, nice to have you here. To answer your question, no, I don’t think it is disrespectful and degrading. These babies were brutally and horrifically slaughtered in the name of “choice.” Many people do not realize what abortion is; they don’t know what it does or how it works. This article is worth reading. It demonstrates how a particular high school class of students is clueless when it comes to what abortion is, as can be evidenced by the quote in the article from one of the students “
Lg, why do you feel that it is wrong in some situations to abort early on?
lg,
Not really. It was pictures of the holocaust that enabled people to understand what was really happening in Nazi Germany. It was pictures that showed us what happened in Viet Nam, Rwanda, Ethiopia…
Pictures bring the reality of the thing to the forefront. They leave no room for doubt. And a prolife blog is exactly the forum to use them.
Some people are untouched by photos, but many are moved when they see the truth. Have you yourelf seen the pictures of early trimester abortions? Would you have thought that late term abortions were horrific if it wasn’t for the illustrations and photos? Were the words enough? For many, I don’t think they are.
LG,
As for being disrespectful to the babies, many of them have been named, baptized and buried. Better to die and have your life mean something. Use their torn little bodies to put an end to this destruction, makes them soldiers. What is really disrespectful is the millions that no one knows, no one mourns, no one remembers that are thrown away as so much trash.
Thank you for the greeting Bobby. I do see where your coming from when you say we do not want the deaths to go unnoticed, or to sweep them under the rug, I as well as you agree people should know what abortion is and the different methods: the “good”; not that I’m saying abortion is good, this is most likely a very distastful word, but I can’t think of another to use that would be better, but “clean” methods (like the abortion pill); like I said, i know that’s distastful, and also the “bad” methods, the “ugly” methods (like partial birth abortion procedures). But could there not be otherways, instead of showing pictures (because even though our opinions differ and I respect yours, I truely do find it disrespectful and degrading), could we not talk to women who have had abortions and now regret it, talk to them about the emotional and physical struggles, the guilt and depression they might have faced, as a way to advocate a pro-life world?
First off, SoMG: as usual your wonderful charitable atheistic self. You will never convince anyone of your position because their are thousands of walking wounded women and men out there that have suffered the consequences of abortion and who would really give you a piece of their minds. Abortion was really a solution to them, wasn’t it.
“NAIRVSC appears to be a right-to-life political organization.”
Posted by: SoMG at May 23, 2008 10:10 AM
And that’s bad? Virtually eveyone of the resources you flaunt are proabort – hardly unbiased m’dear.
And not all the studies are huge but they are accurate in their methodology which is more than I can say for abortion provider research which has a vested financial interest in trying to prove that forcing a woman’s cervix open, vacuuming and scraping the baby out of her womb and pumping her full of hormones to achieve the same is somehow safer than childbirth, which apparently evolution designed. Please, SoMG, be reasonable. Even the evolutionists couldn’t support such a premise.
Stop lying to women to achieve your ends, and once again I call on you to be intellectually honest.
Abortion prevents ectopic pregnancy !! – you are reaching once again SoMG! Try again.
Maybe you will put down kb too for her frontline experience.
MK, trolls are people who hang out on a website for the sole purpose of attacking commenters and turning them off of debating the topic.
I’ll repeat my earlier comment: Lennie: Why badger anyone? Why not have an intelligent debate on the issue at hand? Badgering only ticks people off so things get personal, but then again, maybe that is your goal. If you can’t win a debate with facts, resort to emotions and personal attacks. Then nothing gets solved making everyone looks bad and scaring off any newbies who don’t have a thick skin thus limiting the debate.
BTW, lg, the pictures are disrespectful and degrading, it’s the act of partial birth abortion itself that is disrespectful, degrading, and repugnant.
Bethany-
As I said I do sit on the fence, but I do feel as if the women being selfish and getting a early term abortion is wrong. Everybody knows that having sex leads to a child, just as everyone knows there are many, many forms of birth control out there to prevent just that. I understand mistakes happen; condoms break, birth control fails, etc. Im talking about the girls I hear about who undergo abortions by the 2’s, 3’s, and more. I’m not saying people shouldn’t have sex, people can have sex but they should be safe about, if they do not want to have a child, than should take precautions.
But could there not be otherways, instead of showing pictures (because even though our opinions differ and I respect yours, I truely do find it disrespectful and degrading), could we not talk to women who have had abortions and now regret it, talk to them about the emotional and physical struggles, the guilt and depression they might have faced, as a way to advocate a pro-life world?
We already do…
http://afterabortion.com/
http://www.rachelsvineyard.org/
http://www.safehavenministries.com/
These are just a few examples…also, there are twice as many Crisis Pregnancy Centers as there are abortion clinics, where women in these situations are ministered to on a daily basis. There are hotlines that women who have had abortions can call and get help and support as well.
The biggest obstacles in the way are the pro-abortionists who loudly claim that post abortion grief doesn’t exist, only adding to the trauma that a post abortive woman feels.
Lennie,
I understood her meaning of the word troll. I just know for a fact that the pro choicers on the blog “party” last night, do not EVER come just to attack commenters and turn them off debating the topic.
We have those too yes, but last nights crowd were sincere. Calling them trolls was unfair and unkind. Not too mention, untrue.
I like what you say about honest, open, intelligent debate. And that is exactly what light hearted evenings like last night foster.
BTW, Welcome. I hope you stick around. We’re not usually so irreverent. Our last “party” was months and months ago…but they always result in a new closeness and better communication.
Bethany-
As I said I do sit on the fence, but I do feel as if the women being selfish and getting a early term abortion is wrong. Everybody knows that having sex leads to a child, just as everyone knows there are many, many forms of birth control out there to prevent just that. I understand mistakes happen; condoms break, birth control fails, etc. Im talking about the girls I hear about who undergo abortions by the 2’s, 3’s, and more. I’m not saying people shouldn’t have sex, people can have sex but they should be safe about, if they do not want to have a child, than should take precautions.
But why should they take precaution? What exactly is wrong with abortion, if it is early on? Why should a typical careless teenager take responsibility, in your opinion?
Hi lg,
What would you like to talk about? I had an abortion and regret it. There are many, many like me and believe me when I say that we are silent no more BUT there are those even on this blog that do not believe me the devastating effects of abortion. They still believe that abortion is good for women and doesn’t kill a baby. Pictures can make a difference.
http://www.operationoutcry.org
By the way, lg, welcome to the blog. :)
lg,
Im talking about the girls I hear about who undergo abortions by the 2’s, 3’s, and more
Have you read our quote of the day?
“There are girls who come back five or six times demanding terminations and they get them. How can someone coming for their fifth termination be allowed to keep saying it is due to emotional distress?”
*
~ British registered General Nurse Kay, commenting on her experience being involved with late term abortions, as quoted by spectator.co.uk.
BTW, now that you’re here, I hope you’ll stick around and join the debate.
mk
My post to Bobby also relates to you, I do see your views, and yes, you ave very valid points. Yes I would think partial birth abortions would be horrific without the pictures.
“could we not talk to women who have had abortions and now regret it, talk to them about the emotional and physical struggles, the guilt and depression they might have faced, as a way to advocate a pro-life world?”
Oh yes, lg! We do indeed. In fact, if you hang around here for a while, you’ll meet some people who have had abortion(s). Some regret it, others do not. We do offer support to them. That is one of the main directions in which the pro-life movement is moving; support for women who have had abortions and those considering it.
Now I will say this about pictures, though. They do only work on an emotional level. I personally prefer to discuss the issue from a philosophical POV i.e. establishing the personhood of the embryo. Because as you allude to, you can very easily see why D & X is wrong, but it becomes less clear when we are talking about an embryo. If we see a “ripped up” embryo, it doesn’t move us at all. So we have to go past images and looks and understand what the embryo is. My contention is that the embryo is a human person with the same rights as you or me, and hence can never be killed under any circumstances. Obviously you would not come to this conclusion based on how the embryo looks. But I believe that science, philosophy, and sound logic point to the conclusion that the embryo is a human person. That’s really for another time, though.
Thank you Bethany…
I had a friend who had an abortion, and yes she grieved, she cried every night for about 2 months, she cried again, when it came to the date the baby would have been born. She gets upset around children who are the same age of what the child would have been if she had not had one, she sometimes has terrible dreams. So I do agree, that yes, there is tremendous greif some face. As to why a typical teenager should take responsibility, because it’s human; it’s what sets us apart from animals. As to your question…
“Why should a typical careless teenager take responsibility, in your opinion?”
Not that I would ever wish this on you or anyone for that matter, this is just hypothetical, wonder if that same careless teacher got drunk, got in a car, caused an accident which caused the death of one of your loved ones, would you not want them tot take some form of responsibility; suspended liscence, juvenile detention, permentant records, etc.?
Carla:
Theres nothing specific I would like to talk about now, I’m sure if I stay on this site I will learn more along the way. Your abortion is your own personal matter and yes, if you ever wanted to share anything I would love to listen and share my thoughts with you as well. Like I said to Bethany I believe there is greif, I would never doubt that.
mk:
I did read the qoute, it makes my stomach turn, like I said I do understand we are human and make mistakes, that’s what helps us learn and grow, but when it happens 5 or 6 times, it is no longer a mistake it is childish and ignorant.
Hey Lennie, to be serious, you make good points about rational discussion. Jill’s site is good because of the people and because most of the time things are pretty reasonable, IMO anyway.
Especially for you SoMG, just in case you need a refresher course in RU-486:
As for the approval of Mifeprex (RU 486) I note the following:
1. Acceptance of non-controlled, non-blinded and non-randomized studies as the basis for the approval for RU-486.
2. approval of a regimen of use that does not mirror the clinical trials used for approval – that is the current prescription regimen includes only physical examination and menstrual history and not the use of ultrasound to date the pregnancy or to ensure that the pregnancy is not ectopic. Pregnancy under 50 days is best accurately dated using ultrasound. (Methold of dating was left up to the physician)
3. Clinical trials restricted the use of RU 486 to women 18 and older, FDA reg’s do not require this.
4. Clinical trials restricted the use of RU 486 in women with certain health problems – FDA reg’s do not require this.
5. Oral doses used in clinical trials over the three days are not the same as required by the FDA reg’s. Nor is the upper limit of use followed with ACOG recommending use up to 63 days.
6. I would also state that women in the trials did not use RU-486 5, 7 or 10 times as has been the case for a certain subset of women, worldwide. (i.e this population definitely uses RU-486 as another form of contraceptive and in a manner similar to the use of abortion). Therefore, the effect of repeated abortions in this manner is not known at this time.
7. The apparent co-incidence of death and/or sepsis and the generally harmless bacterium clostridium sordelli when RU-486 is used.
I’m sure if you had taken the time to research RU-486 you’d learn alot more on your own too.
Hey, Mr. Bambino,
If we see a “ripped up” embryo, it doesn’t move us at all. So we have to go past images and looks and understand what the embryo is. My contention is that the embryo is a human person with the same rights as you or me, and hence can never be killed under any circumstances. Obviously you would not come to this conclusion based on how the embryo looks. But I believe that science, philosophy, and sound logic point to the conclusion that the embryo is a human person. That’s really for another time, though.
Posted by: Bobby Bambino at May 23, 2008 12:12 PM
I just read this in an online article written by Christian Brugger. It was very good.
lg,
I did read the qoute, it makes my stomach turn, like I said I do understand we are human and make mistakes, that’s what helps us learn and grow, but when it happens 5 or 6 times, it is no longer a mistake it is childish and ignorant.
You’d like Rae. She used to be pro choice, but not calls her self anti stupidity…lol.
As in people who behave stupidly and then kill their children to cover it up. She is pro life now. And really, really smart.
I had a friend who had an abortion, and yes she grieved, she cried every night for about 2 months, she cried again, when it came to the date the baby would have been born. She gets upset around children who are the same age of what the child would have been if she had not had one, she sometimes has terrible dreams. So I do agree, that yes, there is tremendous grief some face.
Lg, I am so very sorry to hear about your friend and what she is going through. I have many books and booklets that may be able to bring her some comfort and help to be able to overcome the grief after abortion. If you are ever interested, I would be more than happy to send them to you to give to her, free of charge. (Just email me by clicking my name on the sidebar.)
As to why a typical teenager should take responsibility, because it’s human; it’s what sets us apart from animals. As to your question…
Okay, I think I am starting to see what you’re saying, but I am not sure why you feel that in one instance, it could be inhumane to abort, but in another, it could be humane. Do you see why I am confused? How can it be simultaneously acceptable, and non-acceptable?
“I just read this in an online article written by Christian Brugger. It was very good.”
Do you have a link, Patricia? Or just let me know the mane, I could probably find it.
lg,
But where would you have heard about PBA? Usually, the description comes with that popular illustration.
People tend to gloss over when confronted with words, but a pictures strikes quickly and forcefully.
And the pictures should never be used in place of conversation, articles, facts…but only in addition too. Many soldiers, many opportunities to fight the fight.
Bobby is right tho. Pictures only open up the discussion. The heart of the matter is that this is a human being whether they are physically recognizable or not.
Bobby and I are Catholic and we don’t believe that the body comes first, and then a soul occupies it. We believe the the body occupies the soul. We aren’t bodies with souls, We are souls with bodies…So killing an unborn baby, always includes killing one of God’s creatures, regardless of their age or viability.
Oh I am sorry, I missed this response:
Not that I would ever wish this on you or anyone for that matter, this is just hypothetical, wonder if that same careless teacher got drunk, got in a car, caused an accident which caused the death of one of your loved ones, would you not want them tot take some form of responsibility; suspended liscence, juvenile detention, permentant records, etc.?
Yes, but is what you consider to be the wrong, the action of having sex without protection, or the willful taking of a human life, or…?
Go Patricia!
“Bobby and I are Catholic and we don’t believe that the body comes first, and then a soul occupies it. We believe the the body occupies the soul. We aren’t bodies with souls, We are souls with bodies…So killing an unborn baby, always includes killing one of God’s creatures, regardless of their age or viability.”
But it should also be noted that the personhood of the unborn can be argued without mention of God or the soul. There are several atheist/agnostic pro-lifers on this site, and a huge website devoted to atheist/agnostic pro-lifers. Abortion is a human rights issue, not a religious issue. But what MK said is true lg, just not the basis of why I’m pro-life. Just wanted to clarify.
“Go Patricia!”
No, I like Patricia. She should stay.
(such a dork I am…)
Bobby here is the link – I stumbled across this site about a week ago and I think it is one I’ve had bookmarked for a couple of years but they’ve relocated to a new url.
http://www.culture-of-life.org/content/view/459/109/
I see that Dr. Brugger’s part II is on the home page this week. There is lots of good stuff to check out on this site.
Abortion is a human issue – it’s about the human condition. Therefore, everyone has a vested interest in it! That’s why I don’t like to say there is a “Catholic” position on things – (there is) but it’s a “human” position too.
Bobby: I’m sure Bruggers argument is very elementary to you and Chris, but it is a good jumping off point for those who haven’t thought too much about this issue yet.
My daughter just finished a retreat that dealt with new age stuff and cults. However, this is the second time she’s gone to said retreat and after talking with some of the young adults, I am hoping to get the sisters to deal with some of these bioethics issues in an elementary way. After all, these young people will have to deal with many of these issues because they are now part of our culture. They will have friends who will want to use IVF for example. It helps to knwo your “stuff”!
Another idea is learning about Theology of the Body.
Bobby: while we are on the subject of websites you might also want to check this one out:
The Personalist Project:http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/
I just ILLO’ed the book The selfhood of the human person. I’m sure the ILLO department will be shaking their heads over this one! But I guess if we can get Karma Sutra books, we can get this one. (Lord have mercy…)
Bethany:
Thank you for the generous offer, but it has been about a year and a half for her now, and she is alot better, she went to a lot of those clinics you mentioned, it’s not the she has forgotten it at all, she has just found more effective ways of dealing with it.
As to your question…
“Yes, but is what you consider to be the wrong, the action of having sex without protection, or the willful taking of a human life, or…?”
That’s tricky, I do not think it’s wrong to have sex, but I do think it’s childish to have unprotected sex if your not ready for a baby. If you lying on your back and thinking, “hey, if I get pregnant because I’m not using protection right now, it’s ok because I can go get an abortion” than yes, that is wrong. This is why I’m on the fence, I feel as if abortion is ok if your raped, the womans body can not physically hold a baby without causing damage to her or the baby, and yes if it was an honest mistake and you learn from it. I’m not ok with women using abortion as a form of birth control, I’m also not ok with women having an abortion to get ri of a baby who is mentally or physically handicapped; that’s selfish, and I can tell you from experience those children offer you the most joy out of life.
These teenagers should take responsibility, birth control is relatively easy to come by, at planned parenthood condoms are free, birth control is fairly cheap or even free, there’s also plan b which is very available and reasonably priced, so what’s there excuse for not using protection?
mk:
I learned about PBA through a variety of courses I’ve taken at my college, the professor I had this past semester did not use pictures in order to show examples, she used definitions, examples, and true life stories. I understand pictures are a way to open up a topic, but I feel as if someones own personal account holds your attention much more.
Bobby:
I appreciate your input on the matter, like many others on the site, I do not feel like you can base your arguements strictly on religion. I would never put any one down for being a highly devoted Catholic, but I find when you use those arguments to prove your point it will never work, those who are highly Catholic will indeed follow and agree with you, but those who are not will rip apart, ignore, and toss out these arguments, because in all reality they do not apply to them because they are not their beliefs.
This is why abortion is such a highly debated issue, there are so many apinions involved, pro-chiocers, pro-lifers, catholic, agnostics, and we also must keep in mind those who are pro-choice are not neccesarily pro-abortion, I know many women who are pro-chioce who have never had an abortion, never would have abortion, must wouldn’t even fathom the option.
That’s tricky, I do not think it’s wrong to have sex, but I do think it’s childish to have unprotected sex if your not ready for a baby. If you lying on your back and thinking, “hey, if I get pregnant because I’m not using protection right now, it’s ok because I can go get an abortion” than yes, that is wrong. This is why I’m on the fence, I feel as if abortion is ok if your raped, the womans body can not physically hold a baby without causing damage to her or the baby, and yes if it was an honest mistake and you learn from it. I’m not ok with women using abortion as a form of birth control, I’m also not ok with women having an abortion to get ri of a baby who is mentally or physically handicapped; that’s selfish, and I can tell you from experience those children offer you the most joy out of life.
