quote:

---

The things that radical Muslims hate about the United States, apart from their simple jealousy of our wealth and power, are the aspects of American culture that are absolutely the product of the influence of the extremist Left.

Abortion. Sexual promiscuity. Pornography. Open support of homosexuality. Hostility to religion. Denigration of the male sex.

---

My fellow American,

You are now drifting into territory that is beyond the sanity of anyone's shared reality. In a time of war and hate, you are now accusing 100 million Americans of inventing a good number of the things that flew out from Pandora's broken box.

Can you really, in your mind, lump so many now living people against a 30 billion people back drop of history, and accuse them of some of Earth's greatest of sins?

Is this the finest of Wisdoms that my father's generation has to offer?
 

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Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
 
They do hate Europeans. Remember Madrid? The United States remain the "Great Satan," however because we are far more powerful and our presence is felt more profoundly around the globe. Particularlly our military presence in Saudi Arabia.
 

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Posted by Ryuko (Member # 5125) on :
 
Oh my... That's quite an opinion...

....
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
I was under the impression that the biggest thing radical Muslims hate is the fact that we are INVADING THEIR LANDS. It certainly is not the radical left that is responsible for that.

In fact, I don't think I've ever heard Osama bin Laden say anything in any speech about abortion, or pornography, or acceptance of homosexuality. But he has definitely complained a lot about the invasion of Iraq, U.S. military buildup in the middle eastern region, and our desire to control the Middle East - all things that are products of radical neoconservatives, not radical liberals.
 

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Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
 
Actually bin Laden has complained about our "moral decay" and "aetheism." Of course, I couldn't give a damn about his standards one way or the other.
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
Yes, but he hasn't listed off the liberal issues OSC is talking about any more so than more conservative forms of moral decay - such as corporate greed, free market consumerism, or intolerance of the Muslim religion by Christian extremists.

OSC is putting words into the mouths of Muslim extremists in an effort to bend over backwards to blame liberals, when in reality it's rather clear from released tapes and statements that the thing Muslim extremists hate about America the most is the way we try to interfere with the Middle East.
 

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Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
 
I don't think he's putting words in the mouths' of Muslim extremists, I just don't think we should care what Muslim extremists say, except to use what they against them that.
 

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Posted by Chaeron (Member # 744) on :
 
Since when do we look to al Qaeda for moral guidance?
 

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Posted by vwiggin (Member # 926) on :
 
I think it is part of our effort to wage a more "sensitive" war against the terrorists.
 

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Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
 
Silverblue Sun:
Sell crazy someplace else. We're all stocked up here.
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
I think it would be better to put a link to the full article so we can read the statements in their context rather than dog piling over a few sentences in isolation.

Could someone put the link up before this thread goes too much further?

Thanks!
 

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Posted by vwiggin (Member # 926) on :
 
Ornery link.

quote:

---

Irony

Here's the greatest irony of all. The things that radical Muslims hate about the United States, apart from their simple jealousy of our wealth and power, are the aspects of American culture that are absolutely the product of the influence of the extremist Left.

Abortion. Sexual promiscuity. Pornography. Open support of homosexuality. Hostility to religion. Denigration of the male sex.

These are the things that radical Islam hates most about America, the reasons they use when they warn fellow Muslims against allowing Western culture to influence them.

Yet, in Al Qaeda's effort to install Osama Bin Laden (or, if he dies, some like-minded successor) as Caliph of all Islam, they find it useful to promote extreme Leftist governments in Western nations.

Why? Because they know Leftist governments won't fight them.

They know John Kerry will hand them the victory they can't win against a determined America.

Ultimately, they believe that Leftist governments will behave in such a way that the Leftist agenda can be swept away and replaced by Shari'a.

Such might be the result of hypocrisy and cynicism in America.

---

[ October 24, 2004, 06:49 AM: Message edited by: vwiggin ]
 

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Posted by vwiggin (Member # 926) on :
 
Thanks a lot Thor. You made me read that article.
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
I suspect that this essay would be more convincing if it didn't use terms like "econazis" to denigrate the opposing viewpoint.

The flap over Mark Halperin's memo to ABC staffers is a center point in this essay. It establishes the reason for attacking Kerry's lies to make them seem obviously worse than Bush's lies. So that the media bias can be exposed.

However, this viewpoint isn't really fair because:
1) It ignores the candidates' records and attacks the messenger
2) It doesn't take into account the reputation or track record of that messenger (Mark Halperin)

We aren't offered any facts to show us how Kerry's lies and distortions are equal to or worse than Bush's.

ABC is standing by Halperin in the post-memo frenzy saying that anyone who has worked with him (including conservatives) will know his record for unbiased reporting, etc., etc.

Now, that may or may not be disputed by the right, but I couldn't find anything saying "this guy is always taking sides." What they are saying is that a strangely worded memo is proof positive of a left-leaning bias in the news media overall. Then they cite one or two ambiguous lines from the memo.

USA Today reported on an analysis of this issue here:
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20041011/mediamix11.art.htm
And found that there's some evidence of bias in most news organizations coverage of the first debate (Halperin's memo came out just before the debates), but that it seems to have evened out somewhat as things progressed. Not a lot to indicate a severe bias, however.

You can read the memo here:
http://www.drudgereport.com/mh.htm

It's at the bottom of Drudge's analysis. If you follow HIS link, you can see a jpg that's almost unreadable.

Sadly, Halperin doesn't state in his memo which of Bush's lies and distortions he finds to be worse than the lies and distortions that Kerry's camp is putting out. That might've been interesting.

The funniest part of all this is that both sides are now arguing over which candidates lies and distortions are the least harmful. Not which candidate is capable of telling the truth, but which one is the more benign liar.

If I weren't an American, I would be laughing.
 

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Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
 
So basicly OSC is saying that voting Republican is bowing down to the radical"Muslim" agenda.
 

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Posted by Elizabeth (Member # 5218) on :
 
This Mark Halperin is not Mark Helprin, one of my favorite authors, is it?
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
He's ABC News Political Director.

I'm not sure what he does in his spare time, but if you read his memo, I'm sure you'll agree that he's not much of a writer.
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 

quote:

---

This Mark Halperin is not Mark Helprin, one of my favorite authors, is it?

---

Nope. But may I say, Elizabeth, that yet again you have proven the exquisiteness of your taste.



[ October 24, 2004, 10:22 AM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 

quote:

---

This Mark Halperin is not Mark Helprin, one of my favorite authors, is it?

---

Noe. But may I say, Elizabeth, that yet again you have proven the exquisiteness of your taste.

quote:

---

So basicly OSC is saying that voting Republican is bowing down to the radical"Muslim" agenda.

---

That seems to be the logical conclusion.
 

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Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
 
*screams and feels like banging her head against the wall*
That is something simular to something ANN COULTER would say.
The Muslims do NOT hate the US out of jealousy. That is too simple. There are historical factors to consider.
She said something about killing their leaders and converting them to Christianity, but isn't that what they fear?
Wouldn't that attitude CREATE more terrorists?
Oh, I really can't take much more of this.
 

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Posted by vwiggin (Member # 926) on :
 
Syn, you're going to wear out that emoticon one of these days.
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
This article is an example of the reason why people have been attacking OSC's political essays. Nothing he wrote there would survive the scrutiny as a post in this forum. From the very first paragraph it starts making up stuff about John Kerry and giving virtually no evidence to back it up.

As for the Halperin memo, Halperin was right on the matter. It IS the responsibility of a news organization to not artificially make both sides appear to be lying equally when one is lying significantly more than the other. To do so encourages lying more than the opposition, because there is no penalty for doing so. It should be fairly clear that a lie about there being WMDs in Iraq (which your entire campaign and Iraq war is based upon) is far more significant than a lie about the Iraq War costing $200 million already when it has only costed $120 million (a minor claim that barely effects the larger Kerry platform.) But the media has artificially placed lies like this side-to-side, making them appear to be equivalently bad. When the debates occured, the major media stations usually always presented equal numbers of mistruths from both sides, regardless of which side actually misled us more.

So, why is it we can't trust candidates to tell us the truth? It's because the media artificial neutrality encourages lying. The media should be biased towards whichever candidate is telling the truth more, because the media is supposed to be truthful.
 

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Posted by thrak (Member # 5499) on :
 
Excuse me, but why have Al Queda attacked the Twin Towers not once, but twice?

Is this some representation of American Liberals in their mind? Maybe I missed something.
 

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Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
 
*angry enough to explode*
How can he miss the fact that-
A lot of people who claim to be on the right have cheated on their wives, yet turn around and complain about OTHER people cheating...
grah!
*gets frustrated and tries to restrain myself from commenting anymore*
 

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Posted by Elizabeth (Member # 5218) on :
 
About Mark Helprin(Wrote "A Soldier of the great War"), am I dreaming or he did not write the inaugural poem? I will go check, but I see that they are not the same person. It is just strange that the two names are so similar. At first, I thought Bob or OSC ad misspelled it.

Here is a link to an article he wrote, so at least he is involved in politics as far as giving his opinion. I cannot find a link to his poem, but by gum, I think he wrote it.

All of which really has nothing much to do with this discussion, sorry.

Edit one last time to say, "No wonder I could not find the inaugural poem: there wasn't one!"
Bush decided to forego the tradition. I swear, though, Mark Helprin was involved in that inauguration.

[ October 24, 2004, 01:48 PM: Message edited by: Elizabeth ]
 

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Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
 

quote:

---

This article is an example of the reason why people have been attacking OSC's political essays. Nothing he wrote there would survive the scrutiny as a post in this forum. From the very first paragraph it starts making up stuff about John Kerry and giving virtually no evidence to back it up.

---

quote:

---

How can he miss the fact that-
A lot of people who claim to be on the right have cheated on their wives, yet turn around and complain about OTHER people cheating...
grah!

---

quote:

---

So basicly OSC is saying that voting Republican is bowing down to the radical"Muslim" agenda.

---

Well I suppose it would be, but only if he stopped there, he goes onto say that actually the radical Muslims are rooting for Kerry. Not saying I agree (or disagree) but he does specifically mention this point.

Hobbes

[ October 24, 2004, 02:11 PM: Message edited by: Hobbes ]
 

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Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
 
I will be so glad when this election is finally over.

--j_k
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 

quote:

---

Not that I agree with OSC in this essay, but keep in mind it wasn't a post on Hatrack, it's a published column, he can't go through and site links and back everything he says, there's a limited amount of column space and he wants normal people to want to read it.

---

quote:

---

It's not a matter of not citing links, which isn't necessary in Hatrack posts either. It's a matter of the things he's saying being either flatly wrong or being based purely on his opinion. It's a matter of being able to support his claims if he had to.

---

Well OK, I guess I misread then.

Hobbes
 

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Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
 
"...absolutely the product of the influence of the extremist Left." Let's see...

Abortion - There are pro-choice conservatives, although I don't know if OSC is aware of them. There are people with different opinions about abortion all through the political spectrum. I know from previous columns that OSC blames liberal activist judges for forcing abortion rights on America without putting it through a legislative process, and this may be so. But claiming that abortion is legal solely due to liberal influence is absurd.

Sexual promiscuity - Not sure why this is a liberal cause. I don't remember seeing it on any flyers.
So what root causes of promiscuity do liberals support? Birth control (or, rather, easy access to birth control)? Guilty. No-fault divorce? I'd agree. Sex in movies, TV and advertising? Nope, that would be free-market commercialism. The adage "sex sells" is as old as time and companies produce what people buy. Comprehensive sex education in schools? Show me the studies that prove it encourages promiscuity, and see how results fare over abstinence-only education. If you can find any such studies, that is. The only one I know of got hidden on the Surgeon General's Web site, right after the Surgeon General in question resigned. He was probably sick of the liberal agenda.
Maybe it's just the liberal suggestion that people should be comfortable talking about sex openly. I have to say I think it's a good thing.

Pornography - Yup, we're all over it. The open enjoyment of sexual material can be seen as a sign of loosening morals and the embrace of depravity. It can also be seen as a maturing country that is ready to stop treating the human body as something sinful.
Me, I think it's somewhere in the middle. I'd like to see more protection to keep pornography away from children and people who don't wish to see it, but I don't want to see eroticism completely taken out of all media, either.
Now if someone wanted to start trying to restrict depictions of abuse, nonconsensual sex, or the denigration of a sexual partner, I'd be interested.

Open support of homosexuality - Open support of homosexuals, anyway, which isn't exactly the same thing but close enough for government work. Yup, liberals are there. Well, some of them, there are plenty of liberals who fear the acceptance of homosexuality and how it will affect society. There are also conservative supporters, by the way. Talk to Andrew Sullivan sometime, or the Log Cabin Republicans.

Hostility to religion - To religion? No. To the application of religion in secular situations? Yup.
And now I'll back away and admit, yes, there is a hostility towards religion present in this country that isn't rooted in reason, and I won't try to defend it.

Denigration of the male sex - an unfortunate outgrowth of several situations: women of all social strata experienced amazing freedoms in the last century. All of a sudden, seemingly, they could own property, vote, divorce without condemnation, control or prevent their own pregnancies, and even hold a job. Out of this incredible social upheaval came two movements, one public, one not.
Feminism strode forward to demand equal rights and equal pay for women doing equal work. Extremists in the feminist movement went on to claim that all sex was rape, that women who weren't in the workforce were willing slaves,and other such ridiculous statements that colored all other feminists for years.
And many men reacted badly. Men that were used to being in charge, to being able to control their marriage, to being able to treat women as second-class citizens for so long that this new equality thing was utterly incomprehensible to them. There was a backlash. The two extremes are fighting still, and the rest of us are suffering from it.
Add to that a few minor things, such as the invention of the bumbling husband in situation comedies and the concept of the "deadbeat dad," and the "sensitive" guy that everyone was supposedly looking for in the 80's.

Liberal causes, all? Not hardly. Some were inevitable outgrowths of personal freedoms, freeodms that were gained at the same time that personal responsibility began to lose emphasis. Some are situations that arose from several causes but can be easily laid at the feet of liberals who are proud to claim responsibility.
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
The other irony I have to point out here is a personal one. I stopped watching the war coverage BECAUSE it was so blatantly pro-Bush. Did I miss a switch here somewhere? The last time I watched war coverage on teevee, it was all from embedded reporters and all they could tell us was what the military wanted them to. It was so rah-rah pro-war I kept wondering if they were going to regret losing their independent voice.

Did they finally wake up? Is that what's bugging conservatives? That there's some negative reportage now?

I mean, there's a lot to report, isn't there?

- prisoner abuse
- body counts
- unseasoned/untrained Iraqi troops as allies
- etc.

Maybe the problem is that in the middle of all that news, they'd like to see a few pieces on how great the schools are and that utilities have been reconnected for neighborhoods blasted by the war?

