That’s the American party system for ya; no dues, no membership cards, no mechanism for expulsion; if you say you’re a Pub/Dem, then you are one, and nobody can deny it; voting registration not required.
“Mindless pieces of tissue” and “person” are not mutually exclusive. You could describe any infant using the same terms. There’s nothing magical about being born that causes a “person” to suddenly exist. The infant 5 minutes after birth isn’t any less “mindless” than it was five minutes before birth.
I wish you would acknowledge that a pro-life stance is not necessarily about oppressing and humiliating women. It’s not completely unreasonable to view a fetus as a person, especially in the later stages of pregnancy. The “my opponents are evil people” stance doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) work.
Republican and anti abortion aren’t necessarily the same.
I support all of the things you listed, I have made large donations of time and money to Obama’s campaigns, and I haven’t voted for a Republican in over a decade, but I can still see an argument for treating a fetus as a person. It’s not an issue I care enough about to change my voting habits, but it makes me very uncomfortable to see people like you and Der Trihs demonize that position as if it necessarily indicates some kind of sadistic evil oppressive streak in the person who holds it. That kind of dismissive argument style doesn’t help. Calling reasonable people evil just pushes them away.
Yes they are. That’s why people who suffer brain death can be disassembled for their organs; they aren’t people any more.
First, any who have other motives are so powerless & small in number as to be irrelevant.You are just using a standard right wing rhetorical trick where you pretend it’s invalid to criticize a group unless they are all in 100% agreement - which conveniently means you can’t ever criticize them. And second, bending over backwards to pretend that its opponents aren’t evil no matter how horribly they act has led the American left to near extinction and the Democrats to near impotence. They keep trying to fight well meaning but misguided opponents who only exist in their head, while the vicious sadists, lunatics and psychopaths who actually populate the Right walk all over them. As Brainglutton said upthread, they are playing baseball on a battlefield.
If they hold that position, they aren’t “reasonable”. And it’s a definition of “person” that exists for the sole purpose of excusing the abuse and oppression of women. It isn’t supported by the facts and doesn’t fit in with the rest of our laws; it is tailor made for that purpose and that alone. It’s about as reasonable and well meaning as a definition of “human” that just happens to include “has pale skin”.
That’s not actually an exception: At the point where the fetus can feel pain, you’re long past the point where an ectopic pregnancy is possible. I suppose there might be some other conditions past that point where an abortion might be necessary due to risk to the mother’s life, but I’m not sure what they would be.
Der Trihs, what qualities make a late-term fetus a “mindless piece of tissue” which don’t also apply to a newborn? You are using the quote function to edit out the parts of the argument you find inconvenient. Stop it.
When is the abortion issue just going to go away, already?!
:rolleyes: A late term fetus is going to be aborted because it endangers the health of the mother, because it can’t survive, or because some third party is forcing it on the mother. It wouldn’t matter if it was a full fledged person with the mind of a 30 year old.
At what point does a fetus go from being a mindless piece of tissue to a person? All the rolleyes in the world wont stop me from insisting that you answer the question, since YOU decided to frame the discussion in those terms.
You are just trying to play “gotcha” with an irrelevancy; no doubt to justify a call for sadistic and repressive laws against the imaginary hordes of women having 8 month abortions.
That said; probably some time after birth. And since you will no doubt try to insinuate that I’m advocating infanticide, after birth the infant is no long dependent on the mother and there’s no birth trauma to be stopped, so killing the infant isn’t the same as abortion.
Never.
Whack-a-Mole, is hydrocephaly a threat to the mother?
And it makes me very uncomfortable to have my very personal reproductive decisions decided for in the name of someone else’s religion or morality. There’s nothing particularly reasonable about the pro-life movement in America. It is largely about demonizing the often difficult choices woman make and very little else. It is certainly not about providing the resources to actually help women birth and care for babies and children.
As a woman who went through two very difficult pregnancies and had to face some other extremely difficult reproductive choices, I am sick and fucking tired of having to care what the heck someone else who is not me thinks about my uterus.
If that offends you or turns you off well it greatly offends me that the Reps are unable to tell the difference between me and a fertilized egg. You are welcome to have your beliefs. You are most certainly not welcome to tell me or my daughters that we must abide by them. If you continue to believe you have that right you will be treated as someone I deservedly view as a direct threat to the well being of my family.
When the U.S. surrenders to the logical governance of Canada.
From your lips to God’s ear!
No, I’m not. I’m trying to convince you that the issue is more complicated and nuanced than “evil people want to hurt women any way they can!”
That’s a fair assessment. In either case, I’m sure we both agree that at the very least, newborns are entitled to legal protection from optional procedures that would end their healthy life. Now, is it such a stretch for you to imagine that some people would be motivated by something other than pure sadism to extend that same protection to a healthy fetus?
In my opinion, a viable, healthy fetus probably shouldn’t be aborted. Until the point of viability, I philosophically believe that the fetus is more a part of the mother’s body than an individual unto itself, and the mother shouldn’t be prevented from electing to have an abortion. Again, it’s not an issue I care enough about to change my voting habits. What’s annoying to me is that you consistently argue that there’s absolutely nothing reasonable about my opinion, and that I’m an evil person for having it. People who disagree with you ARE NOT NECESSARILY EVIL.
Oh, I agree with the latter point, but Der Trihs’s main thesis doesn’t follow from that. The purpose of such efforts, no doubt, is to burden and discourage abortions. But it doesn’t follow that the purpose of burdening and discouraging abortions is to oppress women. Rather, the obvious purpose is to protect fetuses. And, if we look at the anti-abortion (pro-life) sites, that’s what we see. A quick Google search turns up, for example, the National Right To Life Committee. the Pro-Life Action League and ProLife.com; see also Wikipedia. An honest debate sticks to the topic. Villifying the anti-abortion camp (now apparently a majority in the U.S., btw) is simply a way of trying to win the debate on the cheap.
I surrender! Taxes to Ottawa! Feds in red! Maple syrup on everything! Bring it on! (My town already has a kickass hockey team anyway!)
And God Save the Loon!