These teenagers should take responsibility, birth control is relatively easy to come by, at planned parenthood condoms are free, birth control is fairly cheap or even free, there’s also plan b which is very available and reasonably priced, so what’s there excuse for not using protection?
Okay, yes, I understand your point. But I still do not think you are really understanding my question…. I’m not really wondering which situations you consider it wrong, but rather, what makes it wrong in one instance? See, from my perspective, if abortion is not murder, then there is really no reason to care whether a woman is careless and has an abortion. Why would it be any of our business, if it were not affecting another person?
So my question to you really is, why do you consider abortion to be morally unacceptable in those situations you posed. What exactly is wrong with it, in those particular scenarios? Why is it selfish, careless, or wrong?
lg, I’m glad that your friend has been getting help at a CPC! That is encouraging to hear.
“So my question to you really is, why do you consider abortion to be morally unacceptable in those situations you posed. What exactly is wrong with it, in those particular scenarios? Why is it selfish, careless, or wrong?”
Because in those situations it is easily avoidable and ultimately unneccesary.
In cases of rape or the potential of causing damage to the Mother or the baby, well than that’s not really avoidable, and it is out of there hands.
Now granted I do not know how authentic this is, but is this image not just as compelling as the PBA images on this site…
Hey lg. Couple things.
“I appreciate your input on the matter, like many others on the site, I do not feel like you can base your arguements strictly on religion. I would never put any one down for being a highly devoted Catholic, but I find when you use those arguments to prove your point it will never work, those who are highly Catholic will indeed follow and agree with you, but those who are not will rip apart, ignore, and toss out these arguments, because in all reality they do not apply to them because they are not their beliefs.”
I don’t know if you saw my 1:11 post, but I tried to make it clear that there is no religious argument that I make when arguing against abortion. It’s like arguing against slavery, rape, theft, etc. The evilness of abortion, I believe, can be known using purely natural law and reasoning.
“I know many women who are pro-chioce who have never had an abortion, never would have abortion, must wouldn’t even fathom the option.”
Think about this though, lg. Suppose I defined a new phrase called “pro-decision” and I consider myself pro-decision. After all, who is against making a decision? We live in America where we have the right to make decisions for ourselves! OK, but what do I mean by pro-decision? Well, I mean that people can make the DECISION for themselves if they want to have sex with 4 year old girls or not. Personally, I would never have sex with a 4 year old girl, but far be it from me to impose my decision on someone else.
Do you see where I’m going with this? The problem is that when you have sex with a 4 year old, you are committing a grave bodily, spiritual, emotional, and psychological violation of that person. Yet I can try and hide it under the banner of a decision. This is the same problem with people who claim that they personally would never have an abortion but they think others should be allowed that right. What would you call someone who says that they would never have sex with a 4 year old but that they think other people should have that right if they wish? I call them a sick bastard.
The bottom line is to answer the question “what is the embryo?” Is it a human person with moral dignity? If it is, then no abortion is justified. If it is, then the position that “I would never have an abortion but I can’t tell someone else that they can’t” is absurd. It’s telling someone that although they would never commit murder, they won’t stop someone else from committing murder. Of course, all this is true if the personhood of the embryo can be established using science and reason which it can.
Because in those situations it is easily avoidable and ultimately unneccesary.
But why does that matter? Why is it any of our business? What harm does it cause? I’m being completely serious here. I am just wondering the root of the reason why you believe it to be wrong. I don’t feel you are giving me a straightforward answer here. Getting a gastric bypass surgery is unnecessary and avoidable, but I doubt that you would consider it immoral, selfish and careless to get one done, would you?
Do you feel that abortion affects one person, or two?
The bottom line is to answer the question “what is the embryo?” Is it a human person with moral dignity? If it is, then no abortion is justified. If it is, then the position that “I would never have an abortion but I can’t tell someone else that they can’t” is absurd. It’s telling someone that although they would never commit murder, they won’t stop someone else from committing murder. Of course, all this is true if the personhood of the embryo can be established using science and reason which it can.
Very good, Bobby.
lg, I hope it didn’t sound like my tone was angry in the last post. I had a lot of question marks, and for some reason, to me, when I reread it, it sounded a lot different than how it sounded in my head. In my head, I was asking all of the questions with a soft tone.
Just letting you know, so you don’t get the wrong impression.
Lg,
I know how that it can be frustrating to have two convos at once, so I’m going to take this opportunity to get some work done. I’ll check back later and talk with you some more if you wish. Take care, God love you.
Bobby:
That came out wrong, I was agreeing with you, that you can’t use religion, I know you don’t.
Bethany:
I never thought you were coming out angry, so don’t worry. Maybe I can’t answer your question the way you’d like, that’s probably why I’m on the fence. Abortion can effect a number of people, the Mother, the Father, anyone, my friends abortion affected me, I cried with her, an abortion effects anyone involved.
As much as I’ve enjoyed talking to you, I do have to go, Memerial Weekend Family Vacation I need to pack for! But it was lovely meeting you all, I’ll be back Monday to talk again.
Bethany…
Don’t take this as a copout, I would love to talk to you more, maybe discover myself, learn new facts and come up with a better answer.
Hove a nice weekend everyone!
lg you sound like a very nice person, and I look forward to having you come back sometime when we can discuss this more! I hope that you have a wonderful vacation. :) Thanks for the nice discussion.
Good journey, lg.
Guys, I didn’t even drink last night and I still woke up feeling hungover. What’d you do, drug my water or something?
HisMan, thanks, I appreciate it. I’ll try to be more respectful as well.
HisMan said “I’m sorry, especially to Edyt. Edyt, I just want you to love God and I just sometimes express it real, real wrong.”
Edyt said “HisMan, thanks, I appreciate it. I’ll try to be more respectful as well.”
This makes me very happy :)
Hey guys,
Guess what? I JUST TOOK MY LAST FINAL for this semester. WOO HOOOOO!!!
Lg,
Welcome to the blog..you seem to have some interesting thoughts and can contribute much here! We all hope you stay!
Woo hoo! In your face, school-that-Elizabeth-attends!
Lol Bobby
Of course, all this is true if the personhood of the embryo can be established using science and reason which it can.
No, Bobby, that’s just it – it’s an attributed status, not physical state.
Congratulations Elizabeth! Summer school or time off?
I JUST TOOK MY LAST FINAL for this semester. WOO HOOOOO!!!
Yee Haw!
:: running around shooting guns in the air ::
Seriously, Elizabeth, congratulations! I remember that feeling, though long and long I’ve been out of college.
As much as I’ve enjoyed talking to you, I do have to go, Memerial Weekend Family Vacation I need to pack for! But it was lovely meeting you all, I’ll be back Monday to talk again.
Look, lg, can’t you get online, somehow, during this weekend? I mean, come on…. ; )
I’m on my way to a similar thing – going to Atlanta for a joint birthday party for my wife and one of her sisters, both with May birthdays. Bocce ball (Italian lawn bowling) old-world spaghetti – a centuries old recipe from San Fele, Tuscany(?), Italy, no less – more food than ten times as many people could eat, and more wine and beer than is possible, period. Everything more than everything else.
Sitting in the Pittsburgh airport right now, with free Wi-Fi internet access. Damn ATL airport charges like $7.95 per day, and there’s no option for an hour or two, etc.
Going through security, this airpline pilot breezed around me and one woman where you put your stuff on the belt to go through the scanner.
Okay, no problem, he looked like he had his ducks in a row. But then he walks through the metal-detector and it goes off. Had a bunch of keys in his pocket.
I said, “Dude, you just got demoted to Lieutenant.” He gave me a dirty look.
He steps back, sends the keys on the belt in a dish, then tries again. It goes off a second time. Cell phone in a pocket. I’m thinking, “You so-and-so, and you were in such a hurry. Sheesh, she and I could have been done already.”
He makes it on the third try
At that point, I said, “Good luck, Sergeant,” and the woman started laughing.
Yee Haa – the Gin & Tonic wagon :: cough cough :: I mean the plant is here. It’s party time. It’s vacation time.
If I don’t survive this weekend, nice knowing and talking to you all.
Doug
It’s also known as a “plane” instead of a plant.
At that point, I said, “Good luck, Sergeant,” and the woman started laughing.
Posted by: Doug at May 23, 2008 5:32 PM
Let’s hope he’s not your pilot, if he is, you’d better lay low!
Bombing Iraqi schools and killing hundreds of children – OK
A teenage mom having an abortion because she can’t take care of the child
Bombing Iraqi schools and killing hundreds of children – OK
A teenage mom having an abortion because she can’t take care of the child
i can see how that’s prolife
Yeah SOMG.
The Journal of the AMERICAN Medical Association, and NEW ENGLAND Journal of Medicine represent good examples of your contention.
They have gone downhill, as heavily politicized rags.
In addition, we see Huge Retractions from other really big name journals, such as the famous issue of Hwang Woo SUK’s work. Remember that?
Now try to tell us which are the good journals?
Thanks Janet and Doug,
No, no summer school for me..this momma needs a rest. (And by that I mean, more time to do laundry, cook, and clean up after people lol)
I might actually see a movie or two this summer, or read a book for PLEASURE. :gasp: I know, I’m shocked too.
And yes, it’s a great feeling..especially since I got like $160 when I went to sell my books back..and I’m pretty sure I have straight A’s this semester!! (For sure I know I got an A in Biology which was the most important one!)
Hey MK:
I really wanted to call you “sweetie” or “babelady” or “typical white person” and not “sis”, but I thought I would get a lot of flak from the you know who on the site.
And SoMG really needs an enima doesn’t he? Got his address, I send him a few cases?
And if Hal and I can make up for all the stuff I called him, there’e even hope for me and Edyt.
I guess I really care about all these dudes and dudettes but sometimes I forget I’m talking to real people on this site. It’s kind of like how I drive, you know, road rage.
We really do need a comic break once in a while or, for SoMG, a really big enima, a super size, whopper enima.
@HisMan: It’s “enema”. :)
“I’m pretty sure I have straight A’s this semester!! ”
wow, you’re smart Elizabeth. Congrats.
Congratumutations Elizabeth-san!
Anon: 6:55
Ever heard of a “strawman”?
HisMan-
so is the danger of the internet. The idea of it being just text on a screen tends to create some sort of illusion there’s no one really on the other side, it’s just the computer. Everyone has their moments, but what makes me sick are the people who go onto the web purposely trying to get a reaction out of people for laughs. They dont believe what they say or type, or really even care, they just want to get people ticked off for no other reason than their entertainment. It can also lead to all sorts of unexpected reactions, and makes people less cautious about what they type. Of course tone doesnt come across as well which is a whole other issue. But I’ve digressed to rambling.
Point is, yea inappropriate things have been said on both sides of the fence, and im sure itll still happen at least on occasion, people screw up, we’re all only human :).
“No, Bobby, that’s just it – it’s an attributed status, not physical state.”
OK, so I guess if you want to look at it that way then I claim that the unborn must logically be granted the same attributed status that we attribute to born people.
Bobby, why must they “logically” be granted?
Prolly be three days before I reply, but reply I will, buddy.
On the plane I was thinking about the amazing mix of people here. We have a former professional wrestler, now a PhD candidate in Mathematics, known and loved by pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike.
(SWEEET)
Best,
Doug
Patricia, you wrote: “But where would you have heard about PBA? Usually, the description comes with that popular illustration.
People tend to gloss over when confronted with words, but a pictures strikes quickly and forcefully.”
The popular diagram of “partial-birth” abortion was originally drawn (I think by Dr. Hern) to illustrate draining fluid from a hydrocephalus-fetus with no brain in order to reduce the size of the head to make it easier to pass the cervix.
Drawing it as if it were a normal fetus is a lie.
KB, you wrote: “The Journal of the AMERICAN Medical Association, and NEW ENGLAND Journal of Medicine represent good examples of your contention.”
I said, “usually but not always”.
Patricia, you wrote: “Abortion prevents ectopic pregnancy !! – you are reaching once again SoMG! ”
I didn’t say abortion prevents ectopic pregnancy. I said you can find studies that show a weak preventative effect of abortion on ectopic pregnancy because of statistical noise.
You should read more carefully.
You listed seven objections to the approval of RU486 above. The first five of your objections are meaningless because the true basis for approval was the more than 500,000 successful uses around the world, not the clinical trials you complain about. The sixth and seventh were:
“6. I would also state that women in the trials did not use RU-486 5, 7 or 10 times as has been the case for a certain subset of women, worldwide. (i.e this population definitely uses RU-486 as another form of contraceptive and in a manner similar to the use of abortion). Therefore, the effect of repeated abortions in this manner is not known at this time.”
Congratulations Patricia, you have actually described a possible legitimate reason for concern with this one.
7. The apparent co-incidence of death and/or sepsis and the generally harmless bacterium clostridium sordelli when RU-486 is used.
Yeah, in a total of seven cases. Read this:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/353/22/2317
Money quote: “As tragic as the deaths of these young, healthy women are, they remain a small number of rare events without a clear pathophysiologic link to the method of termination. ”
SoMG said: The popular diagram of “partial-birth” abortion was originally drawn (I think by Dr. Hern) to illustrate draining fluid from a hydrocephalus-fetus with no brain in order to reduce the size of the head to make it easier to pass the cervix.
The identical pictures (intials J.W. on the drawings) are used for the article: D & X: Grim Technology for Abortion’s Older Victims on the following website: http://www.lifeadvocate.org/arc/dx.htm
National Abortion Federation (NAF) Risk Management Seminar, September 13-14, 1992, in Dallas. Dr. Martin Haskell, a Cincinnati abortionist, presented a scientific paper describing the procedure.
Well, I may not post a whole lot, but I do read here when I can and it appears that I missed a party last night! :D You made me laugh–and that frog with the hat was priceless.
On another note, Bobby, I loved your post at 2:07 so much that I read it aloud to my husband!
I’d be interested to know this, regarding the discussion between Bobby and Doug:
what is it that changes between the time a baby is just about to be pushed through the birth canal and the time when the baby emerges that causes it to go from non-personhood to personhood? Is there a genetic/DNA change? An evolutionary change? The addition of a “soul”? A terminology change from “fetus” to “baby”? (Hopefully we can all agree that it is a human being before it emerges and a human being after…right?)
Can bestow personhood upon whomever we deem worthy? Can we remove it from whomever we deem unworthy?
If we base personhood on whether a being can “reason” then a lot of born persons just don’t qualify for personhood, either.
SoMG said:
“Congratulations Patricia, you have actually described a possible legitimate reason for concern with this one.”
WOW, Patricia, maybe you should document this admission. ;)
I think women who want medical abortions should use methotrexate rather than RU-486. First of all, we know it’s safe for regular, repeated use and secondly it protects the patient if her pregnancy is tubal, which RU-486 does not.
Yes Kel, the effects of MANY RU-486 abortions or taking it regularly as a form of birth control have not been measured, as far as I know.
Having said that, I wouldn’t be too worried about it.
SoMG,
Having said that, I wouldn’t be too worried about it.
Well yeah, but since you’re a guy you probably don’t worry about most abortion procedures as they don’t/won’t affect you.
Kel,
Doug’s point (I believe) is that “personhood” is a legal term. A word that has nothing to do with the age of the baby. It is attributed solely when the child is removed from the women. Not for any sound reasoning, but because that is what the law says.
If we remained pregnant til the child was a 21 year old adult and could read, write and ride a unicycle, according to the law, he would still NOT be a person, until he came out of the uterus.
He doesn’t argue that this is morally right, he says it just is.
Even when you type the word personhood here on the blog, spell check doesn’t recognize it as a word.
There is no definition of personhood except as it applies to the law.
You and I and all pro lifers (and even Doug) think that this can/should/must be changed. As Bobby says, we can show scientifically why a fetus SHOULD have personhood attributed from day one, but we have to convince the courts.
So don’t even try arguing that a fetus IS a person with Doug unless you’re prepared to take some dramamine. Trust me, you’ll get very, very dizzy, goin’ around and around.
If you want to argue about personhood, make sure you phrase it that the unborn SHOULD have personhood, and that the law needs to be changed. NEVER, EVER argue that the fetus DOES have personhood. Capiche?
Hey Doug,
“On the plane I was thinking about the amazing mix of people here. We have a former professional wrestler, now a PhD candidate in Mathematics, known and loved by pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike.”
We are a fun mix… I do love our group.
“Bobby, why must they “logically” be granted?”
OK. The question we must ask ourselves is why we attribute the status of personhood to born people. In other words, what is it that makes human beings special so that we can’t go around killing born humans? It is rooted in the fact that we are rational animals. From the POV of evolution, mother nature has given only the species homo sapien the ability to make rational and moral decisions. This ability is not incumbent on any other creature. No one ever accuses a lion of murder when he kills and eats a zebra, or a seagull of theft when he swoops in and takes a fish from another seagull. Only human beings have been given this gift by nature or by God to be a moral and rational agent. Now with privilege comes responsibility. Responsibility not only for the earth, the environment, and other animals, but also the responsibility of protecting and caring for those members of our species which are most vulnerable and most defenseless.
What makes us persons is not our rational in-and-of-itself, yet our natural capacity for rational. That is, given the proper nutrition and environment, the embryo has the a priori natural potential to look and act like a fully developed person. The only differences between the born and unborn are size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency. These are all accidental differences (in the Aristotelian sense of the word) which do not change the substantial nature of WHAT the unborn is. For example, I am a different size than a cat. Yet a cat will never be attributed person status, so we know that the size of the unborn is not what makes it human. What about the unborns level of development? Well we are all more developed than others. One of MK’s young boys is more developed than my daughter, yet I am more developed than both of them. That doesn’t change their status of personhood. As for degree of dependency, we all are dependent on environmental factors in some way or another. Most people would consider my 6 month old a person; yet if I drop her in the middle of the ocean, she can’t survive on her own. She wouldn’t be “viable.” Why is this any more arbitrary than the mother’s womb? My 6 month old is not supposed to be in the middle of the ocean, just like a 7 week old fetus is not supposed to be outside the mother, as evolution intended it.
From here we can get into arbitrary personhood theories; the human being is not a human person if it isn’t sentient, conscience, viable, gives off EEGs, etc. Isn’t it funny that only those people who have all of these attributes get to pick and choose which attributes constitute a person? There is a reason we never hear about a mute claiming that the ability to speak is what makes us a person. But we have seen people in the past claim that those with dark skin are not people. Sure, why not? If someone can claim that you have to be able to live and survive outside of the very environment that evolution has designed you to in order to be a person (the fetus living outside the mother’s womb as in viability) why can’t I claim that you have to have white skin in order to be a person?
