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

You can miscarriage and it is ok.

 

don't know if it's been said yet or not...but since Roe v. Wade has been the law, all state laws contrary have been deemed unconstitutional. erasing Roe v. Wade returns the issue to the individual states. the states will then likely work on referendums on the issue...some states may ban the practice...but not all. getting rid of Roe v. Wade will not have the effect that you think it will.

4Churckie -- i'll take you one further...it's against the law to destroy a condor's egg in california....but it's ok to terminate a pregnancy even in the last term for "soft" reasons.

 

I have a question....

Do you believe that a person who opposes abortion but supports the death penalty is a hypocrite?

 

Do you trust politicians to do this? Who defines something like this?

 

i am against the death penalty for reasons different than those of why i'm against abortion. i'm against the death penalty because i believe man is entirely imperfect...and i've seen how that plays out in the courts among juries. the idea of executing an innocent man, wrongfully convicted, is so disturbing to me that i'd say it's time to eliminate the entire process. we just can't be perfect on that.

the distinction between an unborn baby and a convicted murderer seem obvious to me, though. innocence and guilt before the law.

 

we've already done it. we have to do it. we have standards that affect probate and distribution of assets based on who died first in a common accident. some standards have to do with brain waves...others have to do with whether or not a heart is beating.

 

I think patriots everywhere would find this acceptable. As long as the star is white, not red.

 

Good point.

 

A good one but a little different.

Even without the whole mess of whether a fetus is a person a doctor or anyone else couldn't perform an abortion on someone without their consent. If its not murder its at least battery.

Since we have no way of knowing whether a condor can consent to having their eggs destroyed or not the presumption is that the condor is not giving consent. Of course if a mother condor decides to trample on her own eggs I'm presuming she wouldn't be held accountable under CA laws.

Anyway for your example to have validity though you would have to consider ever instance of where its legal or illegal to kill other animal embryos, we kill and eat chicken embryos with no societal uproar. Or for that matter you would have to by extension considering killing and eating animals as murder.

 

If those stats are even accurate. If they came from a pro-life site, as they are certain to have, their bias certainly skews those statistics. I did note the lack of link or substantiation of any kind.


But when it comes down to it, it doesn't really make any earthly difference what the reason for the abortion is, it should still remain the WOMAN'S choice, not a politician's, and certainly not some pro-life fanatic's. If a woman decides that she doesn't want to have a child, she has every right to make that choice and NOBODY has the right to take that choice away.

Once the government can extract the fetus from the womb, incubate it to term, and adopt it out, then and only then can abortion be banned.

 

Following Mad Max's condor egg example its almost too bad we humans don't lay eggs. That would certainly solve a lot of problems. Any unwanted pregnancies the eggs could be taken off to a government run "hatchery"

Of course then the argument would be:

Do you want government sitting on your eggs?

 

Well, here's the percentages according to a '88 Planned Parenthood survey:

21 - unready for responsibility
21 - can't afford baby now
16 - concerned about how having baby would change her life
12 - has problems with relationship or wants to avoid single parenthood
11 - is too immature or young to have child
8 - has all the children she wanted or all children are grown
3 - mother has health problems
3 - possible fetal health problems
1 - rape or incest
1 - doesn't want others to know she had relations or is pregnant
1 - husband or partner wants her to have abortion
<0.5 - woman's parents want her to have abortion
3 - other

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/index.html

Lots of other stats & whatnot in there.

 

Again, none of those reasons even matter in the first place. I shouldn't even have put that statement in my post, but I will live with it.

A woman has the right to choose an abortion. Nobody has the right to take that choice away, but it is reasonable to put restrictions on it like banning late term abortions or requiring parental notification for minors.

The bottom line is that the government MUST see to it that every single medical procedure in this country is performed by a licensed individual in a regulated medical facility. The government must do this even for unpopular procedures like abortion.

 

wait...what?? it's battery if the unborn child is human and deserving of rights, as well. have you checked with unborn children to see if they consent to abortion?? my guess is it's a resounding no, they'd rather not have that happen.

i'm not trying to make a perfect analogy. i'm talking about what our laws say about our society's values. if i'm reading them correctly, it would appear that a condor's eggs have more protections and are deserving of rights that an unborn human is not deserving of. judge that how you will.

 

Max, I know you might be a little biased what with a new beautiful human boy in your household, but who here has owned a baby condor? I hear they're pretty darn cute.

