RSS Feed MenuSo, the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List has just endorsed Carly Fiorina in the California GOP Senate primary.
Well shoot.
Obviously, they were not going to endorse the pro-choice Tom Campbell, but they could have endorsed DeVore. Note well:
The SBA List Candidate Fund endorses pro-life female candidates, as well as pro-life male candidates who run against female candidates in favor of abortion rights.
But, they didn’t. Most likely because Chuck Devore has not been able to get above 14 percent in the polls, in the most favorable environment for outsider Republican candidates since… when? 1894? That’s not a good sign.
But still. If I were still a Californian, I would have voted for DeVore, for the sake of expediency. I don’t vote pro-choice when there’s a pro-life alternative. But, when there are two pro-life candidates, do I have to pick the (nominally) pro-life candidate that also has the very best chance to defeat the pro-choice candidate? Really?
I know plenty of pro-lifers that did not vote for McCain in 2008. Some of them are pretty much not pulling the R lever until the Republicans agree to throw Dick Cheney in prison. Not only that, they think me less than truly pro-life for not grabbing a hold as they climb the cliffs of insanity. So, why should I hold myself to a higher standard of efficiency than they? Especially if 1) Fiorina ends up losing in a squeaker, 2) her newfound embrace of the pro-life cause inevitably gets the blame, and 3) I won’t be able to say, “Well, I didn’t support her in the primary…”?
So I had my perfectly respectable dodge, and then the SBA List messes it up for me. Alas, I am susceptible to what Sir Henry Maine called “Party Feeling,” and it looks like the SBA List is sending their signal to California’s cultural conservatives: quit being splitters, and suit up for battle.
Well, Fiorina as the choice of a new type of cultural conservative would be… different. Probably frustrating at times, but perhaps refreshing as well. So, I’m torn, and I wish California’s cultural conservatives well, in their difficult and fascinating choice.
Rockerbabe // Apr 28, 2010 at 5:13 pm
Pick your poisen. The “prolife” crowd is just another anti-woman crowd; nothing new there. They are so determined to make the average woman into a 3rd class citizen and what is really shameful, is all of the women who are helping their daughters become disadvantaged and 3rd class. The disrespect and animosity women have to put up with is ridiculous. A woman’s healthcare related matters are not government preview anymore than any male citizen’s healthcare concerns.
To deny women the right to not be an involuntary servent [13th amendment rights]; to deny her her privacy [see HIPPA] and to deny her the right to determine her own fate is stupidity. When women do not have the intergrity of their bodies that men have, then what is next? Forced blood donations, forced kidney donations, forced bone marrow donations and how about repeal of the rape laws? Since when is any citizen has to do anything for another? Afterall, if a women has no control over reproduction and who gets to use her body without her expressed consent, then how can rape be illegal? By the way, all this prolife crap is just an excuse to mistreat vulnerable women of little economic means and to discriminate based on gender. Can you just imagine any male citizen being forced to allow another being to use his body without his consent?
Conscription was ended in the 1970’s and now we have an all volunteer military. How about keeping that notion in place? If men can’t be conscripted to fight for our country, then why should women be conscripted to have children they do not want [especially if an act of violence is involved opr their health and wellfare is a risk?]
So who care about the prolifers and their Senatorial pick – I certainly do not. Just another anti-woman jack ass to deal with. Hopefully the citizens of California will see through this smoke screen and pick a respectful candidate who sees women as worthy of trust and respect in all personal matters such as reproduction and healthcare.
balconesfault // Apr 28, 2010 at 6:08 pm
Ahh – Oresete Brownson!
But from the point of view of morals, or tried by a rigidly ethical standard, such scientists as Darwin, Sir Charles Lyell, Sir John Lubbock, Taine, Buchner, Professor Huxley, Herbert Spencer, and others of the same genus, who publish opinions, theories, hypotheses, which are at best only plausible conjectures under the imposing name of science, and which unsettle men’s minds, bewilder the half-learned, mislead the ignorant, undermine the very bases of society, and assail the whole moral order of the universe, are fearfully guilty, and a thousand times more dangerous to society and greater criminals even than your most noted thieves, robbers, burglars, swindlers, murderers, or midnight assassins. Instead of being held in honor, feted, and lauded as the great men of their age and country, and held up as the benefactors of their race, they richly deserve that public opinion should brand them with infamy as the enemies of God and man, of religion and society, of truth and justice, of science and civilization.