The bottom line is that the unborn is a whole being with the natural capacity to think, feel, love, and reflect on oneself and others. That is, given the proper environment and nutrition, just like any one of us and all of us STILL to some degree depend on, it will mature into a rational being. This is true of no other animal; it is unique to human animals. God love you, Doug.
No SoMG, you should both read and write more carefully:
“You listed seven objections to the approval of RU486 above. The first five of your objections are meaningless (my emphasis) because the true basis for approval was the more than 500,000 successful uses around the world, not the clinical trials you complain about.”
What you really mean here is that women were used as guinea pigs – because doctors really didn’t know what the outcome would be once the off the label use of RU-486 became the norm.
Typical proabort reasoning – no care for the women involved and nil of course for the babies. Hence this post!:
Yes Kel, the effects of MANY RU-486 abortions or taking it regularly as a form of birth control have not been measured, as far as I know.
Having said that, I wouldn’t be too worried about it.
Posted by: SoMG at May 24, 2008 1:35 AM
Thanks SoMG for once being intellectually honest and showing your true colours!
Hi Kel.
“On another note, Bobby, I loved your post at 2:07 so much that I read it aloud to my husband!”
Thank you :)
“I’d be interested to know this, regarding the discussion between Bobby and Doug:
what is it that changes between the time a baby is just about to be pushed through the birth canal and the time when the baby emerges that causes it to go from non-personhood to personhood? Is there a genetic/DNA change? An evolutionary change? The addition of a “soul”? A terminology change from “fetus” to “baby”? (Hopefully we can all agree that it is a human being before it emerges and a human being after…right?)”
I’ll let Doug speak for himself with these questions, but you obviously know my answers: nothing, no, no, no, yes (but that is an accidental change which does not affect the nature of the being).
“Can bestow personhood upon whomever we deem worthy? Can we remove it from whomever we deem unworthy?”
As I tried to illustrate above, if we do not bestow it to the human being from the moment that it exists, sure, why not? It becomes a matter of who has the most power. I’m in charge so I say someone who is ignorant of cobordism is not a person. Watch the algebraic topology courses fill up!
“If we base personhood on whether a being can “reason” then a lot of born persons just don’t qualify for personhood, either.”
Kel, I am convinced that if people were, say, 5 times as large as they are now so that women gestated for 3 years let’s say(so that the fetus had the level of development of a 2 year old while still inside the mother’s womb), then we would see something like that. All the (popular) personhood theories are accomplished by the fetus during gestation (Peter Singer and Michael Tooley and others are an exception). This is why some of the more popular ones are viability and sentience. It is clear that a two month old is viable and can feels and perceive pain. But honestly, my 6 month old is not rational. My friend’s dog is much more intelligent than she is. My daughter doesn’t listen to me, doesn’t respond all that well, can’t do anything that she is told, can’t make decisions rationally. All she can do is basically lie there and roll over. Certainly very little communication goes on. I don’t see any attributes of “personhood” in her. Yet Almost no one would deny her personhood. But if we lived in a world where she was still gestating? I’m convinced she would not be considered a person. So I think you touch on something important here. God love you Kel.
“If we remained pregnant til the child was a 21 year old adult and could read, write and ride a unicycle, according to the law, he would still NOT be a person, until he came out of the uterus.”
Ah, MK beat me to that!
“If you want to argue about personhood, make sure you phrase it that the unborn SHOULD have personhood, and that the law needs to be changed. NEVER, EVER argue that the fetus DOES have personhood. Capiche?”
Doh! Well, I lose…
The Kid,
You took your drammamine, didn’t you?
Hi Bobby,
The last thing I would ever want is my baby riding a unicycle inside of me!!! Good heavens – that sounds worse than labour!!
I think you would be surprised by your 6 month old. I think she can understand you very well, but as you stated she’s not capable of responding all that well – certainly not like you or her mom respond to people.
At any rate, I’m convinced that Gianna’s a genius (like her mom). Sorry, Bobby.
I really hope babies never decide to stay inside until they’re 2 years old. Can you imagine them coming out as 2 YEAR OLDS?!!! Ahhh, I like the gradual progression into the terrible 2’s. I couldn’t take it if they came out as a 2-year old! Plus a person’s bladder can only take so much!
(I guess you can tell I have a 2-year old.)
“I think you would be surprised by your 6 month old. I think she can understand you very well, but as you stated she’s not capable of responding all that well – certainly not like you or her mom respond to people.”
Yeah I did exaggerate a bit, but the point is that there are many, many, many animals who are much more developed and much more “aware” than she is.
I’d be interested to know this, regarding the discussion between Bobby and Doug:
what is it that changes between the time a baby is just about to be pushed through the birth canal and the time when the baby emerges that causes it to go from non-personhood to personhood? Is there a genetic/DNA change? An evolutionary change? The addition of a “soul”? A terminology change from “fetus” to “baby”? (Hopefully we can all agree that it is a human being before it emerges and a human being after…right?)
Well, I’d say that a person is someone who is not fully dependent on another’s life (in such that it is feeding off its body, not like a little kid depending on its mom) to survive.
I’m fine with stopping abortions after viability though. If it can live outside the womb, then it isn’t fully dependent on another person to live.
The problem with legal personhood is who has dominance over the other organism. Whose life you allow to trump the other’s. There are a whole slew of legal questions that come up when you give an unborn child legal rights.
Edyt: 11:59:I’m fine with stopping abortions after viability though. If it can live outside the womb, then it isn’t fully dependent on another person to live.
Viablility for each individual child is going to be different. If you have to pick an arbitrary age, you may be killing children who may have been stronger than the average, and may be saving those who technically may not have been viable at that “point of viability”. Not very accurate scientifically, IMO.
Edyt 11:59am
Babies outside the womb are fully dependent on others to live. I found being pregnant a lot less exhausting, demanding, and tedious than actually having an infant to care for.
Well, I’d say that a person is someone who is not fully dependent on another’s life (in such that it is feeding off its body, not like a little kid depending on its mom) to survive.
Where would you draw the line? There are many people after a stroke or car accident who are almost completely dependent upon another person. My dad is 88 years old – he can’t cook for himself, write his own cheques because his handwriting is now illegible, has trouble getting to the bathroom with help and can’t dress himself. There are even days when he is incoherent or not very lucid. He can still tell me how to change the oil in my lawnmower, help me with tax questions etc!Is he a person?
Patricia 1:05PM
An excellent point. The British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking is so diabled by ALS(Lou Gehrig’s disease) that the man must be fed, toileted, dressed, bathed, and cared for around the clock. The man is almost totally paralyzed and is totally dependent on his caretakers for his very survival. He speaks and communicates only because of technology. Put simply he is as helpless as a baby.
The man is also a genius. His credentials and accomplishments would be too much to list here. Is he a person?
Mary, 12:55 p.m.
Ain’t that the truth?!! I would have kept her in a little longer if I had known how much work she was when she came out lol!
Elizabeth,
And to think we couldn’t wait for them to be born! :)
Haha I know right Mary!
Bobby Bambino @ 8:45 AM All she can do is basically lie there and roll over. Certainly very little communication goes on. I don’t see any attributes of “personhood” in her. Yet Almost no one would deny her personhood.
Bobby, after having gone through the Embryo book, I spent some time thinking about relationships between cells and their particular degree of “awareness” – I use the term loosely, but it’s interesting that the cellular ordering, flattening, arrangement and division of labor that happens during embryonic development hints at something more than simply pre-ordained “assembly”. For instance, at one point cells can be pulled, forcing a twin. How do they know what to do, given that they are no longer part of the other cluster?
Although there is no distinct scientific understanding (at least that I’m aware of) regarding intercellular communication (do they use cell phones?!) it doesn’t rule out self-awareness.
Almost all dualistic definitions of personhood are based on self-awareness, and yet as you observed, those defining personhood require they observe certain signs of environmental awareness to declare that a particular person is “self-aware”!
Yet why should a self-aware person express their own awareness to others? In other words, I need not express anything as long as my own sense of awareness is intact. I might be completely aware and yet appear to others as comatose. In fact, my sense of awareness isn’t dependent upon anyone else recognizing it.
So it’s interesting those who define rights based on personhood require observation of known interactions to prove sentience, but don’t place that same requirement upon themselves: “I think, therefore I am” and the like.
Going back to the embryo: some level of sentience might be present, because the embryo exists, but we don’t understand it.
It simply says more about our own ignorance, than anything else.
Chris: Excellent post.
Bobby: But honestly, my 6 month old is not rational. My friend’s dog is much more intelligent than she is. My daughter doesn’t listen to me, doesn’t respond all that well, can’t do anything that she is told, can’t make decisions rationally. All she can do is basically lie there and roll over. Certainly very little communication goes on. I don’t see any attributes of “personhood” in her. Yet Almost no one would deny her personhood. But if we lived in a world where she was still gestating? I’m convinced she would not be considered a person. So I think you touch on something important here. God love you Kel.
I would beg to differ with the idea that a 6 month old is not rational. She’s not spouting math formulas your way but she is certainly communicating with all of her senses. Babies, for example learn very quickly, that a cry will get Mom or Dad’s attention in the middle of the night.
They can grab a toy to pick it up. How do you define “personhood” to say you don’t see signs of it in your daughter?
Yes, Patricia, I wouldn’t worry about it if you’ve had several or many RU-486 abortions–we interfere with the reproductive cycle all the time without bad consequences. If a bad effect of several or many RU-486 abortions were discovered, it would surprise me.
Chris and Bobby,
It simply says more about our own ignorance, than anything else.
I said those very words this afternoon to my sister in law.
This post will probably be dropped and no one will read what I’m about to write, but I was doing some thinking today…
As a Catholic I use the word soul, and get called on it. So I was trying to come up with another way of saying that we are more than our “bodies”…
I started thinking about the convo with Bethany on Logos and how I was trying to say that Logos doesn’t really mean “words” it more means “thought” but that wasn’t quite right either…then it hit me.
We are more than our bodies, and we are more than our BRAINS. Animals have brains, yet they can’t reason, create, make choices, read, talk…etc.
This is because while they have brains, they do not possess minds (what I would call a soul).
The mind is a very different thing that the brain, the same way that knowledge is different from wisdom.
Saw Indiana Jones last nite and was struck by the Adam and Eve story line. Cate Blanchette desired intelligence. That is the “treasure” that is being sought throughout the movie. At the end she screams to the “being” that they have reanimated “Give it to me now! Tell me EVERYTHING” and then her eyes explode and she implodes.
The 11 year old that was with me asked why. I had to think a bit on that one, but it was just like Eve. They did not eat of the tree of Wisdom, nor the tree of Life, they ate of the tree of knowledge.
Knowledge untempered by wisdom, is actually quite useless. Computers have knowledge. You could even call them intelligent. But they aren’t alive.
Only humans have minds. (Well, angels and God do, but I mean in the physical world).
It is this mind that makes one a person. Someone like Terri Schiavo might no longer have a functioning “brain” but she still has a mind. Rather she still IS a mind.
I tried to explain this to Doug awhile back. As Chris said, the fact that we cannot comprehend how Terris mind functions, because we only understand the “brain”, says more about our inadequacy then it does about the Terri Schiavos.
Hawkings is a great example. Without his electronics, he would have been left to die just like Terri. Not because he wasn’t a person, not because he didn’t have a mind, but because WE would not have been able to see it. What a waste.
Take away his computer and Doug would say “he just isn’t there anymore”…but Doug would be wrong.
It seems that for every physical attribute we have a metaphysical counterpart. Brain, mind. Body, soul. Love, Lust. Knowledge, wisdom. And those that only acknowledge the physical parts, are really missing half the picture.
So many things that happen in the world are truly miraculous. If we saw them for the first time as adults we’d be awed. But we take them for granted because we saw them first when our minds were wide open, as children.
You take a dead “seed”, put it in the ground, water it, and you get a tree, or a daisy, or a cucumber. A miracle really. If you’d never seen it and I told you about it, you probably wouldn’t believe me.
I think the fault lies with us. We have let “knowledge” blind us. We think we know, when actually it’s an illusion.
I wonder if I’ve made even one iota of sense…
“How do you define “personhood” to say you don’t see signs of it in your daughter?”
Oh Janet, no, I definitely believe my daughter is a person, as is an embryo. I believe that there is no difference between a human being and a human person. It is a false distinction; they are always one and the same. I was just trying to point out how she isn’t really all that much different than a well developed dog at this point. Like I said above, I exaggerated a bit. But the idea was that based on the way she acts, there is no reason why she should be allowed to live and a dog not allowed to live IF you believe in a personhood theory. It was simply an attempt at reduction ad absurdum. So yeah, she’s a person, Bethany’s little blessing is a person, someone in a comma is a person etc etc. God love you.
Bobby, Gotcha, I think my brain is fried. OK, you are trying to confuse me? “Someone in a comma is a person etc.” (Just kidding!)
,,,,,,,,,:),,,,,,,,,,:),,,,,,,,,,
LOL! Good one, Janet!!!
I love the visual :)
mk: 9:10: Yes you made a lot of sense.
We might also call a miracle a “wonder”. Some adults have lost a sense of wonder about the world that they once had as children. As you said, we are “awed” by new things. The desire for knowledge strips us of the ability to “wonder” and to just be in awe of life. Does that make sense?
A true miracle is someone like SoMG or Edyt coming to faith in Christ.
mk, yes, you made a HECK of a lot of sense!! Thank you for posting that. :) This quote was a great point: “It seems that for every physical attribute we have a metaphysical counterpart. Brain, mind. Body, soul. Love, Lust. Knowledge, wisdom. And those that only acknowledge the physical parts, are really missing half the picture.” YES! (Okay, now I’m gonna have to go see Indiana Jones because you’ve made me curious! lol) And I was only asking questions, I really would like to avoid having to pop the dramamine. :D
Bobby, thank you for your 8:45 post, and God love you, too. :) I think that your post and mk’s post go hand in hand very well. I think I’ll copy them into a word document, actually.
Have a wonderful Memorial Weekend, everyone.
Patricia, you wrote: “What you really mean here is that women were used as guinea pigs…”
Don’t all clinical trials involve using people as guinea pigs?
MK, you wrote: “Well yeah, but since you’re a guy… ”
And where did you get that “information”?
Patricia,
Any release of a new drug to the public incurs the risk that bad effects will surface which for some reason did not show up in clinical trials All clinical trials are limited. Some long-delayed sequel or some relatively rare effect or some gene-specific or condition-specific effect that was not tested for. That’s part of the price we pay for having new drugs. And every drug was once a new drug. Some people say that if aspirin had to get past today’s FDA approval would be denied. RU-486, unlike almost all other new drugs, had a long track record of use in other countries when it was approved.
As I said, if you’ve alread had many RU-486 abortions or used it regularly as a form of birth control in the past, I would not advise you to worry about it. Just from the animal studies that necessarily preceded clinical trials we know what it does (progesterone receptor blocade) and we know that that is a generally safe thing to do. We also know that in animals repeated dosing doesn’t appear to do anything that single-dosing doesn’t do. If a previously undetected bad side effect of repeated use of RU-486 were to emerge, it would be a big surprise to a lot of very smart, very well-informed people. I’m sure you have much more immediate problems to worry about.
SoMG,
And where did you get that “information”?
A. You are not DoMG.
B. Everything about you screams “male”.
C. Just a guess. Could be wrong. If you are female, I’d swear you have facial hair and a deep voice.
Kel and Janet,
Thanks for taking the time to muddle through that post…I wasn’t sure if it made any sense.
Janet,
Yes, the secular term wonder, works much better.
and you made perfect sense.
Kel,
Indie was “good”, but it wasn’t as good as the first ones. It did raise some interesting questions tho.
Now if only Doug would read that post and comment…
Janet @ 7:12 PM – thanks.
Bobby’s reference to a comma has to do with the zygote which is smaller than a printed comma. (An illustration used in the Embryo book.
Chris,
That is a very interesting concept, tho I really do think that Bobby, in this instance, meant “someone in a COMA is a person”…lol
“That is a very interesting concept, tho I really do think that Bobby, in this instance, meant “someone in a COMA is a person”…lol”
Ah yes, that is what I meant… I don’t know how to spell, lol.
mk @ 9:10 PM
Your post makes perfect sense. The interesting thing is that you look at human beings and you see the “mind” as being intrinsic to each person – a universal whole, a unique individual self, complete.
Yet Doug’s philosophy is dualistic – he isolates legal personhood as a positive recognition from society – the state – and so concludes that the unborn do not possess personhood from conception. Society has the privilege to declare who is a person, and who isn’t. This is historically cruel.
My pressing point, which he has failed to answer, is where does the right of society arise which allows it to dictate or defining “person”.
Doug said on my blog:
He doesn’t say – he assumes what he’s trying to prove, which is the very basis of his argument: he begs the question.
The problem is that Doug uses “his right” to define others – the unborn. But in so doing, he makes the unborn unequal, after the point of their creation. But this runs completely counter to our Declaration of Independence:
Given that Doug is not alone in his thinking, apparently such truth is not self-evident anymore.
Chris,
Yes, I see what you mean. Do we have the right to have consciousness…first you must define what consciousness is. Is it brain activity, or something much more elusive.
If it is simply brain activity, then Doug has a point. Either you have it or you don’t.
But if you and I are right, and consciousness is not actually concerned with, or limited to the brain, then Stephen Hawkings is one very lucky man.
Doug’s definition would have eliminated him. Our definition demands that his consciousness remained whether his brain could express it or not.
We always allow for the fact that we are woefully ignorant, and do not have the proper tools to see the spiritual/other realm, where true consciousness lies.
We can only “prove” things in the physical world through means that exist in the physical world.
How does one prove metaphysical things. Well, to begin with, that’s a bit of an oxymoron, as by definition the metaphysical is unprovable. But perhaps that is because we are using the wrong “instruments” to prove it.
To prove that there is wind, one must use methods that employ the wind.
Dropping a marble in a glass of water and claiming that it wasn’t affected by air, does not disprove the existence of wind. We can’t prove “gravity” by using experiments meant to prove mathematical equations.
To “prove” the metaphysical, we’d need to USE the metaphysical. Can’t prove or disprove it using physical means…
At this point in time, we don’t have the correct tools needed to measure/understand the metaphysical. But this only proves our inability and not the void of the metaphysical.
