Understanding How Modern Liberals Think

There are plenty of women who oppose abortion. The pendulum swings both ways.

I've conceived four children and have raised or are raising four children. My personal conscience is clear on this matter but my heart and mind are plagued by the callous indifference shown by so many people to these little lives.

All I can do is speak the ugly truth and hope that some recognize it.

 

so you mean like normal people should?

 

Are you addressing me? What do you mean by "normal?"

Normal people can be misguided. Normal people can be selfish. I"d saying trumpeting a personal right over the life of an innocent child is both misguided and selfish.

It's wrong.

 

Don't mistake a dutiful application of the law to callous indifference towards lives.

Do you not think that those who crafted and defended such laws have not agonized and considered all the implications of all that they uphold?

Both sides of the issue are weighted. Nothing in this world is black and white or simple.

If you, however, prefer unfettered government access and interference in affairs outside the realm of the public interest (and yes, whether or not a woman should have an abortion should be outside the realm of your interest. It should be between her and whatever her conscience says.), than that is a strand of thinking very outside the bounds of whatever "national character" America may have.

 

So how do you answer the question "do you believe there is an afterlife?"

 

So should I be allowed to actually own slaves if someone is willing to sell me their child? Isn't that the same thing, only kinder, because the child actually will live? Owning slaves used to be legal and abortion not legal.

When the "dutiful application of the law" results in the death of an innocent life, something is wrong with the law.

And no I don't think they have considered all the ramifications because as I've read here too many times, many or most think they are just scraping off a soulless clump of meaningless cells.

 

Preempting RR with my own atheist view, you don't waste time answering the question. Instead, you focus on making the best of our current life, and the world we are in now.

 

Lol. You have an answer to the question which, by default, is a belief. Sorry that this concept is too mind-blowing.

 

Key operative word. The answer is no to your first question.

As for the second, bring it up with the Supreme Court. "Because neither the factual underpinnings of Roe's central holding nor our understanding of it has changed (and because no other indication of weakened precedent has been shown), the Court could not pretend to be reexamining the prior law with any justification beyond a present doctrinal disposition to come out differently from the Court of 1973.” There is a consistent, logical jurisprudence here that has been tested numerous times, and has come unscathed, from some of the best people positioned to balance the various ethical issues involved in such complex cases.

Have there been bad laws? Sure. The American spirit has been to obey those laws until someone displays an overwhelming evidence of change, and a striking reason to invalidate the law. Failing that, there is no United States of America. Have the facts changed so much from 1973? Is there a striking reason to invalidate the law? The Supreme Court has ruled "no" a number of times on this, and from a legal and ethical point of view, I concur with them. If the Supreme Court originally upheld it, it was to respect the fact that government intervention in such matters was counter-productive at best, and foolhardy at worst, along with a host of other arguments. Are there counter-arguments? Yes. But not enough to strike the original arguments down, to this day.

 

Does it also blow your mind that me and RR are different people?

I believe certain things, I just choose not to waste my time believing others that tend not to be peer-reviewed, or empirically validated. I answered the question out of context because I thought it might be a good one to address, but if you want to bring it back to your pissing contest with RR, go for it.

 

Y'all consistently answering these questions shows that you think about these things a lot more than you care to admit, or might be aware of.

 

Rasputin12: Hey thadeus, is there an afterlife?
the thadeus: I don't care.


Problem solved. Moving on.

 

You can compare my post there to any of the ones I usually write to issues of actual substance. It will become fairly obvious what I care about more.

 

Hopefully, the pendulum will swing back. It is only viewed as complex because that is what is used to manufacture the law. All this dithering about when life begins wouldn't be a legal issue were there not a clamor for abortion rights. It's just sad really.

It used to be legal to own slaves, so I guess owning slaves really was okay... when it was legal. :grin: I reckon there were those who thought that would never change....

Maybe some day our descendants will wax that way about abortion?

 

Ethics and the law are interdependent, but still separate concepts.

If you're going to allege that the United States in the 1970s had the same ethical framework as the United States in the 1800s...I can only wish you good luck with that line of thought.