I really don't get it. The press has been anything but negative about Bush all through this war, and now the Conservatives have turned on them saying that the reporting of bad news is evidence of a bias. The evidence of a bias goes back to day one of this conflict and even prior. Back when no one asked the President the tough questions like "where's your evidence of WMD or that Saddam was linked to al Qaida?" Never heard that asked once. And it continued all through the conflict right up to covering his photo-op on the aircraft carrier "mission Accomplished" emblazoned on the bridge behind him.
 

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Posted by Ryuko (Member # 5125) on :
 

quote:

---

But that's the chief tool of Kerry's campaign: False fear.

---

quote:

---

Back when no one asked the President the tough questions like "where's your evidence of WMD or that Saddam was linked to al Qaida?" Never heard that asked once.

---

quote:

---

Back when no one asked the President the tough questions like "where's your evidence of WMD or that Saddam was linked to al Qaida?"

---

quote:

---

That's just nonsense. It's nonsense for the simple reason that the people who are most upset about the absence of WMD now are saying so-now. They certainly weren't saying so before.

---

quote:

---

Days before the Iraq war began, veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus put together a story questioning whether the Bush administration had proof that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.

But he ran into resistance from the paper's editors, and his piece ran only after assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, who was researching a book about the drive toward war, "helped sell the story," Pincus recalled. "Without him, it would have had a tough time getting into the paper." Even so, the article was relegated to Page A17.

---

quote:

---

On Sept. 19, 2002, reporter Joby Warrick described a report "by independent experts who question whether thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes recently sought by Iraq were intended for a secret nuclear weapons program," as the administration was contending. The story ran on Page A18.

---

quote:

---

Not all such stories were pushed inside the paper. A follow-up Warrick piece on the aluminum tubes did run on Page 1 the following January, two months before the war began. And The Post gave front-page play to a Sept. 10, 2002, story by Priest contending that "the CIA has yet to find convincing evidence" linking Hussein and al Qaeda.

---

quote:

---

"Despite the Bush administration's claims" about WMDs, the March 16 Pincus story began, "U.S. intelligence agencies have been unable to give Congress or the Pentagon specific information about the amounts of banned weapons or where they are hidden, according to administration officials and members of Congress," raising questions "about whether administration officials have exaggerated intelligence."

Woodward said he wished he had appealed to Downie to get front-page play for the story, rather than standing by as it ended up on Page A17. In that period, said former national security editor Vita, "we were dealing with an awful lot of stories, and that was one of the ones that slipped through the cracks." Spayd did not recall the debate.

---

quote:

---

God is God. Jesus is Jesus. and Religion is Religion.

---

quote:

---

ABORTION - You will find that almost all people are against abortion. The difference is that people on the Right want to illegalize it, thinking that this will end all abortion.

I believe the only true abortion solution is education, good parenting and people living as good, smart proper choice making people.

---

quote:

---

Want to know the real IRONY?

ALL across the board Abortions have gone, up, up and up! under George W. Bush's watch!!!!!

Why? Because the main events tide into abortion are POVERTY!!!

The poorer people get the more abortions there will be!

---

quote:

---

SEXUAL PROMISCUITY - How on Earth is he pinning this one on the lefties???? America is a capitalist nation and SEX sells everything!!! Is OSC really saying that Republicans are either Virgins or People who have only had sex with one person, their spouses and the lefties are a bunch of orgy-ists???

---

quote:

---

Pornography. Yuck. I hate porn as much as anyone, i think it's gross, sick and evil. How on Earth could OSC accuse the Lefties of being the Pornogrophy party???? I've never heard this issue being discussed in a public forum. And let's be honest, people's porn uses and addictions are usually done ALONE, so know one really knows who the porn junkies are???

---

quote:

---

This shows how flawed OSC's judgement is.

OPEN SUPPORT OF HOMOSEXUALITY - Well, in the face of Republicans who HATE them and like to treat them like evil beings, yes, we lefties do support homosexuals as REGULAR PEOPLE!

---

quote:

---

I believe this subject is for God to judge, but a lot of Rightys either talk directly to God, or are God's themselves so they are allowed to throw stones, or toss people into lakes of fire.

I go back to my old question, why are Gays any worse than Divorceees? Why don't Righties spend large amounts of time talking about how evil divorcees are??? Are y'all reading a different Bible than mine?

---

quote:

---

NOTE: I am all for Homosexual Unions, which hold the same rights as married couples, but am Against Gays getting "married".

The Marriage is defined in the Bible, so it should be allowed to stay as defined.

Gays should be able to get unionized, enjoy the same privelages as married couples, but would have to come up with their own clever term for their union.

---

quote:

---

Hostility to religion.

Religion is not God. God is God. Jesus is Jesus. and Religion is Religion. Those who are mega religious view their religion as god, and expect others to do the same.

I must remind you.

Jesus gave two commandments.

#1 Love God above all else.
#2 Love your neighbor as your brother.

Notice no mention of Religion?

I refuse to treat Religion as an Equal to GOD, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Does this mean that OSC is standing up and fighting for the Rastafarians? Christians who are not allowed to practice their religions properly here in the USA????

heh.

Religion has created a billion more crimes than Jesus/GOD.

---

quote:

---

Denigration of the male sex.

What does this even mean?????

It sounds like OSC hates the Left as much as Osama hates Americans.

---

quote:

---

I'm glad i'm not as "religious" as he is.

Thank you Jesus!

---

The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector comes to mind as a cautionary note about this holier than thou stuff.
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
Dag,

Thanks!

You are too literal minded. It's okay though. If I can dish it out, I should be able to take it. And I don't see OSC's opinion piece as lacking merely in specificity, but it is one of the things I attacked it for. Ah well..

But I was mostly miffed at being hinted at that I might be a liar (you) or having my statement called "nonsense" (I thought that was you, but it was Rakeesh -- oops).

I'm seeing a lot of vindication in what you posted, and so really have to agree that my point wasn't that NO-ONE was doing it (questioning the Administration on WMDs) but that it wasn't being done to my satisfaction.

Which is, of course, a much harder thing to gauge the truth of.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
Nor would I try.
 

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Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
I think that, based on what has come out, we see most of the (fact based) criticism was in branches of the government controlled by the administration, and that the administration was very careful to prevent the degree of the dissension, and in some cases the mere presence of the dissension, from coming to the attention of anyone outside the administration, instead downplaying or ignoring it.

A prime example of this is with the aluminum tubes, where the energy department had a much stronger case for the meaning of the aluminum tubes which didn't relate to nuclear weaponry at all, whereas the CIA case for them being used in centrifuges was based on refuted evidence (identicality to a centrifuge design posed somewhere) and silly assumptions (that Iraq would use these tubes instead of the much better centrifuge technologies they were already known to possess). The only case Congress and the public really heard was the CIA's, which was presented with even more certainty than the CIA was willing to commit to, and the energy department's case was hardly mentioned, with it being referred to like the opinion of a small group of dissenters, when in fact every nuclear scientist in the energy department was in agreement as to the most probable interpretation of the facts by far, and the CIA had not a single nuclear scientist backing their position, merely an analyst with some nuclear technician work with a type of centrifuge completely different from the sort Saddam was allegedly trying to build.
 

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Posted by jebus202 (Member # 2524) on :
 

quote:

---

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And, let me guess... a rose is a rose?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No, roses are tulips now. They had to change it because there was some chatter about terrorists using thorny roses in an attack.

---

Do they still smell as sweet, though?
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
What's better than roses on your piano?
 

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Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
The woman you love on a piano?
 

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Posted by sarcasticmuppet (Member # 5035) on :
 
The man you love *playing* the piano?
 

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Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
 
Tulips on your...

Bob!
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 

 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 
'Orson Scott Coulter'. Yep, sounds about right.
 

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Posted by plaid (Member # 2393) on :
 
A random note re: Chris's post --

quote:

---

Add to that a few minor things, such as the invention of the bumbling husband in situation comedies

---

TV sitcoms didn't invent bumbling husbands. They'd already been around in other forms like radio (Fibber McGee on "Fibber McGee and Molly," started in the 1930s) and comics (Dagwood in "Blondie," which also started back in the 1930s).

I read a book by cartoonist Mort Walker, who started "Beetle Bailey," "Hi and Lois," etc. He commented about how when he and Dik Browne started "Hi and Lois," they meant for the husband (Hi) to be a solid, sensible guy, and NOT a bumbling husband... but that for whatever reason, Hi's character soon became that of the bumbling husband... which suggests that for whatever reason, in American humor, it just tends to be funnier for husbands to be bumbling. (Probably similar to how kids on TV are usually obnoxious and that's funny, even though in real life almost no one likes obnoxious kids.)

[edit to fix typo]

[ October 24, 2004, 10:59 PM: Message edited by: plaid ]
 

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Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
 

quote:

---

Orson Scott Coulter

---

quote:

---

ALL across the board Abortions have gone, up, up and up! under George W. Bush's watch!!!!!

Why? Because the main events tide into abortion are POVERTY!!!

---

quote:

---

The things that radical Muslims hate about the United States, apart from their simple jealousy of our wealth and power, are the aspects of American culture that are absolutely the product of the influence of the extremist Left.

---

If radical muslims are evil and hate the values of the left, does that mean we should endorse the "influence ot the extremist Left?"

I know it is a logical fallacy, but it is a fun one!
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
I believe the CDC keeps yearly records of reported abortions, and the information is available online.

I haven't the time to look it up, but that would be the place to start.
 

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Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
 
What he seems to be suggesting with is "Liberals are the reason.." reasoning is a temporary alliance.

The Radical Islamists get together with the ultra-conservative Christians and others (Ultra-Conservative Jews, Hindu's, and Buddists). They band together to wipe out the dreaded aethistic, demonic, liberal cabal.

With the peacenic, make (perverts) love not war, liberals finally erradicated from the face of the earth, the good religious folks can get back to the business of killing each other.

Finally, the last church/mosque/temple standing will be declared the winner.

I'd be worried for him, since LDS is heavilly outnumbered by any of the other major churches in Christianity, as well as those outside of it, but I'm sure he believes God is on their side, so they can't loose.
 

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Posted by CStroman (Member # 6872) on :
 
Not suprisingly, OSC's article states the same things I say. To each their own.
 

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Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
 
I don't agree with all the "OSC wants to align with the Islamists now" rhetoric.

It's the same argument as "They hate us because we have troops in Saudi Arabia; ergo, take the troops out." This reaction - the accusation that someone who tries to identify a reason must sympathize and validate that reason - is the same attack used against those who claim the first justification.

In other words, OSC saying that part of the reason they sneer at us and think us unworthy of life is because of the soft core porn passing as entertainment is the same as some people saing the reason they sneer at us and think us unworthy of life is because we have troops on their holy land. To say that expressing either viewpoint is equivelent to approving of their actions is bogus.
 

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Posted by CStroman (Member # 6872) on :
 
IMHO, they hate us for "All of the Above" which in other words is "We aren't all Wahabbist muslims".

The people who hate us want the whole world to live under their version of Sharian Islamic Law on a world wide scale under the Ummah of Islam led by a Caliphate.

They hate anything and anyone and any government that isn't in agreement with this. They hate even more those things which oppose this.
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
I've gotten into reading David Brin's columns after a link to one of them was posted here. I thought it was amusing that OSC made the comparision of the evils of our culture that the Islamic fundamentalists see with what the social conservatives see (and I made that point before as well and someone, I think it was Dag, to exception to it) at around the same time the Brin posted this piece showing how he thought the neoconservatives and the Islamic fundamentalists shared very many characteristics.

In regards to the points of OSC's piece, I'd say that it is only because of his idealized, revised version of the past that he can blame relatively new movements for the ills of society. Society has always been sick. In many ways it's getting better. Some of the movements that helped American society grow healthier (or have to the potential to grow healthier) either made certain parts of society's sickness more visible (such as our immature views on sexuality that are more or less as immature now as they were before the sexual revolution, although this takes a much different form) or have given themselves over into excess (such as the more radical feminists). However, that doesn't mean that we're not better off or have the potential to be better off now.

OSC's view of how things should be is, I think, betrayed by one of his earlier statements that the shows of the 50s demonstrated to people how families should work. I believe that he has the smae view of history as a larger whole. Claiming shoes where the major problems overcome by families where that someone got a zit or the family pet died showed people and where the authority figure was always right were a good guide to family life is like claiming that Martha Stewart provides a good to housekeeping. Real life is much more complicated and generally uglier than that. It is disrespectful to actual families to point to 50s shows and say "See, that's what you should be like." It's similarly disrespectful to point to the history of our country and tell the people who worked for people's freedom, "See, you should have just shut up and done what you were told.", which is what it seems OSC's conservativism boils down to.

There never was a golden age. There were just times in the past where, if you were a member of the priviledged class (or someone looking back with a uncritical eye), you could pretend that there were.

Sexual repression is not a more mature way of handling sex than the exploitive, obsessional attitude our culture now has towards it, it's just less visible.

Also, losening the strictures on sex and many other things did other things besides bring these problems into the nation's view. It allowed freedom. Freedom is not a good or a bad thing, necessarily (OSC is arguing that it is bad in these cases, for example). Instead, it allows for good things or bad things to happen. Pointing out the bad things that not forcing people to conform to some set of standards allows to happen without acknowldging the positive uses that people have put that freedom towards is dishonest.

A nation whose method of controlling sex is to make it something shameful, scary, and evil is never going to come to a more mature view of sex. The exploitative nature of our current views of sex are, in large part, built on the immaturity of the sexually repressive climate that preceded it and which still has a major influnce in our culture. Sex is still regarded as dirty. A nipple being bared wouldn't be a big deal exploitationwise if it wasn't a big deal repressionwise.
 

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Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
 
It's fashionable to declare that a family of two parents who devote time and effort to making their children are happy and disciplined is secretly the sign of inner rotten core, but that just means you bought into the same myth that American Beauty was founded on.

Nothing is ever perfect, but the truth is that families of a mother and a father resulted in a standard of living that is higher and children that are better educated and less likely to do the destructive things that derail a life (teen pregnancy, prison, drug addictions).

That's hard thing to hear sometimes, but not all families are like that, even those that would like to be. Citing OSC's belief that parents who get along and consider the children's welfare first are a happy, productive kind of family to be evidence of delusion makes me suspect that there is no evidence of any kind that you would accept to change your views.

[ October 25, 2004, 01:33 PM: Message edited by: katharina ]
 

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Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
 
McSquicky, I wish I could say it as perfectly as you do...
BECAUSE THAT IS EXACTLY HOW I FEEL READING THOSE ARTICLES.
The 50s were NOT a golden time for my folks. My relatives went through hell back then, especially in the south.
Sitcoms in any era are not an accurate representation of America. The 50s had the same problems we have, only it seemed like they were more hidden...
*Thinks of a Tree Grows in Brooklyn even though it's not set in the 50s because it's such a realistic book.*
It seemed like that sort of repression led to the explosion that was the 60s and 70s...
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
kat,
I agree with what you said (well, except for the American Beauty thing). I'm a strong supporter for the two parent family. I'm one of those people who agreed and agrees with Dan Quayle about the Murphy Brown thing.

