I have to ask… did you honestly expect that to not come up?
I appreciate the reasoned tone of these posts.
I can’t speak for the pro-life crowd, but I don’t think they have any goal of sexual oppresion. Rather, those making exceptions for rape/incest are making an attempt to compromise—to accept a partial victory vs no victory. I think those who are pro-life and make these exceptions realize just how distasteful, traumatic and unpopular it would be to require a woman to carry to term a child born of rape or incest.
It’s a well intentioned, but misguided, exception. If one believes that life begins at conception, than it is true that “it shouldn’t matter how the babies came about.”
Try me.
Who’s will? My Senator’s will? The child’s/embryo’s will to live? Who’s will are we talking about/
Mine.
The only one that matters. Allowing anyone else to determine that I have to use my body for their purposes is slavery.
Would the other half of the population include those who are yanked from their mother’s wombs and put in bright red Bio-Hazard plastic bags?
Who’s protecting their rights?
No matter what, they don’t have the right to inhabit another person’s body.
You don’t seem to understand, which is exactly what I predicted. Someone else’s rights cannot come at the expense of making me a slave.
I do believe that the earlier posters were making the point that indeed the so-called “pro-life” faction IS seeking a policy of oppression, by making “exceptions” in order to keep a foot in the door, and the “respect” mentioned is not in the sense of recognizing a worthy cause but in the sense of preferring that your enemy come at you overtly and with clearly manifest intention, rather than using appeasing weasel-words – in both cases you need to defeat them, but in the first case at least they’re not insulting your intelligence.
I’m pro-choice, but the answer to that one is obvious: Don’t fuck. If a pregnancy is the unintended (to you) consequence of allowing a man to put his penis in your vagina and ejaculate, then don’t do that. It’s the same argument that you make in myriad gun control threads: If you can’t handle the responsibility that comes with owning a gun, don’t own one, but you have no right to tell others they can’t own one. If you can’t deal responsibly with the possible consequences of fucking, don’t fuck, but you have no right to tell others they can’t if they are prepared to deal with the results. An abortion is a way to avoid having to deal with the results. It’s not an argument I buy 100%, mind you, but it is logically consistent.
The rights of the MOTHER trump that of the fetus. And since we’re talking about early term abortions, none of them are viable outside the womb, anyways.
Oh and obviously, the above argument does not apply to things like rape.
For the next thirty years, never ever? That’s such a reasonable suggestion.
Ever.
That’s what you’re suggesting. I don’t want kids, ever, so that means I can never (at least until after menopause which should be about thirty years from now) have sex.
No, an abortion is a way of dealing with the results.
Which is conclusive proof that it’s not about a right to life, it’s about controlling the bad little sluts who went out and sinned.
In my opinion, it’s an issue that you cannot possibly understand unless it’s possible for you to be forced to carry a pregnancy you don’t want.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here—and I read it 4 times.
I think it is patently silly to ascribe to the pro-life crowd that make exceptions for rape/incest as having some secret agenda of sexual oppression and other sundry nonsense. It plays well here and everyone can pat each other on the back. You’ve figured them out! They want to enslave you!
That is patently silly.
The pro-life crowd who makes those exceptions see themselves as pragmatists. They calculate the political tradewinds and perceive that it is poitical suicide to try and overturn Roe/Wade if the darkest fears—rape and incest----cannot be mitigated through abortion. They’re simply trying to compromise.** That doesn’t mean most of them, given their druthers, wouldn’t ban abortion due to rape or incest* if they could.* They don’t think they can get the ban they seek without that provision included.
And from that you’ve got them figured for some unstated policy of sexual oppresion? :smack:
** That doesn’t mean that they’re done with the issue. I suspect that if the pro-life crowd got the ban with that provision the ink wouldn’t be dry before they started the long process of getting a complete ban—including rape and incest.
Weirddave, you are dangerously close, mister, to having your membership card yanked and having the secret handshake changed.
This is an argument for accepting personal responsibility—something that doesn’t play well in these parts—and certainly not in this topic. Get your act togther or people will suspect you’re—gasp---- a Republican.
…and of course, the thread has drifted.
In a half-hearted attempt to say somethign about the OP, this is transparently a legal maneouver to force the issue to be once again taken to the courts, to see if the change in bench composition can result in a lifting of RvW. And y’know what? I expect such attempts to keep happenning over and over again for as long as RvW is the law. “Settled law”, schmettled law, is what that faction feels, and why not, since nothing really binds the court to only change its mind on an issue in the direction of additional, expanded rights. Today it’s South Dakota, and if they fail, next decade it’ll be somewhere else.
