I’m assuming you’re referring to Post 106, where you said:
I see where you’re coming from when you talk about how conservatives don’t care about the fetus once it’s born; the lack of support for health care reform, etc, is definitely irrational. But I’ve never heard of anyone forcing a woman to bring a dead fetus to term, or even if that would be possible, so I don’t know if I’m misreading your post or just not aware of this. And if you’re really going to say that anyone who supports restrictions of any kind on abortions is the moral equivalent to a member of the Klan, then I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with you. Again, are there many pro-lifers who are sexist pigs? Lots. But painting an issue as complex and philosophical as abortion rights in such a black and white way only increases the already sky high tensions between the two groups, and brings us farther away from coming to a logical, peaceful solution.
OK, do you claim there are no Conservatives that seek to (and in fact do) dominate women, and are or portray themselves to be very religious (to the point of attempting to pull Science like Evolution Theory out of the classroom and replace it with Creationism … in Science class)? Do you additionally claim politicians aren’t cynical and don’t pander for votes?
I don’t sit in judgement of Liberals or Conservatives. I’ll listen to all arguments. I think the most reasonable on both sides have valid points to consider. William Buckley once said, “The difference between abortion and murder is one day, the child is in the womb, and the next, it’s born. Kill it before it’s born, it’s abortion … after it’s born … murder.” I’m paraphrasing, but his point is fascinating. He was a brilliant guy. I still disagree with him. Now, Bill Buckley was in favor of legalizing some drugs, including pot, so he wasn’t a rabid unreasonable Conservative. He had some ideas I could relate to. Banning most abortions isn’t one of them. I see why someone could make the case that killing a developing fetus is immoral, but it’s a scale of benefits vs losses, and I think the benefits out-weigh the losses. I’m not trying to convince anyone. This is a Political issue, and a Legal matter. My opinion is my own … I wouldn’t force it on anyone. I wouldn’t force anyone to get an abortion or insist anyone not be allowed to have the procedure. I’d hate to see it restricted more than it is presently.
That’s one of the results of their attempts to forbid third trimester abortions. The fetus dying is one of the causes for such abortions.
There is no “logical, peaceful solution” to be made with people like this. They can only be overcome or evaded, not reasoned with or appealed to.
Attempting to treat unreasonable, hate-driven people like this as rational, well meaning people who can be compromised with is a major part of what has let the Right gain so much power in America. They’ll just take whatever concessions you offer for nothing in return, then demand more - the Republicans have been doing that to the Democrats for many years.
I read it. For those who haven’t, Sagan and Druyan conclude that “humanness” is best defined as the ability to think in human-like terms, that this occurs around the third trimester, and that Roe v. Wade was a reasonable compromise (though the ruling wasn’t made for those reasons). Sagan was a brilliant and thoughtful person, and I would regard what he wrote as a reasonable philosophical position. I just don’t agree that objective scientific criteria can be productively applied to something so intrinsically subjective. Which leads me to this…
Exactly. And that’s why the only “logical, peaceful solution” is for the government to stay the hell out of it.
Sagan mentions the 1989 Webster ruling which declined to overturn Roe v. Wade but basically invited the states to set their own laws. What pro-choice advocates are really saying is to take this to its logical conclusion and allow each individual woman to make her own choice, based on her own views, her own emotional and physical situation, her own family and life situation. What sense does it make to declare that “abortion is murder” in the third trimester in one state, but in the second trimester in another state, and perhaps not at all someplace else? The pro-choice view isn’t that abortion is a good thing, it’s to not try to answer a question that is not answerable, at least not in a way that everyone can agree with, and certainly not to empower that arbitrary answer with the force of law.
That was the basis of my sarcastic earlier comment about simple answers to profoundly complex questions. You would think that conservatives would be the first to want government to stay the hell out of personal and private matters, but apparently not when it comes to their supposed overwhelming concern for the unborn. Yet, at the risk of repeating myself, conservatives are utterly unconcerned about the baby’s welfare after it’s born: they’ll happily vote against children’s health insurance, Medicaid, education, and social assistance. This is more than just irrational: it reeks of hypocrisy and misogyny, and tells us that perhaps they aren’t being entirely truthful – maybe not even with themselves – about the real reasons they want to outlaw all abortion.
… because the desire to protect the baby from being murdered HAS to lead to the desire to tax everyone to create welfare programs to support the baby after it was born. There is absolutely no other rational way to think, is there?
It’s a good article, and maybe you didn’t mean it this way, but Sagan is clear that one cannot pin down the “exact tie” when a fetus becomes a “human”.