Chris, 8:06 AWESOME, AWESOME post.
mk: Very deep! Dare I say this? One could say that God is the “tool ” that allows us to understand the metaphysical. He gives us the ability to see beyond the obvious. (Think the gifts of the Holy Spirit – wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, fortitude, piety, fear of the Lord.)
Those who do not believe in God tend to look to the physical world for answers, hence their vision is limited to the here and now.
Janet,
EXACTLY. I was trying to avoid connecting God to the metaphysical tho, for obvious reasons. Although for obvious reasons, that’s impossible…lol.
But,YES, if you only believe in the physical world, you will be sorely limited in your ability to test/prove the metaphysical.
Chris 8:06: The problem is that Doug uses “his right” to define others – the unborn. But in so doing, he makes the unborn unequal, after the point of their creation. But this runs completely counter to our Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Given that Doug is not alone in his thinking, apparently such truth is not self-evident anymore.
Excellent point! Some people have mistakenly replaced the word self-evident with “self-relevant”.
@Chris,
many months ago Doug dismisses T. Aquina’s ‘proofs’ for the existence of God because these do not fit within spacetime but only lin a 3-D (Newtonian) universe. His own arguments do not stem from spacetime but from a 3-D perspective.
For instance, in some sense event is a singularity. Time exists only as an expression of an expanding universe and is not an independent reality.
In practical spacetime view then human and person are one being … rights are not conferred at birth (a 3-D time concept) but are one aspect of being a living human independent of time.
SOMG, 1:14am
How long was DES considered safe and used by women? I believe it was 30 some years before the devastating side effects of this drug were finally determined.
An aspirin tablet wouldn’t get past the FDA? Don’t make me laugh. You’re talking about an organization that permitted RU486 to be manufactured in China in a factory that did not meet FDA standards, and I use that term loosely.
Thankfully they had what you described in a previous thread as the underhanded tactics of Bill Clinton to get RU486 approved by the FDA.
Bobby, Gotcha, I think my brain is fried. OK, you are trying to confuse me? “Someone in a comma is a person etc.” (Just kidding!)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Someone in a comma?”
At least he didn’t say “Someone in a colon.” That would have been really confusing…
Laura 10:41am
…as well as a pretty tight fit.
“Someone in a comma?”
Laura said:10:41: At least he didn’t say “Someone in a colon.” That would have been really confusing…
Mary said:11:29: ….as well as a pretty tight fit.
Lol. Too funny!
“At least he didn’t say “Someone in a colon.” That would have been really confusing…”
Knowing the way I spell, Laura, that isn’t all that far-fetched! :)
How long was DES considered safe and used by women? I believe it was 30 some years before the devastating side effects of this drug were finally determined.
Good point, Mary!
We have changed the FDA approval process a lot since DES.
SOMG,
I can tell. That’s why a factory in China that doesn’t meet FDA “safety standards”(snort) is permitted to produce RU486 for distribution in the US.
Lucky for them they had the help of, what you described as SOMG, an underhanded president, Bill Clinton.
This factory has since been found to produce tainted drugs. Imagine! Tell me what our ever vigilant FDA is doing about this situation.
Janet, when the founding fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence, they were not thinking of the unborn when they wrote “…all men are created equal…”.
Quoting the Declaration of Independence to argue against abortion indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of that document.
Yes, Mary, as we have discussed before, RU-486 was an atypical case, because of Clinton’s determination to get it through during his presidency and because of the very large track record of successful, uneventful use abroad.
Lax standards in China, where MANY of our drugs and chemicals are made, is a general problem which we have only just begun to address. I expect we will see more scandals involving drugs and other chemicals manufactured in China.
SOMG,
“Atypical”? I think a more appropriate description would be political pandering.
How long did DES have a good track record?
We’ve only begun to address this problem in China? How reassuring that the FDA has been, and continues to be, ever vigilant.
SOMG 1:39PM
How can you know for certain what our Founding Fathers were thinking? Were they thinking of women? Old people? Jews, non-white people? I’m sure they were well aware that men didn’t fall from the sky, that their lives began in the womb.
SoMG wrote:1:39:Janet, when the founding fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence, they were not thinking of the unborn when they wrote “…all men are created equal…”.
This is more of what I had in mind:
…they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Patricia, you wrote: “What you really mean here is that women were used as guinea pigs…”
Don’t all clinical trials involve using people as guinea pigs?
Posted by: SoMG at May 25, 2008 12:40 AM
This statement is shocking! But again intellectually honest, SoMG! Good we are making progress. You of all people, should know the outlines for carrying on ethical research with human subjects. Clinical trials at the very least require personal consent. How many of those 500,000 RU-486 users were told they were using a drug which no one had any idea of the side-effects?
Of course proabort’s are never concerned with full disclosure and ethics? Well, why when they are interested in killing one of the patients.
Mary, you are on fire today!
John McDonell @ 9:26 AM
In practical spacetime view then human and person are one being … rights are not conferred at birth (a 3-D time concept) but are one aspect of being a living human independent of time.
Correct, however there is a single time event: conception. This event is relationally dependent upon the parents and their procreativity. It is a singular event, which triggers a multitude of after-effects, one of them being birth, provided nothing stops the inherent growth triggered by the conception event.
While it may be hard to argue in the metaphysical sense regarding the soul, the presence of a zygote within a woman changes her body pretty rapidly. It is a state of “being”, quite independent of any social construct we might imagine.
Without one being, inside the other, there is no such thing as pregnancy. That is the essence of the word. Simply trying to rationalize away that being’s right to life under the metaphysical description of personhood is no less than supplanting God with one of your own making.
MK,
If I didn’t know any better, I would have assumed you were actually a nun with your own blog!
http://asksistermarymartha.blogspot.com/
Bambino,
I tried doing the html link thing with that website you suggested, but I’m not doing something right. Are you kind enough to email me step-by-step?
God really love you!
mk @ 8:26 AM At this point in time, we don’t have the correct tools needed to measure/understand the metaphysical. But this only proves our inability and not the void of the metaphysical.
Right – however metaphysical truth is real, and need not be something we touch – love exists, but we cannot touch it, we know when it is given, but we cannot measure it.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident…” seems to be assuming what we’re trying to prove – that after creation, we’re all equal and have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, yet there is valid reasoning behind each assertion: remove life, and you cannot exercise liberty; if we’re not all equal, then liberty or life is at risk; that the only truly common denominator (all men created equal) among every single one of us is our creation point – our conception as human beings.
I think Janet nails it – throw out such ideals and life becomes a matter of self-relevance, whether in individual terms or state definitions.
Bethany,
Thank you!
testing
I’ll try again tomorrow.
Patricia, you wrote: “How many of those 500,000 RU-486 users were told they were using a drug which no one had any idea of the side-effects?”
Answer: zero. RU-486 was thoroughly tested for side effects in clinical trials in France before being released to the world.
Janet,
Some people have mistakenly replaced the word self-evident with “self-relevant”.
She shoots…she scores ! ! !
Carder,
Sister Mary Martha ! Too funny!
You’re right SoMG:
Not even the Founding Fathers, those rich white Christian guys, could think that future Americans would be killing their children wholesale and that at the behest of the nation they were birthing.
What diploma mill, uh, er, university did you get that rag from?
You really have got no clue has to how heinous abortion is, do you?
You’re right SoMG:
Not even the Founding Fathers, those rich white Christian guys, could think that future Americans would be killing their children wholesale and that at the behest of the nation they were birthing.
What diploma mill, uh, er, university did you get that rag from?
You really have got no clue has to how heinous abortion is, do you?
HisMan, you cannot show even one authentic reference to the unborn in the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence.
If you think this is because there were no abortions in the American Colonies in the 1770s you are mistaken. Prostitution was not uncommon in the colonies and there was virtually no contraception.
There was abortion, and the founding fathers (like all other adults except the most naive) knew there was abortion, and they didn’t care.
The Fourteenth Amendment begins: All persons BORN or naturalized. If they had cared about the unborn they would have said so.
To quote Lawrence Tribe, professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard (also on any Democrat president’s short list for Supreme Court appointees), “In early post-Revolution America, abortion, at least early in pregnancy, was neither prohibited nor uncommon.” (Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes, p. 28) He documents with scholarly references to original and secondary research sources the COMMON practice of abortion prior to the mid-1800’s when evangelical Protestants, soon followed by Catholics, instituted prohibitions. Go read it.
There was abortion, and the founding fathers (like all other adults except the most naive) knew there was abortion, and they didn’t care.
I think you may be exaggerating the number of adults that knew about abortion and you certainly have no way of knowing how our founding fathers felt about it, unless you have direct quotes from them in the history books. Doctors in those days did house calls, practicing medicine was much different. Abortions weren’t announced in the local papers like marriages and deaths, nor talked about at the dinner table. There would be no reason for our forefathers to put an emphasis on abortion when writing the Constitution, etc..as it was something that was basically never even discussed. This isn’t proof that abortion was acceptable then, nor is it proof that abortion should be legally protected today.
HisMan, is Harvard Law School a “diploma mill”?
SoMG:3:36: To quote Lawrence Tribe, professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard (also on any Democrat president’s short list for Supreme Court appointees), “In early post-Revolution America, abortion, at least early in pregnancy, was neither prohibited nor uncommon.” (Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes, p. 28) He documents with scholarly references to original and secondary research sources the COMMON practice of abortion prior to the mid-1800’s when evangelical Protestants, soon followed by Catholics, instituted prohibitions. Go read it.
I don’t have access to this book at this time, but I’m curious which “scholarly references” the author refers to. Since most people were not college-educated professionals, I would argue that the common man would not have been privy to this information, therefore my previous comment at 3:41 would still hold true.
Is there any other so-called “medical procedure” that is specifically protected by the original U.S. Constitution?
Janet, I suggest you read Professor Tribe’s book. Meanwhile no offense but I’ll take his opinion over yours.
I think as a founding father, you just couldn’t be smart enough, and world-savvy enough, to participate in the writing of the founding documents, and NOT be aware of abortion. There’s really only one reason for not addressing the question, which is that they didn’t think it mattered.
And I agree with you that the question whether it should be legal today does not depend on whether it was legal then. Slavery was legal then.
Janet, no, I don’t think the Constitution protects abortion–that is, I’m pretty sure Roe v. Wade was bad constitutional law, although I’m not a lawyer. Bad constitutional law but good abortion policy. The solution is to pass the Freedom of Choice Act.
SoMG: Can you answer these questions?
1. Is there any so-called “medical procedure” that is specifically protected by the original U.S. Constitution?
2. Do you know which “scholarly references” the author, Lawrence Tribe, refers to?
And I agree with you that the question whether it should be legal today does not depend on whether it was legal then. Slavery was legal then.
That wasn’t my point. My point is that the fact that abortion was not legally protected by the Constitution in 1776 doesn’t mean that our forefathers were neutral or ambivalent about abortion.
We are crossing posts here…but no harm done! I have to take a break now. Please answer my last questions if you can. Thanks.
The Freedom of Choice Act, by the way, would guarantee a woman’s right to bear a child. It would protect you from being forced by law to abort a genetically-diseased pregnancy for instance or to take birth control if you didn’t want to (say you’re a crackhead and a judge tries to force you to avoid pregnancy in order to avoid crack babies, FOCA would guarantee your right to have a baby if you wanted to.), and also it would provide federal protection for victims of all these “coerced” abortions right-to-lifers keep complaining about ;-).
The right to conceive and the right to keep and grow your pregnancy are not spelled out in the Constitution either. If it’s there at all it’s in a penumbra of some kind.
Janet, you wrote: “1. Is there any so-called “medical procedure” that is specifically protected by the original U.S. Constitution?”
None that I know of.
“2. Do you know which “scholarly references” the author, Lawrence Tribe, refers to?”
Not yet.
You wrote: “My point is that the fact that abortion was not legally protected by the Constitution in 1776 doesn’t mean that our forefathers were neutral or ambivalent about abortion.”
Informed society was neutral or ambivalent about abortion at that time. I would say more neutral than ambivalent. It simply wasn’t an important issue to most people. If you want to hypothesize that the FFs held a different opinion from the normal opinion in that society, then it’s up to you to find evidence or to explain its absence. Why didn’t anyone even PROPOSE (in writing) extending the Fourteenth Amendment to include all persons CONCEIVED or naturalized in the United States, rather than BORN? There is no reason even to imagine that they were right-to-lifers at all, any of them, and certainly not in the modern sense of the phrase.
He documents with scholarly references to original and secondary research sources the COMMON practice of abortion prior to the mid-1800’s when evangelical Protestants, soon followed by Catholics, instituted prohibitions. Go read it.
I realize I’m being picky, but there was no such thing as “Evangelical” Christians in 1800. The phrase wasn’t really coined until the 19th Century.
Just kind of puts a damper on his research…
And are you sure he meant “common” as in often, and not common as in the “little guy” as opposed to a legitimate, legal medical practice?
“The contemporary usage of the term derives from a 20th century movement which was perceived as the middle ground between the theological liberalism in the Mainline (Protestant) denominations and the cultural separatism of Fundamentalist Christianity.”
WIKI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelicalism
MK, you wrote: “are you sure he meant “common” as in often, and not common as in the “little guy” as opposed to a legitimate, legal medical practice?”
Yes.
Now isn’t this an interesting little tidbit…there were already laws on the books prohibiting abortion BEFORE the 14th amendment was written…and no one thought to use the 14th amendment as a way to insure the right to have an abortion???
Byron R. White and William H. Rehnquist wrote emphatic dissenting opinions in this case. Justice White wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade
“Doctors in those days did house calls, practicing medicine was much different. Abortions weren’t announced in the local papers like marriages and deaths, nor talked about at the dinner table. There would be no reason for our forefathers to put an emphasis on abortion when writing the Constitution, etc..as it was something that was basically never even discussed. This isn’t proof that abortion was acceptable then, nor is it proof that abortion should be legally protected today.
Posted by: Janet at May 26, 2008 3:41 AM
I think way back when, few if any doctors would have given a patient something to cause abortion. Instead, either the woman would have done it herself through herbal sources or have gone to another woman for such. Doctors were few and far between in early NA settlement times. Early Canadian literature for example, is full of such scenarios – farm women who become pregnant again and again and who simply go out and fork hay for 3 days straight, causing an early abortion or “miscarriage” as they called it. But they knew exactly what they were doing – aborting their baby. And it was frowned upon by other women.
Thus, the American forefathers would likely have considered abortion a heinous crime and there would have been no need to write this into your constitution – it was a given that you just didn’t kill your unborn child.
“Informed society was neutral or ambivalent about abortion at that time. I would say more neutral than ambivalent. It simply wasn’t an important issue to most people. If you want to hypothesize that the FFs held a different opinion from the normal opinion in that society, then it’s up to you to find evidence or to explain its absence.
SoMG, the burden of proof is on YOU to prove that abortion was thought of in this manner. There has always been an unwritten code through Christian time against abortion (and North America was settled and founded by Christians). As doctors had a code among themselves to not help a woman obtain an abortion, society was far from neutral or ambivalent on the issue.
BTW, bringing Lawrence Tribe’s book into this won’t work. Tribe is not without his biases and as a member of the liberal intellectual elite, his writing is filled with all kinds of incredibly stupid statements. Pregnancy is a “biological accident” and this is the reason why women have babies and not men. Really?
Tribe attempts to justify abortion by stating that it’s always been done and was just an accepted but hidden aspect of life (where have we heard this argument before?). He writes that abortion rights are all about obtaining equality for women to make them like men (who don’t have to have babies).
SoMG, you prey on people’s ignorance on this board. Just try to be more intellectually honest, please! (BTW being a Harvard person does not make you infallible nor even knowledgable and certainly not unbiased – it is after all a liberal postmodernist institution.)
As for Ru-486, you well know about the studies that have shown this drug to be very harmful to women. RU-486 is immunosuppressive. Dr’s Klein and Dumble who have significant experience working with patients who have used RU-486 have seen the effects of RU-486 on the women’s immune systems and have also stated that this effect is demonstrated in animal studies.Hence the problem with sepsis in women, which I note you didn’t address at all in your posts. Likely because like most abortion advocates, the health of women is very low on your list of concerns.
As for the clinical trials in France, the French government eventually tightened its rules on RU-486 use after re-evaluation of a large number of women users showed significant problems with RU-486 use. It was the French experience with the drug that led to the US dragging it’s feet on allowing the use of the drug on American women. However, the American feminists and population control people won the day.
*point* goes to Patricia!
Patricia, 7:35am
Excellent and informative post.
I would like to add hormone replacement therapy that women were also assured was safe. Its been in use about 40+ years. Didn’t studies come out not too long ago showing an increased cancer risk? In fact the study had to be discontinued for ethical reasons.
Women have paid a terrible price over the years for believing in the assurances of a drug’s safety.
Patricia, you wrote: “Thus, the American forefathers would likely have considered abortion a heinous crime and there would have been no need to write this into your constitution – it was a given that you just didn’t kill your unborn child.”
Nope. Not unless you were married and not necessarily even then. You have constructed a fantasy-past.
You wrote: “There has always been an unwritten code through Christian time against abortion…”
Among some Christians but not among others. Particularly, not among the Founding Fathers.
You wrote: “…(and North America was settled and founded by Christians).” Yes, but not by right-to-lifers.
You wrote: “As doctors had a code among themselves to not help a woman obtain an abortion,…”
Where did you get this information about doctors in the 1770s in the American Colonies? Document please.
You wrote:” …society was far from neutral or ambivalent on the issue.”
In the total absence of any documentation or evidence supporting your opinion, I’ll go with Professor Tribe. He is, after all, a world expert on the subject.
You wrote: “Tribe is not without his biases and as a member of the liberal intellectual elite,…”
By this you mean, that he is smart enough to write a good book about the history of abortion law. It is an unfortunate characteristic of smart people that they tend to be part of the intellectual elite (which is in fact neither liberal nor conservative but diverse. Robert Bork, Robert George, Antonin Scalia and Phil Gramm are members of the intellectual elite too.)
You wrote: “… his writing is filled with all kinds of incredibly stupid statements. Pregnancy is a “biological accident” and this is the reason why women have babies and not men. Really? ”
I don’t see anything “incredibly stupid” about that idea. Which gender a person is depends on a biological accident–whether an x-bearing sperm or a y-bearing sperm penetrates the egg first. I could understand disagreeing with the idea, particularly on religious grounds, but stupid it is not.
You wrote: “Tribe attempts to justify abortion by stating that it’s always been done and was just an accepted but hidden aspect of life (where have we heard this argument before?)”
