So I guess you were opposed to civil rights legislation…the abolition of slavery…restrictions on child labor…etc…?
These were all issues where there was a “major split” in this country…and yet society (by way of governmental actions) proscribed certain behavior, and banned other behaviors.
If this is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, this is a new development to me. Last time I checked the same webpage myself, libertarianism was then defined as being free to act as one chooses, so long as nobody gets hurt. Actually, I think the exact words included language that prohibited enslaving someone or killing or injuring them. I was a foe of libertarianism from then on, believing it was a twisted contradiction to blatatly allow the slow development of a feudal hierarchy and even suggesting the valid abuse of people up to limits that would prevent destroying them as property. Phew! I applaud the re-awareness that equality is an ideal, and I’m not talking about equal money, I’m talking about things money can’t buy. Maybe I can be a libertarian too, with my old fashioned assumptions that freedom applies to everyone or no one at all.
no, i’m for all those things. i don’t think those laws were passed until there was a significant majority supporting them. if i’m wrong, educate me with a link to some unbiased stats.
Well I’m not sure why it’s up to ME to refute claims by you (that there was a “significant” majority of the population supporting these laws before they were passed) that you didn’t bother to substantiate…but what the hell I’ll give it a shot
http://americanhistory.about.com/homework/americanhistory/library/weekly/aa061798.htm
At the very least, your statement seems to indicate that you believe in what is commonly referred to as “tyrrany of the majority” I don’t think that that is a wise thing.
For example…
Do you think that creationism should be taught (along with evolution) in public schools? The majority of Americans (68%) http://www.gallup.com/Poll/releases/pr010214c.asp
certainly do…
Sorry, but just having a majority like something doesn’t make it any more “right” in the moral sense or even, in a Constitutional Republic (such as we have here in the USA), in the legislative sense.
Besides, many of the things you talk about becamse laws in spite of considerable support against them. I suggest you look into the state of Alabama, for example, as a state that didn’t really grasp the idea of unsegragated schools and it took the National Guard to get them to even pretend to comply with the new national laws.
Of course, making abortion legal for me is not about the whims of a public (though more people support legal abortions in some capacity than not by far)…
I think abortion should be legal because I feel that the rights of a person breathing on her own and undeniably possessing a conscience, functioning higher brain powers and a real life that doesn’t need to be debated on has more rights than something the size of a blood clot that, without her tacit approval (and the desire to change her life around for at the least nine months, for the next 18 years after that in most cases, and her entire life beyond that if she is like a person who I would actually WANT to see breeding) cannot become a real life with any viability.
I, like most pro-choicers, am not a big fan of abortion, but the way people argue against it either comes from an issue of personal morality, and I don’t think that we should legislate personal morality, or it is a hypocrisy which gives this blood clot as much rights as an adult, when these people are usually not even prepared to give more rights to a 16-year old. Some even want to give the blood clot MORE rights than the breathing, thinking human without which the blood clot can’t become a thinking, breathing human, in that even if the fetus might be a danger to the woman, that removing it like the cancer it might have become is also wrong.
I see the two extremes here as:
No abortions means that a scared teenager might die in a botched back-room abortion, bleeding and scared on the floor of some dirty hotel.
Legalized abortions on demand means that a woman might go and use abortions as a form of birth control, and she might do this quite a few times, and might even do so later in term.
I find both of these cases repugnant, however, in one case, if I knew the person, I would be at a funeral and nobody would deny it was a “real” life lost.
In the other case, I would worry about how this person lived her life, but I would never feel as if she “killed” anyone, certainly not anyone who had rights that superceded hers. So she abused her rights… All rights are liable to be abused. That doesn’t mean we take them away, because if we do, we have person number one whose right was taken away and she is unquestionably a life snuffed out.
As such, I take what I view the lesser of two evils here.
Your milage may vary, but to me, there is no other way to look at it logically except that some people feel that the rights of an embryo have exactly as many rights as the rights of a breathing and thinking human. They are certainly entitled to feel this way, but they will never get me to agree with them.
Yer pal,
Satan
technically, the emancipation proclamation didn’t really free anyone, but by the time the 13th amendment was passed, i believe the majority of the country approved of it. that part of the union that wasn’t the former confederacy was the vast majority of the country.
sure, why not? knowledge makes for a more productive debate.
it doesn’t have to make it right. it simply makes sense to convince the majority to take your side before you just dictate your whims. if the majority in this country wanted to ban abortion then it would make sense for abortion to be banned. but they don’t, and they’re not swayed by debates like ‘should a fetus have rights’ or ‘when does life begin’.
that’s one state in the whole country. i believe most people in the country supported civil rights laws as they were written when they were passed.
OK…fine…I’d like to see a cite for the notion that a “SIGNIFICANT MAJORITY” (that was your earlier litmus test) of Americans (that would be ALL Americans) supported passage of the 13th Amendment when it was proposed January 31st, 1865.
While you’re at it…I’d like a cite to support your claim that " I believe most people in the country supported civil rights laws as they were written when they were passed."