I’m pretty comfortable with Sagan’s conclusions (which just so happen to be the same as my own ), but Americans should realize that we have some of the most liberal abortion laws in the western world. It’s not uncommon for European countries to restrict abortion on demand to the 1st trimester. At any rate, the idea that the government should stay out of this is nonsense. Few people are going to agree that abortion on demand should extend up to the point of delivery.
Originally Posted by wolfpup View Post
“That was the basis of my sarcastic earlier comment about simple answers to profoundly complex questions. You would think that conservatives would be the first to want government to stay the hell out of personal and private matters, but apparently not when it comes to their supposed overwhelming concern for the unborn. Yet, at the risk of repeating myself, conservatives are utterly unconcerned about the baby’s welfare after it’s born: they’ll happily vote against children’s health insurance, Medicaid, education, and social assistance. This is more than just irrational: it reeks of hypocrisy and misogyny, and tells us that perhaps they aren’t being entirely truthful – maybe not even with themselves – about the real reasons they want to outlaw all abortion.”
There are some good points here. I think it’s fair to point out that if a group perceives a moral injustice, it would out weigh the inclination to keep government out of a woman’s private business. I disagree with that line of thought, but I think it’s reasonable for a Conservative to take the stance that the welfare of an unborn child is more important that the privacy of the mother.
It is disturbing that Conservatives typically want every fetus brought to term, but would rather not spend Society’s wealth on rearing and medical care for that child. We should have universal health care in this country, at a minimum, and arguing that more unwanted children are born i8nto a Society without it is disturbing.
Many conservatives (and some liberals) think abortion is murder, and most conservatives don’t think in terms of “Society’s wealth”, so really what you are saying is that it’s disturbing that conservatives don’t think like liberals. But then, they wouldn’t be conservatives, would they?
True - I was referring to how, while acknowledging that, he also pointed towards the time when the fetus can just barely create normal brain waves as when they acquire human thought (which is, he argues, what really makes people people).
There’s a pretty interesting map of abortion restrictions over here. While most of Europe is green (green not meaning entirely unrestricted, just open to any reason), there are a few outliers - Finland, for example, apparently determines legality by socioeconomic standing.
I often see people try to make the point that if conservatives actually cared about the (unborn) kid, they would vote for more health spending and such so that it would actually have a good life, and it always strikes me as a really bad argument.
But I don’t know where you get “abortion on demand up to the point of delivery” out of this. Late-term abortions are almost never done, except for valid medical reasons, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a doctor willing to do it. Medical ethics goes a long way without having to worry about murder charges and meddling government bureaucracy when a doctor and his patient have to make difficult and intensely personal decisions.
Regardless of your semantic wordplay, it continues to amaze me that conservatives care so much about something that spends the first two-thirds of its life as a non-sentient lump of goop, and so little about actual children. The Republicans’ opposition to the Children’s Health Insurance Program, rejection of free federal Medicaid expansion, and general opposition to funding public education is really nothing short of stunning.
I would disagree with that. With a few exceptions (the UK being the major one) abortions are permitted on demand, limited to more or less the first trimester, with no other real restrictions that I’m aware of. In the US, first of all it took Roe v. Wade to create the present status; before that, only two states in the entire continental US (Washington and New York) permitted on-demand, and in half the states, abortion was unconditionally illegal and could not be performed under any circumstances There’s a good article here which also includes a map of which states unconditionally banned abortion – some might want to amuse themselves before looking at the map by guessing which states those were. Here’s a hint: it’s most of the same states that recently turned down expanded Medicaid and most strongly oppose the ACA, lest children who are actually born might accidentally get health care. :rolleyes:
Granted, the laws are not like that today, but only because of Roe, and I mention it because, unlike Europe, there is a powerful political element that would like to see Roe overturned and the old status quo restored. In the meantime, at the state level they are enacting every possible obstacle to abortion that doesn’t directly contravene Roe, like mandatory “counseling”, waiting periods, mandatory ultrasounds, and anything else they can think of. They have to abide by the letter of the law, but by God they don’t intend to abide by the spirit of the law. The thinking is: they’re going to make these loose women go to hell and back before they’ll let them have an abortion. Until the day that Roe is overturned, praise the Lord.
Of course in Canada, as I mentioned, there are no abortion laws at all, and look what happens: they’ve now legalized same-sex marriage. Obviously, the entire nation is just begging for the Wrath of God to descend upon them, and they are going to burn in hell.