I don’t know where you heard it before. Tribe is (almost) certainly right that abortions have always been done. At least, we have no evidence of there ever having been an abortion-free society. Whether or not this justifies them is a debatable question.
You wrote: “He writes that abortion rights are all about obtaining equality for women to make them like men (who don’t have to have babies).”
That’s an interesting argument. I personally think body-ownership, not gender equality, is the correct basis for abortion rights.
You wrote: “SoMG, you prey on people’s ignorance on this board. ”
On the contrary, I try to dispell it. Did you know, for instance, that you can sterilize a woman non-surgically using quinacrine, a common anti-malarial drug? Did you know that the noble gas xenon is an anaesthetic comparable in potency to nitrous oxide? Did you know that the genetic code has been expanded, cells can now be programmed to make proteins containing unnatural, synthetic amino acids (with different properties from the twenty natural amino acids) at genetically-specified sites?
You wrote: “…being a Harvard person does not make you infallible nor even knowledgable …”
I don’t think you can become a professor at Harvard Law School without being knowledgable (at least). They’re pretty selective about whom they hire. You have to have a long record of important publications, which you cannot write without being knowledgable. And getting tenure is something else again.
You wrote: “…and certainly not unbiased – it is after all a liberal postmodernist institution.)”
So whom would YOU hire to write a history of abortion law? Someone from Falwell’s university, or Pat Robertson’s?
You wrote: “As for Ru-486, you well know about the studies that have shown this drug to be very harmful to women. ”
No I don’t. I am not aware of even one such study. Link please.
You wrote: “RU-486 is immunosuppressive. ”
So is methotrexate. It doesn’t matter because you only take it occasionally, it gets cleared from your body and your immune system is restored to full power once it’s gone. I might worry about immunosuppression if I were treating a patient with RU486 every day or every week for a chronic illness or whatever but not for a single dose, a few times (at most) over a lifetime. Having said that, one of the reasons I prefer methotrexate is that it is cleared faster than RU486, traces of which can be detected in plasma as long as ten days after dosing.
You wrote: “Hence the problem with sepsis in women, which I note you didn’t address at all in your posts. ”
LOL You must not have been reading my posts. I have pointed out several times over the past couple of weeks that the number of deaths (what is it again? Seven deaths? Ten? As many as twenty world wide?) from sepsis after RU486 abortion is an extremely small number of deaths for a drug regimen that has been used now several million times. I have cited, and quoted from, an article in the New England Journal of Medicine which points out the same thing.
You wrote: “Likely because like most abortion advocates, the health of women is very low on your list of concerns. ”
Right. It’s all a big pro-death conspiracy. We do it because we secretly want you to get breast cancer. The chemotherapy people and the mastectomy-surgeons pay us kickbacks for increasing their caseloads.
You wrote: “As for the clinical trials in France, the French government eventually tightened its rules on RU-486 use after re-evaluation of a large number of women users showed significant problems with RU-486 use. ”
Yes, I read “In early 1990, an international group of scientists and doctors based at the Necker Hospital in Paris reviewed the data of 30,000 women who had used RU 486 and issued a stern warning against it. They urged the Ministry of Health
Mary, you wrote: “I would like to add hormone replacement therapy that women were also assured was safe. Its been in use about 40+ years. ”
You take HRT regularly, every month. RU486 abortions are occasional events.
You wrote: “Women have paid a terrible price over the years for believing in the assurances of a drug’s safety.”
So have men. It’s part of the price we pay for having new drugs. And all drugs were once new drugs.
SOMG,
How long were women assured of the safety of HRT and how long did they take it before its deadly side effects were finally acknowledged?
How long will women assume they are taking a safe drug with RU486 before the same thing happens? That’s my point SOMG.
Also, women took DES on an occasional basis as well. It was not something they took monthly for years on end. Its side effects were deadly.
Babies outside the womb are fully dependent on others to live. I found being pregnant a lot less exhausting, demanding, and tedious than actually having an infant to care for.
Thanks for actually reading what I wrote.
/sarcasm.
Where would you draw the line? There are many people after a stroke or car accident who are almost completely dependent upon another person. My dad is 88 years old – he can’t cook for himself, write his own cheques because his handwriting is now illegible, has trouble getting to the bathroom with help and can’t dress himself. There are even days when he is incoherent or not very lucid. He can still tell me how to change the oil in my lawnmower, help me with tax questions etc!Is he a person?
Patricia, you also did not read what I wrote.
Read the parentheses …. (in that it is feeding off it’s host to survive, not like a little kid depending on its mom).
A true miracle is someone like SoMG or Edyt coming to faith in Christ.
Not likely. I’m not easily swayed by arguments using the invisible man in the sky as proof.
Sorry.
Edyt,
They read what you wrote, they were just pointing out that there are different kinds of dependence and they both felt that babies outside the womb require much more work than babies inside the womb.
mk,
Thank you. I sure point out that a newborn child, and older children as well, can demand much of you physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Sorry Edyt, but in my opinion the newborn especially does feed off the “host”, its mother.
The infant demands time, energy, stamina, patience, deprives you of sleep, doesn’t care if your meals are interrupted or if you even eat, and cares about nothing except its own needs and having them provided for on demand.
MK,
Yes, but I was pointing out that same key difference that if a baby is already born you are not obligated to care for it using your own bodily organs!
You don’t have to breastfeed – you can use formula.
You don’t have to babysit – you can put it up for adoption, make your husband or S/O care for it, you can have your family watch it, etc.
You don’t have to educate it – you can sit it in front of those baby movies or send it to school.
You don’t have to do anything at all.
Of course, I’d argue some of the things up there are just bad parenting, but the fact remains that when you are carrying a baby it will, without your permission, feed using your body organs to survive, and no one else can substitute that care if you get sick or tired or depressed or die.
Edyt,
I’m pretty sure they understood that. They weren’t contradicting…just making an observation. Feeding formula,educating, entertaining…all of these can make pregnancy seem like a cakewalk!
The fact that when you are pregnant, you are solely responsible for this little ones life, is reason to embrace your responsibility, not shirk it.
It’s that very fact, that it’s all up to you, that makes the responsibility so very important.
And why engaging in the act of sex should not be taken lightly. It should be engaged in only if you are willing to accept the fact that if you become pregnant, you, and you alone, will be responsible for the most important job in the world. Bringing new life into the world.
Reducing this to something as crude as “gestating” really demeans what is actually happening.
Edyt,
Whether the child is raised by the natural mother or an adoptive or foster one, the fact remains the child will demand of its caretaker time, energy, stamina, etc. It will not care of you have eaten or slept, or if you would just like some time to yourself. It will not ask your permission for anything and demand everything.
Use formula? Fine. But you have to take the time to feed the baby, including interrupting your sleep, meals, and other activities.
You don’t have to babysit, there’s an abundance of people willing to care for the child. Edyt, what planet do you live on?
You don’t have to educate it? You must take the responsibility of sending the child to school and following up on the homework, to name only a few of your responsibilities. Failure to do so could mean a visit from social services.
You don’t have to do anything? I wish!! Again, failure to do so could mean a visit from social services.
MK is right, actually caring for the newborn on up makes pregnancy look like a cakewalk. There were times I envied the kangaroo! :)
Mary,
Like I said earlier, it may be bad parenting, but you certainly are not forced to do so as you are forced to feed the unborn child with your own body.
And I’m not trying to make statements about how much “work” babies are. I’m very much aware, thank you. Even though I don’t have children of my own I have in fact acted as caretaker for most of my siblings.
Again, what I was talking about was limiting abortion to viability, when a child could live outside the womb without needing the mother’s body to survive. That child, if she does not want it, could be cared for by someone else.
I was not making a statement about how “easy” it is to care for a child before or after birth, I was talking about restricting abortion laws.
Edyt,
What I’m trying to get across is that the child will be no less dependent after birth, and will still need the body of another to survive.
It will demand far more of the caretaker’s body, and for much longer, than it did the mother’s during pregnancy.
Edyt: 2:26:Again, what I was talking about was limiting abortion to viability, when a child could live outside the womb without needing the mother’s body to survive. That child, if she does not want it, could be cared for by someone else.
This has been discussed recently. The gestation period from the point of viability back to when a woman finds out she is pregnant is only a few months. Hardly a good enough reason to excuse the killing of the unborn child for the mother’s convenience, bodily autonomy arguments notwithstanding.
“Like I said earlier, it may be bad parenting, but you certainly are not forced to do so as you are forced to feed the unborn child with your own body.”
yes I am, my body has to work to get money, and my body has to get the food, my body has to cook the food. I’m forced to clean and teach the child too. If I don’t, I could get arrested for neglect.
Isn’t that awful Edyt? they will throw me in jail if I choose not to feed and take care of my child. Shouldn’t I have control what I do with my body? why should the government be telling me what to do with my body.
I’d be interested to know this, regarding the discussion between Bobby and Doug: what is it that changes between the time a baby is just about to be pushed through the birth canal and the time when the baby emerges that causes it to go from non-personhood to personhood? Is there a genetic/DNA change? An evolutionary change? The addition of a “soul”? A terminology change from “fetus” to “baby”? (Hopefully we can all agree that it is a human being before it emerges and a human being after…right?)
Hiya Kel. What changes is being inside the body of a person or not. The “soul” is a matter of belief, really not germane to making public policy. “Fetus” is medically correct while “baby” is in the eye of the beholder, a subjective thing, a term or endearment, etc., really not worth arguing about IMO. I do agree that “human being” fits, i.e. it’s a human organism, etc.
……
Can bestow personhood upon whomever we deem worthy? Can we remove it from whomever we deem unworthy?
Yeah.
……
If we base personhood on whether a being can “reason” then a lot of born persons just don’t qualify for personhood, either.
Sure, but we don’t base it on whether a being can reason.
Bobby, nothing really makes human beings special as far as personhood. In general, we want to live and we attribute certain statuses to ourselves in view of that, and of course there is argument over that “ourselves,” i.e. where it begins and ends. Yes, we are rational animals, but we are not the only ones on earth. Dolphins, whales, elephants, many primates, etc. If we are talking about the notion of the “soul” then I’d say that other beings have them, beyond humans, if humans have them.
The main deal with attrbiuting the right to life or not for the unborn is that they’re inside the body of a person, and that’s a lot different than not being there.
SoMG:
I don’t think you can become a professor at Harvard Law School without being knowledgable (at least). They’re pretty selective about whom they hire. You have to have a long record of important publications, which you cannot write without being knowledgable. And getting tenure is something else again.
Really. Is this what you actually believe? Everyone knows that becoming a professor and getting tenure require a certain towing the ideological line. I know how tenure works. Come on SoMG, what planet do live on?
I simply cannot believe that you – a so called educated professional could subscribe to the idea that pregnancy is a biological accident. Do you actually know and understand HOW a woman becomes pregnant? Because if you do, you would know that it is NOT an accident. I do not in any way believe this on the basis of religion. The whole act of intercourse is geared towards pregnancy including all the physiological changes in both men and women that occur during lovemaking.
“Having said that, one of the reasons I prefer methotrexate is that it is cleared faster than RU486, traces of which can be detected in plasma as long as ten days after dosing.”
Great so you will push this chemical on the market so that now men can use this to abort their wives and mistresses and girlfriends of their unwanted babies and there will never be any evidence. Except the woman will wonder again and again why she keeps miscarrying. You sure are a special guy, SoMG!
Yes, I read “In early 1990, an international group of scientists and doctors based at the Necker Hospital in Paris reviewed the data of 30,000 women who had used RU 486 and issued a stern warning against it. They urged the Ministry of Health
You and I and all pro lifers (and even Doug) think that this can/should/must be changed. As Bobby says, we can show scientifically why a fetus SHOULD have personhood attributed from day one, but we have to convince the courts.
Well, MK, that’s not really it. It’s not a question of science, it’s a question of us attributing rights or not, and for the unborn there is necessarily then also the matter of the pregnant woman.
I really don’t think the current legal rights of the pregnant woman should be restricted or taken away, to viability, anyway.
……
So don’t even try arguing that a fetus IS a person with Doug unless you’re prepared to take some dramamine. Trust me, you’ll get very, very dizzy, goin’ around and around.
Not at all. It’s very straightforward. There is the physical state of the unborn, and then there is the attributed status, if any, deemed to be present by society. The latter is what the abortion argument is about.
……
If you want to argue about personhood, make sure you phrase it that the unborn SHOULD have personhood, and that the law needs to be changed. NEVER, EVER argue that the fetus DOES have personhood. Capiche?
I realize that you were saying that a bit tongue-in-cheek, (I think, anyway) but yeah, why argue that something is there, when it’s the fact that it’s not that has one dissatisfied with the situation in the first place?
SoMG,
In your experience, do you find more pro-lifers becoming pro-choice or more pro-choicers becoming pro-life?
Which type of abortion do you prefer to perform on patients, the traditional aspiration or the RU486 type?
This is not a Photoshop image, but the header of a real website.
Chris: Yet Doug’s philosophy is dualistic – he isolates legal personhood as a positive recognition from society – the state – and so concludes that the unborn do not possess personhood from conception. Society has the privilege to declare who is a person, and who isn’t. This is historically cruel.
“Cruel” in your opinion, Chris. To me it’s more cruel to try and legally compel the continuance of a pregnancy against the will of the pregnant woman.
……
My pressing point, which he has failed to answer, is where does the right of society arise which allows it to dictate or defining “person”.
Nope, I’ve already answered that. It is simply a fact that society attributes various statuses. Sure, one may or may not agree with it as to time or place, or even that society makes in the first plae such distinctions (i.e. one wishes things were different, there), but the fact remains that it happens.
…..
Doug said on my blog: Do we “have the right” to define personhood? That’s like asking if we have the right to have feelings of good and bad, right and wrong, etc., in the moral realm. The fact is that we do, plain and simple. Do we have a right to have consciousness? Really, it’s a meaningless question – we just have it, and it all goes from there.
And that is true – it’s self evident. It’s silly to pretend that society does not attribute personhood/the right to life, etc. Yes, it is just society itself deeming things, and deeming that society is justified in doing so. That’s the bottom line for societies – at the most basic level they are groups of people with things in common, and the commonality of desire to live is reflected in the attribution of “right-to-life.”
……
He doesn’t say – he assumes what he’s trying to prove, which is the very basis of his argument: he begs the question. The problem is that Doug uses “his right” to define others – the unborn. But in so doing, he makes the unborn unequal, after the point of their creation. But this runs completely counter to our Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Given that Doug is not alone in his thinking, apparently such truth is not self-evident anymore.
Wrong again. That society does what I say is a given. There’s no “assumption.” It’s not me “defining the unborn,” it’s me and you seeing that society isn’t attributing rights to the unborn as we do to the born, in general. The DOI was white, male landowners telling England and King George to basically go screw off – and abortion was legal to a point in gestation before, during, and after its writing, and the save is true for the Constitution.
Now here’s what you gotta do, Cranky.
Hijack the shot of that precious little infant and replace it with the “other” kind of baby in favor of Obama.
Which website was this, pray tell?
many months ago Doug dismisses T. Aquina’s ‘proofs’ for the existence of God because these do not fit within spacetime but only lin a 3-D (Newtonian) universe. His own arguments do not stem from spacetime but from a 3-D perspective.
John, nope – they aren’t even proofs in the first place. Really just infinite regressions and then unsupported statements of belief.
More from the satanist country of Denmark via the satanist pro-abort conspiritors who run the New England Journal of Medicine:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/7/648
Conclusions We found no evidence that a previous medical abortion, as compared with a previous surgical abortion, increases the risk of spontaneous abortion, ectopic pregnancy, preterm birth, or low birth weight.
Posted by: SoMG at May 23, 2008 3:40 AM
I have had time to reread this article more closely and your interpretation of the article’s findings are not quite correct. While it is true that the authors of this study are stating that medication abortion is not more or less dangerous than surgical abortion it does not state that abortion is safe by any means.
In fact this article demonstrates that there are serious outcomes for future pregnancies after abortion, whether they be medication or surgical abortion, including ectopic pregnancy, spontaneous abortions, preterm births and low birth weight. This is also fairly recent research which further supports research done in the past 50 years or so.
“Not at all. It’s very straightforward. There is the physical state of the unborn, and then there is the attributed status, if any, deemed to be present by society. The latter is what the abortion argument is about.”
Society has no business in attaching a “right to life” attribute to living humans, born or unborn. This right comes from God himself when life is created.
The inconvenience (if any, even thats a stretch) of a mother for 9 months does not trump a human beings right to life, especially when it’s the mother who helped create that life.
Somehow, through the power of evil, society has granted this unconscionable power to Mothers, to destroy their unborn children (and born children in some cases).
Now, I can understand how a non-believer in Christ could take this path, after all, they serve as their own God. But how, in God’s name could a Christian believe that abortion should be legal.
Thanks for responding, Doug. Your answers were about what I surmised they would be, based on many of your comments I have read previously.
What I took from your comments was that, basically, “man is the measure of all things.” Whatever “we” as a society decide is best for us, then that’s what’s best.
Unfortunately, the people didn’t get to decide in the abortion debate. It was a decision made by unelected judges, despite the fact that the societal opinions at the time differed, and despite the fact that the court cases of Roe and Doe used pawns as political tools to get their agenda pushed through contrary to the will of the people.
Another example (though not in the case of one who is unborn) I think of is Terri Schiavo, who had her right to life stripped from her by a judge and a cheating louse of a husband, despite the fact that she had people willing to care for her (her parents). The judge found that it was within her husband’s rights to remove Terri’s food and water, starving her to death, and she could not voice an objection, even though there was no statement of proof that this was her desire before the time of her tragic accident. Public officials (rightly or wrongly) voted to try and be a voice for this woman and her parents, attempting to extend her life so that she could be loved by her family. They failed, as you know.
There are plenty of times when the will of society is overruled by rogue, appointed judges. Frankly, I don’t think that societal opinion makes a bleeping bit of difference anymore (California judges just overruled the overwhelming vote of the people regarding gay marriage). So depending upon society to define something as important as personhood is ridiculous at best.
If we, as man, are the measure of all things, then we are accountable to no one but ourselves. In my opinion, frightening things happen when we act on that assumption.
Jasper–
“Society has no business in attaching a “right to life” attribute to living humans, born or unborn. This right comes from God himself when life is created.”
*ding ding ding* :)
http://www.babiesforobama.com/
Cranky Catholic,
wow, I can’t believe somebody setup that website. Little do they about Obama’s views on babies thats survive abortion. I wonder if there is a contact name for that website.
