Sincere request to help me understand why you feel abortion is not murder.

You" Consider that a large number of the people who find abortion horrible do not explicitly advocate for making it illegal. By the same token, a large number of the people who advocate for abortion remaining legal do not explicitly advocate for women having abortions."""


You've made that point, I don't disagree. However, I have been I the abortion debate , in this forum far longer than you and most Anti-Choicers want abortion made illegal.

You: "" Based on common use of basic tenets of Natural Law, there is a wide intellectual and practical space for solutions in accordance with these common values--birth control and other proactive family planning strategies, encouragement of adoption, etc..""

I disagree. The only point to the abortion issue is that abortion should be legal .

""""birth control and other proactive family planning strategies, encouragement of adoption, etc..""

Sure, encourage those things ( while Anti-Choicers whittle away at women's ability to utilize them) but they do not, and should not, replace a woman's right to have an abortion.

No woman should be under any obligation ( or pressure) to use birth control or give up a kid for adoption.

 

My experience is that the more strongly people are against abortion, the more strongly they tend to support birth control and adoption.

I have NEVER actually heard of anyone arguing against adoption. Where did you hear that? I mean, seriously, what nutjob said or wrote people should not give up for adoption kids they cannot or will not raise?

The only people I have ever heard argue against birth control are a minority of Roman Catholic (RC) parishioners and a majority of RC clergy. Moreover I have never heard of anyone wanting to limit access to it by adult women. Independent access by minors is about parental rights and responsibilities, and the fact that parents of minors are legally responsible for their minor children's choices.

I have seen from, time to time, people advocating for removal of federal funding, but that is almost always fiscal conservatives simply pointing out that the federal government cannot afford those costs. Usually it is backed up with the observation that lack of individual accountability leads inevitably to government overreach and (further) truncation of personal liberty.

Other people's relationships with their bodies and their reproductive functions are none of my business, and by extension, they are none of the government's business. It is important that Roe v. Wade was argued and decided on the basis of the Fourth Amendment because it draws a thick line between the government and people's personal reproductive choices.

While I am strongly in favor of the whole range of choices (abortion being legal, parenthood, adoption, birth control), I am also strongly against the government (at any level) subsidizing any of them. For that matter I am against all tax-funded social welfare programs because they all reach into people's personal lives to the extent that they fund people's personal lives.

Money comes with rules, restrictions, and prying eyes. The minute a tax-payer is paying for something, there is a reasonable and just demand for oversight, information, and regulation. It is the analog of raising a teenager and saying, "As long as you live under my roof, you will obey my rules, and yes, I can go into your bedroom any time I want, because I am paying for it." (I had this argument with both my father and my son, so my understanding of this evolved as I matured.)

If we want to be free, we must also be independent, self-reliant, self-funded.

The best and most just way to preserve freedom is for people to pay for their own lives, be accountable for the results of their own choices. For rights to be sustainable, the people with the rights must accept the attendant responsibilities.

(If some NGO, funded by donations is willing to pay, that is between the NGO, the donors, and the individual. That is all a private agreement.)

 

.


Then you are totally and completely unaware of the Repubs doing everything possible to shut down Planned Parenthood clinics. You are completely unaware of how hard they fight to keep birth control from being paid for by employers in employee health benefits.

I honestly wonder whose post you were reading when you responded to mine....


I never said I heard about people arguing against adoption...where did you see that? I never posted anything you claim I did....

Then you chose to ignore all the stories about Repubs/Anti-Choicers fighting to close clinics where women can access affordable birth control, how some religious employers don't want their heath insurance to pay for birth control, how some Anti's scream against the morning after pill and call it "murder".

.


And how stupid to think that Birth Control is more expensive than filling the Welfare with more kids. Fiscal conservative has never equated with "intelligent" or "logical".

Saying women must pay for having sex and getting pregnant ........Big Government Overreach is making abortion illegal, and is certainly a truncation of personal liberty

The old " I got what I want from the government and no one else should get anything I personally don't approve of "..... TOO BAD They DO!!!

Yes, I know you personally with your own hands and money built the street you live on and the freeway you take to work and the police department in your community and the traffic signals ...all by yourself...and the courthouse and all the other public buildings and infrastructure you use with your own hands ....really?

You didn't...or are you claiming you live alone on a desert island and are totally self sustaining....if you aren't you can hardly point a finger.