…
We condemn them, because the truth condemns them; because, instead of shedding light on the glorious works of the Creator, they shed darkness over them, and obscure their fair face with the thick smoke that ascends at their bidding from the bottomless pit of their ignorance and presumption. Their science is an illusion with which Satan mocks them, deludes and destroys souls for whom Christ has died, and it comes under the head of the endless “genealogies” and “vain philosophy,” against which St. Paul so solemnly warns us. It is high time that they be stripped of their prestige, and be treated with the contempt they deserve for their impudent pretension, and be held in the horror which all men should feel for the enemies of truth, and whose labors tend only to the extinction of civilization, the abasement of intelligence, to fix the affections on the on the earth, to blunt the sense of moral obligation, and to make society what we see it every day becoming. They are Satan’s most efficient ministers.
Rabiner // Apr 28, 2010 at 6:19 pm
where did you get that schpeal from Balconesfault?
From a personal perspective, voters who are one issue voters are the laziest of all voters and this author specifically states they are a one issue voter unless both candidates agree on that one issue.
joemarier // Apr 28, 2010 at 10:33 pm
That would be from Brownson’s Quarterly Review, the year of 1873, from his review of The Descent of Man. I wish I could write that well when I’m wrong.
Carney // Apr 29, 2010 at 11:06 am
Rockerbabe, you completely ignored and refused to engage with the points and ideals of pro-lifers. Disagree with pro-lifers if you want, but show some mental effort in understanding our position, and you might actually persuade some of us, or at least make us re-think. Instead you just bashed straw men, which is self-indulgent and lazy, and most of all ineffective in advancing the cause you believe in.
Nowhere in your post did you address the issue of the unborn human being and what if any claim it has on our conscience and our law. Instead you sweepingly ignored it, as if Feminists for Life are motivated solely by a bitterly misogynistic desire to control women.
What is your view of the unborn? Is an unborn child a human being? If not, what species does it belong to? If so, how can it be acceptable to deliberately target him specifically and individually for a violent death?
Or is an unborn child somehow sub-human? Should it deserve some rights, like a farm animal or dog, but not be given the full respect a human is due?
Or is an abortion no different than a tonsillectomy? Is an unborn human being, right until the instant before birth, and perhaps while still in the process of moving through the birth canal, a mere clump of cells with no rights? Can he be killed arbitrarily and with utter impunity, for the most frivolous of whims? Does he at least deserve protection from pain? Should his remains be treated with respect and dignity, or simply discarded with medical waste, like a cancerous tumor, in the dumpster or incinerator?
balconesfault // Apr 29, 2010 at 11:47 am
Nowhere in your post did you address the issue of the unborn human being and what if any claim it has on our conscience and our law.
What claim the unborn have on our conscience is a matter of personal conscience. It should be noted that every thing which becomes part of our law is subject to a balancing of interests – in this case, the interest of a bunch of cells with a certain DNA blueprint versus the interest of a woman who must for some period of time carry this bunch of cells around (and restrict her lifestyle in a way to protect the health of this bunch of cells) as her body goes through significant changes in order to accommodate its growth.
What is your view of the unborn? Is an unborn child a human being? If not, what species does it belong to?
The fetus is a member of the species Homo sapiens … just as most egg are a member of the species Gallus gallus. It is left to the individual to decide if breaking an egg is the same as breaking a chicken.
Or is an unborn child somehow sub-human?
Define “sub-human”.
Should it deserve some rights, like a farm animal or dog, but not be given the full respect a human is due?
Given that the fetus is wholly dependent on its host mother, I am unwilling to strip rights from the host in order to bestow them upon the fetus. This is akin to arguing that a visitor to a residence does not remove property rights from the owner of the residence – if you ask a visitor to leave, and they will not, do you believe you should not have the right to have them forcibly removed?
Or is an abortion no different than a tonsillectomy?
This is a question that depends on one’s personal morality. For example, to a Christian Scientist, a tonsillectomy is an abomination.
Is an unborn human being, right until the instant before birth, and perhaps while still in the process of moving through the birth canal, a mere clump of cells with no rights?
I would argue that the state has a right to bestow rights on the clump of cells at the point where the state is fully ready to take responsibility of the clump from the mother. I would have absolutely no problem with a law that would demand that any woman who goes to a doctor for an abortion would instead undergo an induced delivery (in the absence of severe complications that would endanger her health), the state paying for the procedure and thereupon taking full charge of the baby which is delivered.