I hope you consider Gallup to be “un biased”
http://gallup.com/poll/Releases/pr991206.asp
As the site points…by the time the legislation actually passed, there was a significant majority (61%) who approved it. At the beginning of the process however, this was not the case…indeed, one might surmise that the shift in opinion came as a RESULT of the legislation, not vice versa
Even WITH the passage of the law…I think it’s quite a stretch to say that there was a “significant majority” in favor of what the law really stated…
"And by 1965, the idea that the federal government was doing too much for the blacks in this country and moving too fast had plurality support over the idea that the federal government was not doing enough or moving too slow:
Generally speaking, do you, yourself, feel that the federal government in Washington is not doing enough for the Negro or is doing too much for the Negro?
"Now, how about the new Civil Rights Law passed last year guaranteeing Negro voting rights and the right of Negroes to be served in public places such as restaurants, hotels, and theaters. Would you say the federal government was moving too fast to enforce this new law, or not fast enough?
"By October 1964, when polls were showing that about six out of ten Americans supported the new civil rights legislation, almost the same percentage – 57% – said that the pace of implementation of integration was too fast:
On the whole, do you think that racial integration of Negroes in this country is going ahead too fast or not fast enough?
As pointed out here…legislators did not wait until a “significant majority” of the people were in favor of the Civil Rights Act before pushing for enactment. Although correlation does not equal causality, I don’t think I’d be going too far out on a limb to suggest that the law was ITSELF a catalyst for change in attitudes towards civil rights.
this passage from your link states that the public supported the laws but there were ‘mixed feelings’ that they were being implemented too fast:
Despite the generally positive reaction to the new civil rights legislation, Gallup polling during the period of the civil rights movement captured mixed feelings among the American public about the speed with which integration and civil rights legislation should be implemented.
it’s debatable whether the moral issue at stake was the support for civil rights itself or the speed with which specific laws were passed, and we’re already getting way off course here. i’ll tell you what - to keep this debate on track, i’ll say that if i was around when civil rights laws or the 13th amendment was passed, i’d have been against them on the grounds that society was forcing the principles of one significant group onto another significant group. now i’m consistent when i say that one group’s views regarding abortion shouldn’t be forced on another.
or speed with which they were enforced after they were passed. i think i read that quote wrong.
So you were not serious when you said…=>
no, i’m for all those things."
:rolleyes:
School isn’t a fucking debate. School is education. And education is about learning FACTS, not dogma, superstition, or anything else which does not have something factual behind it.
What say we start talking about witch doctors in medical school while you’re at it? After all, that would make a good debate. ::rolleyes::
[quote]
**
You don’t know much about the way this country works. Here’s a hint: It’s a Constitutional Republic. The only whims which are dictated all have to meet certain degrees of fairness with regard to the rights of all, not just the majority.
**
“If the majority in this country wanted blacks to be treated as second class citizens, that it would make sense for blacks to be second class citizens.”
What about “the majority cannot infringe upon a majority” is hard for you to understand?
No, they have their own criteria. One that doesn’t make a hell of a lot of logical sense to me, but nobody said that being logical was necessary in laws either: Alcohol being legal while marijuana is not comes to mind.
So what? School systems have the autonomy within a state to make a lot of policies for them alone. A vast majority of Texans want to say a prayer at HS football games, and that is a rule that a school board can make. The only problem is that it is unconstitutional.
Besides, none of this fucking matters because the fact is that this country, as a Constitutional Republic, cannot make laws and do many things with federal or state finances (including on public ground) because the majority, no matter how persuasive it might be, cannot infringe upon the rights of a minority. Period.
There are many ways to say that abortion should be legal and you’d have a point.
This is not one of them.
Please either change your tact or start a new thread as to whether the majority always rules in the US if you think I am somehow mistaken, because that’s a whole other can of worms. One which, unlike the abortion debate, is easy to see the answer:
You’re wrong.
Yer pal,
Satan
To the OP and/or anyone else uninclined to read previous threads–
Please understand that some of us do not accept your initial premise that the abortion-rights controversy boils down to “is this fetus a living person or not”.
I hate that formulation. It sets up the pro-choice position as a “straw woman” that you can then attempt to knock down. (Although, as strawfolk go, the hypothetical position that the embryo or fetus is NOT a living person is remarkably adept at keeping its feet as you may have discovered).
But to heck with that. I’ll give you whatever field advantage you think you get from winning that particular argument, from the outset. I will stipulate (and have, in prior threads on this topic) that the fertilized ovum is both alive and human and then declare that pregnant women should have the unmitigated right to obtain an abortion if they deem it necessary to have one.
Not all killing is murder, and in my political and not particularly humble opinion the pregnant person is the one best situated to make that call.
Women who choose to abort should receive flowers. It ain’t easy.
no, i was serious, but the statement was leading into a tangential debate that could have gone on and on. i’d like to get this thread back on track with the op and it’s very possible that i would not have supported that legislation at the time it was passed.
rolleyes? am i really that ridiculous?
quitcher cussin’, boy.
yeah, i heard you the first time - “constitutional republic”. you were just waitin’ to spring that on the next yokel who suggested america was a democracy, weren’t you. i know how this country works. doesn’t mean i can’t have my opinion on how it should be, does it?