If you meant what you said to be a criticism of my post, I'd suggest that you didn't actually understand what I said.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
I think OSC's point has never been that things should be just like they were in the 50s. Rather, it is that correcting the bad aspects of society in the 50s did not require outright dismissal of the good aspects. Where he fails to make this clear is when he speaks only of the good aspects of 50s society.

This is an easy concept for me, because I think every human society throughout history has had its moral compass misaligned in one or more ways, due at least partly to overreactions to prior moral misalignments. This isn't to say that overall one society can't be said to be better than another. Rather, it is to say that society does not necessarily always move in the best direction, even when it moves in a direction toward something clearly better than what exists now.

It also means that in correcting one problem, it's possible to make other problems worse. And it doesn't mean that desiring the return to some previous aspect of society indicates a desire to return to the bad aspects of that society. It also doesn't mean that all changes which better one aspect of society are necessarily better in all ways.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Bob the Lawyer (Member # 3278) on :
 
Even accepting OSCs argument I don't think I understand the point. He says that apart from simple jealousy of wealth and power America is hated for the culture-products of the extreme left. Of course, without these leftist elements they'd hate America anyway, what with the path of jealously leading to hate still being intact. You take anyone with a desire to hate you and they're going to pick out your differences and exaggerate them. Whether its sexual promiscuity or simple greed that's used to justify the hatred the hatred is still going to be there, right? So how is it the fault of the left for providing the moral decay that the Islamic Radicals loathe when the loathing exists independently of the moral decay?

Am I making sense here? And what's the point? Is he taking his irrelevant distaste of certain elements of American culture and fitting it into something that's universally disliked in an attempt to convince people this way of life is wrong?
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
Dag,
But my point is that OSC's conception of the 50s were a time were most things were good that was screwed up by the social reformers and that our main problems now is that people have these freedoms to do other than what they are told. My view is that, in many cases, earlier times in American society were, through repression and oppression, able to conceal the sicknesses that are now evident and that while many people (the majority of our country, I'd say) have been misusing these freedoms or at the very least using them without taking on the responsibilities they entail, there are people who are using them responsibly and to very good effect and that the way to deal with people's immaturity is not to try to again force them to do as they are told.
 

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Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
 
:whew:

Do not try to read Squick's last post aloud, in one breath.
 

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Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
 

quote:

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So how is it the fault of the left for providing the moral decay that the Islamic Radicals loathe when the loathing exists independently of the moral decay?

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quote:

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OSC's view of how things should be is, I think, betrayed by one of his earlier statements that the shows of the 50s demonstrated to people how families should work. I believe that he has the smae view of history as a larger whole.

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quote:

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It's on these issues I see little hope of reconciliation. The only hope is mass conversion, which is what the Civil Rights Movement accomplished

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quote:

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I guess what you're saying is that sometimes it takes force to make that happen.

I think it is possible for people to get there without force. It takes a certain maturity to realize that the change is both inevitable and desireable and thus worth implementing without further fighting.

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quote:

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For example, on the issue of abortion, I'm betting that eventually we will get to a point in this country where there is cheap, effective birth control, realistic age-appropriate sex education, and a major reduction in abortion rates (per person, per live birth, etc.) But we aren't going to get there by making abortion illegal. We're going to get there because people realize that it's better to plan and take advantage of cheaper, less stressful ways of avoiding having a child.

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quote:

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I do see both sides (and many more) to the abortion issue. I think you aren't seeing any but one side.

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quote:

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I submit that our nation is divided mainly because people like simplistic arguments. Like this one.

When you go looking for the complexities of any issue, you almost always find them. And then, I think, you are intellectually bound to include them in your thinking and planning.

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quote:

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And this division does NOT exist because two sides have simplistic arguments. Both sides have very complex, nuanced positions that happen to be utterly incompatible. The whole issue was brought up, after all, as a counterexample to your proposition that simplistic views lead to division and understanding the complexities leads to less division. It just ain't so.

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Dagonee
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
By the way, Dag, I'm pro-life too. I just don't think we should legislate it.

If the number of abortions were to climb dramatically, I might change my mind. But for now, I think we have a better way to achieve a positive result and, frankly, the acrimony isn't getting this nation anywhere that I want it to go.

I'd prefer an educated populace, free health care, including sex education and prenatal care, better adoption procedures, and replacing stigma with truth regarding teen pregnancies. I'd also rather see mandatory parenting classes. Oh, all sorts of things we could be doing if were weren't at loggerheads.

That's all I'm saying.

I see multiple approaches that would reduce the abortion rate NOW. Fighting to make them illegal is just entrenchment.

While both sides dig in their heels, how many abortions have happened that might not have?
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
As long as both sides can point to the others as "extremists" we will have all or nothing in this country.

It's a dumb way to affect social change. It's doubly sad when lives are at stake.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
You're acting as if wanting to make abortion illegal precludes advocating for other abortion-minimizing policies. It doesn't.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Olivetta (Member # 6456) on :
 
I'm with Bob.

I mean, isn't it best to change people's attitudes instead of laws, at least to begin with?

Because people still do stuff that happens to be illegal. All the time.

I think real change has to start in the hearts of people, not in their fear of authority. But that's just me. I could be all turned around on the subject.
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
Dag,

Again, you fail to undestand the opposition if you think that statement is true.

Loggerheads, digging in of heals, rhetoric instead of dialog.

That's what we have with the approach that has to solve the legality issue first...
 

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Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
 

quote:

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I mean, isn't it best to change people's attitudes instead of laws, at least to begin with?

Because people still do stuff that happens to be illegal. All the time.

I think real change has to start in the hearts of people, not in their fear of authority. But that's just me. I could be all turned around on the subject.

---

If someone was shooting arrows at the local school, I don't think the thought would be, "well it's a shame that they do that, we should try and change their minds about wanting to do that, but it would be such a greater shame to force them to stop". Sometimes you get people to follow you by persuasion, most of the time in fact, but sometimes the consequences are to grave, which is why we have laws at all. It would be great if we could persuade people not to commit petty theft, or not to hit each other, but we can't rely on that, because they still will steal batteries and get in fights.

The argument about abortion's importance in these matters is of course up for descension, some feel it's important enough to stop outright, some people don't think there's anything like a human life being ended. Would it be better if we could just convince everyone abortions were wrong? Absolutley, but until we do, they'll keep happening, and some of us don't think that the cost of abortion is worth leaving the choice open.

Hobbes

[ October 25, 2004, 09:04 PM: Message edited by: Hobbes ]
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
Olivetta,

do you think a coalition of like-minded people could be built? Do you think we'd be in the majority? I believe we would be and could build such a coalition.

And I believe we could make a difference where others have failed and will continue to fail.

But then, I believe that most people do not seek out polarizing opinions. I think most people would be willing to give things a try to make something better and work cooperatively with others.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
Where did "have with the approach that has to solve the legality issue first" come from.

Where did I say that nothing else can be done until abortion is made illegal?

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
Actually, I find it interesting that you seem to think the mere possession of a "polarizing opinion" makes it impossible to work together. I think that says more about your ability to work with others, especially if you're only looking for "like-minded" people to have in your coalition.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
Hobbes,

Would you like to save lives now? Do you think you'll get an abortion ban passed now?

I offer a way to reduce the frequency of abortions right now.

Is that not even MORE analogous to your situation of the person shooting arrows at a school yard.

Aren't you the one saying "we'll get that guy, just as soon as we can pass a law!!!"

Meanwhile kids are dying, right?

Good plan you've got there. Working well for you?

It's a high moral stance but it doesn't get the job done.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 

quote:

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I mean, isn't it best to change people's attitudes instead of laws, at least to begin with?

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quote:

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Good plan you've got there. Working well for you?

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Bob's Dr. Phil Moment.

Sorry, couldn't help it. Love ya, Bob!
 

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Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
 
Bob, I was responding specifically to Olivetta's comments, I wasn't outlining a plan of attack, sorry for the misunderstanding.

I agree with Dag, and with you, it would be great to change people's minds, let's do it! I just don't see why such efforts are mutually exclusive, or even should be, with trying to get legistlation passed to prevent abortion.

Hobbes
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 

quote:

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I offer a way to reduce the frequency of abortions right now.

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quote:

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You keep saying this, yet you have utterly failed to back it up with evidence, theoretical reasoning, or any other form of proof.

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quote:

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You are such a lawyer.

Law school will do that to people. It makes you think that courtroom logic is real logic.

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quote:

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Will you work with me? Give us 10 years of doing it my way. Work to convince your fellows that we should not work on the legality issue for the next 10 years while we try other things. And in the meantime, we will work with pro-choice people to work with us.

If you'll do that, and really do it, I think we can get somewhere.

If you can't do that, then we'll just have to work for a solution without your help because your insistence on solving the legality issue (and you too Hobbes) means that you can't work with the opposition.

So, take that step???

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Why can't someone work with you on issues they agree with you on, and with other people on issues they agree with other people on?

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
 
Bob, the reason no one will garuntee you 10 years of not working on legality is that 10 years means over 10 million abortions. What if what you suggest doesn't work?

I'm also curious why you think that wanting legal restrictions on abortion makes it impossible for me to work with anyone else on abortion at all? I mean is simply having a view on where to go with the issue equivelant to being polorizied on the issue? Or have I shown myself to be to dedicated to my belief to ever listen to anyone else? If so I'm truely sorry, I do try to always hear what people are trying to tell me.

Hobbes
 

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Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 

quote:

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If someone was shooting arrows at the local school, I don't think the thought would be, "well it's a shame that they do that, we should try and change their minds about wanting to do that, but it would be such a greater shame to force them to stop". Sometimes you get people to follow you by persuasion, most of the time in fact, but sometimes the consequences are to grave, which is why we have laws at all. It would be great if we could persuade people not to commit petty theft, or not to hit each other, but we can't rely on that, because they still will steal batteries and get in fights.

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quote:

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Why can't someone work with you on issues they agree with you on, and with other people on issues they agree with other people on?

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It's a trust issue. No one from the opposing side will work with you if they know that you are leaving this meeting to go to one where you fight to make abortion illegal.

It's just trust, or lack thereof.
 

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Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
 
[In response to Rabbit]

Well for starters, how about strict regulation of the medical end of this? My "favorite" comprimise is to consider life to begin by the same qualifications used to test for the end of life. Not allowing doctors to preform abortions past that point would be a fine starting for me.

Hobbes

[ October 25, 2004, 09:30 PM: Message edited by: Hobbes ]
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
Rabbit, I can and have described such a system, but don't have time to write it up right now.

I will try to do so over the weekend or next week in a new thread.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 

quote:

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Bob, the reason no one will garuntee you 10 years of not working on legality is that 10 years means over 10 million abortions. What if what you suggest doesn't work?

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quote:

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It's a trust issue. No one from the opposing side will work with you if they know that you are leaving this meeting to go to one where you fight to make abortion illegal.

It's just trust, or lack thereof.

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quote:

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It's a trust issue. No one from the opposing side will work with you if they know that you are leaving this meeting to go to one where you fight to make abortion illegal.

It's just trust, or lack thereof.

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I'm trying hard to stay above board on this discussion Bob, and so I hope you take this the right way, but it's hard for me to really understand how you can have such little faith in people that you think they can't work together on things they agree with because they know there's things they don't agree with, and yet have enough faith in people to believe that arguing the effects of abortion will stop it.

Sorry if I offended.

Hobbes

[ October 25, 2004, 09:33 PM: Message edited by: Hobbes ]
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
Re: Hobbes & Dag's responses to Rabbit.

Back alley abortions.

Still illegal, but they'll happen.

Or women will travel to Canada or Europe.

The solution doesn't work. It makes things riskier and puts doctors and women in jail, but it doesn't stop abortion.

It shifts the problem to somewhere where you don't have to look at it statistically.

That's not a victory.
 

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Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
 

quote:

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Back alley abortions.

Still illegal, but they'll happen.

Or women will travel to Canada or Europe.

The solution doesn't work. It makes things riskier and puts doctors and women in jail, but it doesn't stop abortion.

It shifts the problem to somewhere where you don't have to look at it statistically.

That's not a victory.

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It's true, any method we pursue I'm sure will never result in a full stop of abortion, but I find it very likely that making abortion illegal will drasstically reduce the number of cases of it. Will it still go on? Will women try to have create their own abortions, sadly yes, they will. But that doesn't negate the fact that, in my opinion, the abortion rate would fall through the floor.

Hobbes
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 

quote:

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'm trying hard to stay above board on this discussion Bob, and so I hope you take this the right way, but it's hard for me to really understand how you can have such little faith in people that you think they can't work together on things they agree with because they know there's things they don't agree with, and yet have enough faith in people to believe that arguing the effects of abortion will stop it. :confsued:

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quote:

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You will no doubt point to people who switched from pro-choice to pro-life. I will then refer you to the book The True Believer and we can decide what motivates the people who cling to one movement and switch to cling to a different movement, and whether they are really allies of anyone.

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quote:

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It's true, any method we pursue I'm sure will never result in a full stop of abortion, but I find it very likely that making abortion illegal will drasstically reduce the number of cases of it. Will it still go on? Will women try to have create their own abortions, sadly yes, they will. But that doesn't negate the fact that, in my opinion, the abortion rate would fall through the floor.

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The MEASURED abortion rate would fall through the floor.

You would have no way of knowing what the real abortion rate would be. But that's okay, because the numbers would be a salve to the morality of nation.

What a crock!

It's deliberately cooking the books, in my opinion.
 

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Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
 
Bob, for most of my life I was the opposition, and like most pro-choice people I found abortion to be ... disgusting at best. If someone came to me with a plan of a group that would try to stop abortions, without any legal action then, I would be compeltely in favor, as I'm sure most people on the pro-choice side would be. I can't imagine myself caring that half the people left the meeting to and then tried to make abortion legal, just as I wouldn't care now that half of the people left this meeting and tried to make (or keep) abortion legal. I really don't understand why this would cause such a conflict as to make it impossible to work together.

Hobbes
 

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Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
 

quote:

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The MEASURED abortion rate would fall through the floor.

You would have no way of knowing what the real abortion rate would be. But that's okay, because the numbers would be a salve to the morality of nation.

What a crock!

It's deliberately cooking the books, in my opinion.

---

I've tried to be very understanding Bob, and presume that you do have the best motivations at heart, just disagreement over the best way to accomplish them. I very much resent the implication that I only ccare about keeping my moral concsience clean, not about other's lifes.

Hobbes
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
Tom,

I was talking mass psychology again. Specific cases are not judgeable. You do what you do. Others do what they do.

And, by the way, the True Believer description applies to people who are radical adherents to one philosophy and "nearly instantaneoulsly" become radical adherents to the philosophy they once despised.

Sorry if this answer isn't good enough for you, as I'm sure it is not. I don't have a better one for you.