No, you want the Big Government to give YOU stuff, protect YOU but not anyone you don't approve of.....

But hey, with our new president you might get your wish , Bigger Government to make laws against people you don't like...that's HIS theme.

more irrlevant blather

 

To have murder, you have to have a human being. When you step on an ant or eat a Big Mac, it is not murder.

And a single celled zygote is not a human being.

 

Prove it.

 

You can not prove a negative. You must prove it is a person

 

It depends on your definition of "human being" ... if you are using it to mean an organism with human DNA then it is... but if you are using it to mean a person or a citizen to which individual morals and ethics might apply, then a search of the Internet turns up no evidence that the zygote qualifies as a person (which is probably the poster's definition of "human being").

Do you claim to have evidence that the zygote qualifies as a person for whom morals and ethics might apply?

 

Logic isn't your strong suit, obviously.

On the contrary, you're the one contending for the right to kill it, so it's on you to prove it's not a human being.

 

You can not prove a rock is not a person. This is basic logic. You can only prove a positive

 

Happily there is no need, seeing that is self-evidently true.

Since when is that synonymous with "gibbering lunacy"?

Actually, should the need arise, I assure you I can prove there are no elephants in my refrigerator.

 

Actually you can't. You just can't see them

 

Well certainly none can deny that you're committed...or at least that you should be committed.

 

I'm very committed. Thank you. I have also been a therapist for 27 years. Lol

 

The "zygote" in question is an initial stage in human development, there is no denying that. It might develop into a human being given the chance.

However, it is not an individual yet, and definitely not sentient. We cannot afford to deal in what might or might not happen, that's as luxurious a stance as they get. If we ever decide to argue on that area alone, we would have to consider bizarre concepts as well, such as the allocation of resources to an untimely and unwanted child eventually greatly diminishing the possibility of having a planned one when the parents can afford it, who would grow up in an overall better environment. As I said, we cannot deal in what might or might not happen.

Therefore, this devolves into just another question of faith. If your faith teaches you that it is the God that you worship that gives life to the fetus, and names them his creation, a human, then there's no convincing you and I'm genuinely sorry that you feel people are murdering their children. However, medical procedures are by default scientific, thus, your faith cannot be imposed upon them.

 

Prove it.

Then we can't afford to make laws.

 

How about lets not prove it. Abortion is what the people want...and thus we have it

 

Sources from Scientific American online articles, if you wish to check them:

The “Stress” of Being Born. Hugo Lagercrantz and Theodore A. Slotkin in Scientific American, Vol. 254, No. 4, pages 100–107 (92–102); April 1986.
The Importance of “Awareness” for Understanding Fetal Pain. David J. Mellor, Tamara J. Diesch, Alistair J. Gunn and Laura Bennet in Brain Research Reviews, Vol. 49, No. 3, pages 455–471; November 2005.
The Emergence of Human Consciousness: From Fetal to Neonatal Life. Hugo Lagercrantz and Jean-Pierre Changeux in Pediatric Research, Vol. 65, No. 3, pages 255–260; March 2009.

Or just type "fetus sentience" into google, and please try to avoid partisan or religious sources. Spending some time reading through this very well-known and basic medical knowledge should be enough.

It is also important to note that while the primary somatosensory region of the cerebral cortex forms around 18 weeks, there is virtually no activity until week 30.

Yes, if you take what I said in the broadest terms possible. However, what "might" happen in bizarrely deterministic approaches to human biology is a rather isolated topic.

 

Some Republicans object to Federal funding of Planned Parenthood. That does not automatically equate to trying to shut it down. People who want to maintain PP are perfectly capable of writing a check to the organization.

If you paid attention to what the arguments actually were (primarily regarding Hobby Lobby and Roman Catholic Church-based employers), they centered on RELIGIOUS employers BEING FORCED by the government to purchase plans that include those services. Most Republicans did not support the court cases, and most of the ones who did were doing so primarily to weaken ObamaCare, or to be pissy about the separation of church & state.

I thought it was a stupid argument on both sides, if for no other reason than birth control is so cheap. Costs to most insurers even go down if their customers are on birth control (fewer maternity claims).

Believe it or not, religious crazies are a tiny minority of Republicans; they just yell really loudly. (It is just like the racist crazies in BLM are a loud minority of BLM.)