Not in this debate on abortion. More specifically, not if you are trying to argue that abortion should be legal FOR THAT VERY REASON!
If you have an issue with a Constitutional Republic, please start another thread to depate the merits of a true democracy and how it shits all over what we got now.
I warn you, I’ll come up with the caveat that such a thing would be a tyrany of the majority and point out that in such a govermment, if two people thought it was dandy to rape the third, the rape of that person would be legal, so do so at your own peril.
However, in the context of an abortion debate, saying “majority rules” is WRONG because majority does NOT rule. Not in this country.
Hell, I as well am in favor of abortion rights, and I can shoot a hole in your thesis. What about the folks who do think that a fetus has as many civil rights as a real person, huh?
I am reasonably sure there’s a fancy latin word to describe this fallacy, but the fact is that you are now debating something which is not the original topic or order, and that’s the very definition of a fallacy.
And yes, this whole tangent is the very definition of the :rolleyes: smilie.
Yer pal,
Satan
Sorry, you are (partially) correct, Drain Bead. I overestimated. I hope you’ll excuse me, my neonatology and OB medical school rotations are sometime in the future.
At 24 weeks, this paper quotes a 59% total survival with a 49% survival without birth defects. I overestimated.
It is indeed a hijack however – I took more conservative numbers than I needed to in order to support my point. At least I hope.
Just to clarify one point further –
The so called “morning after pill”, which you can take the day after the condom broke, is just basically 2 of your OCDs for 2 days IIRC function to prevent implantation. RU-486 (the “abortion pill”) basically uses the same steroid axis to induce a shedding of the endometrium, which discards a small implanted fetus as well.
Back to the regularly scheduled debate.
From a purely medical ethics based approach, I think that the argument of defining the a fetus as a human being is indeed at the core of the argument.
The primary goal in medicine is to offer treatment to all who need it, except in a very limited set of circumstances. This set of circumstances (whether it be refusing treatment or right to die) depends on the treated person (or his durable power of attorney) being of sound mind and refusing intervention. This is the only time that medicine will not intervene.
This only applies to people of legal age (although for some diseases like cystic fibrosis, it is extended to mature teenagers near legal age). For children, it does not depend on the parents at all. For instance, Jehovah’s Witnesses are free to refuse blood products but they cannot mandate such on their children. If a Jehovah’s Witness child comes into the ER and needs a transfusion, he will be made a ward of the state while the transfusion is administered, regardless of the views of the parent.
In medicine, we like to think that we don’t call the shots between when to intervene and when not to intervene. There are no cases[sup]*[/sup] where we will forcibly stop life support except if the patient is legally dead.
Thus, if a fetus is legally a human being, we are now venturing into a realm where IMHO medicine should not go. The process of childbirth becomes a rather meaningless transition medicolegally. If we can advocate abortion if the fetus is human, than there is really no line between this and infanticide.
I once heard of someone suing in some state with such a law (fetus is human) to be able to drink at 20 years and 3 months. If you really believe that the fetus is human, you should celebrate the first birthday 3 months antenatally.
IMHO this has no precedent in human society and is a very dangerous road to follow. Taking it to a logical extreme: Only 1 in 5 conceptuses implant – does this mean that we commit murder 4/5 months that a woman tries to get pregnant? How about conceptuses implanted in the fallopian tube (an ectopic pregnancy) – do these have as much right to live as their mother?
I hope this makes sense. I am sick and it is late.
[sup]*[/sup] – In Texas, there is a very rarely used law by which an anonymous ventilator dependent patient can have his code status determined by two non-associated physicians. This basically means that they can determine the level of intervention (from none to whole hog life support) without familial or patient consent. IMHO this is quite dangerous law and if doctors began to use it more commonly, it would probably be thrown out by a court.
Yes…the notion of switching a philosophical viewpoint (whether or not society/government should impose it’s will on the entire population) in mid thread just to seem “consistent” (your term) seems ridiculous.
And the notion of what role a government should play (if any) in such situations IS as much a part of the abortion debate as any of the other elements mentioned.
satan, you missed my point by about five miles. i think you were refering to this comment:
“if the majority in this country wanted to ban abortion then it would make sense for abortion to be banned. but they don’t, and they’re not swayed by debates like ‘should a fetus have rights’ or ‘when does life begin.’.”
the majority in this country could feasibly elect officials that could overturn current abortion laws. if abortion rights opponents could turn enough voters to their side, and as a result abortion was outlawed, it would make sense in the context of our society. that doesn’t mean i’d necessarily be for it, but i wouldn’t think there was some miscarriage of justice, the way i would if, f’rinstace, dubya signed a law outlawing abortion tomorrow. however, arguments about whether a fetus is human do not change the minds of enough pro-choicers to have that effect. it’s a waste of their time.
what about them? some of them shoot abortion doctors, some of them picket outside clinics, others simply engage in futile debate.