I'm mostly suspicious of you for your post count and your collection of dice with more than six sides.
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 

quote:

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I've tried to be very understanding Bob, and presume that you do have the best motivations at heart, just disagreement over the best way to accomplish them. I very much resent the implication that I only ccare about keeping my moral concsience clean, not about other's lifes.

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quote:

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Well for starters, how about strict regulation of the medical end of this?

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quote:

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I really don't understand why this would cause such a conflict as to make it impossible to work together.

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quote:

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And I have gotten somewhere: two. That's two people, one of whom worked as a pro-choice activist in college, who are now pro-life at least in part through my efforts. No, it's not a huge number. But it's two.

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quote:

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My goal is to reduce the number of abortions. In the ~31 years since Roe vs. Wade, how many abortions have you and other pro-life activists stopped?

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quote:

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I can and have described such a system, but don't have time to write it up right now.

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Me? 2 that I know of.

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quote:

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I will say that the system would necessitate release of medical records, but only upon probable cause (or something stronger) that the law had been violated and never without a judicial order that the patient has due process (notice and hearing) to oppose.

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quote:

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But have could you provide evidence for "probable cause" without the medical records? Without medical records, there is no reliable evidence that a woman was pregnant. Anything but medical records (except perhaps the 1st hand testimony of the women involved), is heresay. This is the entire problem with abortion -- all the evidence comes from the body of the woman. ALL.

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quote:

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Frankly, Bob, if my taking a ten year break is contingent on your success in encouraging people to work with you, this thread is enough to make me skeptical.

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quote:

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Why then Dag, do you feel that making abortion illegal is a critical part of stopping abortions? As best I can see, the legal fight against abortions for the past 31 years has been at best a waste of time and at worst counter-productive.

Wouldn't we be much better off if all the time and effort spent on trying to change Roe-vs-Wade had been put into helping young girls find practical solutions to their problems besides getting an abortion?

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quote:

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I think that it would be wonderful to start up coalitions to work on specific aspects of the issue in a cooperative manner. I think that it would take some restraint on everyone's part to stick just to the issue at hand (say, providing teens in realistic sex education -- defining what that is and how best to deliver the message, etc.). We'd all have to agree to not try to force the agenda into areas of disagreement and just hammer out something practical on the thing we set ourselves as a task.

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quote:

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The normative reason is that criminal laws are one of society's best means for declaring certain behavior as outside society's moral norm, and for declaring to the potential victims of the behavior that they are part of the community of human beings worth protecting.

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quote:

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I think OSC's point has never been that things should be just like they were in the 50s. Rather, it is that correcting the bad aspects of society in the 50s did not require outright dismissal of the good aspects. Where he fails to make this clear is when he speaks only of the good aspects of 50s society.

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quote:

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The 1950s were the last decade in which marriage was still believed to be permanent, illegitimate births and abortions were rare, and adults chaperoned children to keep them from having sex before they were ready to deal with the consequences.

No civilization has ever been as successful at bringing freedom, self-government, relative safety, and a chance for happiness to such a large proportion of the human race as the civilization of western democracies under the leadership of the United States of America. And a rational claim can be made for the idea that the 1950s represent the peak from which we have deliberately and unnecessarily fled, heading irrationally downward into darkness.

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• The 1950's marked the resurgence of what is the modern Klu Klux Klan movement.
• The 1950's was when "under god" was forced into our Pledge of Allegiance.
• The 1950's marked a divisive period in American history topped only by the Civil War itself with the McCarthy era.
• The 1950's was the time that rose the bar higher in our Cold War arms race than any other decade.
• The 1950's was the decade where we began our actions that led invariably to the mess that was the Vietnam War.
• The generation that was born in the 1950's is the generation that 30 years later gave us one of the highest divorce rates in the world.

Dispute my list against his until you're blue in the face, but the only way either are viable examples of the 1950's is if they are taken in context together, not separate. OSC separates the good from the bad and states explicitly that the 1950's are the ideal from which the modern day must be judged, yet you claim he doesn't do that. Are you OSC under another persona, or do his own writings not speak better for his opinion than your own opinion of his writings?

[ October 25, 2004, 11:47 PM: Message edited by: Jutsa Notha Name ]
 

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Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
 

The darkness was always there! Hidden under the surface!
DIDN'T THEY LINCH PEOPLE BACK THEN! ARRRRRRRRRG!
I need to brush up on my history. What year did they start intergrating blacks into schools?
 

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Posted by Olivetta (Member # 6456) on :
 
Hobbes-- You know I like you, but that argument is specious. Making it illegal to shoot arrows in schools won't keep people from doing it-- it just gives us the ability to punish them for it. Making abortions illegal won't keep people from having them.

I'm thinking that if people could come to recognize that unborn babies are people, and maybe also come to see that women who give birth to unwanted babies are heroic instead of 'whores'... then maybe public opinion would swing aroundso that it wouldn't seem like the 'best' option for some people.

I know it sounds silly, but the movie <I>Babe</I> actually decreased the worldwide consumption of suckling pig. People's minds can be changed, and behaviors can be affected.

Laws don't prevent crimes, they just give us means for revenge or punishment.

I would like to see stronger emphasis on preventing pregnancy. I would like to see abortions limited to worst-case scenarios of medical necessity. Laws won't do that. People don't obey laws that don't make sense to them, or that the public at large no longer care about. When was the last time someone was arrested for spitting on the sidewalk in the U.S.? It's illegal for a free woman to wear an ankle bracelet in my home town, but I wasn't hauled off to the pokey the last time I was there.

It's like prohibition. A good idea. Our society would be better without alcohol, no question in my mind. But the genie was out of the bottle (so to speak) and the only thing prohibition got us was very organized, very profitable crime (which didn't go away when the booze came back).

When it comes to building a utopia, rulebooks don't work. It may seem fruitless to try to change even one person's mind, but to that one person it isn't.

I want to live in a world where people protect the innocent and helpless-- and people won't do that sort of thing just because someone tells them to, I think.

I haven't been here much lately, and that isn't about to change. Just a warning that I probably won't see this thread again.
 

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Posted by Jutsa Notha Name (Member # 4485) on :
 

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I need to brush up on my history. What year did they start intergrating blacks into schools?

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Are you OSC under another persona, or do his own writings not speak better for his opinion than your own opinion of his writings?

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And 4 of your 6 items in your list indicate the start of things getting worse - hardly inconsistent with a peak.

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And I would argue that of those four, none of them had to do with the decade in which they happened, much like almost all of OSC's list. It is inconsistent with a peak because he's claiming correlation or causation where there is little or none.

And your opinion as to what he said aside, the only way we can know for sure is if he were to post here and settle it. However, take my post as a warning to stay away from such definitive statements of the opinion of others, especially when so little interaction takes place. Unless, once again, you have something to tell us that we formerly did not know. I'm suggesting that you may be projecting a bit.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 

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However, take my post as a warning to stay away from such definitive statements of the opinion of others, especially when so little interaction takes place.

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Hobbes-- You know I like you, but that argument is specious. Making it illegal to shoot arrows in schools won't keep people from doing it-- it just gives us the ability to punish them for it. Making abortions illegal won't keep people from having them.

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I like you too.

Consider this though, if laws don't stop people, if they're only purpose is to impose revenge, then we would be better off without laws wouldn't we? I would agree that an argument that making something, anything illegal would stop it is a specious argument. I think just as specious an argument is that making something illegal would have no impact on how often it occurs. If we made murder legal most people would not run out and shot up their neighbor just because they could, or more to the point, most people would not take some old grudge as an excuse to kill, people are normally bound by their morals. But I find it highly unlikely that legalizing murder wouldn't still lead to a very high increase in murders, don't you?

I think your solutions, the ones you present in your post, are absolutley great, and I would be thrilled so see them enacted, and am thrilled so far as they are already in motion. My argument is not that we should abondon these methods! Certainly that would be a bad idea, but I do not think it is necessary to forgo legal issues to pursue these methods, nor beneficial to do so.

Hobbes
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 

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I understand that you said those words, but the words that followed were using definitive phrasing. I'm not trying to pick on your use of the English language, but the vehemence which you followed up the "I think" with belies a bit of projection. Where you think he doesn't, I think that after reading that and some other essays there that he most definitely does. Whether that is a useful thing or not is a whole nother debate, but I think the examples of his idealizing the decade grossly outweigh your "I think" on this matter.

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Do you think he thinks Jim Crow was a good thing, or that he is unaware of its existence throughout the 50s? If so, then we have vastly different, and probably irreconcilable, opinions of the man.

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Absolutely not. He seems to feel quite the opposite, in my opinion.
 

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Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
 
I certainly can't speak for the man, but when I read the article I got the impression he was saying that when people wish for a return of the fifties they aren't wishing for a return of everything that happened in the fifities, they're wishing for a return of what they remember the fifties as. The fact that the fifties, like any period in time, had a lot of things we all hope never return can be used as ammunition against such wishes, but the motive of the wisher isn't to bring back racial intolerance and all these terrible things, but to bring back what was good about the time.

Hobbes
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 

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Do you think he thinks Jim Crow was a good thing, or that he is unaware of its existence throughout the 50s? If so, then we have vastly different, and probably irreconcilable, opinions of the man.
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Absolutely not. He seems to feel quite the opposite, in my opinion.

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But what if the good stuff didn't exist purely?

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Wouldn't it be better to say, Let's work hard to create a society with strong families, people taking care of their kids and being responsible right now

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That would be equally valid, and I wouldd happy to hear that become our societie's mantra.

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with no precedent, just create something that's completely real

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Once again, I'm confused. What do you mean "competely real", or more to the point, what was said above that was less than real that now needs to be made real?

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honour, compassion love and stuff we really need!

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I wouldn't list them in that order, but a society based on those things has a good chance of making it.

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(and it would include gay people too ^^)

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I'm all for a general society that includes anyone who is willing and desirious to become a part of it.

Hobbes
 

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Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
 
It's rather late, so my thoughts are not as clear as they should be.
I reckon I have mixed feelings about movies and books that portray the fifties or suburbs as being places with underlying corruption.
But, at the sametime, I dislike it when they portray such an era as being completely perfect and free of corruption..
*Sighs*
I am not making myself clear >.<
It shouldn't be based on... dammit. Why is that so hard to explain?
*Growls in frustration*
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
Wow, this has been pretty active lately, huh?

Dag:

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would likely not work on sex ed portions (although I wouldn't oppose them) but rather on making sure real options were available for women facing unplanned pregnancies. It's an area where a coalition would be much more successful.

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I was wondering what you would say to Bob's post at that point, as I know you are a RC.

I think there is a bit of misconception here, as I see it.

To me, Dag isn't a polarizing force, really. He is willing to work with people who don't agree with him on this issue, and most of the people I know (and I know a lot of them feel too strongly to ever be able to restrict themselves and their views to do so effectively. A lot of them are RC like Dag, but they wouldn't allow anything they were involved in to promote anything resembling birth control.

Not that RC's (or pro-lifers) have a lock on intolerance...a lot of people who are pro-choice are just as set in their ways, and every bit as intolerant as the other side.

I think the people whom Bob_S was talking about are those others, who feel so strongly about these issues that they don't see the damage they are doing in the name of their "cause".

Sort of like those aid workers who were detained in the middle east for preaching Christianity to the people in the relief camps. They were there under false pretenses, lied about their motivations and their willingness to help others without proselytizing, and then when they were caught claimed that it was all justified.

All aid was stopped from entering the country for a while, and Arabs everywhere lost trust for the UN workers and aid associations from the west....but it was all justified?

I don't think so. We should have left them there to rot, IMO, rather than insisting on their release.

I think Bob's point is that there are people out there that think outlawing abortion techniques is the ONLY way to lower the abortion rates...and that a lot of those very groups are the reason so many young girls feel unable to have the child in the first palce....so in fact those same groups are fighting the battle but losing the war.

And that a lot of pro-choice people are so worried that Roe vs Wade will be overturned that that make outrageous claims about their opponents, without seeing that their radical messages hurt their own cause.

Most people believe something in the middle, and so we are very uncomfortable with either extreme....and don't trust either side at this point.

Not that I speak for American,now,but most of the people I know detest the concept of abortion, but don't want the option removed from the women who would be most affected by it.

Well, that is my 2 cents, anyway...

Kwea

[ October 26, 2004, 12:34 AM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
 

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Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
 
Listen, you're either with Dag or against him.

Polarizing? You bet. Like a metal polar bear wielding a huge freaking EMP canon.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 

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By the way, Dag, I'm pro-life too. I just don't think we should legislate it.

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I suppose you could argue that Rabbit -- and Bob -- both believe that this human baby's right to live is less important than some other right, but I suspect that many other people would find that position more repugnant than the alternatives.

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I would say that Rabbit would not be recognized as "pro-life" in that case by most other pro-lifers -- unless, of course, her logic really is that it is better to accept a limited number of state-assisted murders each year to keep the total number of murders down.

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Why is murder against the law anyway?

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As I said above, most people believe even the right of adult humans to live is occassionally superceded by other things - meaning it is okay to kill them.

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Common law doesn't get to decide what the definitions of words are

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Yes it does.

Neeener, neener, neener.


 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
Nope, it really doesn't. In this case it's clearly wrong: Murder is actually "wrongful killing" which is often legal - particularly when repressive governments do it.

Or did Hitler not murder anyone? The law of Germany at the time was on his side, after all.

[ October 26, 2004, 09:59 AM: Message edited by: Xaposert ]
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
But not the law made up at Nuremburg.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
I would contend that no definition of "right to life" is meaningful if the law makes the termination of that life to be always lawful, regardless of circumstances.

And that is the state of law, explicitly for first trimester abortions and effectively for the other two trimesters.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 

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I would contend that no definition of "right to life" is meaningful if the law makes the termination of that life to be always lawful, regardless of circumstances.

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No, the pro-life argument is that people have a right to life and an unborn baby is a person.

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Pro-life does not mean "I value it more than the other things at stake" because, except for the most far extreme, pro-lifers usually agree that there are situations in which an abortion is okay.

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Xap, you are in fact citing grudgingly granted and not univerally-accepted exceptions as "proof" of your point, and thus miss the point entirely. It's like saying that pro-choicers aren't really for choice if they think that third-trimester abortions -- or post-birth slayings -- are too icky to permit.

There are limits to how far you can stretch the definition before it becomes meaningless. Someone who believes that a fetus has an inherent, inviolate right to life unless it's in its mother's womb, at which point it's okay for her to violate that right for any reason, is not by definition "pro-life," as the philosophy is understood. By the same token, someone who believes that a mother has the right to choose to abort her baby as long as the baby has not yet been conceived cannot be called "pro-choice" in any way that keeps the debate coherent.

[ October 26, 2004, 10:26 AM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 

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Xap, you are in fact citing grudgingly granted and not univerally-accepted exceptions as "proof" of your point, and thus miss the point entirely.