Should his remains be treated with respect and dignity, or simply discarded with medical waste, like a cancerous tumor, in the dumpster or incinerator?
From a moral perspective, I would have no problem with a law that would require the physician performing an abortion to turn remains over to the state. From a taxpayer perspective it would bother the crap out of me.
Rockerbabe // Apr 29, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Carney:
No I didn’t miss anything! I just didn’t give you the answer you apparently expected.
The “needs of the unborn are the perview of the woman involved and her significant others” as they are the ones who will deal with the aftermath of a pregnancy. OMG, let’s not do the welfare thing, shall we? The anti-woman crowd does not care about women or their needs and certainly cares little once a pregnancy has been delivered. We have almost a half a million kids in foster and institutional care; they could use parents, but most adults only want “perfect” babies and not kids who are older and may have some issues.
The unborn are not recognized in law for the most part; at least not until abortion became legal in the US.
Why, well, most abortion laws were designed to prevent women from having abortion because the danger to the woman at the time. But, that didn’t stop women from having abortions; they just died or were badly injured; I suspect that the anti-woman crowd doesn’t care about that either due to their gross denial. The desire to reclaim one’s life and direction in life is a powerful force and one that so many refuse to acknowledge when it comes to women.
There are lots of anti-women folks out there and some of them are female. Their pov is that women are the bearers of life and should just settle for whatever happens to them. I know about these women; my mother is one of them. And, she like a lot of women, looks down on women who are not married or who have been raped, etc. Her attitude is not of accepting other woman and their goals; she only has one and it doesn’t happen to be any of the ones I am interested in pursuing.
Being unborn is just that; being unborn. The woman involved is the one who gets to make the decisions about her pregnancy. Not you, not me, not the church, not the government and not any other outside influence. Women are capable to making these decisions on their own and I for one, trust them to do so. If I want my decisions on all the other areas of healthcare respected, then I have to respect the women making these decisions regarding reproduction. The unborn get their rights when they become born and are a separate and destinct person apart from their mothers. A few long term stats:
- about 15-18% of all pregnancies end in either miscarriage or stillbirth.
-50% of all conceptions never make it to the implantation stage, thus the time when a pregnancy begins.
There is nowhere in the constitution that anyone, and that includes you, must provide physiological or metabolic support to another being, born or unborn; especially if against their will. There has been a number of court cases where patients have tried to force family members to given blood and “donate” kidneys, etc, but were rebuffed by the court. Body integrity is body integrity and women have that right also. No one should be forced use their body to service another for any reason other than their own.
You place so much emphasis on the unborn, but fail to see the woman involved as a separate and distinct being in her own right. That is the case for many of the anti-woman groups. Women are just a means to an end in their eyes. A pregnant woman’s life means little to them; her disablement means little to them; her life’s direction means little to them. A pregnancy resulting from an act of violance, means little to them. HER life means little to them. She is given no credence, no standing in their eyes and I for one, am sick and tired of being so discounted.
I vote, I pay taxes, I work, I breathe and I am a citizen in this country. I EXPECT the same rights as the male citizens and no male citizen would ever stand for being “made” to service another being without his consent.
We don’t need pregnancy police in this country. What we need is respect for each already born individual of the female persuasion. Pregnancy is not a matter for the government; that would be government intrusion that is onerous. Morals, I leave to the already born to make those decisions for themselves.
Carney // Apr 29, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Rockerbabe, as I anticipated, you ignored my questions and posted a completely irrelevant rant. Answer the questions.
Rockerbabe // Apr 29, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Carney:
While I do not pretend to understand balconsfault responses to most things; at times this person does make some sense to me. I wonder if he breathes while the posts are being made as his sentences seem to run on. But, the his/her responses to your questions could very well be mine, with one exception. No woman should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term that she does not want to carry.
Rabiner // Apr 29, 2010 at 4:19 pm
You can legislate to protect a fetus so long as that fetus is viable. If it is not viable, restricting a woman’s ability to get a legal procedure (abortion) is wrong. What’s happening in Oklahoma is some of the most extreme government legislation I’ve read about in a long time.
Carney // Apr 29, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Rockerbabe, I will, however, do you the courtesy you didn’t do me, and respond directly to your points, or at least many of them.