Thinking all Republicans are like the "Evangelical" wingnuts is as worthy of ridicule as thinking all Muslims are terrorists, or all Black people are on welfare. If you are going to stereotype a group, don't base your stereotype on some characteristic that is rare.

I got it directly from your statement. In post #251, you used them to refer to birth control and other proactive family planning strategies, encouragement of adoption, etc..

Regarding "birth control and other proactive family planning strategies, encouragement of adoption, etc." you wrote, "Sure, encourage those things ( while Anti-Choicers whittle away at women's ability to utilize them) but they do not, and should not, replace a woman's right to have an abortion."

If you did not mean to include "encouragement of adoption" in your reference, then your original statement makes more sense.

There are lots of pharmacies that have $4-10 generics available, with or without insurance:

"If $20 or so a month still seems like it’s too much (or the products available at those prices aren’t suitable for some reason) there are even less expensive options. The generic aviane, for example, is $11 at Walgreens, $12 at CVS, and $13 at Rite Aid (all with coupon). Sprintec, another generic, is $9 for a month’s supply at Walmart and Target.

Walmart actually has nine different generic birth control pills available for $9 a month, according to their $4 generic drug list (apparently they can’t do it for $4?). Sprintec and what I’m guessing is a variant called tri-sprintec appear to be the only birth control pills offered by Target as part of their $4 generics program.

If in fact you really are looking for a $4 generic birth control pill, there are still options. Philith and gildagia, both generic versions of Ovcon, are available at Target as well as what GoodRx can only identify as a local membership warehouse (i.e. Costco, Sam’s Club, or BJ’s) for $3.77. Other local pharmacies including Safeway, Walmart, and CVS all carry the same pills for about $6 or $7." ​

http://selfpaypatient.com/2014/07/01/birth-control-self-pay-patients/

This data is from 2014, but most of this has not changed much.

I have never heard anyone say they thought that "Birth Control is more expensive than filling the Welfare with more kids."

Fiscal conservatives generally argue that people should take care of themselves and, revolutionary as it sounds, that they should take care of their own kids. Their arguments generally include consideration how much administrative cost is involved in government running various programs, and whether or not individuals are capable of doing those things for themselves for cheaper. Regarding this question, Fiscal conservatism is based on the easy math in the following equation:
$ Welfare > $ Abortion > $ Birth Control > Being an independently responsible adult

Many conservatives reject on moral principles as well as on fiscal principles, the idea that FoxHastings should pay taxes to support the results of MarcusMoon's choices, carelessness, and unwillingness to exercise self-control. The premise is that it is theft (from you) to reward me for having an orgasm.

Saying other people must pay the (financial) costs for women (and their partners) having sex and getting pregnant, and then involving government in the process is a contributor to creating Big Government, and getting it to Overreach.

Saying women and/or their partners must pay the financial costs for their choices does not even relate to saying Big Government Overreach is making abortion illegal, much less imply it. It is tantamount to concluding that saying people must take care of their own dishes after dinner implies that Big Government Overreach is making paper plates illegal.

Actually, nothing is making abortion illegal. All the "attacks" are either on funding, or, as in Texas, on ensuring the clinics that provide surgical abortion services meet particular achievable standards.

Saying a service provider must meet some particular achievable standard to perform a particular service does not equate to illegalizing the service.

Here you are putting words in my mouth. Really??

We are talking about reproductive choices, and you bring in roads and cops? I specified social welfare and personal lives ("For that matter I am against all tax-funded social welfare programs because they all reach into people's personal lives to the extent that they fund people's personal lives.")

But sure, I'll bite.

Somebody being paid by all the taxpayers to reproduce provides no definable benefit to any taxpayer, but instead benefits only the recipient.

Moreover, people who want to help people in financial need are thoroughly capable as individuals of helping them at much less cost than were that same help filtered through the government.

By contrast, infrastructure both physical and service (Roads, Dams, Cops, Firefighters, Education) are not person-specific, but provide universally beneficial services.

More to the point of this conversation, they are all (with the exception of police enforcing some laws, e.g. drug laws and domestic violence, etc.) oriented to support people's public lives, e.g., driving, commerce, education (for work preparation, etc.) They do things that the vast majority of individuals cannot do for themselves as individuals.