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Someone who believes that a fetus has an inherent, inviolate right to life unless it's in its mother's womb, at which point it's okay for her to violate that right for any reason, is not by definition "pro-life," as the philosophy is understood.

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Why? Because you say so? Because a bunch of extreme pro-lifers say so? As I said, a bunch of Christian groups can claim Catholics or Mormans aren't Christians, but that does not make it so.

Just because the extremists are most vocal in the pro-life movement doesn't mean pro-life is defined by that extremism.

Pro means favoring, and life refers to the life of the fetus. Thus if you favor the rights regarding the life of the fetus you are pro-life. If extremist pro-lifers want a more exclusive term then they should call it anti-abortion, rather than a term that quite clearly invokes a more commonly accepted message.

[ October 26, 2004, 10:39 AM: Message edited by: Xaposert ]
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
I would not say that the desire to strictly limit the reasons for and situations under which a mother can choose to legally abort her child is an extremist position in the pro-life movement.

The term "pro-life" was selected for the same reasons -- and is as accurate -- as the term "pro-choice." And if you don't want to discuss terms as they apply in reality, as opposed to what they might conceivably be parsed to mean, you may as well start a thread on "liberals" and "conservatives." *grin*

[ October 26, 2004, 10:42 AM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
It's certainly more extreme than the position that fetuses have a right to live but that we can't legally enforce that right against people who believe otherwise.
 

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Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
 

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For instance, when the mother's health is in danger or when rape has occured, just to give two commonly accepted exceptions.

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If an abortion occurs because the mother's life is in danger, then you haven't decided that something is more important than life. You've decided that one life is more important than another.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"It's certainly more extreme than the position that fetuses have a right to live but that we can't legally enforce that right against people who believe otherwise."

Which would be the mainstream pro-choice position, actually. It's identifiable by its poor and ultimately corrupt logic.

That we have no legal right or compelling social interest in preventing the murder of a baby while it is in the womb is perhaps the delineating factor here: if you believe that, you're pro-choice.

[ October 26, 2004, 10:44 AM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
All that proves is that many people are both pro-choice and pro-life.

[ October 26, 2004, 10:45 AM: Message edited by: Xaposert ]
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
No, Xap. It means that you're trying to play semantics in order to argue both sides of the issue simultaneously. You do that a lot, but it winds up being smoke and mirrors every time.
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
Nonsense. You're buying into a dichotomy that doesn't exist, which is the point here.

When two sides don't contradict, you can argue both points.

"Fetuses have a right to life" and "Mothers legally should have the option to kill their fetuses" don't necessarily contradict, if you believe there are things that supercede the right to life.

[ October 26, 2004, 10:48 AM: Message edited by: Xaposert ]
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
Maybe. But the pro-life position generally includes the contention, "Mothers don't have the right to kill their fetuses."

Dagonee
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Except that those AREN'T what's being argued.

The actual positions are "unborn babies are living people and should not be killed" and "women have the right to remove growths from their bodies." Attempts to find the middle ground have produced exceptions on both sides, but that doesn't mean that they're interchangeable or even necessarily compatible in worldview.

[ October 26, 2004, 10:54 AM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
It may not be what is being argued (if you're talking about the argument between the two extremes), but it is what pro-life and pro-choice mean.

The more extreme pro-life position includes the idea that "Mothers don't have the right to kill their fetuses" but that doesn't mean all pro-lifers do. As a pro-lifer myself, I don't agree with that statement. I think mothers should be legally allowed to do so, but it doesn't mean I'm not pro-life. I favor life - even the life of fetuses.

[ October 26, 2004, 10:53 AM: Message edited by: Xaposert ]
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"It may not be what is being argued, but it is what pro-life and pro-choice mean."

On what authority are you making that determination?

It seems to me, Tres, that your primary objection is to the fact that both groups, for purely political reasons, are misnamed.

[ October 26, 2004, 10:54 AM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
No need for authority. I've already shown it through logic.

You know what "pro-" means don't you? I mean, if I said I was pro-Nader in this election, you'd know what I meant even if you'd never heard the term before, right? It means I favor Nader.

And you know what "life" means in connection with the fetus debate, right? It's the life of the fetus.

Thus pro-life means any position that favors the life of the fetus.
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 

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It seems to me, Tres, that your primary objection is to the fact that both groups, for purely political reasons, are misnamed.

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It seems to me that the defining characteristic of a "pro-lifer" is that the person in question believes both that the baby is a living human being and has an intrinsic right to live.

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Actually, murder is always against the law. At common law, "murder is the crime of intentionally causing the death of another human being, without lawful excuse."

So it is incorrect to say, "Murder isn't always against the law." If the killing of another human being isn't against the law, then it isn't murder.

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I believe abortion should be classified as murder.

In other words, it's a wrongful killing that should be made illegal. I'm not always successful at keeping the words distinct, especially when I'm posting quickly, but I try to maintain the difference.

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Xap, we've argued that there is no meaning to the words "intrinsic right to live" if that life can be taken by the mother for any reason, or no reason, whatsoever.

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n the case of abortion, many believe that the right to individual choice on matters of faith-based morality is a good reason - a reason equal to something like "because the person was a murderer" which many accept as a reason to break the right to life for adults.

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Xap, I very clearly addressed the distinction.

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It boils down to the same thing. You are saying she has the right to end that life for any reason, or that any reason she has is a good reason.

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But you stated the freedom of belief was a reason to have an abortion, not a reason to allow abortion. Either that, or your analogy with the execution of murderers is right out the window because you're comparing apples and oranges.

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If she has no right to do that, how is it unethical to prevent her from doing that?

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I believe in freedom of choice on many matters because, even though I think things are wrong, I recognize that I might be mistaken about that, and that other people might be mistaken too - and that I wouldn't want everyone trying to force their ethics on me by law.

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Well let me ask you this: Do you think the government should ban you from doing everything unethical?

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"You were talking about the correct definition of pro-life."

No. I was talking about the defining characteristics of a pro-lifer.

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The two are connected directly. For instance, I am a pro-lifer, yet I do not have those defining characteristics you talked about, so they aren't really defining of pro-lifers after all. The only way you can refute that is by saying I'm not a pro-lifer, and the only way you can do that is by saying my definition of a pro-lifer (which includes me) is wrong.

Let me add, also, that I have argued here before that conservative is a misused term, in the same way that pro-lifer is. In its political sense it should refer to a certain set of beliefs, but it is often given to people like Bush who hold onto very different beliefs. This means, I think, Bush is not really a conservative - not that the definitive characteristics of conservatives differ from the definition of a conservative.

I think it is important not to misuse words in a debate, even if it is a common misuse, because misusing words leads to rhetorical trickery. For instance, someone might say anyone who believes in conservative values should support Bush because he is conservative. This can be a trick, however, for people who are conservative in a different way than Bush is. They miss the subtle difference in the use of the term, switching from a definitional sense to a more common-lingo use.

It's often very difficult to see an issue clearly if the way the words are being used is mixed up or changing. The abortion issue is case-in-point. I believe far more people would be pro-choice if they realized that you could be pro-choice AND pro-life (and vice-versa too, to a lesser extent). But the rhetorical way the terms are used commonly (as opposed to how they should formally be used) hides that fact, and artificially alters positions. It is a trick used to make middle ground invisible, and the trick is only dissolved by defining the terms more accurately and more clearly.

In my mind words are only useful insofar as they are accurately pointing to the concepts they represent.

[ October 26, 2004, 12:08 PM: Message edited by: Xaposert ]
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
Well Xap, is it safe to say you are not pro-legal-protection-of-unborn-children's-right-to-life?
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
What's interesting to me is that I am, by Xap's argument, a Republican, because I'm a citizen of a republic. And he would presumably pretend to not understand the distinction.
 

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Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
 
Tom, I submit that most self-identifying non-catholic pro-lifers (which you say you are) would deny that you are a pro-lifer simply because you are probably voting for Kerry. My mother is a strict one issue voter. She votes republican, not because she likes them but because of their position on this one issue without considering any of the damage they may have inflicted on this country in any other form.

AJ

(I talked to my mother last night about elections in general and made the mistake of saying that I was leaning towards Obama over Keyes. The thing is, my mother isn't actually a rabid pro-lifer. But it is the only thing she considers when voting, regardless of lives lost in Iraq.)

[ October 26, 2004, 12:25 PM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]
 

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Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
 

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In my mind words are only useful insofar as they are accurately pointing to the concepts they represent.

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What's interesting to me is that I am, by Xap's argument, a Republican, because I'm a citizen of a republic.

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"In my mind words are only useful insofar as they are accurately pointing to the concepts they represent."

In my mind words are only useful insofar as you understand what they mean to your audience.

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I can't say "Evil is defined as anyone named Tom," declare Tom Davidson evil, and be correct.

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I can't say "Evil is defined as anyone named Tom," declare Tom Davidson evil, and be correct. Even if we both agree on the definition.

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Sure you can.
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
From before all the abortion stuff started (I had a real sarcastic opening, but I gave sarcasm up for Lent once and haven't looked back since), Dag, you seemed to be saying that I hadn't really gotten a good read of OSC's stance and gave another possible interpretation of it. I felt your interpretation was more a representation of what you wanted him to say than what he did say. Upon reflection, do you still think that my interpretation is an unfair representation of what was said?

To expand on my point, there are many prople, OSC among them, who seem to think that the primary reason why we have a high divorce rate is because of the feminists and their ideological comrades who have an unreasonable hatred for marriage and who have worked against it. As proof, they show how much better things were, divorce-wise, back in the 50s. They hold it up as the peak from which the dark forces in our society have been herding us away from since.

I'm disputing the claim that marriage in the 50s was this wonderful thing and that the reason why there was so little divorce is because people were better then. I think that the environment that made it very difficlt to impossible for a woman, especially one with children, to support herself outside of marriage and a culture that held that women were inferiors whose role was to ruled by their husbands and that implictly and sometimes even explicitly condoned wife-beating, among other forms of what we would now consider abuse, had a major role in determining divorce rates.

I do actually believe that there has been some cultural aggression towards marriage, some of it justified, some of it not. I remember a friend relating to me a quote from when Gloria Steinem visited our campus. Someone asked her why she never married and she replied that she didn't breed well in captivity. Also, I think that there are positive things from the 50s that we've lost and would benefit todays society greatly.

However, to point to that as the main reason why there is a higher divorce rate and to completely ignore the often horrible state of marital relations in the real world of the 50s as opposed to the idealize Golden Age represented by the TV shows of that time is, I think, dishonest.

I'd love for the divorce rate to go down. I really respect the institution of marriage and think that a stable one is a great thing for society. However, I want this to come as an internal factor of the marriages themselves, with the peopel in them behaving maturely and treating each other as equals, not because of external factors making one of the members is subservient to the other.

A society that looks better on the surface because they restrict people's freedom isn't more mature than one that allows the freedom and that has it being generally abused. I don't hold the current state of marriage in our society as anything but lamentable, but I don't think that it was really much better, if at all, during the 50s. My idealistic goal is for marriage to be something that people aren't forced to be in, but something that they choose to be in. I don't think that this has ever existed in great numbers.
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
Now you're just being evil, Tom.

Most of my logic classes said definitions were arbitrary too. However, my point here comes from one professor of epistemology in particular, who made a case for non-arbitrary definitions that was good enough to convince me. I'm of the opinion that he is correct and the average logic class is mistaken, and that I can show why.

Arbitrary definitions only work in abstract logical debates where it's possible to start with clear, logically-defined premises and derive conclusions that everyone will accept because they all see the logical progression and accept the premises.

It breaks down when you bring it into real matters - just read some of Plato's dialogues to see this in action. Socrates will offer a definition for everyone to agree upon, people will agree upon it, yet they won't like his conclusions. And it will turn out that the reason they don't like the conclusion is because the definitions they originally agreed upon, though they were in fact agreed upon, were mistaken.

Why does this happen? Because in real matters we may not be clear on definitions, and we may think we define a word in one way when actually we conceive of it in a different way. We may confuse properties that are conditional (teachers are women) with properties that define something (teachers teach.) We might say something like "Let's all agree that killers are by definition evil" without realizing that it is possible, by the true understanding we have, that a non-evil killer could exist. And what will happen is that once we get to the conclusions, we will have forgotten about the artificial definition we arbitrarily created and naturally revert to our original understanding. In the killer example, we might conclude the American soldier is evil because he kills, and we defined killers as being evil. But what if the soldier was justly killing and is not evil? In that case, we should say (by our definition) he was not a killer, because he was not evil - but we won't realize this because the real, natural definition of killer is simply "one who kills."

Yes, you can say definitions are arbitrary because there could be a hypothetical society where all words mean something different. But, at the same time, in our society words are institutions. They have a meaning fixed to them that we can be confused about, and can't alter for the sake of argument, or for the sake of making our position look better than it is, or for the sake of factoring common prejudice into the definition. In that sense, they are not arbitrary.

Coming back to pro-life, I agree that it is common to associate "pro-life" with being anti-choice. However, I think this is not how people actually conceive of the pro-life concept. It is just something they associate with it, just as many might associate Bush with conservativism, or "being female" with teacher, or "like America" with democratic, or "evil" with dictator, or "able to fly" with bird, or countless other characteristics which, though associated with a group, do not define that group.

quote:

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Yes, but if someone says, "I am pro-life, bu which I mean that fetuses have a right to life, yet this right receives no legal protection," it doesn't make him right, either.

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quote:

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By establishing a common definition first, it becomes clear that "evil" in this context means nothing more or less than the content of someone's name. It's only when you attempt to carry over connotations from other accepted meanings that the use of the word "evil" to mean "people who are named Tom Davidson" becomes problematic.

It frustrates me to no end that people use this particular semantic trick constantly, even though it's so easily defeated.

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Actually, that trick is exactly what I'm talking about - except I think it's not easily defeated at all. It's only defeated, in my view, by first figuring out what is the true thing we both mean when we say a word, distinguished from (1)other things we associate with it, and (2)other definitions we may create for the sake of winning an argument. This is what I'd call the non-arbitrary definition of a word, because it is the one thing I am actually thinking of when I hear a given use of a given word, and to alter it will likely result in me falling into the trap you were just talking about (unless I am very very careful, almost to an impossible degree in complex arguments.)

[ October 26, 2004, 02:01 PM: Message edited by: Xaposert ]
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"This is what I'd call the non-arbitrary definition of a word, because it is the one thing I am actually thinking of when I hear a given use of a given word, and to alter it will likely result in me falling into the trap you were just talking about...."

Are you saying that when someone says the word "pro-life" you immediately and sincerely think, "Oh, that person must be in favor of life, then?" And nothing else?
 

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Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
 
Tom is making an homage to me from the "Preserve Civil Liberties" thread.
I was just checking to see why this thread was alive. Pleased to see it hasn't totally devolved into a Bob/dana wedding discussion.
 

