Abortion

I find it interesting that with your choice of words (murder and killing) you would make an exception for rape--is it not still murder and killing?

I'm also interested as to why you picked "Religion" as the category, as you don't mention that your views on abortion are based on religious conviction. I'm simply being curious!

If you are truly interested in my views on abortion, feel free to check out my blog entitled "Women Deserve Better than Abortion." I'd re-hash, but it might be the equivalent of highjacking your thread!

Hmm...abortion...dangerous ground....but I'd have to agree and disagree with you....in some way. I don't nescessarily promote abortion...but the thing is does the fetus have any awareness when it is in the womb...if not...at what point...those are more or less the ethical consideration....personally I'll just leave abortion on the conscience of the people commiting the act...I'm not a girl and I don't have to worry about that kind of thing...and if I see a suspected rapist I'll beat the everloving hell out of him...because that is not right at all....I'm potentially deadly to people who abuse women...seriously.

Good Article...keep crankin' em out...lol
~Zoo

Even though I respect your opinion, I think mine's just a little different.

You make an exception for rape. In my mind, abortion is still killing a person. The only way I could ever see an abortion as even a possiblity is when the mother and the child would die from the birth. There are many people in this world that can not have children and want them badly. Adoption, although sometimes with it's problems, is a good program, putting babies in the arms of loving parents. A baby isn't a choice, it's a life.

Keep working!

I make no exception for rape. Abortion is murder. As for disrupting your life.... there is adoption. Then you are out for nine months. Either way, why should someone die?

The issue is one of metaethics. Do you define a fetus as a person, or not? If so, why? At what point is a collection of cells a person? These are questions that need to be answered before you can even have this debate.

Hope I've clarified the issue.

um Daniel--I think that is the debate. If everyone agreed when that point was, there would be a clear answer as to whether or not abortion was "murder."

Wow shadesofgrey, I was wrong. I totally missed the part of the thread where people backed up their assertions that fetuses should count as people. Nevermind, there isn't one. All that people seem to be doing is saying things like

I make no exception for rape. Abortion is murder. As for disrupting your life.... there is adoption.

which is an unargued for assertion that fetuses are people, and then some implications of that assertion. But who cares about the implications when the first point hasn't even been made. And if you look through the thread, it hasn't.

P.S.: My point is, argue for the first issue before arguing for the implications, because if you don't you'll never get anywhere at all.

The sooner we could raise a fetus outside of a woman, the sooner abortion will be unnecessary. Nobody will have an excuse then.

The problem is both sides are expressing *opinions*. There are no definate universal laws of women's rights to choose, any more than they are definate natural laws the other way. Unless you count all those obvious ones about killing other people...

What makes me really, really sick is when pro-choice people try and accuse the religious of being "holier-than-thou" and then espouse their own set of supposedly concrete, common-sense ethics. That kind of activism is just as subjective and imposing as pro-life activism, and based just as much on personal belief.

Damn shame we can't just have a referendum and let the citizens of the US decide. As long as there are activist judges, priests of the holy Constitution, we'll never have the opportunity.

BakerStreet - Extraordinary majorities for amending the constitution are necessary to protect minority rights and to ensure that the government changes slowly, which protects us against ourselves and rash decisions we sometimes would like to make. If there were a majority of people in 3/4 of the states and 2/3 of the house and senate states and districts, then hey, abortion could be made unconstitutional. Lemme know when that happens, ok? The process being as it is has greatly restricted the government in its actions, and this is basically always a good thing, because rights are zero sum, and the more the government has the fewer the citizens have. Though I can see where this would take us into metaethics again, hence:

I see your ethics and raise you a solipsism

I guess the ethics things is more for other posters than for you, BakerStreet. But feel free to address it if you like.

"If there were a majority of people in 3/4 of the states and 2/3 of the house and senate states and districts, then hey, abortion could be made unconstitutional. Lemme know when that happens, ok?"

If there were ever the ability to really find out what the American people believe concerning one particular issue, we might know. I know many pro-life people who vote Democrat for other reasons, so their voice will *never* be heard on teh subject. If you can talk the political parties into discarding their imposed platforms so that they can truly represent what the majority of their constituants believe, let me know, ok?

