Say Roe v. Wade is gone and there's a non gay marriage amendment

Most of those "abortion doctors" perform abortions as a side business. Many of them have a primary OB/GYN practice and work at a clinic to supplement their income. Those who work exclusively at Planned Parenthood or some other similar establishment spend a good deal of their time performing other services (gyn exams, etc). What I'm saying is that there will not be a lot of doctors in the unemployment line should Roe be overturned.

No state in the US is bound to recognize a foreign marriage if doing so would be contrary to the law or public policy of the state. As far as I know, there have been no Full Faith and Credit challenges for gay marriages performed in Hawaii, but I am pretty comfortable that should the occasion arise, the Court will fashion a public policy exception.

 

"free facial and loofa scrub with every abortion!"

seriously though, i dont think those who want to outlaw abortion have thought about the consequenses. you are not going to completely stop it, you will just create and environment where it is dangerous for women and puts them at serious risk to their heath, reproductive capabilites or even life.

when abortion was illegal women still got them. i hate to get too graphic, but it usually involed a coat hanger and some seedy back-alley "doctors" office. in the 50's women died b/c of this. many damaged their reproductive organs and were never able to give birth.

if an amendment is passed to ban abortion than this is the scenario that we will face (again).

im not even getting into the concept of a women's right to choose. this is an issue of health and safety. a woman who is desperate enough is going to get an abortion whether there is planned parenthood or not.

 

and not to get too political, but its a never-ending source of amusement and irony for me that the biggest pro-lifers are usually the biggest supporters of the death penalty and the biggest supporters of the president's war in iraq, which has killed over 100,000 innocent iraqis.

 

You don't see a difference between an innocent child and a convicted murderer or an enemy of the state?

For the record, I am pro-life/anti-death penalty.

 

and not to get too political, but its a never-ending source of amusement and irony for me that the biggest pro-abortionists are usually the biggest opponents of the death penalty....

But, for those that have that conflict, at least the pro-death penalty and anti-abortionists are trying to save those that are 100% innocent.

 

Oh, and for the record, I am pro-life and anti-death penalty as well. So, even though I voted for Kerry, I guess there is a bright side to Bush winning. (I preferred to think of the election as a win-win situation rather than a lose-lose situation)

 

yes i see a difference. however, the pro-life argument seems to be that to take a life (abortion) goes against the will of god. how is the death penalty any different? you are still taking a life.

 

for the record, i am pro-choice/pro-death penalty.

in fact, i would like to see all child molesters and rapists added to the list of those eligible for the death penalty.

 

Here's a bit of a tangent wrt abortion.

There are several nations in the world that each have over ten times the yearly abortions that we have performed here in America. Take India and Russia as two extreme examples.

Do those foetuses matter as much as American foetuses? I would hope so. Personally, I would love to see a drastic world-wide decrease in the number of abortions. The most direct way to get there would be through the funding of international orgnizations who promote sex education and the use of condoms.

Oh, whoops, we've drastically cut funding for those organizations, even the ones that have nothing to do with abortion. We promote a "just say no" policy to sex, which hasn't worked for the history of humanity, outside a few puritan villages here and there that also enjoyed burning women.

As for marriage, I will repeat that I advocate a "three strikes" law to uphold the institution of marriage. People will three divorces should be prohibited from marrying again. I see "gay marriage" as no threat at all to the institution.

 

i think the fundamental issue is that whether or not abortions are legal, women will still have them. i bet that if abortions were made illegal, the number performed would not significantly go down.

the choices are to either ban them and have women going to underground/shady doctors and getting them done in an unsafe and potentially fatal manner or providing them with a safe environment under the supervision of a licenced doctor.

 

The pro-life side does not need to say that taking a life goes against the will of God. Murder is already outlawed. Scott Peterson is being charged with two counts of murder, not one.

And about B-bob's post, I agree for the most part. Increasing funding to the sex ed programs, non-abortificient contraceptives, and giving condoms to those that need them is just a practical extention of trying to protect life. As far as worldwide abortions, maybe the US should distribute condoms worldwide, with US flags on each package. What better way to engender goodwill around the world, than to associate us with safe sex!

 

We are in complete agreement. This is the type of patriotism I would fully support, as long as the flag is only depicted on the packaging (not the condom itself).

 

why do you hate america?

 

Those who want to outlaw abortion don't care about these consequences. They know that outlawing abortion will cause these problems. They don't care. They want to outlaw abortion.

It is now, and always has been, more about imposing a specific set of values on the entire country than it is about health/population/personal freedom concerns.

Mainly, it's an attempt to shape this country in their own image, one issue at a time. There are few fundamentialists/anti-abortionists out there who don't think the entire universe would be a better place if we were all like them. Sorta like the Borg from Star Trek.

(...and here come the exceptions.)

 

I'm not gay and I practice safe sex. Therefore, I think its fair that I decide that gay marriage be outlawed as well as abortion. Now give me my tax cut.

 

I too am a blithe and happy heterosexual who practices safe sex. I think same sex marriage is fine. I also believe man should have several wives when he can afford them, but a wife should never have more than one husband.

 

THAT'S the problem with abortion.

Once you start condoning murder in the name of the greater good, you start treading on extremely dangerous territory.

 

I would suspect that the Catholic Church is the largest concentrated pro-life group, they are also against the death penalty.

 

The problem with abortion is that there is no bright line legal definition of when life begins.

In most legal instances its accepted that life begins at birth yet as things like the Peterson murder case and the Protection of the Fetus law shows, it is also considered murder if a fetus is also killed during a murder. On top of that trying mothers who abuse drugs while pregnant as child abuse is directly defining the fetus as a separate life. These are in direct quandry with legal abortion is considered not murder [/b] because the fetus isn't considered a separate life.

So while a woman can be charged with child abuse while doing cocaine while pregnant she is perfectly fine to terminate that pregnancy through abortion.

What we need is an agreed upon definition of when life begins. I would suggest that that answer depends on two things: Consciousness and viability.

Its clear to me that embryos aren't viable. While they may be potential human life without a womb they will never develop into a human. For that matter thanks to cloning any nucleated cell in your body could be potential human life yet we don't consider giving blood to be murder or abortion.

I'm not aware of any test yet that can determine when consciousness begins but I think we can determine that based upon development of the brain. I say that at the point where we can see the cerebrum developed in the fetus might be the point where we can say that consciousness has begun.

IMO that should be the dividing line between where one can say this is an individual human life or this is a clump of unique cells that happen to be in a woman's body.