Obama: Mental Distress Can't Justify Late Abortion

We complain about 'safe' answers . . but we b*tch so much about the answer if it isn't safe.

I don't know about us. . . American people sometimes
we want contradictory things

Rocket River

 

Well, it matters because he could be the one picking members of that judicial branch.

 

Then his answer should be "this administrion will not apply any specific litmus tests for judicial appointees but will seek the best and most qualified candidates".

At this point the man should stick to the safe answers and get to the finish line without having car wreck. His mantra should be "no ammo for the wingnuts".

 

Like the Daily KOS wingnuts.

However, I don't know how the term "wingnut" came to be a putdown. Merriam-Webster's first definition is " a nut with wings that provide a grip for the thumb and finger," i.e., an often vital cog that holds things together.

 

It's an abbreviation of Right wing nuts or, Left wing nuts. No one really ever calls centrists nuts.

 

Back to the original thread, I give Obama props for being willing to make a comment like this. My take from his comment is that you can't just claim "metal distress" as an equivalent to an endangerment of a mother's life. Of course, right away, people start equating mental distress with suicide (which it is not) and deadbeat dads with rightless fathers.
Even though I disagree with his position on abortion, I appreciate how he tries to use some common sense in an arena dominated by a few loud voices from each end of the political spectrum shouting over each other. I imagine most Americans do not fall into the full-throttle pro-life and pro-choice groups but rather take a middle-of-the-road approach trying to weigh their sense of morality with their sense of reality.
Unfortunately, the media and special-interest groups are unlikely to let people get away with reasonable clarifications on controversial issues, so the dumbing-down of politics continues.

 

There are two political topics that really get under my skin. The first is flag burning, because I consider it completely and utterly ridiculous as an issue in any election.

The second is abortion. I hate the politicization of abortion because each abortion case is unique. We can't sit back and judge morally whether or not a woman is making a correct decision to abort. Once you concede that any abortion can be moral, then the whole debate about where to draw the bright line becomes very murky and arbitrary. This should all be a decision between a woman, her doctor, and her God.

Now, for those who will not concede that abortion is ever moral, and believe it is murder: how many abandoned children have you adopted lately? Put your money where your mouth is. I always find it odd that the people against abortion and euthanasia are also against welfare and socialized medicine, and usually for the death penalty. Very odd.

 

That's nice. Let's go ahead and concede something that is likely not true. EVERY abortion can be moral? So somebody has promiscuous sex without the use of birth control, gets pregnant, and decides to have an abortion because she doesn't want a baby...and this is somehow moral? It must be a very nice world where random promiscuity, failing to take responsibility to avoid pregnancy, and failing to take responsibility of the result are all moral actions.

This, of course, ignores the fact that during the second trimester, there is a chance that the fetus could survive with substantial medical intervention and during the third trimester, there is a substantial chance that the fetus could survivie outside of the mother. As the fetus has a chance at life without the mother, the state has an interest in its life. The Supreme Court got that part of this right. Ignoring that is pretty convenient to support your point of view.

The morality or immorality of an action is a completely separate issue from how to bear the burdens of the morally correct decision.

I find it odd that you put these two things together. With euthanasia, the deceased had a choice, one that they made in writing before the illness or that they are able to make at the time. With abortion, the deceased never got the chance to choose death.

 

I think you misread his statement. His use of "any" wasn't that ALL abortions are moral - but that if you agree that any single abortion is justifiable, then you've set an arbitrary line, and everyone has a different arbitary line, so it's a matter of degrees which is hard to then justify why one line is better than another.

 

Wichita is pretty centrist, like right in the middle of the country, and there are plenty of Wingnuts there (or at least 25).

 

I think Major correctly restated my argument. Once you concede that abortion in any case is moral, the debate shifts to classifying which abortions are moral and which are not. I believe that this decision is case by case, therefore no bright line can be drawn.

Survival rates in the aggregate are not useful if you look at each pregancy as an individual case with individual circumstances and variables. Government is in a poor position to make rules and policy over such a complicated MEDICAL and RELIGIOUS issue.

So it is moral for churches and political action committees to spend millions on campaigns to end abortion through legal mandate instead of using those millions to try to fight the causes of abortion (cost and stigma associated with giving child up, and the lack of families willing to adopt poor, minority infants)? Last I checked, Jesus fed the poor with two fish and five loaves, not an army of lawyers, lobbyists, pollsters, and pundits.

I put them together because they are grouped politically, and the justification is the same: religion equates all decisions that end in death to be a sin, except for situations involving criminals or war. Politically, a conservative is traditionally against abortion and euthanasia, against social welfare programs that are aimed at solving the causes of these two problems, but completely for tough crime prevention and the death penalty. It is a "have your cake and eat it too" position, and I find it dishonest.