Yes, there is undoubtedly a strong if not dominant portion of the pro-life movement that is anti-feminist, socially conservative, and favors a default setting (if not an exclusive one) for women being in traditionally feminine roles, especially homemaking wife and mother. I understand this culture and its values are irritating to you.
However, the case for the humanity (or lack thereof) of the unborn human being, and the attendant moral and legal obligation we have to protect it, can and should be considered separately from that.
Even presuming that such conservatives are an “anti-woman crowd”, you cannot credibly accuse Feminists for Life and other, similar, otherwise socially liberal groups of being that. That’s lazy, an easy out, and again simply refuses to grapple with the thorny issue – abortion itself, and even more specifically the humanity and personhood of the unborn.
Secondly, let’s say for the sake of argument that your cartoon image of pro-lifers as being utterly indifferent to the well-being of babies once they are born is true. So what? That does not in the slightest affect the reality, one way or another, of whether an unborn child is a human being who deserves legal protection from deliberate, targeted deadly violence.
Many abolitionists, while by mainstream contemporary standards being completely correct on the question of the morality of slavery, were also by those standards terribly wrong on racial issues overall, having sharply negative views of black Africans and their descendants, and intending to deport all the freed slaves to Africa or elsewhere as soon as possible after emancipation. Slaveholders, with some success, seized on this and accused abolitionists of being grossly irresponsible and inhumane, being indifferent to the well-being of the slaves, and so on — as an excuse for retaining slavery. See what conflating separate issues can do?
You are of course right that the Constitution nowhere mandates a pro-life public policy. However, it just as true that it nowhere mandates a “pro choice” public policy either! The Constitution is quite simply silent on the matter. While that might well be cited as a reason to oppose, on strict-constructionist, constitutional grounds, any federal restrictions on abortion, such grounds would also prevent any federal mandate, imposed by any branch of the federal government, of a “pro choice” policy on unwilling states.
You say that bans on abortion don’t stop women from having abortions, but of course they did, a lot of the time. Something being illegal, and penalized by the state, has a significant deterrent effect. If drugs and prostitution were legalized, does any rational person believe that drug use and prostitution would not go up substantially? If pollution were legal, does anyone think that it would not spike?
Your comparison of unborn babies to kidneys and blood is an indirect answer to my question. Let’s make it explicit. You totally deny that an unborn baby should have any higher status in our culture and law than a kidney? The mere fact of being helpless and residing within his mother makes him non-human and his death of no moral consequence?
What is the magical difference between a baby 5 minutes before birth and 5 minutes after that confers humanity on him? Being surrounded by maternal tissue? Relying on an umbilical cord? Can you not see how weak your position is?
And how is anyone’s humanity determined by others, especially others who may want to kill them, OK? A baby who is wanted is a human being, but an unborn baby who is unwanted is not human? This is a profoundly unserious, frivolous position. It deserves no respect.
You talk about how some unborn die of natural causes. Irrelevant. Born children die sometimes too, but nobody says it’s OK to shoot your toddler.
As for being required to serve others, men pay taxes (much of which are redistributive), comply with regulations, and are subject to the draft. If necessary, the government can, morally and legally, take a man from his home, order him to kill others, even order him to die, knowing that that order will kill him, for example to cover the retreat of another unit. In general, men accept this as a matter of course, although some may disagree about individual wars and some may be cowards or pacifists.
Carney // Apr 29, 2010 at 5:00 pm
OK Rockerbabe, as I was writing my last response, I did not refresh the page and did not see that you posted some clarifications.
You now propose viability as the standard for human status. Really? First of all, viability advances forward in weeks as you go back in the years and decades, and it will continue to retreat as time and technology march forward (unless we become a bankrupt, Third World country). A 24 week old is probably viable today, although that would not have been the case in 1970 or 1940. So 24 week olds are human now, but weren’t human then?
Also, there’s no bright line for viability. It’s a numbers game. At certain week level, a certain percentage of babies survive. That percentage climbs as the week level gets bigger. So is a 22 week old viable (20-35% chance?)
balconesfault // Apr 29, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Rockerbabe: No woman should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term that she does not want to carry.
I think we’re on the same page here. My response would be “no woman should be forced to carry a pregnancy any longer than she wishes to”.
Thus, if at 10 weeks she decides to get an abortion, she should be permitted to get an abortion.