Wow shadesofgrey, I was wrong. I totally missed the part of the thread where people backed up their assertions that fetuses should count as people. Nevermind, there isn't one. All that people seem to be doing is saying things like

Before you get all snippy--my point was that if you settled the question of "when" there isn't really anything left to debate. Also, the term "murder" implies that "personhood" has occured, doesn't it? This blog was not about the "when" it was about the validity of "exceptions."

Just remember: before you jump all over peoples "debating" skills--this is a blog site, not the national debate competition.

If it's really an issue of murder for these people, you'd think that they'd have their priorities straight. Or is there more murder happening somewhere else that only the Democratic party is addressing? As for public opinion on the subject, people clearly do not care enough to get the necessary majorities.

According to a year 2000 Gallup Poll: Most American adults (51%) currently believe that abortions should be legal under some circumstances. 28% believe that abortions should be legal under all circumstances. 19% believe that they should be always illegal -- apparently even to save the life of the woman. The same poll reveals that 50% of adults identify themselves as pro-choice; 40% as pro-life.

That's from here Link.

Sorry, I took statistics and political science. I know how huge of a grain of salt to take Polls with. You have a +/- that is big enough to eat you, regardless of what they claim it to be. The people that make the poll decide the outcome simply by skewing the questions and choosing their sample areas. The only way you'd get a true count is to have a true referendum, which we will never be allowed to do.

shadesofgrey: Debating when murder is OK is really silly. I guess I overestimated the thread, then. On the other hand, I'm having a fantastic debate with BakerStreet, so maybe not.

Yeah, BakerStreet, such a thing is unconstitutional. Which is independently a good thing for the reasons I provided. Having taken some stat classes myself, I know about the importance of the MOE, but Gallup is not very widely considered to be partisan or issue-biased. I don't have access to their polling data (you have to pay), but a 10% MOE is somewhat unlikely. But hey, even if the difference is within the MOE, that doesn't answer the question of what priorities people have that are more important than stopping dramatic numbers of murders. You'd think that would show up in election results, and it does. And what's shown is that people don't care enough.

As for the referendum idea outside of constitutionality, how far do you think this should extend? I'm pretty sure people are against outsourcing, and if you put it on a national referendum the result would likely be the populist isolationism, but law makers and economists will tell you all about the benefits of Ricardo's international trade efficiencies. So this process would likely get a result that isn't very good for the populace (or the world) in the long term. And to use a somewhat loaded scenario, what if race related civil rights had been put on a referendum in the 1950s?

Debating when murder is OK is really silly.

I would draw your attention to my first comment questioning why the exception would be made if it truly was "murder." However, I find it strange that you would call it "silly" to debate when murder is ok. Do we not have the death penalty debate raging all over America? Is that not a debate about "when murder is OK?" Or is that silly too?

As for the poll you are citing...the wording is questionable. Even the most staunch pro-choicers (aka NARAL/Prochoice America) do not support the right to abortion in EVERY case. They have no object to bans on post-viability abortion.

I agree with Bakerstreet that a referendum would be preferable, but I fear we have different ideas of what the outcome would be. However, I would rather have the vote than have to deal with legal battles that eventually declare Bush's new laws unconstitutional (ie. The Ban on Partial Birth Abortions--the very name of which is completely misleading).

shadesofgrey: The death penalty debate is really silly too, yeah, for numerous reasons. The case for it is so massively weak. And ya know why? Because when it all comes down to it, you're debating when it's ok to murder someone. If you want to have that discussion, and take the pro side, I can show you what I mean.

About the poll - you'll note that it splits up the pro-lifers and pro-choicers by percentage wrt who holds what terms are acceptable.

I don't think that it splits by terms; rather, it deliberately makes the outcome vague enough to be manipulated by either side. The poll, in essence, tells us nothing. Also, it's interesting to note, that some people selfidentify with one group, but in actually agree with the other. I can't tell you the number of times that I have heard "I'm prolife because I would never have an abortion." I've often pressed these people further to find out that this is simply a personal conviction and they do not want to tell others what to do. A person can be "personally pro-life" and be adamantly "prochoice."

I do not support the death penalty and therefore have no interest in playing devil's advocate. Yet, I would say that there are some instances that murder is acceptable. Self-defense is one of them, saving others is another. For example, if a gun man entered a school and the only way the police had to stop him before he killed untold number of children, I am not opposed to the police using whatever force necessary to protect the civilians present. That said, once a criminal is in custody, I want justice sought, not revenge--I place the death penalty firmly in the revenge category.