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Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
 
Squick, great post. One of the truest-ringing monologues I've read in a long time.
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 

quote:

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Are you saying that when someone says the word "pro-life" you immediately and sincerely think, "Oh, that person must be in favor of life, then?" And nothing else?

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quote:

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So, since the baby's right to live can be ignored at another human's convenience, even adult rights to live can be ignored at someone else's convenience.

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katharina, I'm going to pick up on this point from pages back, but more as an exposition than as a rebuttal of what I think is your intended thrust here.

We do attribute a right to life for adults, even though we do also agree that other persons' interests or rights may supercede that. I am not referring to capital punishment, but rather to all those things which one may need to exert effectively a "right to life."

For example, if a person has failing kidneys, our healthcare system is not set up to guarantee them access to regular dialysis, much less supercede the wishes of someone who is a potential kidney donor. Such a potential donor -- even if a relatively simple surgery is all that is required -- is not routinely censured for not being willing to donate a kidney. We do not censure one another for failing to be typed for a bone marrow registry, either, despite the fact that the bone marrow would be regenerated and could safe the life of a child or adult with leukemia.

Of course -- of course! -- a pregnant woman is in a different relationship with her fetus than you are in with some stranger. But even in the case of a parent of a child who needs a transplant, we don't make it a legal requirement for the parent to give up a kidney (or bone marrow) should the child need it to survive. We may think that he or she is not a great parent, and we may mourn the loss of the child, and we may still hold firm that that child still has a "right to life" -- and this is not necessarily inconsistent with still not wishing to legislate against the control of the parent over her own body, including the kidneys and marrow.

I think a similarly consistent position can be held regarding abortion; namely, that the fetus can be acknowledged to have a "right to life" without necessarily having a right to everything required to exert that right, especially if it involves the body of an unwilling other. The analogous situations are yet even less distinct when a woman did not make the choice to get pregnant.

Granted, the analogy isn't an equivalence, but if it were, it would no longer be an analogy. I think the coherence of the perspective hinges on the same issues, though. And though I think a coherent response can be made by someone who is pro-choice, I don't think such a response can be tenable if it rests on an un-deniable "right to life" as a trump card. As above, we don't consider such a "right to life" to be a trump card in even the clearer cases.

[ October 26, 2004, 03:37 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
By the way, I'm not terribly persuaded that it is necessarily worse to let someone die by refraining from an action than it is to commit an action which causes death directly. (I am willing to be persuaded on this for given situations, although it would take some doing.)

That is, if someone were to watch Sophie slide down and drown instead of simply lifting her out of the bathtub, I'd think that person just as horrible as if they had been the one to tip her under. The distinction would be irrelevant to me.

This is why I've had my bone marrow typed for a national registry, why I sought out training in advanced CPR even before applying to medical school, and why I would donate blood on a regular basis if permissible. I don't take these responsibilities to my fellow humans lightly.
 

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Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
 
What's involved in having your marrow typed? If they need to use it, what's involved in donating it?
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
Noemon, I found a good online site at The Puget Sound Blood Center Online. Excerpts are below.

To be placed on registry, all you need to do is donate a blood sample and pay a registration fee. At their site, this is $25-$65, depending on whether you require financial assistance. I think I paid $45 back in the early 90s.

This is sufficient for the initial screening, and this is where I am. I have never donated marrow, and I doubt that I would be able to even if I did match someone (as I've had multiple blood transfusions for my second heart surgery, placing me at risk for infectious disease carrier status, and I was exposed to the prions of a spongiform encephalopathy in medical school during a brain dissection). However, if I do match someone and it is possible to donate given my circumstances, I certainly would.

Although the initial typing is paid for by the donor, if you match, there is no out-of-pocket fee for you to do the rest of the donation. That consists of having marrow aspirated out of one of your bones, usually the hip (fair warning: I have reason to believe from the aspirations that I've attended that this is more painful than is really captured in the Puget Sound information), and hopefully you save someone's life. The primary risks to the donor are those typical for anesthesia, but it does not usually require an overnight hospital stay.

Sometimes you will be asked instead to donate peripheral blood stem cells. In this case, there is no anesthesia, but you do take a medication for several days to stimulate bone marrow production before you are harvested through a peripheral vein. It's just like donating a pint of blood, except for the medication (which often causes joint and muscles aches).

quote:

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Why Register to Donate Bone Marrow?

Every year, thousands of adults and children need bone marrow transplants; a procedure which may be their only chance for survival. Although some patients with aplastic anemia, leukemia or other cancers have a genetically matched family member who can donate, about 70 percent do not. These patients' lives depend on finding an unrelated individual with a compatible tissue type, often within their own ethnic group, who is willing to donate marrow.

As of January 31, 2000 the National Marrow Donor Program has facilitated 9335 unrelated bone marrow transplants. Also as of this date the National Registry has over 3.8 million volunteer donors. In the Puget Sound region, our local donor center has more than 50,000 volunteer donors on the local registry. There is a critical need for more volunteer donors. Many patients, especially people of color, cannot find a compatible donor among those on the registry. Patients and donors must have matching tissue types, and these matches are found most often between people of the same ethnic group. A large, ethnically diverse group of prospective donors will give more patients a chance for survival.

Donor Eligibility

Donors joining the NMDP Registry must be between 18-60 years old, in good health and meet the NMDP donor eligibility guidelines. ... Donors who are not eligible to join the national registry can help patients in other ways such as making a financial contribution to tissue type other donors. See funding information below.

Funding

When someone volunteers to join the national registry of potential donors, a blood sample is taken and is tissue-typed. This test costs $65 per donor. The Puget Sound Blood Center is sometimes able to reduce this cost to $25 per donor, depending on available NMDP funding and outside contributions. Because funding is limited and the need to diversify the registry is so critical, the Office of Naval Research pays the fee for people of ethnic minorities. In addition, the Puget Sound Blood Center often holds sponsored donor recruitment drives which pays the typing fees for Caucasian donors. For more information about upcoming funded drives, please contact the Bone Marrow Donor Program at 206-292-1897. Once a donor is found to match a patient, all medical costs of the collection are covered by the patient or patient's medical insurance, as are travel expenses and other non-medical costs.

Individuals wishing to make a tax-deductible contribution to the Bone Marrow Donor Program's Donor Typing Fund should contact the Program Supervisor at (206) 292-2305 or (800) 366-2831 x2305. Your support is greatly appreciated.

How Can I Join the Registry?
...If you live in another area of the United States, call the National Marrow Donor Program at 1-800-MARROW-2.

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[ October 26, 2004, 04:33 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
 

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Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
 
Thanks Sara, I'll consider doing that. I have to admit, my reason for not running right out and doing it right now is what I've heard about how painful the marrow extraction is for the donor, but as you said, it might save someone's life, which is worth a certain amount of pain I'd say. Honestly, I both really want and really don't want to do this. I'll have to sit down and examine why more carefully.
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
As a follow-up to the my above post on abortion, I'd also like to clarify that I don't think the "right to have an abortion" (i.e., to have a fetus removed from one's body) is equivalent to "right to ensure the death of a fetus."

That is, as research in artificial wombs progresses, I think the abortion issue will get more complex for some. From my perspective, it simplifies things.

Note that the Japanese gynecologist referenced in the article has gestated a goat to term in an artificial womb. AFAIK, though, in order to keep the goat fetus from continually disconnecting itself from assistance, it had to be paralyzed, and thus after birth it had such low musle tone that it was unable to survive on its own.

I trust this issue can be addressed in time.

[ October 26, 2004, 04:51 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
You can always get typed for no more trouble (other than the fee) than you would have for donating blood. If you match later, you can still refuse. And you could (I think) specify that you would be willing to do a peripheral stem cell collection but not a bone marrow aspiration.

I think the pain is more like what one would have from a sprained ankle than a broken bone, at least in severity and duration. The quality of the pain is described as a "deep ache," but that is helped by anti-inflammatories, and it should not be sufficient to keep you from doing the things you would normally do, except for maybe refraining from downhill skiing for a week or two.

Great! I'm glad you are thinking about it. I wish we talked about it more in our general community.

[ October 26, 2004, 04:55 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
When I was at the ASCO and Oncological Nursing Society annual meetings, there were lots of booths demonstrating new instruments. One of them was a tool to extract core samples from bone. They had a layered demo board there with cork, balsa, and then some harder wood. The mechanism worked by using the downward thrust of the arm to turn the corkscrew-shaped blades to cut through the material.

Just thinking about that in my thighbone made me want to faint.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
Thankfully, bone marrow aspiration is done with a needle, not a corkscrew. You just need cells, not an intact chunk of tissue to analyze as you would require for a biopsy.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
I know, but it's a rather vivid image easily brought back to the forefront of the mind.
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
That's like poking with your tongue at the hole left from a wisdom tooth removal. Hard not to, but you shouldn't really do it.

Resist, Dagonee. Be strong.

Think of a kitten.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
No! Don't corkscrew the kitten!

Oh, the humanity!
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
Corkscrewed Kitten

You are a vile beast, Dagonee. Shame, shame. Now I will never get to suck the marrow of Noemon, and it will all be your fault.


 

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Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 
Worldwide 28 Million children die from easy curable diseases each year and 17 million children die from malnutrition and starvation each year. The estimated cost to prevent these deaths is 80 billion or about $270 each for every American. If we should legally require women to carry an unwanted child to term, shouldn't we also legally require people to give the money to save these children who die from poverty.

$270 dollars is a much smaller sacrafice than donating an organ or 9 months of pregancy. What's more, a law requiring everyone to donate to end child poverty would be much more likely to actually save lives than a law against abortions.

If you believe that the "right to life" is truly more important than the "right to choose", why should people be allowed to choose not to help those who are dying of poverty?
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
It's likely that someone will point out that one needn't argue that we all should do x in order to outlaw y. True enough.

However, when we come across such inconsistencies in our own thinking, sometimes this is an indication that there may be something we have yet to clarify in our perspective. That is, if it is human life in general which ought to be respected (and this is indeed my personal belief, although I'm not going to delineate it fully here), then why does the urgency seem to be so much greater in some cases than others?

[ October 26, 2004, 05:43 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
Tom et al., I need to ask a question about the label "pro-life." I've always thought that it should mean one of two things (with respect to human life only -- we can worry about ALL life another time):

1) I am in favor of each human being's right to live out his/her natural lifespan, no matter what, or

2) I am in favor of maximizing both the number people alive and quality of their lives. It's a balance, but in all cases we should err on the side of maximizing BOTH things.

I believe that the pro-life movement has been somehow translated into an "anti-abortion" movement. That, really, being anti-abortion is only part of what one who is truly "pro-life" would adhere to.

But then, I never thought the term "pro-life" was the exclusive coinage of people who define themselves as abortion foes, in a primary sense. That is, I'm against abortion, and therefore I shall call myself "pro-life."

Is that really the genesis of that term?

I seem to recall the Pope having used it decades ago and not just about abortion.

Maybe I'm just suffering from fuzzy memory.

Be that as it may, if you define the pro-life term narrowly to mean "anti-abortion only" then I guess I have to say that I'll look for a term that better describes my philosophy and aspirations for mankind.

They are, by the way, most consistent with #2 above.

I don't undestand calling oneself Pro-Life if either #1 or #2 is not true.

But then, I guess I'm understanding the term literally, not as a term defined in opposition to a pro-choice movement related mainly to abortion.

Thanks for any clarification you can share on this.
 

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Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 
The difficulty is that the right to life and the right to make choices are both rights we respect in this culture. When we these two rights come into direct conflict, we are forced to decide which right must supercede.

[ October 26, 2004, 08:29 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
 

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Posted by The Silverblue Sun (Member # 1630) on :
 

quote:

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The things that radical Muslims hate about the United States, apart from their simple jealousy of our wealth and power, are the aspects of American culture that are absolutely the product of the influence of the extremist Left.

Abortion. Sexual promiscuity. Pornography. Open support of homosexuality. Hostility to religion. Denigration of the male sex.

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I guess it's easier for all Hatrackians to restate their views on Abortion, than to actually discuss the issue which is the fact that OSC just blamed the American Left for Abortion. Sexual Promiscuilty. Pornography. Open support of homosexuality. Hostility to religion. and Denigration of the male sex.

I'm a 32 year old male.

How on Earth am I responsible for any of this?

Out of 250 million Americans how can OSC BLAME and ACCUSE me and anyone else NOT to the right of him of some of America's biggest problems?

All you can judge me on are MY individual actions, and I REALLY doubt that any of them can be used as a rationalization for why OSAMA and his Gang of Tusken Raiders hate My country, and want to nuke it to hell.

Now,
I ask you,
read through ALL of
OSC's POSTS
on War Watch.

How much of a brother is this man to those who are to the Left of him?

He acts like the Left are the Buggers, and he is part of the Army sent by God to destroy them and give them a lesser planet.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
Well, to be fair, he did say the "Extremist Left." I'd say there's a fair stretch of political spectrum that's not to the right of OSC that couldn't be called "extremist left" by anyone's definition. So he hasn't actually accused everyone "not to the right of him" of anything.

Also, I'm kind of at a loss as to what you want us to say about it. Do you want us to tar and feather him? Stop reading his books? Quit his site?

You're annoyed with what OSC writes? Why not write some coherent articles about it. At least one former poster has done this, and if nothing else another point of view is expressed for people to consider. You're attacks on him don't advance anything - it's clear you're against OSC, but what are you for? Why is what you are for a better view of the world than OSC's? And don't just list things you want people to think about or make clever little slogans linked by passion.

Explain it. Support it. Sell it.

Dagonee

[ October 26, 2004, 09:38 PM: Message edited by: Dagonee ]
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
Last time I tried to read anything that was semi-coherent about that, he lost me by the second sentence...



[ October 26, 2004, 09:40 PM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
 

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Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
That depends on how you take Extremist Left. It could be that he's describing the Left in general as Extremist, or it could be as you say.

Of course, he's made it pretty clear in other articles that he thinks (or at least considers it okay to say he thinks) anyone on the Left is at least on most issues not just wrong but blind as a bat and hitting itself over the head with the stupid stick.
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
I agree completely Sara and Rabbit.

If we think of all the money that has been spent by pro-life organisations demonstrating against abortion and think also of how many lives could have been saved if that money had gone to a program like world vision - well, the discrepancy is staggering.

If all life is sacred why not protect the most number of lives possible?

And, as Sara said, it may not be an x or y situation. But I'd be willing to wager that a lot of people who are fierce pro-life advocates do not contribute nearly as much (if any) time and expense to saving lives through foreign aid programs. Something to consider...
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 

quote:

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If we think of all the money that has been spent by pro-life organisations demonstrating against abortion and think also of how many lives could have been saved if that money had gone to a program like world vision - well, the discrepancy is staggering.

---

I doubt this is a standard you'd like any causes you believe in to be held to. If it is, then you've pretty much got to be against any form of political activism.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
Hey Thor, I'm pretty sure I wrote at least two pretty detailed posts talking about this. Oh well, at least some people appreciate me.