If at 24 weeks she decides she wants an abortion – and the state believes that there is a compelling reason to prevent her from doing so – I believe that the state should offer her a choice:
a) go for a state-paid induced pregnancy, with the state taking full responsibility for the ICU care of the baby after delivery, and the mother relinquishing any right to the baby
b) continue to carry the child to natural childbirth with the state paying her a stipend that she accepts as adequate compensation for the use of her body
IMO, (b) is optional – there are a lot of reasons why the state would not want to establish a system of paying women to carry a fetus around, because that would clearly incentivize many women to get pregnant and then declare their intention to abort simply to take advantage of this system.
In which case the only option left to the state would be (a).
Now, I can see where some women might even object to the idea of the state inducing delivery of a baby with her DNA – but in my mind if the state is ready and able to take full care of the delivery and the resulting baby her rights are at that point trumped by the rights of the fetus to survive as a ward of the state.
balconesfault // Apr 29, 2010 at 5:39 pm
I note that Carney avoids touching upon my responses like the devil avoids a church.
It’s hard being a strident property rights/small government advocate and favoring anti-abortion legislation, but some people are talented!
I will respond directly to this, however:
If necessary, the government can, morally and legally, take a man from his home, order him to kill others,
No – the state cannot morally (or legally) order a man to kill others if killing others goes against his own personal moral conscience.
The state can only order a man to kill who already believes that he can morally kill another human being (including for self-defense).
I suspect that the idea of someone being willing to die themselves rather than kill someone else is wholly alien to Carney, so this omission is not a surprise.
Rockerbabe // Apr 29, 2010 at 7:15 pm
Carney:
NO, traditional values are not irritating to me; my mother was a traditional woman in so many senses. What I do not like is the notion that traditional roles are the only roles women can occupy and the only ones so many accept with respect.
No one has ever said the unborn is not human; the unborn, however do not have “hold” over the born in most cases. The pregnant women is the holder of her own body and has say about her body’s integrity and who or what get to use that body.
The thorny issue – abortion itself, has already been decided. The unborn do not get to have a say over the already born woman with rights to her own body. That is perverse.
Brilliant, bring children into the world forcibly and then not provide for them! How perverse; demand that a woman carry a pregnancy to term against her will, the child then gets to what, starve to death, die of untreated medical issues, grown up emotionally scarred – I do believe we already have those situations occuring elswwhere in the world. Trgeted deadly violence, did you say? Well, how about protecting women from that violence? Did you know that fully 1/3 of all women will be raped at least once in their lives? I was stunned to hear that from a FBI report in our local paper.
Slavery is the intentional denial of a person’s right to make their own decisions; look up the definition in Webster. It applies to women with unintended pregnancies also.
“You are of course right that the Constitution nowhere mandates a pro-life public policy. However, it just as true that it nowhere mandates a “pro choice” public policy either”
The constitution guarantees every citizen their rights. We have seen what happens when states refuse to respect those rights. Denial of voting right, denial of property rights, denial of civil rights, denial of the right to speak, denial of freedom from religion [ie kids forced to listen to prayers in school], denial of women and minorities the right to an educations, etc., etc. A woman’s right to make her own choices about a pregnancy/healthcare, as a citizen of the USA, should not be abridged because some back a$$wards state legislature has decided that females are 3rd class citizens is just plain short-sighted and stupid.
Making abortion illegal doesn’t stop abortion; it drives it into the “back alley” and many women become mained or died. And, there will always be some states that do respect women and will offer legal abortions to all who come for that procedure. NY and CA come to mind. At one time, here in Atlanta, there was an OBGYN ward at Grady Hospital that did nothing but care for women who had illegal abortions. The place was full all the time! Drugs are controlled substances in this country; we have a war on drugs. We now have more illegal drugs available anytime a person wants them. What we do not need is a pregnancy police hounding women.
You do not get to make decisions about my body any more than I get to make decisions about your body. Your morals are your own and my morals are my own. Neither is subject to the other person’s approval.
“What is the magical difference between a baby 5 minutes before birth and 5 minutes after that confers humanity on him? Being surrounded by maternal tissue? Relying on an umbilical cord? Can you not see how weak your position is” I refer you to the above statement.
I do believe we are now conducting war on two fronts and all of the military is now volunteer and will be for the forseeable future. Conscription is about as popular as paying taxes for the programs so many Americans want. Conscripting women to carry pregnancies against their will is a denial of THEIR human rights. I value women over fetus and I respect a person’s decision to make their own choices in life. I will even respect you for making your own choices. . .something I suspect, you would not render to me.