Fair enough. I look forward to having a conservative explain why they’re so obsessed with fetuses but have no interest in children after they’re born and start having real life experiences that mold them into actual people. Apparently when a real child suffers or dies from lack of health care or proper nutrition, or grows up without an adequate education, this is all a matter of Personal Responsibility™. But when it’s still a shapeless blob in a woman’s body, conservatives have to leap into action to ensure its well-being every step of the way. If this means that the evil of Intrusive Government Overreach™ needs to intrude right into the uterus, well, that’s just how it is. Just as long as the government doesn’t touch their guns.
A conservative would be just as concerned with preventing a murder of a child after the child is born, and after it “starts having real life experiences”.
Anyone would agree with this. It’s a no-brainer; it doesn’t involve weighing difficult or contentious issues or making value judgments.
But abortion does. It involves weighing the rights and prerogatives of the mother – an actual living person – against something that, for about the first three to six months or so, is largely a non-sentient mass of protoplasm. Likewise, the quality of life of an actual child involves tradeoffs related to health care, nutrition, lifestyle, proper parenting, education, and so forth – tradeoffs because these things cost money, and sometimes that money has to come from the taxpayers or the child doesn’t get them.
It’s not how you make the obvious no-brainer decisions that matters, it’s how you make the hard ones. And I say again, when it comes to abortion issues, there is this strange disconnect between how conservatives weight the tradeoffs in favor of the unborn versus how they weigh the tradeoffs for the actual child after birth. Interestingly, both the US Roe v. Wade decision and the Canadian Supreme Court decision on abortion both invoked a very similar clause in the countries’ respective Constitutions governing the rights and liberties of the mother. Conservatives seem to accord the rights of the mother a weight of about zero. Not to mention the consequences to mother, child, and society of a child that, for whatever reason, is not wanted, even if there aren’t any physical or emotional risks to carrying to term. But as pointed out earlier, before Roe v. Wade, fully half of the traditionally right-wing states outlawed abortion unconditionally, at any stage of gestation, regardless of reason. There is something going on here that clearly defies logic.
Well, unless the law is changed, it’s not murder. It is killing. Exactly how do you know that most Conservatives wouldn’t understand that Society, by virtue of a government that taxes the citizens, has a given amount of wealth to allocate toward social programs? Are you saying they don’t have a concept of funding programs by spending money? That seems bizarre.
Now, to paraphrase me, you’ve said something substantially more vague. “Think like liberals” does not equal what I said.
“It is disturbing that Conservatives typically want every fetus brought to term, but would rather not spend Society’s wealth on rearing and medical care for that child. We should have universal health care in this country, at a minimum, and arguing that more unwanted children are born into a Society without it is disturbing.”
Specifically, insisting that women carry unborn children to term, and then give birth should include free health care for the mother and the child. For the life of the mother and the child. Universal healthcare is a good investment in the people. A farmer cares for his stock, but the military industrial complex doesn’t care for their workers. That concept shouldn’t clash with a Conservative mindset. It has become a political chess piece, I believe, because insurance companies and the AMA have such powerful lobbies. Since the middle 60s, this government has spent enough on welfare to have made at least three generations of recipients millionaires many times over. Those trillions were largely wasted, IMO. Is that a Conservative opinion? I just think it’s reality. It served a political agenda, or it wouldn’t have been funded. Instead, we should have funded Universal healthcare and jobs programs that stressed childcare and work requirements instead of welfare families continuing from generation to generation.
But, that’s a subject for another thread. I’ll agree to disagree whether abortion should be defined by the courts as murder. If the government isn’t able to accept the burden of caring for it’s own citizens, it should stop funneling their taxes into wasteful programs and constant wars. It would make good economic sense for the conservative politicians to divorce themselves from the AMA and the giant insurance companies, and work for the Society, rather than for themselves. That’s not radical thinking, just a call to curtail the unethical status quo and replace it with policies that fix what’s broken in our country.
Regarding the OP, I’m not convinced an overwhelming majority of conservatives honestly believe abortion is murder, anymore than I think every Liberal wants to ban guns. These are just positions that the parties have staked out to form talking points, Shibboleths if you will, that differentiate the voters and try to keep them neatly entrenched as “Red” or “Blue”. It works to divide us and create tribal tensions between us that play into the agendas of the military industrial complex. Too bad.
Ok, this is comical. I actually quite literally laughed out loud as I read this exchange.
Of course what Wolfpup is ignoring is that it is easier to get a second trimester abortion in such liberal states as Alabama and Texas than in most European countries, such as France.
He is claiming to disagree with John Mace, but he is effectively admitting that what John Mace is saying is the truth.
), but Americans should realize that we have some of the most liberal abortion laws in the western world. It’s not uncommon for European countries to restrict abortion on demand to the 1st trimester. At any rate, the idea that the government should stay out of this is nonsense. Few people are going to agree that abortion on demand should extend up to the point of delivery.