By contrast, social welfare programs do things for the vast minority of recipients things that they can do for themselves, and which, in fact the vast majority of people actually do for themselves.

There is nothing mysterious about how to keep from having a kid you cannot afford to raise, and there are multiple options available.

-abstain from sex - boring, but time-honored and free.
-use birth control - more fun, requires some planning, and cheap or sometimes free.
-adoption - no fun at all after the orgasm, but occasionally very profitable
-abortion - moderately inconvenient to both physically and emotionally painful, depending on how early, costs vary starting at free, totally legal and showing no signs of losing that status​

 

I've disagreed with much of what you have discussed with yguy (strange that!)...but I could not agree more with this particular comment.

We, the people, have decided that a woman should have the right to obtain an abortion if she chooses.

That pretty much covers it!

 

Sorry, you didn't refute one word of my post.....it was all the same old same old Anti-Choice claptrap .....even the insane "just don't have sex"......and the standard ""taxes are only for things I approve of" blather, the denial that Repubs try to shut down clinics over trumped up charges that they don't meet the requirements that they by law don't have to meet, the ignorance of the Hyde Amendment and the denigration of women........etc.

- - - Updated - - -

Good post and true!

 

Now that you've resolved the issue you can, in perfectly good conscience, scramble your password and log the puck outa here.

Even if you provide a direct link, without a pull quote, I sure as hell won't go slogging through it in the hope of finding something that probably isn't there anyway.

No need for that, since fetuses are properly deemed sentient at 5 months, given that the hearing faculty appears at around 4 months; but of course that can only give us an upper boundary, seeing the most elementary component of human sentience is self-awareness, a faculty for which no neurological explanation has been offered.

Not really, see above.

Not really. The ultimate expression of the will of the People is of course the Constitution, which is silent as to the personhood of the unborn; so naturally the pro-death crowd relies on the authority of a fraudulent 33 year old SC ruling. This being the case, all We the People can be said to have "decided" is to look the other way.

 

Not surprising that you would avoid reading any actual facts that might disagree with your mythology.

Zerks listed several articles that prove the fetus cannot experience pain at the moment the nerve cells appear. Surely you understand that the signals have to reach the mind and be interpreted as pain. Otherwise, the presence of nerve cells proves nothing. A man with a spinal cord injury may have living nerve cells in his legs but he will not experience pain if those nerve cells are activated. With the proper instruments you might even detect electrical discharge associated with those signals, but if they cannot reach his active mind... he does not experience pain. The same logic applies to the fetus. In the earlier developmental stages (as you might learn from those heretical science articles you avoid reading) the signals may reach the primitive brain stem and elicit reflex responses... but they cannot be understood by the fetus as pain until the mind of the fetus is activated.

Where have you seen evidence that "fetuses are properly deemed sentient at 5 months" ? Unlike some people, I prefer to read information that might disagree with my current understanding.

 

You seem to have made an unfounded assumption that I am a Republican, and then assumed I buy into stereotypical Republican views, reasons, and attitudes. I guess you missed most of my prior posts, and read things into my post that I did not write, or even imply.

I am not a Republican -- I think they are a bunch of liberal wussies.

I am IN FAVOR of women having the right to have abortions.

Maybe some of your confusion about my stance is that I don't think that means anyone has the responsibility to make it easy, or to subsidize it. For example, you have the legal right to buy a house. People saying title searches should be mandatory, and that the Federal Government should not help you pay for a house does not equate to people making it illegal for you to buy a house. It does not even imply that they are against you buying a house.

Maybe you thought that because I understand the reasoning of both sides, and point out when assumptions and stereotypes misrepresent people, including Republicans, that I must be one of the Anti-Choice crowd.

Nope.

My ONLY problem with abortion is that, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF CHILD MOLESTATION, RAPE, & PREGNANCY COMPLICATIONS, it indicates a severe failure to plan ahead and take appropriate and timely precautions with regard to a basic part of life.

Abortion is one of the many symptoms of the carelessness and unwillingness of people to live purposefully and behave proactively. Absolutely, abortion is better than making parents out of those same imprudent, self-absorbed bumblers, who either cannot exercise basic impulse control, or have not figured out something as simple as birth control or the relationship between sex and parenthood.

