GOP: Female body has natural defense against pregnancy in case of legitimate rape

You can't reason someone out of a position that they didn't arrive at by reason.

 

i have a brain, a heart, a thinking mind, self-sustainable, nervous system and so on. A bit more than just a bunch of undifferentiated cells with potential.

Many blastula's don't make it to the next stage. Are they mourned as lives lost? Are gravestones put up? It is mourned as a death? No. Many times a woman might not even know she just had a miscarriage.

what on earth do you think that is a human being?

 

true dat.

 

First off, I think you owe me rep for being so nice to you in this thread and for being so reasonable and understanding on this issue although we do not agree. I have always been very willing to see the other side on this issue, most unusually in a person that identifies in all other ways with far left positions. (I was joking about the rep thing.)

Secondly, I think that when you use language like "with a hidden agenda to seek justification for destroying [a life]," you are setting the conversation back to its traditional place of two people (sides) yelling at each other and calling each other anti-life or anti-choice or pro-abortion or whatever. There will be no resolution nor any common ground -- in fact we will remain in a brutal ideological war with one another -- when you call people that disagree with you on an unknowable thing (when life begins) murderers. This is extremely unhelpful language, it damages your very own cause, it does not persuade others to your point of view, in fact it does nothing but damage to your cause.

To act as though the decision to have an abortion is a frivolous one, to act like there's nothing "easier" than being pro-choice, is to deeply offend about half of this country and alienate them from ever coming around to your way of thinking, because it demonstrates to us all that you just don't have your facts right, that in your zeal to save what you regard to be innocent, human lives, you have jumped the shark and badly. The vast majority of abortions in this country are decided upon by women under extreme duress and the vast majority of abortions in this country are traumatic. You treat these women like they just don't care; that is a callous, misinformed, nasty position and it is one that hardens the opposition and rightfully so. You are wrong on this point and you should stop repeating it.

Nobody sets out to have an abortion, nobody enjoys having one, no one sets out to have an unwanted pregnancy, not everyone is up for (for example) raising a child with Down's Syndrome or something, and maybe it's even a factor that not everyone is up for putting a child up for adoption knowing that unwanted children are often not adopted.

And it is important here to note that the very same voices that are loudest on personhood, the ones that say or shout or hold up signs saying abortion=murder and all that are by and large the selfsame voices that most inhibit finding loving homes for otherwise unwanted children. As I said before, if you want to ban abortion, you damn well better be ready to let single men and women and gay men and women and gay couples adopt. And you damn well better be doing everything in your power to prevent unwanted pregnancy: we know sex ed and the easy availability of contraception is a preventative to unwanted pregnancy. This is a settled matter, a factual matter, an incontrovertible one. We also know, as a settled matter, that abstinence only programs do NOT work. There is now empirical, incontrovertible evidence on this too, and most studies show that all those programs wind up doing is convincing kids that birth control doesn't work anyway so why use a condom when it feels better not to? That's bad propaganda that leads to more unwanted pregnancies, more STD's and more abortions.

The Christian Right in particular needs to decide which is more important: reducing abortions or sticking to their antiquated biases against rubbers, sex education, and who should be allowed to adopt a child.

Thirdly, if it is the "humane" thing to do to err on the side of caution in this matter, why is the same not true of:

- The death penalty. We do not know how many innocents we execute each year by not "erring on the side of caution," but we do know that the legal system fails us sometimes and some number of innocent people are killed by the state. This would not happen if we "erred on the side of caution" in this matter of life/death.

- War. The question as to whether or not to involve our country in a war, especially when we are not attacked by a sovereign nation, the question of "just wars," when answered in the affirmative will definitively result in the deaths of innocents. 100% of the time. Why do we not "err on the side of caution" here?

- Hunting, the eating of meat, and the wearing of skins. We do not definitively know enough about cognizance, pain, or relative cruelty when it comes to this matter, but we do know the deaths of innocents are involved, 100% of the time. Eating meat is never necessary and it is never a result of self-defense. They are not humans; they are animals and I know that makes a huge difference for many people but that can only ever be because those people do not "err on the side of caution" when it comes to the deaths of innocents.