 

I think having a baby is stressful for any mother - so it's not a valid reason. Unless the mother is likely to become suicidal I don't see a case.

If financial hardship comes up (the father loses his job in the last trimester) then I think the mother can give the child up for adoption.

I mean, why didn't she get an abortion in the first trimester if it was so mentally stressful?

 

I'm curious. What has KOS done that makes it a wingnut piece of internet blogging?

I can tell you what right wing wingnut groups have done that make them wingnuts. But what specifically has KOS done?

 

My apologies for misinterpreting your post. That seems to happen a lot around here.

Bright lines have to be drawn. Laws are of general applicability. They apply the same to everybody. If you were to have a case by case scale, entire courts would have to be set up to deal with abortion applications. I, for one, do not want to have a system where lawyers would accompany their clients to Harris County Abortion Court. All Roe says is that the state has an increased interest as viability becomes more likely. Therefore the state is more able to regulate. Roe does NOT say that abortion is not legal in the second trimester. It says that the states may enact reasonable regulation of abortion in the second trimester.

This notion also logically leads to a court case for an abortion with medical expert testimony and attorneys. This would breate a situation where a $500 abortion would cost $20,000.

This, of course, is why the Court adopted the medical community's delineation of pregnancy into trimesters. The Court largely stayed away from making religious arguments.

Two wrongs not equalling a right...this should ring a few bells.

Essentially this argument is a red herring. Whether or not churches campaigning against abortion is moral or not has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

Lat time I checked, Jesus wasn't doing anything about abortion. The church members are human, with all the human flaws. It is interesting that you bring Jesus into this, as though Jesus would be okie dokie with abortion.

Yet at the same time, they are logically very different.

Aimed at...yet somehow these problems have gotten worse during the last 40 years of the broad social programs. Curious, eh?

Really? Interesting. Killing the innocent versus condeming the guilty. I'm not saying that it is correct, but you really cannot see the distinction? Protecting the innocent and condeming the guilty may or may not be the correct approach, but it is far from "dishonest."

 

I'm not really upset with the Roe trimester approach (even though the trimester solution was a complete fabrication and never a part of the record on appeal; we can leave the judicial fiat debate for another day). My problem is that ever since Justice Blackmun drew the line at first trimester, the argument continues over how far states can interfere or whether there should be any limit at all on state interference. If Blackmun's decision is based on science, shouldn't at least one of those debates be off the table?

Personally, I don't think it's a bad thing to have judicial or at least administrative review over abortion cases after the first trimester. The medical opinion of the woman's doctor should carry a rebuttable presumption. Banning certain procedures outright is the wrong approach. However, this will never change, because both political parties benefit from abortion being a wedge issue too much for any practical compromise to be made.

This is a false dichotomy. Innocent versus guilty is a black and white approach, and both abortion and euthanasia are gray issues in my mind. Again, not all things can be measured by a bright line.

 

I let you guys chew on this legal bone. However you look at abortion, it is a black or white decision, or should I say life....or death.

I truly hope none of you ever has such blood on your hands.

 

Really? Because a pure black and white approach would mean that all abortions are immoral. Even people who use the morning after pill are murderers. Even women that abort pregnancies that are the product of rape or incest are murderers. That doesn't make sense to me, and I can't really discuss abortion rationally with anyone who takes that position.

 

That's your decision to make. I made mine more than 30 years ago

 

This creates a whole host of problems. One, what law should the judges be applying? There will have to be statutes written for the judges to interpret. These, of course, will likely be challenged in the federal courts. Two, how do we pay for the court system that would be created? Judges and court staff are very costly. Three, who pays for the attorneys and medical expert testimony for those who cannot afford it? Medical expert testimony is insanely expensive. Attorneys for such a case will easily cost between 5 and 10 thousand dollars. It isn't nearly as easy as waving a wand and providing court review for every woman who wants an abortion in their second trimester.

Medical opinion? What opinion changes the color of legal litmus paper? That the mother's life would be endangered by carrying the pregnancy to term? The overwhelming opinion in this country is that a threat to the life of the mother is already sufficient. Anything else isn't really a medical opinion.

When you are talking about an abortion in the third trimester absent a serious threat to the life of the mother, what compromise is there to be had? You either allow it outright or you allow the states to regulate as they see fit.

Capital punishment involves the guilty. Those who have taken life without just provocation. Euthanasia involves a personal choice of the person dying. The fetus is afforded neither or these luxuries.

I guess if you are hell bent on having an abortion court, it could be madated that an ad litem be appointed to speak for the fetus, but this is really getting absurd.

 

That is just BS. The morning after pill PREVENTS pregnancy. The woman is NOT pregnant when she takes it.

It isn't even close to being the same as an abortion.