I wonder why they don’t sell this one —
Doug,
My pressing point, which he has failed to answer, is where does the right of society arise which allows it to dictate or defining “person”.
*
Nope, I’ve already answered that. It is simply a fact that society attributes various statuses. Sure, one may or may not agree with it as to time or place, or even that society makes in the first plae such distinctions (i.e. one wishes things were different, there), but the fact remains that it happens.
…..
The question was not, does society employ this right, but WHERE does this right come from…
Kel,
The society of Jill has gotten together, voted, and decided that you must NEVER leave the blog! Your posts are AWESOME!
What I took from your comments was that, basically, “man is the measure of all things.” Whatever “we” as a society decide is best for us, then that’s what’s best.
Kel, somewhat correct, but again – that “best” may or may not be agreed with on an individual or group basis, or from one society to another. I’m really not saying that “man” is the measure of all things. Other animal species on earth have some consciousness in this regard (the moral realm), and of course there’s no proving that there aren’t other “higher” beings than us earthly humans.
……
Unfortunately, the people didn’t get to decide in the abortion debate. It was a decision made by unelected judges, despite the fact that the societal opinions at the time differed, and despite the fact that the court cases of Roe and Doe used pawns as political tools to get their agenda pushed through contrary to the will of the people.
There was vast support for legal abortion at the time, though of course there was also vast opposition, too. If we are to take away the freedom of people, as with the choice to end or continue a pregnancy according to the will of the pregnant women, then at the least I think it should be unanimous or nearly so, and with the abortion issue nothing such is present.
It wasn’t like abortion was made illegal earlier in the history of the US due to some massive preponderance of public opinion, it was primarily that doctors felt midwives were encroaching on the doc’s “rightful” territory, and they maneuvered politically to try and shut them out. The Roe decision affirmed that it’s first and foremost the woman’s choice to a point in gestation, as it was before, during and after the writing of the Constitution, and indeed, under English common law.
……
Another example (though not in the case of one who is unborn) I think of is Terri Schiavo, who had her right to life stripped from her by a judge and a cheating louse of a husband, despite the fact that she had people willing to care for her (her parents). The judge found that it was within her husband’s rights to remove Terri’s food and water, starving her to death, and she could not voice an objection, even though there was no statement of proof that this was her desire before the time of her tragic accident. Public officials (rightly or wrongly) voted to try and be a voice for this woman and her parents, attempting to extend her life so that she could be loved by her family. They failed, as you know.
You’re going with the others’ side of the story, rather than with the husband’s. Terri indicated she wouldn’t want her body to be kept alive under such a condition, and it makes sense to me and many others as well – what would be the point of that? Sure, there was a body there, but I think that the person was no longer present, that which truly made her Terri was long gone.
……
There are plenty of times when the will of society is overruled by rogue, appointed judges. Frankly, I don’t think that societal opinion makes a bleeping bit of difference anymore (California judges just overruled the overwhelming vote of the people regarding gay marriage). So depending upon society to define something as important as personhood is ridiculous at best.
You say “depending” as if it’s in doubt, but it’s really not. Whether you agree with society’s position or not, it is society which makes the rules here, and it’s society’s position that people are either happy or unhappy with, in varying degrees, with respect to the abortion debate. Personhood is a societal construct.
……
If we, as man, are the measure of all things, then we are accountable to no one but ourselves. In my opinion, frightening things happen when we act on that assumption.
Okay, your opinion. Societies haven’t attributed personhood prior to birth for thousands and thousands of years, however, the world over. I realize the world is far from “perfect,” and frightening/horrible things happen all the time. Do we, as a society have a real need to take away or further restrict the legal rights that women have in the matter of abortion, though? I say no, while I realize you disagree. I would rather see women retain the freedom they have, while you would rather see the pregnancies continued, even if against the will of the woman.
The question was not, does society employ this right, but WHERE does this right come from…
MK, society does make the distinction, as I said. Society is saying that society rightfully does so. Bottom line – society is a group of people having things in common, wanting things one way or another, to varying extents saying, “We want it this way,” varying because the gamut runs from a true democracy to a monarchy.
Personhood is a societal construct, though any one of us may agree or disagree with society’s definition of it. Once again, it all goes to desire. It’s people saying “we want it like so-and-so.”
You or I may not like the rules, but that society makes rules isn’t really at issue.
Jasper: Society has no business in attaching a “right to life” attribute to living humans, born or unborn. This right comes from God himself when life is created.
Society has no business taking such unprovable things and foisting them on the people within society, against their will.
……
The inconvenience (if any, even thats a stretch) of a mother for 9 months does not trump a human beings right to life, especially when it’s the mother who helped create that life.
It’s not for you to rule on the “convenience” or “inconvenience” of the woman. It’s not that any rights are being trumped, there, it’s that the right to life hasn’t been attributed to the unborn in the first place.
Who says? – You?
Why not Doug? – Society does as society wants.
Morality is subjective – right?
Based on your own philosophy “we” can do anything we damned well please. Because it just is. Right?
You can’t even explain to us why that’s wrong.
Your logic is circular Doug.
Like I said – historically cruel. Boo Hoo.
You or I may not like the rules, but that society makes rules isn’t really at issue.
Nope – not an issue – no sir.
Grow up.
“Society has no business taking such unprovable things and foisting them on the people within society, against their will.”
“It’s not for you to rule on the “convenience” or “inconvenience” of the woman.”
Chris: Who says? – You?
Yes, in response to Jasper’s opinion.
…..
Why not Doug? – Society does as society wants.
Because society does not want to. Because society recognizes the bodily autonomy of the woman to a very large extent. Because society has no real need to have every pregnancy continued, especially against the wishes of the woman. Society has no overriding deal that would overrule a woman ending a pregnancy to viability nor would it overrule her continuing a pregnancy if she wanted, and that’s a good thing, IMO.
Not saying it is impossible that abortion would again become illegal, either. Yet to take away the freedom that women have in the matter would be a bad thing, IMO, and if we are to do such a thing then I think it should be with unanimous sentiment behind it, or nearly so.
If there really is such a preponderance of sentiment for a thing, then it will be law and there won’t be much debate about it. Abortion is not like that at all, and again IMO, with good reason.
…..
Morality is subjective – right?
Yes, by definition it’s subjective, not objective. It’s ideas of the good/bad/right/wrong in the moral realm. It’s internal to the mind, not external to it.
……
Based on your own philosophy “we” can do anything we damned well please. Because it just is. Right?
It’s not my “philosophy,” it’s just how society functions. That is not to say that you or I will necessarily agree with a given thing that society says, of course. When it does come down to our individual opinions, then I certainly don’t see Jasper’s being any better than those of pro-choicers.
As far as society doing “anything,” it really does not work like that, since there is such a great commonality of desire among the people in society, and indeed, even among different societies, in general. Thus, laws tend to be similar around the world on most things.
…..
You can’t even explain to us why that’s wrong.
I can explain where you are wrong, as far as what I say and as far as you pretending your unprovable beliefs are some sort of external reality. It is also wrong to pretend like “anything goes” in societies since human nature is quite stable, overall.
…..
Your logic is circular Doug.
No it’s not. I’m saying, “this occurs.” That is true, and it’s true for all of us. That’s a far different thing from taking subjective religious beliefs and acting like they should have to apply to everybody, which is what you do.
……
Like I said – historically cruel. Boo Hoo.
Again, your opinion, and okay – but I see it as much more cruel to try and force the thinking, feeling woman against her will.
……
“You or I may not like the rules, but that society makes rules isn’t really at issue.”
Nope – not an issue – no sir.
Well good, and I hope you’re serious, there.
“Society has no business taking such unprovable things and foisting them on the people within society, against their will.”
“It’s not for you to rule on the “convenience” or “inconvenience” of the woman.”
Chris: Who says? – You?
Yes, in response to Jasper’s opinion.
…..
Why not Doug? – Society does as society wants.
Because society does not want to. Because society recognizes the bodily autonomy of the woman to a very large extent. Because society has no real need to have every pregnancy continued, especially against the wishes of the woman. Society has no overriding deal that would overrule a woman ending a pregnancy to viability nor would it overrule her continuing a pregnancy if she wanted, and that’s a good thing, IMO.
Not saying it is impossible that abortion would again become illegal, either. Yet to take away the freedom that women have in the matter would be a bad thing, IMO, and if we are to do such a thing then I think it should be with unanimous sentiment behind it, or nearly so.
If there really is such a preponderance of sentiment for a thing, then it will be law and there won’t be much debate about it. Abortion is not like that at all, and again IMO, with good reason.
…..
Morality is subjective – right?
Yes, by definition it’s subjective, not objective. It’s ideas of the good/bad/right/wrong in the moral realm. It’s internal to the mind, not external to it.
……
Based on your own philosophy “we” can do anything we damned well please. Because it just is. Right?
It’s not my “philosophy,” it’s just how society functions. That is not to say that you or I will necessarily agree with a given thing that society says, of course. When it does come down to our individual opinions, then I certainly don’t see Jasper’s being any better than those of pro-choicers.
As far as society doing “anything,” it really does not work like that, since there is such a great commonality of desire among the people in society, and indeed, even among different societies, in general. Thus, laws tend to be similar around the world on most things.
…..
You can’t even explain to us why that’s wrong.
I can explain where you are wrong, as far as what I say and as far as you pretending your unprovable beliefs are some sort of external reality. It is also wrong to pretend like “anything goes” in societies since human nature is quite stable, overall.
…..
Your logic is circular Doug.
No it’s not. I’m saying, “this occurs.” That is true, and it’s true for all of us. That’s a far different thing from taking subjective religious beliefs and acting like they should have to apply to everybody, which is what you do.
……
Like I said – historically cruel. Boo Hoo.
Again, your opinion, and okay – but I see it as much more cruel to try and force the thinking, feeling woman against her will.
……
“You or I may not like the rules, but that society makes rules isn’t really at issue.”
Nope – not an issue – no sir.
Well good, and I hope you’re serious, there.
Carder, you asked: “In your experience, do you find more pro-lifers becoming pro-choice or more pro-choicers becoming pro-life?”
I have no data on this question. I don’t know. I’ve seen both.
You asked: “Which type of abortion do you prefer to perform on patients, the traditional aspiration or the RU486 type?”
The choice between medical and surgical abortion is up to the patient (unless she has counterindications against abortion medications). If she wants a medical abortion, I prefer to use methotrexate rather than RU-486, because 1. we know more about methotrexate–it’s been around a lot longer; 2. It’s cheaper; and 3. if the patient’s pregnancy is lodged in the fallopian tube rather than the uterus, methotrexate will take care of it but RU-486 will not.
If I were the patient, I would prefer a surgical abortion over a medical abortion because surgical abortion is a lot more comfortable (medical abortion causes mild-to-moderate-to-severe abdominal cramping). Also, medical abortion requires a return visit to the doc’s office to verify that the uterus is empty, while surgical abortion can be done in one visit.
Mary, you wrote: “How long were women assured of the safety of HRT and how long did they take it before its deadly side effects were finally acknowledged?”
I don’t know the answer to this. I bet you could look it up.
But the implication of your question seems to be that we should not use new drugs because of the risk that a bad effect might surface which was not detected in clinical trials (as it did with HRT.) That’s always a risk because all clinical trials are limited.
The problem with this reasoning is that all drugs were once new. Should we still be treating wounds with picric acid because antibiotics MIGHT turn out to have previously-undetected side effects?
Patricia, you wrote: “Everyone knows that becoming a professor and getting tenure require a certain towing the ideological line.”
That may or may not be true but ideological conformity is not ENOUGH to get you hired as a professor at Harvard Law School, or to get you tenure. You also have to be an expert in your field with a long and impressive publication record (or, as you put it earlier, “knowledgable”).
You wrote: “I simply cannot believe that you – a so called educated professional could subscribe to the idea that pregnancy is a biological accident. ”
I didn’t say that. I said that WHICH GENDER YOU ARE is a biological accident. I doubt Tribe was arguing that women get pregnant by accident–I bet he was saying that the fact that women and not men CAN get pregnant is a biological accident. That the fact that we don’t reproduce for instance by laying eggs is a biological accident. But I’d have to read the book cover-to-cover to say for sure.
You wrote: “Great so you will push this chemical on the market so that now men can use this to abort their wives and mistresses and girlfriends of their unwanted babies and there will never be any evidence. ”
That is not a legitimate use of methotrexate. Nor is it a good reason to take methotrexate off the market. Lots of drugs and other chemicals can be used for illegitimate purposes. You can poison someone with castor beans (and by the way death is delayed until after the toxin, ricin, is cleared from the victim’s system and there is no way to prove the cause of death). We do not restrict castor beans for that reason–you can easily buy pounds of them at a time online.
You quoted the 1990 anti-RU486 report from Necker Hospital. Let me point out that copying their arguments from their web site onto this one does not make those arguments any more convincing. You quoted:
“1.The major side effect observed up to date remains the uterine metrorrhagia which develops in more than 90 % of the cases, after administration of RU 486, and can last up to more than one week (from 1 to 35 days). In many cases an emergency “R
Doug,
et to take away the freedom that women have in the matter would be a bad thing, IMO, and if we are to do such a thing then I think it should be with unanimous sentiment behind it, or nearly so.
There wasn’t unanimous or even close to unanimous sentiment when it came to making abortion on demand legal.
As Kel said, we have many laws that were not deemed by society but by a very small segment of society.
Gay marriage being one of them. Most people are not for it. Yet California, based on one very, very tiny segment of society (a single judge) has now made gay marriage legal.
Most of the population does NOT want abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy, but a small segment of society has made it so.
Those are just two biggies but there are hundreds of lesser examples.
So is it the majority of society? Which brings us back to something I have said before. When moral law is subjective, the strongest segment of society “rules”…not the most, but the mightiest. He who has the biggest “gun”…
There wasn’t unanimous or even close to unanimous sentiment when it came to making abortion on demand legal.
MK, abortion to a point in gestation was legal for a long, long, time in the “new world” and then in the US. It was a relative few doctors and legislators who got it made illegal in the first place. I favor leaving it as it is now – the same deal – restrictions after a point in gestation.
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Gay marriage being one of them. Most people are not for it. Yet California, based on one very, very tiny segment of society (a single judge) has now made gay marriage legal.
I don’t think it’s fair to deny them getting married. Certainly, just my opinion, but over the years sentiment for allowing them to get married has been increasing. In the long run I think it’ll be allowed and become less and less of an issue.
I realize that many people have religious objections to it, but again, I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to deny it to them. Theocracies have a way of getting really crappy.
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Most of the population does NOT want abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy, but a small segment of society has made it so.
Those are just two biggies but there are hundreds of lesser examples.
Most states do have restrictions at viability or at the end of the second trimester, but yeah, those are two good examples because there really is significant disagreement about them. On most issues, there isn’t significant disagreement.
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So is it the majority of society?
Sometimes it is. For a thing to be in effect – a law, etc. – there has to be sufficient opinion for it, whether or not that constitutes a majority.
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Which brings us back to something I have said before. When moral law is subjective, the strongest segment of society “rules”…not the most, but the mightiest. He who has the biggest “gun”…
Well, that’s the way it is anyway. The rules come from the individuals who have the sufficient opinion on a given issue, no matter how many of them there are, and regardless of whether they have religious beliefs or not.
Yes, in a way it’s “might makes right,” though of course the individual may or may not agree with what is “right” and “wrong” on the given issue. More correct to say that “might makes….” and that the morality of the effect exists in the eye of the beholder.
mk, lol! Thanks for that vote. :D
Doug, I most definitely take the side of Terri Schiavo’s family, because they were willing to take her care upon themselves. There was no written proof at all that Terri Schiavo wanted a FEEDING TUBE removed, starving her to death while all her bodily organs were still functioning. She was a mentally and physically disabled individual, who responded to her mother, and whom other neurologists had examined and found to have some form of awareness. Yet their testimonies were ignored in favor of a man who had a history of abuse, who stood to GAIN from her death, and who had fathered children with another woman who was not his wife WHILE she lay in the hospital. Why not just divorce Terri? The actions of this man are inexcusable and completely reprehensible.
My cousin died at age 38 as a result of botched anesthesia during her tubal ligation surgery. She was deprived of oxygen and tests showed that there was no brain activity. Yet, the family waited until there were clear signs that she was indeed “gone.” Within a week, her organs began to shut down on their own, and she was removed from life support (a ventilator). Terri Schiavo was no such case. For you to say that Terri wasn’t “there” anymore is surprising to me, because how would you know, unless you observed her yourself? Her parents were there, and other doctors with opposing diagnoses were there, and their firsthand testimony was ignored.
So what this comes down to, for me, is if we can arbitrarily decide that a person like Terri Schiavo is NOT a person with a right to live–whose heart is beating and whose organs are functioning (aside from being attached to an umbilical cord of sorts–a feeding tube!)–then how can we expect that anyone will ever acknowledge the rights of the unborn?
And yet, we should not give up, because Truth is Truth, regardless of what “society” has deemed it to be.
If society had decided that Germany under the Third Reich was just fine and dandy, where would we be today? How on earth did we know that the slaughter of millions of people (including the disabled) was wrong? After all, their society deemed it to be acceptable, and/or turned a blind eye to it. I’m not trying to have a discussion comparing abortion to the Holocaust, I’m bringing this up to say that society isn’t always correct or moral in the direction that it takes.
Doug, a democracy which decides not to allow gay marriage is not a theocracy. It’s a democracy that happens to disagree with your point of view. How “convenient” that we have a handful of judges who are willing to overrule the will of the people in so many cases.
Doug,
My point was not about whether gay marriage is moral or not, it was about society vs a small segment of society…
You say “society says” and I guess I’m asking you to define society. It certainly isn’t the “majority” of society, so what is it? The loudest?
Yes, in a way it’s “might makes right,” though of course the individual may or may not agree with what is “right” and “wrong” on the given issue. More correct to say that “might makes….” and that the morality of the effect exists in the eye of the beholder.
And that is how you end up with Hitlers, Stalins and Pol Pots…
Again, who is this society you speak of?
My point was not about whether gay marriage is moral or not, it was about society vs a small segment of society…
MK, there will be times when a given person, you or me for example, will be on the side of the majority, and other times we’ll be in the minority. Whether we’re in the “big” or the “small,” it’s not necessarily going to affect our feelings on the matter at hand.