For the sake of argument, let's say that I'm a member of the Extreme Left, which I'm pretty sure I'm not. For at least two of the things on that list: open support of homosexuality and hostility towards religion (for a given value of hostility and when the religions involved are similar to those of the Islamic fundamentalists), I'd be proud of being given credit for. And promiscuity, at least responsible promiscuity, I don't really have a problem with, although with all the promiscuity I'm causing, you figure that I could get a little for myself. Pornography's not really my bag, but take away the exploitative, objectifying nature and talk more about what would classified erotic and again I'd support it. Abortion I personally don't think is a good thing and I'll try to convince people who are thinking about it to take other options, but I'm also not sure that making it against the law is the best way to go on it. Denigration of the male sex is an issue that I'm personally very opposed to. I'd be a charter member of the War Against Boys fan club. But if you're talking about strictly delineated sex-roles and males dominating women a la the Fundamentalist societies, yeah, I'm totally against that.

OSC's obstensive main point wan't to blame the Extreme Left for all the ills of society. It was to show how extremist Muslims would still hate us and likely not leave us alone even if we left them alone. The thing is, I'm a progressive, a child of the Enlightenment. I'm proud that fundamentalists of whatever religion hate me.

Now, I may not agree with a lot of his reasoning, but I'd say that OSC's description of some of the reasons why the fundamentalists don't like us is truer than not. It's as George Bush keeps telling us, "They hate our freedom." That is definitely true, if extremely incomplete. The thing that OSC's listing of supposed ills of our society that were the product of the left brings up is "Does he hate our freedom too?"

edit: To be fair, that ending was almost pure rhetoric. I'm not a huge fan of a lot of the freedoms in American society either, as I feel that people are generally not living up to the responsibilities that come along with those freedoms. There are certain things that, were I made Lord High Dictator, I'd try to do away with. Advertising for one thing. However, I think only a great fool would allow the government as it now stands or potential future governments free reign over what we should be allowed or prevented from doing. Rights based democracy with a population such as ours doesn't have a lot of positives to recommend it, but the tyranny of the government that it prevents is pretty impressive.

[ October 26, 2004, 10:46 PM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
Dagonee -- and I am dead serious about this -- when I come across such an inconsistency in my own beliefs, I re-evaluate those beliefs. If the underpinning isn't consisent across the causes I believe in, I spend some thought puzzling through where the inconsistency arises and how I think it might best be resolved.

Mind you, I may not drop everything until I get it figured out. Usually I don't, as then I would live in limbo. But this has been the cause of my mind changing about some things in the past, and I expect it will continue to happen in the future.

Perfect rigor isn't possible. But where there are pieces that don't fit together, I take it as a given that this reflects something I either haven't thought through clearly or about which I have some unresolved tension.

[ October 26, 2004, 10:49 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
Dag, you're right that it is extreme.

However in the case of legislating against abortion which necessitates saving one life (if, of course, you classify the foetus as a life) at the expense of interfering with the body and life of another human being, why not ask pro-life advocates to look to other ways of saving lives that do not necissitate interference with a third party's rights?

Note I'm not arguing that to protest against x you have to have done y and z first. But I think at least it is a valid idea that should be considered.

The answer may be that people are selective to the point of hypocritical in which causes they choose to support. I'd prefer at least people think about it though.
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
I know hero-worship is discouraged, so I'm just going to whisper it quietly.

When I grow up, I wanna be just like Sara

**

Seriously, I think that *should*, in the moral sense, be how such inconsistencies are addressed.

If everyone did that then I believe, to use a cliche, that the world would be a better place.
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 


(all the cool chicks dig me )
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
Here's the thing: From Sara's posts here, I know she's extremely outcome-oriented in her moral reasoning. An argument such as the one you presented makes a whole lot of sense from that perspective. And, from that perspective, it would present "an inconsistency in my own beliefs."

I, however, do not judge the appropriateness of actions solely from their outcome. I tend toward a more deontological, not utilitarian, view of morality. The "harm" caused by a behavior is not limited solely to the tangible results (death, in this case).

So to me, and many who think like me, the inconsistency identified in imogen's post is not as large as it is to Sara.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
imogen,
Maybe I could offer another perspective?

I have a friend who, while not necessarily an idiot activist herself, is definitely an idiot activist supporter. One of the things that we constantly disagree on is that I think that most protests are pretty superficial and mindless and as such are the easy way out. She thinks that the easy way out is when people sit at home and don't do anything.

I've never been able to get across to her is that for many of these people, sitting at home, not protesting, would be the equivilent of not blaring on their horn or flipping the bird or yelling or whatever when someone cuts them off in traffic. From my perpsective, superficial venting of anger or outrage is the easier thing to do.

I think that this is the case for the majority of activists of any stripe. Their immediate goal is emotional release and expression of their anger, not necessarily what will advance their cause.

Don't judge them too harshly. If you've ever felt so mad that you needed to do something or explode, that's what their perspective looks like a lot of the time.

edit: And from the anti-abortion perspective, abortion is the socially condoned wholesale killing of babies. If that's your perspective, I'd think there was something wrong with you if you didn't burn with a powerful anger. I'm much more ambivilent than they and it still makes me pretty mad.

[ October 26, 2004, 11:04 PM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
I understand your point Dag.

However isn't there more harm in deaths caused by extreme poverty which rich (read: citizens of the first world) could have prevented then simply the deaths themselves?

Just as it could be argued that legalised abortion decreases the overall value placed on life, doesn't the lack of concern over the number of deaths from starvartion/malnutrition indicate a morality that "our (first world)" lives are intrinsically worth more than "their (third world)" lives?
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 

quote:

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$270 dollars is a much smaller sacrafice than donating an organ or 9 months of pregancy.

---

True. However, the people who would be paying the $270 in this case are not directly responsible for the indigent conditions of the people they are helping, whereas most people who are having abortions are directly responsible for their pregnancy. I submit that there is a huge distinction between requiring someone to sacrifice to help a stranger and preventing someone from killing a stranger; it is for this reason that murder is punished more harshly than negligence. The situations are not parallel, in other words. If, however, you were making the argument that these poor children are living miserable lives and that their parents should have the right to decide whether to kill them or not, thus improving the lives of everyone around them, the situations would be analogous.

"I believe that the pro-life movement has been somehow translated into an 'anti-abortion' movement."

As far as I know, widespread use of the term "pro-life" has always been connected to the abortion issue and was a direct and deliberate response to the selection of "pro-choice" by abortionists. It is perfectly possible to be in favor of life in general -- and thus pro-life -- without being "pro-life," as the term is applied. (A classic argument against "pro-lifers" is that they're hypocrites, that they support things like the death penalty while claiming to approve of life; this is a semantic dodge, built upon a largely disingenuous interpretation of the "pro-life" label.)
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
I agree that global poverty must be addressed, imogen. Fortunately it's not an either-or situation.

And, to be fair, many pro-life activists (as opposed to pro-life supporters) are extremely involved in social justice issues such as poverty.

Dagonee

[ October 26, 2004, 11:06 PM: Message edited by: Dagonee ]
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
Mr Squicky - I'm not trying to say don't protest. Or even that protesting is a bad thing.

I've certainly protested myself (in a quiet dignified fashion of course ) against things that I feel particularly strongly about, usually because they affect me directly.

However I do believe that if one is to base an argument and stance on the sanctity of life, then it is hyprocritical not to view all life as sacred - and to at least consider other ways of saving lives apart from (and this could be as well as) out-lawing abortion.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
But the pro-life position isn't simply based on "all life is sacred."

It's based on the notion that a child's right to legal protection should not be based on how many cells it has.

If there were 1 million babies being outright executed each year in this country (or your country), wouldn't that be worth spending time opposing?

Dagonee
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"However I do believe that if one is to base an argument and stance on the sanctity of life, then it is hyprocritical not to view all life as sacred..."

Hm.
You are making assumptions here which I'm not sure are correct, and they are confusing you. Let me enumerate the assumptions for you, in hopes that you will recognize the errors:

1) All pro-lifers believe all life is equally sanctified.
2) Murder is morally equivalent to negligence.
3) Abortion deaths are so rare that they are of vanishingly small concern compared to the number of other preventable deaths out there.
4) Protesting abortion prevents someone from endorsing other life-affirming causes.
5) It would be no harder or unlikely to eliminate worldwide poverty than to make most forms of abortion illegal in America.
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
Yeah, and I'm just trying to point out what I think may be some people's perspectives. They're really angry and they need to do something with that anger. Logically, they should be stopping to think about what the best thing they can do is, but logic is not really all that accessible when you're really angry. It's a perrenial problem with activism. You need passionate people to help you champion your cause, but people in the grips of passion usually make very bad decisions.

Our emotional system isn't built to handle complex societal issues particularly well, but people mostly from intellect usually aren't particularly ardent. I think that's one of the big things holding human progress back. Most emotionally energized groups of people are only a few steps away from a rioting mob.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 

quote:

---

It's a perrenial problem with activism. You need passionate people to help you champion your cause, but people in the grips of passion usually make very bad decisions.

---

Yep.
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
1. All pro-lifers believe all life is equally sanctified. I am assuming this. Let me caveat it with all innocent life. Frankly I would find it astonishing if someone could advocate that the life of a foetus in America is more sacred then the life of a 2 month year old baby in Ghana.

2. Murder is morally equivalent to negligence
This point rests in turn on the assumption that abortion is in fact murder.
However it does raise another interesting point -I assumed that the role of anti-abortion legislation was to prevent abortions, not to punish mothers who have them. Although some enforcement may be necessary to make the law effective, I assumed that the overriding objective of the law was not punitive.

If this is the case then why is protecting one life so different from protecting another?
Would your view change if it was shown that people in the third world were dying as a direct consequence of the actions of some corporation in that country?

3. Abortion deaths are so rare that they are of vanishingly small concern compared to the number of other preventable deaths out there
I'm not assuming abortion deaths are vanishingly small. I am however assuming more people die world-wide from poverty and malnutrition then die as a result of abortions.

4. Protesting abortion prevents someone from endorsing other life-affirming causes
Nope. Not saying this. What I am arguing is that where people protest abortion and do not concern themselves with other (probably easier)ways to save lives, they are demonstrating an internal hypocrisy. But in NO way does protesting abortion mean people can't support other life-affirming causes.

5. It would be no harder or unlikely to eliminate worldwide poverty than to make most forms of abortion illegal in America .
No. But it would be no harder or unlikely to save lives overseas then it would be to save lives in America.

edit - for a missing legislation

[ October 26, 2004, 11:26 PM: Message edited by: imogen ]
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 

quote:

---

But the pro-life position isn't simply based on "all life is sacred."

It's based on the notion that a child's right to legal protection should not be based on how many cells it has.

---

That is a very interesting way of characterising the argument.

Would it be accurate to say that the pro-life position is based on the sanctity of all innocent life, including that of all children no matter how many cells they have?

(Really clumsy sentance, sorry)
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
I think the pro-life position, at least that part of it that distinguishes it from other positions that also care about life, is that an unborn child is due the same protections as one who has been born.

Certainly, pro-lifers (as used in the abortion debate) aren't the only ones who believe in the "sanctity of all innocent life." What distinguishes them is the inclusion of a particular stage of human development into the definition of "innocent life."

So think of the position as definitional. Once the unborn child is included in the category of "innocent life," whatever moral implications that already exist concerning innocent life attach to the unborn child.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
Doesn't the characterisation of a foetus as a life from the moment of conception rest on ideas associated with sanctity of life?
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Let's address those, then.

1) I threw out #1 mainly to eliminate anyone who would argue, for example, that pro-lifers should be opposed to the death penalty, wars in general, etc. That doesn't mean that individual pro-lifers are not opposed to those things, but only that they aren't part of the definition.

2) The distinction between murder and negligence is not merely a punitive one; it is also a moral one. While economics and civil war might lead to the death of a baby in Botswana, the direct cause of that baby's death is rarely something as clear-cut as, in the case of abortion, the decision of a specific individual to kill someone else. People here have rightly mocked the concept of the "war on terror" because terror is a fairly nebulous and unformed concept against which to send tanks. By the same token, there are rarely any individuals or specific decisions clearly at fault when two thousand people die of famine -- whereas abortion is in fact a clearly purposeful act.

If it could be shown that people were dying as a direct consequence of one company's actions, I would indeed expect that protestors would immediately begin actions against that company once it became known.

3) You've heard the phrase "think globally, act locally," right? It's a classic activist cliche -- and here you're looking to reverse it. Because more people may die of a series of nebulous and not necessarily related policies and world events, you're arguing that people should not be excessively concerned with abortion. The same logic, of course, suggests that we should never spend any money on researching Alzheimer's treatments until all the more important diseases are cured.

4) "Not saying this. What I am arguing is that where people protest abortion and do not concern themselves with other (probably easier)ways to save lives, they are demonstrating an internal hypocrisy." I quoted you here because you're making an assumption -- probably easier -- which I specifically reject. I'll deal with that in #5.

5) Leaving aside matters of personal responsibility, the simple fact is that poverty -- particularly worldwide poverty -- is pretty much going to be with us always, if only for the practical reason that most activists are pretty spoiled and don't think to concentrate their efforts on it. How many feminists are completely wasting their time on the Equal Rights Amendment, for example, when people are starving in Congo? Let's face it: eliminating worldwide poverty and saving the lives of those millions of children is a dauntingly impossible task. Even if every protest group in the world threw away their own pet cause in favor of it, it would still be a daunting task. But abortion is one of those issues where a few opinions, a few voices, can make a solid difference to literally millions of lives -- so why not work to save those lives instead of wasting a lifetime on a project that's unlikely to go anywhere?

As other people on this thread have attempted to suggest, shouldn't practicality also be a concern?

[ October 26, 2004, 11:46 PM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 

quote:

---

Doesn't the characterisation of a foetus as a life from the moment of conception rest on ideas associated with sanctity of life?

---

No, I think you've got the cause and effect backwards. The application of sanctity-of-life principles rests on the characterization of a fetus as a human life.

We have principle A, which says innocent human life is sacred.

We have principles B-Z, which state "because innocent human life is sacred, action b is/isn't moral behavior."

Then we have definition 1, which states "an unborn child is an innocent human life."

If definition 1 is accepted as true, principle A applies to unborn children. Because principle A applies to unborn children, principles B-Z apply as well.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
I have now spent 2 hours procrastinating.

I have exams in 10 days.

I'm going to work now. Otherwise I'll never tear myself away.



***
Tom - thanks, I'll look over in more detail later. A quick response though about your last point. I think you are confusing "saving lives from death from malnutrition/poverty" and "eradicating all poverty". The first is acheivable, the secondly is certainly less so. But because my money going to world vision will only save a few children's lives, not end world poverty, should I stop donating it?
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
That's OK, I'm doing this between substantive cite checking on a journal article on textualism.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"But because my money going to world vision will only save a few children's lives, not end world poverty, should I stop donating it?"