Rockerbabe // Apr 29, 2010 at 7:23 pm
balconesfault:
Thank you. Nothing like trying to deal with a person who uses circular notions of logic. They just don’t get any pov other than their own. More emotional than clear headed logic; it is as if everyone has to think and act and believe as they do without regard to the different paths we all take in life.
The military has no interest in forcing anyone to kill another person; lots of people learn to kill and be warriors all the time. Those who are found to be unsuited are often discharged.
balconesfault // Apr 29, 2010 at 8:15 pm
I do believe we are now conducting war on two fronts and all of the military is now volunteer and will be for the forseeable future. Conscription is about as popular as paying taxes for the programs so many Americans want. Conscripting women to carry pregnancies against their will is a denial of THEIR human rights. I value women over fetus and I respect a person’s decision to make their own choices in life. I will even respect you for making your own choices. . .something I suspect, you would not render to me.
Rockerbabe, I will try to put myself into the head of an intellectually consistent anti-abortionist here, just for discussion purposes.
First, while we currently have an all-volunteer army, that is certainly not a guarantee going forward. Our youth are in fact required to register for the draft, indicating that society is keeping the draft in a “lock and loaded” position to use whenever we have a threat great enough to justify it’s renewal.
What is that threat? I’m pretty sure that most would define that as an existential threat to the US – a massing threat which if we did not summon the sufficient resources to counteract could at some point destroy the US.
Of course, this has evolved over time – in WW I there was clearly no existential threat to the US had the Germans been allowed to win over France and Great Britain.
In WW II, while the only attack on the US was on our naval forces in Hawaii, there was no great leap of faith needed to conclude that America was not safe from attack by the Axis, and that failure to stop the demonstrably expansionist Germans and Japanese would eventually lead to the US having to defend ourselves from them (that and the fact that the Japanese and then Germans declared war against us).
During the Cold War, the US believed that Soviet determination to export communist revolution throughout the world – and it was their stated policy to do so – would someday lead to the US being surrounded by Communist countries dedicated to destroying our capitalist economy. I certainly disagree with some of our actions during the Cold War, but we were responding to at least a perceived, perhaps true threat that we abandoned our allies around the world that the Soviet/Sino axis would eventually pose a direct military threat to our soil.
Again, in all cases we’ve been willing to use conscription as an essential means of defending the nation from a threat of force against us.
Now … you argue that anti-abortion law basically conscripts a woman’s body. Carney essentially agrees when he brought up the draft. But Carney is basing this conscription not on protecting the nation from an external threat, but on protecting the fetus from the will of the mother.
This position can be considered intellectually consistent with the idea of conscription as a means of protecting the nation if you view abortion as an evil sufficient to pose an existential threat to the US.
Now, perhaps the most rationalistic way of approaching this would be to argue that abortion is a threat to our being able to maintain a population large enough to defend ourselves. This however is patently ignorant. We’re having no problem growing in population by leaps and bounds, so much so that some are wanting to deny citizenship to certain children born in the US.
The next tier of argument is that permitting abortion on demand undermines the morality of the nation, and that the resulting degradation of our national conscience is a step off a cliff that will inevitably lead to our decline and collapse as a nation.
The supernatural argument is that some Deity is appalled by the number of abortions that take place in our country, and will destroy us (or permit us to be destroyed) in some form of Old Testament retribution for our allowing the procedure to be legal.
The problem for the anti-abortionist is that the last two are both rooted in theology. Personally I have no problem with the morality of abortion, and believe the decision to bestow “personhood” on the fetus as long as it is wholly dependent on its mother to be a wholly religious argument. And clearly the last is simply theology.
And we have this clause in the Constitution that bars the state establishing a religion. Yet giving rights to the fetus over the rights of the mother can only be justified on religious grounds.
But if I am a committed theocrat, I would conclude that the Bill of Rights is flawed in the establishment clause, and would still support a ban on abortion, because I truly would believe that it will lead to the destruction of America.
Rockerbabe // Apr 29, 2010 at 9:18 pm
balconesfault:
Your arguments are clear and even I understood them. I think you have started to breathe as you compose your post or maybe, I just think you have.
I will not argue your comments. Your points are well made and taken. I understand a good argument when I see or hear one, but that does not change my thinking on the matter of women’s rights.