Your call to "err on the side of caution" on matters of life is arbitrary from the outside, giddyup. And it is a result of your own life experience, religious or spiritual beliefs, and your bias. I know that you or at least your wife had a previous trauma involving abortion and I think that must have impact on your thinking on this matter; I also had one. I got a girl pregnant and desperately wanted to have and raise the child but she, being 18, did not want her life to be defined by a mistake (a broken condom) and she did not see a two month old foetus as a baby. I deferred to her decision; I had no choice and I would have deferred anyway because I think the choice has to be hers if we are at a loggerheads over it. But it had an impact on my thinking on the issue. Everyone is subject to life experience influencing his/her position on this most contentious issue.

 

That is true but in this matter the science does not exist to arrive at a position of reason. This issue is the rare one in which both sides have a valid point and we need to start treating each other that way instead of calling each other immoral.

 

I don't care what you call each other as long as it doesn't turn into legislation where legislation does not belong.

 

ditto.

 

You are still a bunch of cells. Those undeveloped cells have more potential than you do.

People often mourn miscarriages, even 1st trimester ones. And yes, some people do hold funerals for them. It is an often traumatic experience. One you shouldn't take so lightly.

Most of what you point to as making you human (although most animals have all those things), has already started developing during the 2nd month of pregnancy.

Would you prefer we say life starts after a month, because the cells are more clearly defined?

 

You might not be, but we will never know.

One thing for sure is that your sibling isn't alive because of it.

Edit: It sounds harsh, and I am sorry your mother felt the need to have one.

 

Your openness on this issue is both surprising and reassuring. So rarely do people in here ever rationalize both sides of a divisive issue (in particular someone who leans so far in one direction).

 

We live in a capitalist society. Life doesn't start until you're being exploited for your labor. Until then, you don't count.

 

So does Chinese/SE Asia life start earlier?

It is always better to exploit other people's children.

 

heartbeat - 10 weeks

brain -4.5 to 12 weeks

thinking mind - 2 or 3 years old?

self sustainable - 22 years old?

Which one of these cutoffs are you OK will killing?

 

This part of the post is genius. I also oppose war and the death penalty..but not bacon.

 

Ha! Not to your post but to your rep. The answer to your question is an emphatic NO. I tried to rep you back to answer privately but I never get to rep you because I've always repped you too much already. If you cared to search backwards by many years, and who would, you'd find that I've always seen the other side on this issue. I mean yeah, maybe I'm a bit gentler since I got medicated and into therapy, but on this issue my take hasn't changed over time; I've always been 100% pro-choice and 100% understanding and respectful of the other side's POV, by which I mean why they think the way they do; I do not agree with any of their proposed remedies to the situation. In other words, I see why they think of abortion as murder, I honestly do, and I honestly respect them in their belief. I also think most of them are hypocrites on matters of "life," that the woman should always have full decision making protection under the law with regard to their own bodies, that the government never should make a law that intrudes upon that right (late-term abortion is an exception to me), that harassing women at abortion clinics is the lowest possible behavior, that proposing jail time for doctors or women is insane, etc.

I'd go to war to protect abortion rights. I can just understand the other side on this and don't regard the other side to be evil, stupid, mean, callous, cruel, misogynistic, or misguided in their beliefs. In the ways those beliefs manifest, I think they are all seven of those things.

 

"Do you love that baby that's inside of you? Then why did you eat it?!?" - The Republican Party

 

Thanks, juicystream. I don't believe in what I believe in because I am a liberal Democrat; I am a liberal Democrat because of my beliefs. But I'm not in lockstep with my party. I appreciate your appreciation and feel obligated not only to rep but also to acknowledge that you are far more often than I likely to disagree with your party's orthodoxy in favor of seeing the other side. I think that's maybe more a matter of you agreeing less with your party than I do with mine, but it is still, to me, a welcome thing.

 

Yes, useful life starts earlier in third world countries. The minute you can be exploited for your labor is the minute you become important in capitalist society.

 

Thanks, bud. Most of my liberal friends feel the same way you do, bacon being the most popular food among them, especially the Jewish ones .

I understand. It's been 25 years but I remember bacon.

 

Post of the thread.