• There are a lot of people who can't reason well enough to recognize the benefit of putting a condom on their johnsons, or whose sense of the future is so dim that they cannot tell when it might be in their best interest to keep it zipped up in their pants.
• There are people who cannot scrape together the minimum responsibility and resourcefulness to get to the pharmacy with a prescription, or remember to take a daily pill, or to buy condoms.
• There are people who feel entitled to be protected from the natural consequences of their choices, and who assume someone else will fulfill their responsibilities.
• There are people who cannot look past how they feel at the moment, or who cannot temper those feelings well enough to reason and to consciously determine whether acting in accordance with those feelings is in their longer-term interest.

​

These people are not capable of being decent parents, because the personal faults that would make these people into parents are the exact opposites of the qualities and abilities required to raise a child. These people are why I am in favor of abortion being not just legal, but easy to get.

When I look at how many people use Welfare, WIC, SNAP, Food Stamps, etc. as long-term revenue streams and as career alternatives,
When I see how many borrow more than they can pay back (as individuals and companies),
When I see how many people demand safe spaces and trigger warnings because they do not want to hear information and ideas they disagree with or dislike, and how many people who know better, and who value the First Amendment, capitulate to those demands,
When I see how many people text and drive, drink and drive, and are otherwise hazards in the world,
THAT is when I know that abortion has been grievously underused in the last 44 years.

Regarding your statement that my stance is that "taxes are only for things I approve of", you failed to read enough of what I wrote, and then, again you assumed stances I never stated. My points were

• The government should only rule or impact the public sphere of people's lives.
• When taxes are spent to address problems in people's personal lives, that spending inserts government and laws into those personal issues that are nobody else's business, and the result is a destruction of privacy and an infringement of liberty. It is Significant that Roe v Wade was decided on the basis of the right to privacy, based on a clear determination that reproductive and medical choices ARE NOT ANY OF THE GOVERNMENTS BUSINESS. Because it is none of the government's business, tax money should not pay for it.
• That group monies (taxes) should be spent only on projects and activities meant to benefit the group, not select individuals or sub-groups within the group. (Welfare, corporate bailouts, etc.)

There are many programs meant for the benefit of the group that I dislike/disapprove of, but which constitute a fair and reasonable use of public tax dollars by being intended for the general public good by impacting the public sphere of life. I dislike massive military spending, for example.

I find it odd that when I state a position you disagree with, you characterize it as blather, without explaining a competing philosophy or set of reasons. Do you understand that this site is meant for conversations between people who disagree? It seems juvenile to seek out differing ideas and opinions, and then dismiss them out of hand, without any explanation.

 

Actually...YEAH, REALLY. We have decided.

The Constitution may seem silent as to the "personhood" of a fetus (unborn sounds like something from a horror movie)...but it is not silent as to how to resolve matters that are not specifically mention in the document. We do it by having the courts decide what is lawful and what is not.

The courts have decided that it is lawful. (That may change, if people like Trump and Pence manage to get people on the highest court willing to overturn what has been decided for now.)

Really? "Pro death?"

C'mon, grow up. No need for that kind of nonsense. No one here is "pro death" on this issue. I doubt anyone here is even pro-abortion, for that matter. Some of us are pro-choice for the woman who decides to terminate a pregnancy occurring in her own body.

Fraudulent?

What is "fraudulent" about it?

If a newly comprised court overturns that decision, will you consider the new decision to be fraudulent?

Most people are not looking away. Most of us are looking right at this issue with concern and consideration...just as you are.

We disagree about it, but we are not looking away.

 

Sorry didn't get much past the holier than thou part but I did check in to see if you were one of those who think condoms are effective contraception and BIOY! DO I HAVE NEWS FOR YOU!!!!

Although with perfect use concoms prevent 98% of pregnancies the typical number of unwanted pregnancies is 15

http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/topics/unsafe_abortion/magnitude/en/

But let us go back to the perfect use - 98% means 2 out of every 100 women will get pregnant and since contraception was being used then this is an unwanted pregnancy - the the ones that end in abortion

You know it is a repeating meme on this forum

Someone. Usually male. Comes onto the forum and starts inferring that women who have abortions are sluts who know nothing about contraception or are too lazy to use it

I have yet to find one of these who actually has good information about contraception. Most do not know even the basics about condom use let alone the failure rates of other contraceptives

Most women seeking abortions have been using some form of contraception