We as a nation cannot claim to have equal citizenship for all and a bill of rights for citizens and sign on to all sorts of treaties and charters for international rights, then tell the women of this country or any other country that they have no rights to their bodies, no privacy with regard to healthcare decisions, no ability to choose their destiny [as the men often claim to do and plan to do]. I think there are limits to government on such a personal level or maybe we just think we are a “free” society. Refusing to reproduce is not a crime; we have over a million live births in this country and this year’s census will show the level of population growth.
Thank you for your comments and not calling me names.
Rockerbabe // Apr 29, 2010 at 9:24 pm
FYI:
Sigrid Frye-Revere of the Cato Institute writes:
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/11/16/what-about-fetal-rights/
BoolaBoola // Apr 29, 2010 at 10:13 pm
Right-to-lifers owe us blood for eight terrorist murders.
Someone should kill eight famous right-to-lifers.
It wouldn’t be murder; it would be JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE.
Go Dog Go! // Apr 30, 2010 at 5:37 am
This post is nothing but political mast-ur/bat.ion. Being pro-life or not is practically irrelevant in the California Governorship. Sure, there’s a potential nominal budget for pro-life education and other programs but, as conservatives (and with CA’s fiscal mess) don’t we want and need all of those cut?
This “enough or not” argument just feeds the litmus test problem with the Republican party which has led to its marginalization. Until social conservatives can back off (as if) or at least stop feeding the measuring stick mentality, this party will continue to operate at the margins. Playing with ourselves in posts like the one above.
Carney // Apr 30, 2010 at 9:50 am
Rockerbabe, an unborn baby has its own body. Just because it lives inside its mother out of necessity doesn’t make it part of its mothers body as if it were a kidney. Saying otherwise is specious, denying obvious reality to provide a flimsy “justification” for abortion.
Destroying a baby isn’t making a decision about your own body, it’s destroying another human being, deliberately. What’s so monstrous, disgusting, and contemptible about abortion is that it is such a blatant and gross violation of the healthy and normal feeling that any mother of any species would have for its own offspring. An unborn baby is helpless, innocent, and innately trusting. It has no defense mechanisms – it is made to simply assume its own mother is its greatest defender.
Sucking it out of the womb to be left to die on a tray, injecting the womb with saline as it thrashes in helpless agony, sawing it into chunks as blood begins to pour – that is abortion. Not abstractions about “choice” and citizenship and equality.
balconesfault // Apr 30, 2010 at 12:10 pm
What’s so monstrous, disgusting, and contemptible about abortion is that it is such a blatant and gross violation of the healthy and normal feeling that any mother of any species would have for its own offspring.
Ummm … Giant Pandas may bear litters of 1-3 cubs, but the mother will only raise one – abandoning the others. Galapagos Shark mothers will pretty much eat her own children if she comes across them. Black Bears, meanwhile, will also have litters of 1-3 … but the mothers pretty much consider one too much trouble to deal with on its own, and will just abandon a cub if its an only child and wait until the following season to see if she produces a larger brood. If the infant of a Langur monkey is injured the mother may abandon it … or simply kill it.
These are the actions of species towards their actual newborn offspring. Seems like there are some pretty crappy human mothers as well.
Whether a woman feels maternal towards a growing bunch of cells in her body is something within her.
Meanwhile, I find your characterization of an “unborn baby” as “trusting” to be wholly farcical. At best, that is a purely theological/spiritual statement.
Rabiner // Apr 30, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Carney:
I’m curious since you’re the most pro-life person in this discussion. How pro-life are you? Do you agree with the Oklahoma laws just passed? or the Florida that the legislature just passed?
If you were wondering what these laws were let me break them down:
Florida:
A woman who wants to get an abortion must have an ultrasound and view the pictures while a doctor explains what the woman is seeing. The woman must pay for the ultrasound.
Oklahoma:
1) A woman who wants to get an abortion must have an ultrasound and view the pictures while a doctor explains what the woman is seeing. If it would produce better pictures, the ultrasound must be a vaginal ultrasound.
2) prohibits pregnant women from seeking damages if physicians withhold information or provide inaccurate information about their pregnancy.
These 2 are going to be voted on soon and are expected to pass
3) One would force women to fill out a lengthy questionnaire about their reasons for seeking an abortion; statistics based on the answers would then be posted online.
4) The other restricts insurance coverage for the procedures. Insurance options in the exchanges that will become developed from the Health Care Reform bill cannot cover abortion if offered in Oklahoma, thus restricting access.