What, really, is the objection to gay marriage? What counter-argument, what real “loss” can the opponents show? There’s nothing there like the freedom that pregnant women would lose if abortion was made illegal. People raised cain about interracial marriage, there was all matter of hand-wringing and the like, and they too couldn’t really show anything akin to the freedom that pregnant women would lose.
Going with Constitutional intent to keep people free from government interference, I’m fine with the Roe decision – as a matter of privacy on the woman’s part. I do not think that interracial marriage, gay marriage, or the legality of abortion as we have it now should merely be a matter of majority vote.
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You say “society says” and I guess I’m asking you to define society. It certainly isn’t the “majority” of society, so what is it? The loudest?
Now hang on – often it indeed is the majority. It does not have to be, on all issues, but it’s certainly not a rare thing. When we are talking about the laws of a society then it’s the sentiment behind the law, regardless of the exact number of people that represents.
Here, it’s not only about x amount of people voting for legal abortion and y amount voting against it, it’s also about people wanting some things to be the decision of the individual, rather than having society dictate to them.
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“Yes, in a way it’s “might makes right,” though of course the individual may or may not agree with what is “right” and “wrong” on the given issue. More correct to say that “might makes….” and that the morality of the effect exists in the eye of the beholder.”
And that is how you end up with Hitlers, Stalins and Pol Pots… Again, who is this society you speak of?
It’s also how you end up with the people that you consider good. As before: “Well, that’s the way it is anyway. The rules come from the individuals who have the sufficient opinion on a given issue, no matter how many of them there are, and regardless of whether they have religious beliefs or not.”
Doug,
You are still missing my point. You are focusing on whether or not my feelings fall with the majority, and whether or not I am for gay marriage.
Try to focus.
You say the “that is what society wants…” It makes no difference what we are talking about, the point remains that many laws are in effect that only a SMALL PER CENTAGE of society wants. I am asking you, if society makes the rules, how do you define society, because as I have shown, it DOES NOT mean majority.
Kel, I second MK in saying that you’re a great poster. I sure hope you keep going here.
On Terri Schiavo, we’re just not going to agree. It makes perfect sense to me that she said she didn’t want to be kept alive in such a situation. I would not, and many people would not and have instructions going to that effect. The autoposy confirmed the state of her brain. I think that while there was a body there, that Terri was long gone.
I realize you don’t agree (and that we don’t know all there is to know about consciousness), and aside from what Terri had wished for, it’s too bad her family’s feelings couldn’t be accommodated.
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If society had decided that Germany under the Third Reich was just fine and dandy, where would we be today? How on earth did we know that the slaughter of millions of people (including the disabled) was wrong? After all, their society deemed it to be acceptable, and/or turned a blind eye to it. I’m not trying to have a discussion comparing abortion to the Holocaust, I’m bringing this up to say that society isn’t always correct or moral in the direction that it takes.
I think the suffering caused by the Nazis is undeniable, and also that it was a relatively few people in power that were responsible for starting it. We are all individuals and obviously there were many in Germany who felt it was wrong.
There is a great amount of “horror” going on right now in the world that you and I would agree upon. On my part it’s primarily because of the suffering involved. The suffering in one person’s life in Darfur, for example, can easily be more than that involved in 10,000 legal abortions in the US.
As far as the direction that society takes, I don’t see that it has any real, demonstrable need to ban abortion or further restrict it, especially not to the extent that we would forbid a woman or girl from ending an unwanted pregnancy.
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Doug, a democracy which decides not to allow gay marriage is not a theocracy. It’s a democracy that happens to disagree with your point of view. How “convenient” that we have a handful of judges who are willing to overrule the will of the people in so many cases.
Certainly agreed – it doesn’t have to be a theocracy. Yet outside of religious objections, the sentiment against gay marriage is considerably less.
Okay – the “will of the people.” I see two people getting married as primarily their own decision, rather than something that should be a matter of popular vote, same as for interracial marriage.
Sentiment against interracial marriage has gone down and down, and now I’m guessing that a majority of Americans support it. Yet there are still those opposed to it. If you are really against gay marriage, does the increasing amount of opinion for it matter to you? If ever a majority was for it, would you cease to object?
I am asking you, who decides which part of society will make these decisions. And saying that society decides what society is, does not answer that question.
Why is it sometimes the minority, sometimes the majority? Who ultimately makes the final decision?
And don’t say society, because you have yet to define what you mean by society when determining laws.
Look. 1/3 of society wants green streets. 2/3 of society want red streets.
Who decides which color streets we will have. You can’t say society, because both red AND greens are part of society.
If green wins, then tell me why. They were in the minority. Who decided that the greens have it? Who decided that the reds lose?
More people DO NOT want abortion on demand thru all 9 months. But we have it. WHO DECIDED THIS, and where did they get the power?
You say the “that is what society wants…” It makes no difference what we are talking about, the point remains that many laws are in effect that only a SMALL PER CENTAGE of society wants. I am asking you, if society makes the rules, how do you define society, because as I have shown, it DOES NOT mean majority.
MK, again, it often is the majority, since some things are put up for popular vote.
Of course it makes a difference about what we are talking about – some things are allowed to be decided on an individual basis, some things require a majority, some things are decided by a relative few, i.e. Congress, etc.
When you “if society makes the rules,” then you are talking about more than one thing, because in no way is it the same every time.
With abortion, there are many people, who though they would not choose to have one themself, feel it should be an individual decision rather than have the state mandating things one way or another.
I am asking you, who decides which part of society will make these decisions. And saying that society decides what society is, does not answer that question.
MK, it depends on who has the sufficient opinion. (The opinion that is sufficient to get the given law made.) Could be a monarch, President, etc., could be a ruling council, could be the majority, the largest portion of a popular vote, a two-thirds majority, a 60% majority, etc.
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Why is it sometimes the minority, sometimes the majority? Who ultimately makes the final decision?
It varies, and it’s because sometimes we are okay with “the government” deciding versus a popular vote, versus allowing the individual to choose, etc.
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And don’t say society, because you have yet to define what you mean by society when determining laws.
Depends on what law you are talking about. A majority of people will often think that a given speed limit is too low, for example. In practice, many times it’s been Department of Transportation officials observing how fast the average vehicle moves, and then recommending a speed limit significantly less than that. There, we are still okay with the gov’t deciding, (at least to the point that we don’t seriously rebel), though we don’t really agree.
There is no one, monolithic, unchanging “society” that makes laws. There is a varied, complex society with many inputs and outputs involved.
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Look. 1/3 of society wants green streets. 2/3 of society want red streets. Who decides which color streets we will have. You can’t say society, because both red AND greens are part of society.
Ha! At first I thought you said “sheets.”
Depends on who has the sufficient opinion. Is it a matter of popular vote or what?
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If green wins, then tell me why. They were in the minority. Who decided that the greens have it? Who decided that the reds lose?
Evidently, the greens don’t want peace without honor, so they hold sway. Okay, totally kidding.
Your example is unusual , though obviously not impossible, for the US. Since almost all of us use streets, then if it’s really a matter of simply choosing a color, I imagine it’d be up for a vote. (In reality, economics would likely determine the color – we go with the basic black, red, white, etc., from the asphalt or concrete, rather than adding to it.)
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More people DO NOT want abortion on demand thru all 9 months. But we have it. WHO DECIDED THIS, and where did they get the power?
Nope, it’s much more correct to say we don’t have it. Isn’t it 41 or 42 states that have restrictions at viability or the third trimester? For the most part, the ones that don’t are due to foolish legislators who tried to go well beyond their purview under Roe, and thus the courts would in effect say, “Look, you clowns, if you can’t write a better law than this, then forget it.”
Doug,
I’m not the one that says “society wants” or “Society desires” or “society decided”…you are.
So I am asking you, who is this society that YOU speak of?
Who decides which things are decided by majority, which are decided by legislature, which are decided by judges…etc?
I’m not the one that says “society wants” or “Society desires” or “society decided”…you are.
MK, so what? There are laws that society has. There is cause-and-effect behind them. As with Chris, I think you have to see that, regardless of whether you agree with a given law or not. I don’t think that it matters who notes the fact – it applies to all of us, it’s just a given.
If a law exists, there will be an opinion behind it, an opinion sufficient for its passage. There may be a variety of entities involved – everybody, a majority, a ruling council, a monarch, etc.
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So I am asking you, who is this society that YOU speak of?
Same as before. There is no one, monolithic, unchanging “society” that makes laws. There is a varied, complex society with many inputs and outputs involved. To pretend otherwise is just patently false, not just unprovable, i.e. it’s not always the same. A given law comes about because an entity wants it, whether it’s everybody or a majority or a council of legislators, or just one legislator, etc.
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Who decides which things are decided by majority, which are decided by legislature, which are decided by judges…etc?
It’s the same as above. There is not only one way about it. Case-by-case, it is a deeming, a “saying” it will be such-and-such a way, and the origin of that may come from a great number of people or a relative few, depending on what it is.
“Kel, I second MK in saying that you’re a great poster. I sure hope you keep going here.”
Thank you, Doug, that’s kind of you to say.
“On Terri Schiavo, we’re just not going to agree. It makes perfect sense to me that she said she didn’t want to be kept alive in such a situation. I would not, and many people would not and have instructions going to that effect. The autoposy confirmed the state of her brain. I think that while there was a body there, that Terri was long gone.”
No, we aren’t going to agree. I feel it’s incredibly sad that we had to discover the state of her brain from an autopsy and not give her the benefit of the doubt before her forced death. My point was that she had no instructions regarding such a situation, and she was being kept alive by the insertion of a feeding tube, not a machine that was breathing for her and keeping her organs functioning. This is why I made the comparison between removing life support (my cousin’s case) and removing a feeding tube. This was akin to sticking her in a closet and leaving her to die without food and water.
“I realize you don’t agree (and that we don’t know all there is to know about consciousness), and aside from what Terri had wished for, it’s too bad her family’s feelings couldn’t be accommodated.”
Yes, too bad that the cheating louse of a husband decided that he wanted her dead more than he wanted her to be kept alive and taken care of by her parents and siblings. We do not KNOW what Terri had wished for. The testimony of her cheating husband and her cheating husband’s sister is questionable at best. But I guess the unelected, appointed judge didn’t agree.
“I think the suffering caused by the Nazis is undeniable, and also that it was a relatively few people in power that were responsible for starting it. We are all individuals and obviously there were many in Germany who felt it was wrong.”
A few people started it, but there were more than a “few” who participated in it, many of them willingly. I know there were many who felt it was wrong, but what did they DO about it?? The few who did stand up and do what was right (at risk to their own lives) are lauded as heroes, and rightly so. But the majority of “society” stood idly by and turned a blind eye to the atrocities.
“As far as the direction that society takes, I don’t see that it has any real, demonstrable need to ban abortion or further restrict it, especially not to the extent that we would forbid a woman or girl from ending an unwanted pregnancy.”
That’s right, we wouldn’t want to restrict anyone’s freedoms in this country…oh, wait…I think we do that already. Hmm. ;)
“Look. 1/3 of society wants green streets. 2/3 of society want red streets.
Who decides which color streets we will have. You can’t say society, because both red AND greens are part of society.
If green wins, then tell me why. They were in the minority. Who decided that the greens have it? Who decided that the reds lose?”
mk, green wins because painting the streets green wouldn’t really “hurt” the red proponents in any way, would it? I mean, how would it affect THEM if the greens got all the streets painted green? Forcing the greens to paint their streets red is just cruel. And obviously, the reds just have some sort of religious agenda to keep the greens from painting all the streets in town green. Which clearly makes their view null and void. *smirk*
Doug, the problem is the redefinition of “marriage” that is being sought here. Marriage has been between a man and a woman for a very, VERY long time. Why should we seek to change it? (I believe that the PCs on this site are fond of saying how LONG abortion has been around and how acceptable it has been in society, so why change it. Right?) Pretty soon we will be discussing whether or not three women can marry, or whether a man can marry two women (which right now, is obviously illegal). Why the heck NOT? I mean, if it’s not “hurting” anyone, then what’s the problem? If societal opinion shifts in the future on whether five men can get “married”, will you be okay with that, Doug?
Is what is “moral” simply determined by your version of “society” and their very fluid opinion at the time?
“As far as the direction that society takes, I don’t see that it has any real, demonstrable need to ban abortion or further restrict it, especially not to the extent that we would forbid a woman or girl from ending an unwanted pregnancy.”
That’s right, we wouldn’t want to restrict anyone’s freedoms in this country…oh, wait…I think we do that already. Hmm. ;)
Kel, point certainly taken, so the question is do we really need to do it in this instance?
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Doug, the problem is the redefinition of “marriage” that is being sought here. Marriage has been between a man and a woman for a very, VERY long time. Why should we seek to change it? (I believe that the PCs on this site are fond of saying how LONG abortion has been around and how acceptable it has been in society, so why change it. Right?) Pretty soon we will be discussing whether or not three women can marry, or whether a man can marry two women (which right now, is obviously illegal). Why the heck NOT? I mean, if it’s not “hurting” anyone, then what’s the problem? If societal opinion shifts in the future on whether five men can get “married”, will you be okay with that, Doug?
I think I’d draw the line at two people. Marriage was not between different races for a very long time in the US, and we got over that one pretty well. Was interracial marriage allowed in the Bible?
On abortion being legal for a long time, the point is usually that people have been having abortions for thousands and thousands of years, and that societies haven’t attributed personhood and rights prior to birth for time immemorial, the world over, so it’s not like the presence of legal abortion has us on some dire, steep slope within a hand-wringing, moaning handbasket going straight down….
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Is what is “moral” simply determined by your version of “society” and their very fluid opinion at the time?
One’s morals need have nothing to do with society’s current position on an issue, unless one wants to bow to the will of the masses, etc. The good/bad/right/wrong in the moral realm will always be in “somebody’s” opinion, in the eye of some observer. Without “somebody” caring about a thing in that regard, there would be no morality in the first place.
I think that corporal punishment in schools is okay, for example.
Kel: green wins because painting the streets green wouldn’t really “hurt” the red proponents in any way, would it?
You’d really need to ask them.
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I mean, how would it affect THEM if the greens got all the streets painted green? Forcing the greens to paint their streets red is just cruel.
Perhaps, but not enough information is given to determine that.
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And obviously, the reds just have some sort of religious agenda to keep the greens from painting all the streets in town green. Which clearly makes their view null and void.
Should the unprovable beliefs of the reds then be forced on the greens, who don’t share those beliefs in the first place?
If the Reds are Muslims and the Greens are Christians, shouldn’t the Greens hold sway?
Doug,
So I am asking you, who is this society that YOU speak of?
Same as before. There is no one, monolithic, unchanging “society” that makes laws. There is a varied, complex society with many inputs and outputs involved. To pretend otherwise is just patently false, not just unprovable, i.e. it’s not always the same. A given law comes about because an entity wants it, whether it’s everybody or a majority or a council of legislators, or just one legislator, etc.
Well if this is true, then how did abortion become legal? You are the one that said “society” has never attributed personhood, or rights to the unborn. You are the one that says “society” has decided that abortion should be legally sanctioned. But you have yet to tell me why certain members society got their red sheets, when clearly most of society wanted green ones.
Obviously, someone IS getting hurt in the abortion scenario. So not only has the minority won, but death is involved. There is harm being caused to a third party.
Who is society in THIS case?
“I think I’d draw the line at two people. Marriage was not between different races for a very long time in the US, and we got over that one pretty well. Was interracial marriage allowed in the Bible?”
Yep. It was. It was marriages between peoples of unlike faiths/religions that was not considered acceptable.
“Should the unprovable beliefs of the reds then be forced on the greens, who don’t share those beliefs in the first place?”
They’re not unprovable beliefs, if you’re talking about gay marriage or abortion. Men aren’t physically designed to have sexual relations with other men (or to reproduce), nor women with other women. The unborn child is clearly human. These things are biologically true.
“If the Reds are Muslims and the Greens are Christians, shouldn’t the Greens hold sway?”
Doug, I think you know that I was responding to your statements that because something is part of the Christian (or ANY) religion, that somehow it makes it invalid. That is not a logical assumption.
BTW, Doug, if you draw the line at two people, but society deems that you are wrong, what do you do then? Do you stand up for what you believe to be right?
Well if this is true, then how did abortion become legal? You are the one that said “society” has never attributed personhood, or rights to the unborn. You are the one that says “society” has decided that abortion should be legally sanctioned. But you have yet to tell me why certain members society got their red sheets, when clearly most of society wanted green ones.
MK, I don’t see any good reason for not leaving the choice of sheet color up to the individual. What demonstrable need can people show for forcing green sheets on those who wanted red? Same for the color of Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts they wear.
Abortion was legal, in the beginning. Stuff doesn’t start out illegal, it has to get made that way. It became legal again because there was sufficient opinion for it, and Constitutional principles which were applied to it as far as leaving it a personal choice to viability (though I know you disagree with that), same as leaving the choice of shirt color would likely be.
No, rights and personhood weren’t attributed to the unborn, even when abortion was illegal. Now with the restrictions on late-term abortion, I think an argument could be made that a limited form of rights have been granted – limited because while abortion is restricted, it’s not like the fetus has a right to life than cannot be negated by conditions on the woman’s part.
Abortion is legal because lots of people want it that way, because the freedom of the woman in this case matters to lots of people, because there are principles of liberty and privacy and bodily autonomy involved and people perceive that, etc. This all adds up for enough sentiment to have abortion be legal. It does not “have” to be that way but for now it is that way.
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Obviously, someone IS getting hurt in the abortion scenario.
No, not necessarily, any more than someone gets hurt continuing pregnancy and giving birth, for in both cases while there are risks they are not guaranteed.
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So not only has the minority won, but death is involved. There is harm being caused to a third party. Who is society in THIS case?
I don’t think it’s a minority. I think a majority of Americans favor having elective abortion be legal to a point in gestation.
There is not a sufficient opinion for making abortion be illegal, beyond the restrictions we now have. This could change, but for now it ain’t that way.
We are continung with the principles of keeping the gov’t off our backs as much as possible, as the Constitution is aimed at doing. We are sticking with the idea that some things are best left to the individual.
Doug, if you draw the line at two people, but society deems that you are wrong, what do you do then? Do you stand up for what you believe to be right?
Kel, yep.
Yep. It (interracial marriage) was. It was marriages between peoples of unlike faiths/religions that was not considered acceptable.
Thanks, Kel. I’d say that we got past allowing people of different religions to marry pretty well, and we’ll do the same with gay marriage.