 

andy --

i really dont' want to engage you on this issue again. but i want to point out that the quote above is what YOU say. no where in this nation...no where in Roe v. Wade or subsequent constitutional interpretation of this issue does it give an unqualified right for a woman to choose an abortion. it is qualified by the term of the abortion...by the reasons for the abortion past that term...etc. it is not some pinnacle of liberty...and of course, it's subject to reinterpretation as we learn more about how human development in the womb.

 

hey, protect all the condors you want!!!! i'm just thinking that the same protections should probably be provided to human beings as well. just a thought.

 

I never said it was unqualified, I specifically listed two restrictions that I think are relevant and appropriate.

However, a woman has the right to do what she wants with her body and a fetus is still part of her body. The ONLY role the government should play is in laying out the proper regulations. The government must assure that every single medical procedure carried out in this country is performed in a regulated facility by a licenced practitioner.

The government will not have the right to BAN abortion until it also has the ability to extract the fetus once the woman has decided that she doesn't want to use her womb to carry that fetus any more.

Yes, Max, it is my opinion, but the difference is that my opinion does not force me to make a crusade of removing choices that other people have the right to make for themselves.

 

Do you believe that a person who opposes the death penalty but supports abortion is a hypocrite?

 

So much in this thread I don't even want to address. I've done the BBS abortion argument enough times already. But, I thought wizkid's initial questions about consequences was interesting, so I'm posting about that.

On foreign abortions, does anyone know how liberal the abortion laws are in Mexico and Canada? I googled Mexico and found this which says "Mexican federal law allows abortion in cases of rape, serious health problems or potential birth defects." The article is about a proposed state law that would remove the rape exception (it was defeated) . I don't know how easy it would be for foreigners to come and get an abortion. According to these folks, Canada has no prohibition against it, so you may want to set up shop there.

How welcoming will these two countries be about having thousands of American women coming to them? It'd help their economies certainly. But, isn't it a bit unseemly to be the abortion center for another country? And, if the US government decided to outlaw abortion here, couldn't they also use their influence to keep our neighbors from doing it for us? So I think the escape valve will be somewhat available but will be insufficient to keep up the current rates of abortion we currently enjoy.

I think Max makes the best point in this regard -- overturning RvW will not automatically result in the criminalization of abortion. We would likely have abortion safe haven states in more liberal areas and other states where it would be much harder to get one. With RvW out of the way, Congress may try to pass a bill to outlaw it on a national basis. I don't know if that would pass or not. Either way, I would expect an increase in travel for abortions, an increase in back-alley abortions, but still a large decrease in overall abortions.

The main reason for the decrease, despite what someone had said earlier in the thread, is that there is a great deal of overlap between what is legal and what is deemed moral. When the government criminalizes something, it puts its stamp on the thing that the will of the people has determined that a thing ought not to be done. And, when something is legal, many will blow off the moral question, reasoning that the state did not see fit to make a thing illegal. There would be many many people, in my estimation, that would refrain from an abortion simply because it was illegal, even if the punishment was a slap on the wrist. Plus the deterrence will weigh heavily on doctors, much more than on patients, and force them out of the market. Doctors probably would rather go to prison than lose their license to practice.


On marriage, if someone hasn't answered your question yet, if someone came into the US with his 3 wives, the police could come and arrest him for polygamy, give him a few years in prison and then deport him. A couple of years ago, there was a Saudi (?) prince in the US that we wanted to leave, so we threatend to charge him for polygamy. Also, I think if someone comes into the country with a regular marriage, you still have to register your marriage with the government. I'm in process now of registering my marriage with the French government and it's a big pain in the butt, and I'm a citizen of France.

I think gays married in foreign countries would be treated like regular marriages except they could never register it. They would essentially be single in America, just as I am currently officially single in France (though, they'd bust me if I tried to marry again). I wonder what would happen if a man married a man in another country and then came here and tried to marry a woman. Would they void the marriage because the man was already married? Btw, if you're wondering who allows gay marriage in the world, as I was, check this out: http://usmarriagelaws.com/search/al...rriage/gay_laws_around_the_world_/index.shtml

In any case, allowing or barring gay marriages won't have near the consequences of allowing or barring abortions. The more I think of it, the stranger it seems to have them in the same thread. It is important in its own way, but isn't in abortion's league for moral, legal, economic and social ramifications. If we ban it, we'll essentially have status quo (with whatever ramifications it currently has plus a lot of complaining); if we allow it, it has some moral dimension to it, a little blip of a social consequence, and pretty neutral when it comes to legal and economic considerations (and a lot of complaining).