Laws restricting abortion are themselves a relatively new thing holding little precedence in English common-law tradition. To go back to them would be a reversion of a deeper evolution on how society views ethics. Rather than moving forward, we would be moving back.

I rather think society will move forward onto new ideas rather than look back at old ones. I think the next generation might be very ashamed, for example, of the industrial system for processing meat in such an unnecessarily cruel and inefficient way, and the suffering that entails. Of course, until this vague projection of right vs wrong turns into law, there is not much to argue over.

All this "dithering" over where life began wouldn't happen if in the late 1800s to early 1900s, a bunch of people broke precedence with established law, and implemented and modified a radical new set of laws that interfered with all elements of human life. The ban against abortion only held up for longer than that on alcohol, but fundamentally, the concept that the government can intervene at such a level on issues so tangentially related to the national interest, have been defeated pretty conclusively.

It also wouldn't happen if people didn't take their fears of abortion to invalidate things like crucial stem cell research that can save lives, without costing anything more than cells that were going to be discarded anyways. Kinda makes you think about the "pro-life" angle, especially as quite a few "pro-lifers" have very contradictory positions when it comes to other things like war, and prison.

 

I should also note that decriminalizing abortion does not mean encouraging abortions. It is just a way to recognize the utter inefficacy of applying legal and criminal punishments to dissuade abortions.

I don't know of too many people who hope for abortions. When you (and countless other pro-lifers) rant and rave about the moralistic implications of children's lives, I think that this distinction is very crucially missed. This isn't an argument about whether or not abortion is good or bad. I'm going to go out on a limb and say, that for most people, having an abortion is not a good event (especially with how our male-dominated Abrahamic society views the "others" making irresponsible decisions).

This is an argument about how to manage abortion in a complex political, legal, and ethical framework, which is nowhere near as black and white as saying that "I raised children, and they're adorable, so you should too".

 

I always found the pendulum metaphor kind of sad. People often use it to describe changing times, because they hope that, like a pendulum, the change will reverse.

But, in reality, changing times are more like an arrow of infinite power - they keep flying away from now, and they never come back.

 

What? You significantly altered my quote! I said that I took responsibility for what I created, period. The pro-Choice crowd is all-too happy to allow themselves or countless others to blunder down this narrow path of abdicating responsibility at whatever cost.

For most people, the choice for abortion is a very difficult one, yet they do it and some of them do it over and over again. What makes it so difficult? Could it be that instinctively they know the cost is utterly supreme... and wrong?

That is called a conscience.

Do you really want to mock people who "rant and rave about the moralistic implications of children's lives?" Sorry but you don't just "kind of" abort a child like "speeding a little" or "fudging your taxes." It's an all-in proposition for the child and for the mother.

Why do you have to drum up all these complexities to justify your position? Doesn't that tell you something? I'm reminded of that childhood rhyme: "Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we endeavor to deceive."

If abortion were so "right," it would be an easy act. What else do we allow ourselves the privilege of that so haunts us? Half of America mollifies itself by arguing that they are campaigning for Choice not Abortion (and in fact they are against abortion.... please!) but campaigning for that Choice is what makes Abortion so rampant in America. Do they fool themselves so easily by not even thinking through the implications of their own rantings?

Whatever happened to "First do no harm..."

 

Remember back in the 80s when all the burgeoning technology was supposed to "free us up?" In fact it has enslaved us. Oops. Not all so-called progress is entirely good.

 

If conservatives gave a damn about those children and supported policies to help those children born to mothers ill-equipped to care for them then your argument would be much more genuine. Save the baby but after he's born you bastards are on your own is basically the game conservatives run. And you floozies have the nerve to ask us to pay for your contraceptives!

Why do you believe the government should be in the position of forcing someone to give birth and take care of a child theyre not equipped to deal with? You tout what amounts to the right to birth without addressing the practicality of the wellbeing of the mother and a new child. This isn't an abstract thing, there are real consequences to outlawing abortion. Save the babies and screw the moms and kids is not a sound alternative.