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“Should the unprovable beliefs of the reds then be forced on the greens, who don’t share those beliefs in the first place?”
They’re not unprovable beliefs, if you’re talking about gay marriage or abortion. Men aren’t physically designed to have sexual relations with other men (or to reproduce), nor women with other women. The unborn child is clearly human. These things are biologically true.
Agreed on those matters of fact, but they aren’t at issue. Gay people don’t want to get married to reproduce with each other. Nobody is really saying the unborn are “not human” in this debate.
I’m saying that the reds don’t demonstrate anything beyond unprovable belief as far as the green-desiring people. Likewise, there’s no “proof” that allowing two gay people to marry is “bad.” It’s all a matter of belief.
I haven’t seen any good arguments as to why we shouldn’t allow gay marriage. How is it really going to hurt other people? If two heterosexual people want to get married, then certainly still can.
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“If the Reds are Muslims and the Greens are Christians, shouldn’t the Greens hold sway?”
Doug, I think you know that I was responding to your statements that because something is part of the Christian (or ANY) religion, that somehow it makes it invalid. That is not a logical assumption.
I sure don’t think I said that. I’m saying that some things like religion are a matter of personal belief, rather than a suitable reason for making public policy which applies to people with differing beliefs.
Doug,
Obviously, someone IS getting hurt in the abortion scenario.
*
No, not necessarily, any more than someone gets hurt continuing pregnancy and giving birth, for in both cases while there are risks they are not guaranteed.
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Every abortion produces a dead human being. Someone gets hurt. The human being whose life was ended is hurt. They were given an opportunity. To grow, to become. To be a lawyer, a teacher, a street person or a musician. That opportunity is taken away from them. This is a harm.
EVERY abortion harms someone. EVERY abortion results in a dead human being.
That is sufficient EVIDENCE that abortion is wrong. It results in the end of a life.
While it is true that a woman’s autonomy is being compromised, it is also true that a human being is being killed.
NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING…no “right” or “percieved right” EVER trumps that. Ever.
By your reasoning all murder should be allowed. Any one who compromises my personal desires should risk being erased by me. It would be sufficient opinion that certain people infringe on my happiness. What stops me from eliminating them? Why is a womans autonomy enough of a reason, but my neighbors fence is not?
Why is my neighbor’s life sacred, while my childs is not? What part of society made that decision?
If we do not grant the right to life first, foremost and above every other right, then we cheapen all other rights. Life comes first. Then freedom. Then privacy. Then autonomy. But if the right to life of ALL human beings is not guaranteed, all other rights are null and void.
I already know your answer. I’m not asking you to change the law. I’m not asking you explain it to me yet again.
I am asking you, my friend, my debate partner, how you can reconcile this misguided notion that women have the right to kill their children? How do you look in the mirror and say out loud…”Women have the right to end the lives of their unborn children…because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time”
EVERY abortion results in a dead human being. That is sufficient EVIDENCE that abortion is wrong. It results in the end of a life.
MK, we do not need an unlimited number of human beings.
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While it is true that a woman’s autonomy is being compromised, it is also true that a human being is being killed.
NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING…no “right” or “percieved right” EVER trumps that. Ever.
Well, yeah it does, so, we disagree.
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By your reasoning all murder should be allowed. Any one who compromises my personal desires should risk being erased by me.
No, because they (murderers) don’t have anywhere nearly as good a claim, nor would you, as one based on being pregnant and not wanting to be.
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It would be sufficient opinion that certain people infringe on my happiness. What stops me from eliminating them? Why is a womans autonomy enough of a reason, but my neighbors fence is not?
Nope – there is not any sufficient opinion to make it legal for you to kill based on merely “compromising your desires.” Not even close, while with abortion it’s a much different deal. MK, the unborn are inside the body of a person. It does not make a difference to you, but to many it certainly does.
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Why is my neighbor’s life sacred, while my childs is not? What part of society made that decision?
It’s not “sacred.” The sufficient opinion in society is saying that you’re not allowed to kill your neighbor unless certain conditions are met, ones you’re not including.
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If we do not grant the right to life first, foremost and above every other right, then we cheapen all other rights. Life comes first. Then freedom. Then privacy. Then autonomy. But if the right to life of ALL human beings is not guaranteed, all other rights are null and void.
I already know your answer. I’m not asking you to change the law. I’m not asking you explain it to me yet again.
Okay, yeah – I disagree with the “slippery slope,” there.
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I am asking you, my friend, my debate partner, how you can reconcile this misguided notion that women have the right to kill their children? How do you look in the mirror and say out loud…”Women have the right to end the lives of their unborn children…because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time”
That’s not really it, MK, since the usage of “children” is so farfetched, there.
There isn’t even reconciliation among those who argue over the terminology. I think the real reconciliation means getting perfect birth control that people would use unfailingly if the don’t want to be pregnant.
Doug,
MK, we do not need an unlimited number of human beings.
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Need has nothing to do with it. Why don’t we eliminate all blue eyed people, or all midgets? That logic is scary, Doug. They already exist. You don’t want an unlimited amount of human beings, fine, don’t make any. But killing the ones that are already here????
No, because they (murderers) don’t have anywhere nearly as good a claim, nor would you, as one based on being pregnant and not wanting to be.
How do you know that my desire to be rid of an obnoxious neighbor is not as great or important as the girl who wants to go to dance school?
What gives you the right to tell me that what I want is not as important as what a young pregnant girl wants?
In both cases a life is on the line. In one case you say her desires are sufficient. In the other you say they aren’t. Why? Why are her desires acceptable, but mine aren’t?
It’s not “sacred.” The sufficient opinion in society is saying that you’re not allowed to kill your neighbor unless certain conditions are met, ones you’re not including..
I asked you, Doug, not society.
There isn’t even reconciliation among those who argue over the terminology. I think the real reconciliation means getting perfect birth control that people would use unfailingly if the don’t want to be pregnant.
We have perfect birth control. It’s called abstinence. Sans that, we have birth control, that if used properly, works 99% of the time.
If you do the crime, you should do the time. If you become pregnant, through your own choices, then you should take responsibility for it. Why do you think women should be able to do what they want, take no responsibility for it, and then demand ransom (help from the state) to allow their child to continue living?
Where else in “society” are you allowed to act irresponsibly, take a life to eliminate that responsibility or have the state pick up the tab?
Where else does society allow such behavior??????
If you choose to drink, are you allowed to drive?
If you visit brothels, does the state pay to cure any diseases you get?
If you smoke, does the state pay for you cigarettes?
In what other instance are you rewarded and lauded for irresponsible behavior????
“We have perfect birth control. It’s called abstinence. Sans that, we have birth control, that if used properly, works 99% of the time.”
Awesome posts, mk. I am bouncing in my seat. :D
“In what other instance are you rewarded and lauded for irresponsible behavior????”
It sounds to me like a rhetorical question, but my not-so-rhetorical answer is: When a person is a practicing homosexual.
And sometimes addicts are given “clean needles” so they can continue their habits of illegal drug use. Because killing oneself with hepatitis or AIDS is bad, but killing oneself with drugs isn’t. (???)
“Gay people don’t want to get married to reproduce with each other. Nobody is really saying the unborn are “not human” in this debate.”
Gosh, I’ve seen at least one poster on this site refer to the unborn as mindless, insensate blobs of tissue. But you weren’t that poster, Doug, I know that.
And gay people CAN’T get married to reproduce with each other because it’s not biologically possible. So…why is it that they want to get married? So that the “marriage” term can be applied to their lifestyles in order appear more normal to society? Clearly, they are attempting to indoctrinate our young children beginning at Kindergarten age, by saying it’s “perfectly normal” to have two mommies or daddies when that is NOT perfectly normal. It’s not even biologically possible, so it’s not normal.
anyway…sorry, I am SO far off-topic!! :D
MK, we do not need an unlimited number of human beings.
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Need has nothing to do with it.
Yeah, it really does.
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Why don’t we eliminate all blue eyed people, or all midgets? That logic is scary, Doug. They already exist. You don’t want an unlimited amount of human beings, fine, don’t make any. But killing the ones that are already here????
Who wants to get rid of all blue eyed people, etc.? Meanwhile, there really are quite a few unwanted pregnancies.
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“No, because they (murderers) don’t have anywhere nearly as good a claim, nor would you, as one based on being pregnant and not wanting to be.”
How do you know that my desire to be rid of an obnoxious neighbor is not as great or important as the girl who wants to go to dance school?
It’s a perception. It’s a saying, just as we are individuals here having our say. It’s a deeming, and obviously a huge number of people, not just me, make it.
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What gives you the right to tell me that what I want is not as important as what a young pregnant girl wants?
It’s a given that we have opinions. You don’t have to listen to my opinion, but societies at their most basic are groups of people with things in common, and the reflections of opinions, when there’s enough of it, are laws.
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In both cases a life is on the line. In one case you say her desires are sufficient. In the other you say they aren’t. Why? Why are her desires acceptable, but mine aren’t?
“It’s not “sacred.” The sufficient opinion in society is saying that you’re not allowed to kill your neighbor unless certain conditions are met, ones you’re not including.”.
I asked you, Doug, not society.
You asked “why not acceptable,” etc., for your desires versus hers, and what really is at stake in the abortion debate is society’s position.
For my own feelings – why, exactly, in this hypothetical, do you want to kill your neighbor? I would weigh your reasoning and desire against that of the pregnant girl/woman, as far as where I would think you had a “good enough” reason or not.
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We have perfect birth control. It’s called abstinence.
Proven to be a huge failure – people are simply going to have sex. Human nature.
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Sans that, we have birth control, that if used properly, works 99% of the time.
Again, human nature, “heat of the moment,” etc. I do wish that more people would use BC, though – I certainly see prevention as better than abortion. I was always concerned about preventing unwanted pregnancies, myself.
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If you do the crime, you should do the time.
Ending an unwanted pregnancy, legally, is not a “crime.” It’s the woman’s responsibility. She’s not responsible to what you want, but to what she wants.
“Gay people don’t want to get married to reproduce with each other. Nobody is really saying the unborn are “not human” in this debate.”
Gosh, I’ve seen at least one poster on this site refer to the unborn as mindless, insensate blobs of tissue. But you weren’t that poster, Doug, I know that.
Kel, nothing mutually exclusive there. It can be human and still be mindless and insensate.
Doug,
We have perfect birth control. It’s called abstinence.
*
Proven to be a huge failure – people are simply going to have sex. Human nature.
Abstinence never fails. People fail. You said you wanted a perfect birth control, and I gave you one.
She’s not responsible to what you want, but to what she wants.
It’s not about being responsible to what I want. It’s about being responsible for ones actions/choices. You drive a car, you accept responsibility. You take out a loan, you accept responsibility. You don’t study for a test, you take the consequences. You don’t kill the teacher.
If people fail to use it, THEY should pay the price, not the resulting human life.
Meanwhile, there really are quite a few unwanted pregnancies.
Doug,
Need has nothing to do with it.
*
Yeah, it really does.
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Nope (ode to yllas) actually it doesn’t. As I said, you don’t want more babies, don’t make ’em (see abstinence comment). Once they are here, it’s pretty much too late.
MK: You said you wanted a perfect birth control, and I gave you one.
You sly fox, I said one that people would use. Abstinence is a failure, period. Yes, it’s due to human nature, as I also have noted.
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“She’s not responsible to what you want, but to what she wants.”
It’s not about being responsible to what I want. It’s about being responsible for ones actions/choices. You drive a car, you accept responsibility.
You are making it about what you want. You are equating what you want with “being responsible.”
Yes, driving a car, and if one has a flat tire then one will usually get it remedied, get the undesired situation fixed. Same with an unwanted pregnancy, ending it is often the remedy.
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If you drove your car at 90 miles an hour into a brick wall, do you think you have the right to complain???? Sure, there’s a small chance that you won’t die, but the likelihood of walking away unscathed is slim. If you continue to have sex the likelihood of remaining unpregnant is slim. You’d have to be pretty much of an idiot not to realize this. If you choose to go ahead and have sex, and get pregnant, you really shouldn’t be surprised.
No, you don’t really “have the right to complain.” What would be the point? So, in both cases it’d be, “yes, I drove into the wall,” and “yes, I had sex.” It’s silly to think that people won’t seek medical treatment for injuries in accidents, and likewise you know that people are often going to seek abortions for unwanted pregnancies.
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The person driving the car, consented to speeding, aimed at a wall, but can claim that they didn’t consent to crashing…well, duh! A woman can claim that she consented to sex but not pregnancy…well, duh!
That’s silly, MK. No, having sex is not consent to remaining pregnant, but you said the person is driving “into the wall,” and I’d say the issue on consent to hitting it doesn’t even enter into it, then. The logical thing to say, there, is that even though one drove into the wall, that’s no necessary consent to go without medical treatment.
EVERY abortion results in a dead human being. That is sufficient EVIDENCE that abortion is wrong. It results in the end of a life.
“MK, we do not need an unlimited number of human beings.”
Need has nothing to do with it.
“Yeah, it really does.”
Nope (ode to yllas) actually it doesn’t. As I said, you don’t want more babies, don’t make ’em (see abstinence comment). Once they are here, it’s pretty much too late.
Have to laugh – yllas is such a fruitcake that she thinks one won’t see “nope” or the equivalent much on message boards where people disagree. Oy vey.
Maybe we should have a poll about yllas? She’d probably love the attention.
Anyway, you are equating the “dead human being” with “wrong.” That’s your opinion, not “evidence.”
First of all, I’m saying there is more to it than that; there is also the pregnant woman to consider. I do see harm in not allowing her the legal freedom she now has. I see less harm in not having every pregnancy continued.
In a vacuum (no pun intended and it’s come up before), I’m not saying that abortion is “good,” per se. I’m not claiming any absolutes or externals. For me it comes down to it being better or “less bad” to allow elective abortions to viability rather than tell women they can’t have abortions.
There is a “better” for me, and it’d be to prevent unwanted pregnancies, but once an unwanted pregnancy is fact that’s not possible.
“If you eat 3 chocolate cakes every day for a year, and claim that while you consented to eat the cakes, you didn’t consent to gaining 30 pounds, should you be allowed to shoot the baker?”
Hmmm…I think you may be on to something, mk. LOL!! ;)
“Anyway, you are equating the “dead human being” with “wrong.” That’s your opinion, not “evidence.”
Okay, the next time someone decides to post pictures of the victims from the war in Iraq (or even from the Holocaust), I’ll just be sure to remind them of that. I’ll have to remember: Dead humans do NOT equal “wrong” or bad, so says Doug.
“I see less harm in not having every pregnancy continued.”
Doug, there is NO pregnancy that continues indefinitely…they all eventually come to an end. It’s just that some result in live children while others result in dead ones. And if a dead human isn’t “wrong”, tell that to the mother who gives birth to a stillborn child or who miscarries one. Should she rejoice in that??
Let’s call it what it is, Doug:
You are saying that there is “less harm” in killing the unborn than there is in overturning an unjust law.
One thing we can agree on, though, is that preventing unwanted pregnancy is better than abortion. I am not anti-birth control, but I believe if it’s going to be used, it should be used by responsible (and preferably married) adults who are prepared to deal with the consequences if it should fail (raising a child or placing it for adoption). Teenagers need to practice abstinence. It CAN be done. I, and others I know, are living proof of that. Abstinence, when properly used, works 100% of the time. :D
And btw, regarding this comment: “The logical thing to say, there, is that even though one drove into the wall, that’s no necessary consent to go without medical treatment.”
Medical treatment is typically medically necessary. Elective abortion (and any other elective procedure) isn’t. Medical treatment usually does not include the end goal of taking a human life.
“Anyway, you are equating the “dead human being” with “wrong.” That’s your opinion, not “evidence.”
Kel: Okay, the next time someone decides to post pictures of the victims from the war in Iraq (or even from the Holocaust), I’ll just be sure to remind them of that. I’ll have to remember: Dead humans do NOT equal “wrong” or bad, so says Doug.
Ahem – I wasn’t saying that the deaths of born people would not be seen as bad/wrong.
I was saying that the fact that the fetus dies in an abortion is not automatically “evidence” that abortion is wrong, especially wrong enough to take away womens’ current freedom in the matter.
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Doug, there is NO pregnancy that continues indefinitely…they all eventually come to an end. It’s just that some result in live children while others result in dead ones. And if a dead human isn’t “wrong”, tell that to the mother who gives birth to a stillborn child or who miscarries one. Should she rejoice in that??
Well of course not – that was a wanted pregnancy. You know darn well that some people want kids or more kids VERY much.
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Let’s call it what it is, Doug: You are saying that there is “less harm” in killing the unborn than there is in overturning an unjust law.
No, I’m saying the law as we have it is not unjust.
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One thing we can agree on, though, is that preventing unwanted pregnancy is better than abortion. I am not anti-birth control, but I believe if it’s going to be used, it should be used by responsible (and preferably married) adults who are prepared to deal with the consequences if it should fail (raising a child or placing it for adoption). Teenagers need to practice abstinence. It CAN be done. I, and others I know, are living proof of that. Abstinence, when properly used, works 100% of the time. :D
It can be done, sure, but the fact is that it’s often not done, so let’s get something that works, given human nature.
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And btw, regarding this comment: “The logical thing to say, there, is that even though one drove into the wall, that’s no necessary consent to go without medical treatment.”
Medical treatment is typically medically necessary. Elective abortion (and any other elective procedure) isn’t. Medical treatment usually does not include the end goal of taking a human life.
Well, MK was talking about “consent to crashing.” I think if one deliberately drives into the wall, then that consent is implied, just as a person knowingly having sex when pregnancy is a possiblity can’t really claim they didn’t know they could get pregnant. So, we have a crash, and a pregnancy, in this example.
What comes after – the medical treatment and the abortion – are both remedies, and it should be no surprise that people seek them.
I suppose that the driver-into-the-wall might be attempting suicide, and if so they might not want medical treatment, but medical personnel are still going to give it if prudent. And that could be against the will of the patient.
For the woman who had sex, having the abortion is her will if the pregnancy is unwanted, so again – should not be any surprise that she seeks the abortion.
‘Faith. Hope. Aggravation.’
Though his true identity is known to few, his presence is known to many. Cranky Catholic, as he is known in the blogosphere, is a deeply devout Catholic with a world of experience and knowledge and a bone or two to pick with society.
Surprisingly, Cra…
Wow!! Try harder than that,he Does Not Support Abortion.