"As for the referendum idea outside of constitutionality, how far do you think this should extend?"

As much as our system of government is based on self-determinism. Frankly we should have the ability to make mistakes. If we end up being isolationist, and it isn't beneficial, we'll see the results. As of now we only sit and grumble and blame our leaders or the courts and have absolutely *zero* idea of why thing happen the way they do. We have made the broadest interpretations of the Constitution in the belief that the average person has no business deciding what is best. All they have to do is lay back on the excuse "Sure, what I did was counter to the will of the people, but it was in the interest of the people. They just don't realize what is best from their perspective" At what point can we say that the population is sufficiently informed enough to act of our own accord?

I understand that there are clear-cut reasons for the courts to thwart popular opinion. Racial descrimination was a good one, and I think that the people who crafted the constitution had every intention of that interpretation being made when the time was right. It was readliy apparent that rights were being withheld from part of the population and granted to others.

When abortion is made illegal, no one enjoys the priviledge. It isn't like some people have to use separate washrooms, the laws simply stated that abortion was illegal, like murder, rape, etc. No one was favored with a right witheld from others. Acting as if abortion is a Constiutionally provided right is taking a huge step toward legislation by interpretation.

This is defining a "right" out of thin air. Regardless of the outcome, I don't think this kind of thing should be decided by a few activist judges. Let the people decide, it is their nation.

BakerStreet - If we're going to go about making mistakes, why not do them as slowly as possible? This gives us opportunity to fix them before things get too bad. Having things be slow, like they currently are, allows for greater control of the processes of government, which at this point are immensely powerful. The people still have just as much input - they get to vote for representatives, and they can vote for someone else if they aren't happy with their representation. This also saves us from mistakes that are made because people don't have much knowledge about goverment, don't care much about government, and are really hard to organize to get to do much more than the living they already do.

About specific bad decisions - we've been isolationist before. Really, we have. And it didn't work then, and it won't work now. Have people learned? Nope.

Let's think of a case in which the public would harm itself in totality, with equality. How about giving up significant portions of the fourth amendment? The public has shown it's pretty willing to allow government more and more power. Yet, this would be a really bad decision for all people, even though the all have the same rights (or lack thereof). But anyhow, who cares about the way this case is different from the case of racial discrimination, because your interpretation of what the public should be allowed to choose has no bounding mechanism. And if it did, who would interpret what fell within it and without it? If you don't have that mechanism it all falls apart, and we can once again democratically vote for segregation.

Oh, by the way, I don't think that the right of privacy is found out of thin air. There's the tenth amendment, which allows citizens all rights not given to the government, and also there's the spirit of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th amendments. It's not like there's a codified right of privacy, but the interpretation that certain things fall within it isn't out of line with either the spirit or wording of the constitution.

shadesofgrey - If that's your (very broad) definition of murder, which includes self-defence killing, please tell me what a fetus could possibly do that would make it worthy of being murdered.

We start war in the name of God and no one questions the murder that occurs. And perhaps it is God's test to you. God gave you a gift. Will you except it or will you throw it back? Everything we do is destined to happened. You walk to close to dark, the demons are bound to get you. God may be punishing you. Take your punishment.

On a non spiritual note, do you think the tigress likes being raped. It's part of nature for man to spread his seed by all means necessary and mother nature watches out for the women and gives us the strength to love unconditionally.

In the grand scheme of things, it really makes no difference whether you kill the fetus or not. It cannot feel or reason. We don't give adults that can't feel or reason the same opportunities. We hide them away and pump them full of drugs. What's good for one is good for another, don't you think? Double standards are so tricky.

I didn't read all the coments but I don't think I need to. When you have a potential life in your "hands" getting rid of it is murder. The problem with that is the rape or death of the mother and baby. It's not exactly your fault the baby won't get a chance to live. But, I don't think killing anything is so great... Again, the problem there is that I like to eat. Does that mean I'm a hipocryt? Oh, who cares. Killing the thing inside you is not a great choice. Killing the rapist isn't so great either, but doing something to rid us of the threat is. Women used to die in pregnancy before and abortion wasn't a problem. I think the natural way of things is best, God would prefer it. There's our religious part of the argument.

Capt. over and out!