Good god. Look, I’m not going to be able to read you from one snarky post, and one follow up, hostile rebuttal.
Whatever, perhaps I came on strong with the idea that people are rationalizing away the humanness of a fertilized egg, and that they truly believe it’s just a clump of molecules no different than french toast. Fine. I can buy that. I still contend it’s human nature to do so, and may play a lot into the actions people take. My apologies all around to those here that firmly believe this and aren’t rationalizing. But I’ll give you this, it’s not easy trying to forge your opinions when it differs from the pack, so I tend to come out swinging.
Good grief, give this man a break. This is a matter of opinions.
As you do not believe that unborn children are babies, apparently, cmyk believes that they are babies. So what? How can you call this ignorance? This is bullshit. Can you just agree to disagree? Calling somebody having a different opinion “ignorant” is just plain stupid.
I am pro-choice, but in this whole thread cmyk has proven to be the more rational person. As opposed to many pro-abortionists, he tries to have a discussion, which you are obviously not.
Btw, when my wife was pregnant, doctors called the unborn the “baby”: “How is the baby?”. They did not ask “How is the thing soon to be called baby” or “how is the fetus?” or “how is the cell dumpling?”.
What you guys don’t get is that one can admit that babies are babies even before birth while still conceding that abortion is a private matter of the woman involved only. Short, one can be pro-choice and still admit that life is killed.
And, even more importantly, one can be pro-choice, not thinking that life is killed, but admitting that other people think otherwise without calling them ignorant.
Because in this case, flonks, the man is dealing in special cases. Calling him a “baby killer” is disengenuous. And he’s shown to be quite ignorant, as stating that he doesn’t believe that most of these late-term abortions are being performed for medical reasons (despite evidence shown to the contrary), AND ADMITS HE HAS NO PROOF, other than his own “opinion”, I would INDEED call that ignorance. As in, he doesn’t know.
The attacks were on the question whether a fetus is a baby or not. And this is open to debate. Neither side has a proof, since the whole question is ill defined and unclear.
Yes, although sometimes this can be a result of faulty risk assessment more than a conscious choice. Still, most of us can say, “I’d rather die than X” where X can be anything from “lose a limb” or “live without my loved ones” to “deny my religious beliefs” or “pay more in taxes.”
There’s also “I’d rather kill than X” or “I’ll risk death in order to try to achieve X.”
It’s startling and depressing to me, how angry I’m getting over this. Not that the events themselves aren’t depressing enough.
Dr. Tiller likely cared more about his patients than anyone in the so called “pro-life” movement, and for that he was assassinated by a politically and religiously motivated terrorist. That’s what it boils down to, for me. He cared for his patients and didn’t hate them, or try to shame them, or tell them that they were going to hell. And for that he was shot in his church, by some nutcase who has likely been taught by his religion and a score of reliable demagogues on TV that his pulling the trigger was an act of “love”. There’s a fucking disease in religious culture. Quick: someone deflect the discussion onto whether an undetectable soul particle sneaks into the blastocyst in week 21 or week 22. Meanwhile, a caring physician is still dead in an act of terror that won’t stop a single abortion. It’s sickening.
To them, yes. That’s the choice I was talking about. You have the choice to take your own life or someone elses if you absolutely must. You will effect one small part of a greater whole by doing so. However, simply because you take one life or a dozen or a hundred does not diminish the importance of life. One part is not the whole.
Most of us can say it, but truly, few of us have what it takes to end it all once the variable of X is realized. Life, or the desire to live or of life to continue, is strong in most people. It is strong in animals, large, small and microscopic. That survival instinct is the sign that life is sacrosanct, indeed and if you so believe, even holy. Cancer, as Der pointed out is, by definition life. Truly it is life that needs to be eradicated and life that is harmful to other forms of life, but life it is, no question.
To that point, I’m not sure that life IS holy, rather, if there is any one thing that can be considered so, it must surely be the force that is life.
You know, I entirely agree with the sentiment of your post, but the thing is… the world is full of crazies. The person who killed Dr. Tiller was crazy. His craziness was no doubt *exacerbated *by the rhetoric of his chosen religion and politics, but it wasn’t *caused *by it. I’m an atheist, and I have very little patience for religion, but religion doesn’t *make *crazy. I’m not saying we should excuse it for *exploiting *crazy, but crazy people will find motivation and absolution somewhere.
You’ve been lucky. I remember reading a lot about him back when he founded Operation Rescue in 1987, including an interview with him in Newsweek. I don’t have a cite for this and I don’t know if their archives go back that far, but I remember him saying in that interview that he thought the devil was out to steal or possess the souls of America’s children. In short, in my book, he’s a nasty piece of work, if nothing else. What’s interesting is he has four sisters, all of whom are feminists.
We’ve fallen into the old trap again, though. Instead of trying to work out what can be done to reduce the number of abortions, we’re back to yelling at each other about the morality of it and whether it’s ever acceptable to have one. I don’t think anything we say here will make Starving Artist or cmyk turn around and say abortions are good and wonderful things which should be available anytime anywhere, and I don’t think they can say anything which will convince me it’s none of the government’s business (sorry, gentlemen). Can we try a different approach?
To those who oppose abortion, what means of reducing the number of abortions would you support?
[ul][li]If there was evidence that there was a good chance requiring that employers provide paid maternity and paternity leave would reduce the number of abortions, would you support that? [/li][li]How about providing low cost or free contraception through the government to anyone who wants it, married or single, no questions asked? [/li][li]Would you support some kind of a pool out of which the cost of prenatal care and giving birth would be paid for women without health insurance who chose to put their babies up for adoption or who chose to keep their babies?[/li][li]I’ve read that 90% of babies who test postive for Down’s syndrome are aborted. Would you support better provisions for handicapped people in the US if it would reduce the number of such children who are aborted?[/ul][/li]FoieGrasIsEvil wrote that two of his girlfriends got pregnant and had abortions, which is why he thinks women use abortion as birth control. Why did this happen twice (and I’m not talking about the mechanics)? Was it because they weren’t using birth control, and if so, why? Was it because they couldn’t afford it or obtain it easily? Was it because he has an objection to condoms, which are a lot easier to obtain than birth control for women, in my experience? Was it because they were using birth control and it failed?
For over 20 years, I’ve been hearing that abortion is immoral, horrible, and murdering babies. There are letters to the editor telling the city that in the local paper at least twice a week. I’ve seen the protestors outside clinics and near a bridge I used to take to work. I’m not sure how showing me a picture of an aborted fetus while I’m waiting to make a left-hand turn to get to work is supposed to get me to change my mind, but the protestors persist. I understand their point of view, even though I don’t agree with it. As any veteran of GD can tell you, no, people won’t agree with you if you just shout at them louder or speak more slowly. If you yell at me too much, I’ll just write you off as an unpleasant nutcase and walk away.
I may want to keep abortion legal, but I would like to see the numbers continue to decrease, as they have done since Roe vs. Wade. Yelling at each other won’t accomplish that, and shooting at each other certainly won’t. I realize this is the Pit and I shamefully forgot to include any “fucks” or “fuckings” when I posted yesterday, but could we maybe explore something other than telling each other how wrong we are?