And you say right there that the ideal sought IS the
complete ban, and they will not be satisfied until they get it. That would constitute sexual oppression, even if they do not see themselves as anything but trying to “save babies”.
That’s right, I should accept personal responsibility for being raped or for being diddled by my uncle. I should accept personal responsibility for a broken condom or imperfect use of spermicide. And if I should become pregnant, I should spend the hundreds of dollars it’ll cost for doctor’s bills and the like, have my body twist and turn itself around with the new hormone balances, and go through hours and hours of agonizing pain before bringing a new life into the world, give up the child for adoption, and then get tracked down ten, fifteen, twenty, however many years in the future and have to explain gently why I gave that child up.
That’s fair.
I’m all for taking personal responsibility for foolish actions. That’s why I don’t have sex, why I would never have unprotected sex if I didn’t want to get pregnant. It’s not the reason I would not have an abortion – I have my own reasons for that, but I don’t force those reasons on others.
It’s not an easy question. Is abortion right? If no, then why? If for the sanctity of human life, then all pregnant women should bring those fetuses to term regardless of how they were implanted, no matter what.
But for me, the question isn’t whether abortion is right. I don’t believe it is. The question is, whether something I don’t think is right should be made illegal. I also think that smoking isn’t right, drinking to excess isn’t right, and attempting to normalize gifted students in school isn’t right. I think it isn’t right to drive gas-guzzling SUVs when you don’t need them. I think it isn’t right to cram cows into feedlots.
I think a lot of things aren’t right, but I don’t call for legislation against them. I can understand the pro-life debate, but it’s my opinion that the people clamoring for that position would do well to fund scientific research for removing a fetus from its home inside a woman’s uterus and implanting it elsewhere – whether within another human being or in an artificially created womb, as it were. No death involved, and less inconvenience for the mother. Granted, I say this blithely as though it were just around the corner…
I am absolutely and vehemently pro-choice, but I think catsix’s rhetoric about slavery is a little over the top. But I don’t see how you can say that allowing for exceptions when it comes to rape and incest doesn’t make the issue about punishing women for being sexually active.
If you believe that life begins at conception and that life is sacred, then it is logically inconsistant to say that “well, it’s less sacred if the woman didn’t have a choice in becoming pregnant”. When you provide these exceptions, abortion ceases to be about the fetus and instead becomes an issue of the woman’s behavior.
If you want to talk about how women shouldn’t have sex if they don’t want to be pregnant, fine, but why don’t we try living in reality? It’s not going to happen, just like refusing to teach sex ed to high school students doesn’t stop kids from having sex.
What else do you call being forced to carry a pregnancy you don’t want?
We’re often forced into situations that we would prefer not to be in, but we don’t usually call them slavery.
Geez, I’m on your side here.
Currently (and sadly) my mother isn’t viable outside Swedish Covenent Hospital. Viability is but one factor in determining the central question:
I would submit that there are other questions, other than, and in addition to, viability, that need to answered. Of course, there are people in jail for ending the life of a fetus that would not have been viable outside the womb. Further,viability is a progressive, moving target. A baby, born or unborn, is viable only to the extent that his/her parents care for it. I would submit that a 2 month old baby, totally abandoned in a crib, is actually less viable than an 8 month old fetus. Viability, in my view, is a totally arbitrary definition.
And to make this clear, the specific rights are these:
The Mother
1)The right to privacy.
2)The right to self determination; the right to use her body in the way she chooses.
3)The right to not have parenthood forced upon her; the right to keep the state of her family decisions.
Those are compelling rights, and shouldn’t be trifled with capriciously.
The Child/Fetus
1)The right to live; the right to not have his/her life ended in the name of convenience, expediency, or even the noble attempt to limit the trauma of his/her host while in the womb. (ie rape/incest)
2)The right to be cared for by his/her parent, to not be neglected, abused or killed.
Are those rights any less compelling?
If that fetus is a [legal] child—a citizen—than we have a problem. “Rights” are going to collide.
That’s certainly not uncommon, and so we have determined that at times the law must recognize a 'hierarchy" of sorts. The best known is the notion that the right of free speech can’t be extended to create mayhem—you can’t shout “fire!” in a crowded theater.
And so if that fetus is a child, than I find it hard tp accept that a woman’s right to privacy, self deterimination and even the right to limit her trauma due to rape or incest is so compelling to give her the right to end the life of another human being.