I await your answer. Because if money and time spent to end abortion in America will only save a few children's lives, not end world poverty, I wonder whether you think people should stop donating it.
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 

quote:

---

So to me, and many who think like me, the inconsistency identified in imogen's post is not as large as it is to Sara.

---

quote:

---

Here's the thing: From Sara's posts here, I know she's extremely outcome-oriented in her moral reasoning. An argument such as the one you presented makes a whole lot of sense from that perspective. And, from that perspective, it would present "an inconsistency in my own beliefs. "

---

You are civil and charitable to a fault in your characterization of me. Thanks for the care and patience.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"I'm still curious as to whether Tom would support legislation that requires a parent to donate organs to a child who needs them from that parent, but I won't push for a response."

No, I would not. Again, it's a matter of negligence versus murder. Compelling someone to help someone else is not the same issue as preventing someone from hurting someone else.
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
So I take it you would make a distinction in the situation below? (I don't think this makes you a worse person, by the way -- as if there were some doubt -- just someone with a different perspective.)

quote:

---

That is, if someone were to [calmly] watch Sophie slide down and drown instead of simply lifting her out of the bathtub, I'd think that person just as horrible as if they had been the one to tip her under. The distinction would be irrelevant to me.

---

quote:

---

However, the people who would be paying the $270 in this case are not directly responsible for the indigent conditions of the people they are helping, whereas most people who are having abortions are directly responsible for their pregnancy. I submit that there is a huge distinction between requiring someone to sacrifice to help a stranger and preventing someone from killing a stranger; it is for this reason that murder is punished more harshly than negligence. The situations are not parallel, in other words.
[italicization added by me to clarify my reference in the block quote]

---

quote:

---

No, I would not. Again, it's a matter of negligence versus murder. Compelling someone to help someone else is not the same issue as preventing someone from hurting someone else.

---

quote:

---

What does trouble me -- in contrast -- is when people give a primarily outcomes-based objection to a situation but then hold the type of inconsistency brought up by imogen. That is, when the discussion turns to something like "But there are a million innocent lives dying every year!" I have trouble getting my head around why this is more important than a million other lives.

---

quote:

---

If the primary concern isn't so much the loss of the innocent lives as it is the punitive aspect of addressing an immoral action (and if this priority is made consistently clear), then I can make better sense of it in my head.

---

quote:

---

But if "dying" is replaced with "murdered" or even just "killed," the reason for the dying is at least acknowledged as part of the moral harm.

---

quote:

---

In that sense, addressing means more than reacting to it if it occurs; it also means attempting to prevent it.

---

Not to be divisive, but if there is a more effective way of preventing the action than by formalized punishment, would serve to trump the punitive approach, for you? (Just curious -- promise not to force you on the defensive. )
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 

quote:

---

On the "standing next to Sophie while she drowns in the bathtub," I'd submit that there is a further distinction.

---

quote:

---

Not to be divisive, but if there is a more effective way of preventing the action than by formalized punishment, would serve to trump the punitive approach, for you?

---

quote:

---

If a strong, healthy, fully alert babycare provider for Sophie sits at the side of the bathtub, watches Sophie slide under the water, struggling and unable to breathe, choking to death -- and this provider sits there eating a muffin and watches Sophie die, then ...

... of course you would be furious, enraged, and judge this provider a horrible person. But this would not be as morally outraged a position as if the provider had given Sophie a push, and then watched her die when she could have been easily saved?

---

quote:

---

The true opposite of pro-choice is anti-abortion,

---

quote:

---

For me, though, I think it would be a trump, both for abortion and for child abuse. If I really believed that making child abuse no longer a legal issue really would quite significantly decrease the incidence of it, then that is what I'd lobby for.

---

quote:

---

If you don't understand this, consider another possibility: Sophie is playing happily in the tub, and the provider hears a scream from another room. She rushes out of the room, only to discover that it's a soap opera on TV. When she returns to the tub, Sophie has drowned.

Sophie has still drowned on her watch. Is she as guilty of something as when she watched her drown, or when she pushed her in?

---

In this case, the intent also is different -- and I think that is where the distinction would lie, for me. In contrast, I tried in my example to narrow it down to just the distinction between active and passive action.

When other things like differing intents get mixed in, I think that the active/passive distinction -- although more obvious -- may be merely coincidental with the other (determining) factors.

A more clear example was given by James Rachels, whose example was that of an uncle who was caring for a nephew. The uncle would inherit if the child died, and the uncle was fully aware of this as he watching the child slip under -- it was the intent to have the child die and he himself to inherit which was in his mind, both in the situation where he watched and refrained from action, and in the situation when he pushed the child under.

Same intent, same effect. One time reaching out to give a push, the other time just waiting for the inevitable.

All other things being equal (a rare case, but I think helpful in clarifying what things are trumps -- or deal-breakers, or however one might put it), I can't make sense for myself of distinguishing between action and passively permitting.

However, as Dag noted, I am rabidly outcomes-oriented, at least on the surface, so this is not a surprising conclusion for me.

[ October 27, 2004, 10:44 AM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
 

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Posted by Sopwith (Member # 4640) on :
 
I don't agree with Tom often, but I regularly find my respect growing for him.
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 

quote:

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If you're going to redefine "pro-life" then you HAVE to redefine "pro-choice" to be remotely fair.

---

I'm not redefining anything. That's just what the two words mean. Pro-life is favoring the life of the fetus. Pro-choice is favoring the choice to be able to end that life if you want. It's counterproductive to redefine words in order to make them artificially fair.

I would call the pro-choice position pro-abortion, but that would be misleading, because it seems to imply abortion is a good thing, which most pro-choice individuals do not believe. It'd be like calling anti-abortion people anti-choice, which is equally misleading.

[ October 27, 2004, 10:35 AM: Message edited by: Xaposert ]
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
A not uncommon event, Sopwith.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 

quote:

---

I'm not redefining anything. That's just what the two words mean. Pro-life is favoring the life of the fetus. Pro-choice is favoring the choice to be able to end that life if you want. It's counterproductive to redefine words in order to make them artificially fair.

I would call the pro-choice position pro-abortion, but that would be misleading, because it seems to imply abortion is a good thing, which most pro-choice individuals do not believe. It'd be like calling anti-abortion people anti-choice, which is equally misleading.

---

But if you're excluding "pro-life" as a valid term for people who oppose abortion's legalization because there are other considerations beyond support for life, then you must logically exclude "pro-choice" as a valid term for people who favor abortion's legalization because there are other considerations beyond support for choice.

Further, there are many other choices than the choice to have an abortion, as well as another entity who's capacity for choice is restricted by abortion.

If you're going to make a textualist argument, apply your principles consistently.

You're principle objection to the term "pro-life" as defined by Tom is that it excludes people who consider themselves in favor of life but who support abortion rights. The way you've applied it, "pro-choice" can't be used to describe me, even though I'm in favor of the power of choice.

You can't have it both ways.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
I see.

If that's what pro-choice is, however, there's not really anyone who isn't pro-choice. I mean, there is contraversy over whether a fetus has a right to life. There isn't contraversy over whether people have a right to choose to do things.
 

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Posted by Sopwith (Member # 4640) on :
 
How about:

Supportive of potential human beings
and on the flip side
Ambivalent towards potential human beings

If you want to really look at it from a non-partisan aspect, you could almost say it is a tenant-landlord issue.

Should the tenant be allowed to keep a nine-month lease that the landlord entered into by their own volition.

Or should the lease be voidable at will by the landlord, no matter the original conditions of the lease?

Let's face it, it's more difficult today for a landlord to kick a renter out for non-payment than it is for a woman to choose to have an abortion.

[ October 27, 2004, 11:03 AM: Message edited by: Sopwith ]
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
The simple fact, Xap, is that defining "pro-life" as "people who believe that fetuses have a right to life which may be abrogated for any reason by the decision of the mother" would render the term meaningless for the purposes of defining the conversation. You would need to come up with a new term for "people who believe that fetuses have a right to life which cannot -- or can only in exceptional circumstances -- be abrogated by the decision of the mother."

As it stands, there is no real need to expand the term "pro-life" to the first group, as they are already reasonably well described by the term "pro-choice" -- since, after all, they believe that the choice in this case is more important than the life. Why would you change that?
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
Suffers from the same sort of problems as

Supportive of individual control over the basic functioning of one's own body
vs
Ambivalent regarding individual control over the basic functioning of one's own body

Namely, either way you end up defining one group in terms of a factor which that group does not accept as the most fundamental issue.
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
Tom, a quick question? (You don't have to explain why -- again, I'm just curious as to whether I understand you.)

Would you, too, agree that in the situation of the babycare provider who went to investigate the scream, there are additional relevant considerations over and above the active/passive distinction?

(That is, do you get why I would draw a distinction in that case but not in mine, even though you may not agree?)

[A "yes, I do" or "no, I don't" would satisfy my curiosity sufficiently, but of course you needn't limit yourself to that.]

[ October 27, 2004, 11:12 AM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
 

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Posted by Tristan (Member # 1670) on :
 
What, to me, is one of the most maddening points of the American abortion debate is that the nature of the US legal system prevents some compromises which would limit abortions that I believe otherwise would be easily agreed upon. Over here, the main-stream liberal pro-choice position -- which is reflected in law* -- is actually pretty close to Tom's position, which he characterizes as pro-life.

While I share the position of being "pro-choice" rather than "pro-abortion", I believe that the choice should be exercised as soon as possible. Ideally, all recreational sex ought to be conducted with adequate contraceptive protection, but in cases where the contraception fails or the participants are too inexperienced or ignorant to protect themselves, abortion is a second chance.

But really, why is there a need to extend this chance to the point of killing a foetus that would be able to survive outside of the womb (as has been know to happen as early as the 22nd week, IIRC) or even to the disgusting practice of partial birth abortions? To my mind, there is no reason for why the pro-choice crowd should not allow themselves to be satisfied with a reasonable period of time from which the pregnancy is discovered for the woman to exercise her choice. This choice, provided a minimum of mandatory sex-education, could easily be satisfactorily accomplished within the first trimester.

As I see it, the only reason for why such a compromise has not been worked out in the US is the fact that what would normally be a slippery slope fallacy argument actually has some basis in reality, given how the US legal system is set up. The pro-choice advocates feel that granting an unborn baby any rights at all, even at a late stage of the pregnancy, opens the way for a constitutional argument for a total ban on abortions. The only way to alleviate this fear may be to institute a constitutional ammendment detailing the elements of abortion rights, something the pro-lifers (among whom Tom's position is a distinct minority) would never agree to; since, although limiting abortions to the first trimester might be an acceptable compromise as an intermediate step towards an eventual goal, an ammendment would solidify the state of affairs in a long-term unacceptable position.

So, in my view, the rigidity of the US constitutional rights based legal system is to a large part a contributing factor to the polarization of the American abortion debate, making it harder to reach acceptable temporary compromises. It may be that the only way forward is more of the, to many so hateful, "judicial activism". The Supreme Court could revisit the abortion issue and "interpret" the constitution in a way that limits the excessive use of abortions without curtailing the right to choose altogether.

Or would that be to much to ask?

* Up until the 18th week since conception abortion is available on request of the pregnant woman. Later abortion would only be an alternative after permission from a board of review -- permission only granted under extreme circumstances and not at all if the foetus is suspected to be capable of surviving -- or in a medical emergency.

[ October 27, 2004, 11:21 AM: Message edited by: Tristan ]
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
The only accurate descriptions are things like pro-/anti- abortion legalization, pro-/anti- abortion criminalization, pro-/anti- abortion rights, or pro-/anti- legal fetal protection from abortion. The terms must include some association with the legal system since that's the desired goal.

We don't hold language to this standard on a consistent basis. And even these accurate terms have obvious propoganda potential for one side or the other.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"Would you, too, agree that in the situation of the babycare provider who went to investigate the scream, there are additional relevant considerations over and above the active/passive distinction?"

Certainly. The problem is, however, that I'm not sure how this actually helps your larger argument, as the intent behind abortion is the death of the fetus.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"It may be that the only way forward is more of the, to many so hateful, 'judicial activism.' The Supreme Court could revisit the abortion issue and 'interpret' the constitution in a way that limits the excessive use of abortions without curtailing the right to choose altogether."

Ironically, that's exactly what happened.
The problem is that the Court, in so doing, hung their entire argument on the concept of a "right to privacy" that, IMO, has never been properly defined or enumerated.

It's my personal opinion that the judicial system is so burdened now by bad precedent and poorly formed logic that we should just throw our hands into the air and declare that all previous legal precedent is null and void, letting each case be decided on its merits. But I suspect that might cause problems.
 

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Posted by Tristan (Member # 1670) on :
 
Tom, I'm aware of a case where the SC decided to allow restrictions on later term abortions. What I would like is a decision -- or a federal law -- actually forbidding late term abortions (excepting medical emergencies).

[ October 27, 2004, 11:27 AM: Message edited by: Tristan ]
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 

quote:

---

Certainly. The problem is, however, that I'm not sure how this actually helps your larger argument, as the intent behind abortion is the death of the fetus.

---

My intent isn't to build an argument here so much as it is to figure out which among the various factors are relevant, and if any are trump cards, for the people I am trying to understand.

I don't find the active/passive distinction on its own to be tenable as a moral distinction, and so I don't find that portion of the distinction between voluntary abortion and declining to donate bone marrow to be a relevant one, either.

Of course, there are other potentially relevant distinctions to be made, as I noted above. But again, I'm not trying to make that argument, just to understand better the claims that are being made here.

When discussing this complicated an issue, it is not uncommon to see people arguing, "I believe q because of x, y, and z. Oh, and s too, and t is also true, did you think of that?" When reasons are conflated with coincidental characteristics, I get muddled and can't trace the thread of the argument.

That's all. Just trying to figure out whether -- for you -- the active/passive distinction is a relevant one, or if it just happens to occur in contexts with other factors (but not be a deciding factor itself).
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
I was trying to investigate this in Running from Bears and Moral Ponderings. I don't think we reached any conclusions, but it helped clarify some of my thinking.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by saxon75 (Member # 4589) on :
 
Going back to the original topic for a moment, I wonder if OSC thinks that if everyone in the US were as outwardly religious as people supposedly were back in the 50's, the terrorists would hate us less. Suppose we were all pro-life, heterosexual, male-friendly Christians who only had sex with our spouses and never consumed pornography of any sort. Would the terrorists hate us less?
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 

quote:

---

The simple fact, Xap, is that defining "pro-life" as "people who believe that fetuses have a right to life which may be abrogated for any reason by the decision of the mother" would render the term meaningless for the purposes of defining the conversation.

---

quote:

---

You would need to come up with a new term for "people who believe that fetuses have a right to life which cannot -- or can only in exceptional circumstances -- be abrogated by the decision of the mother."

---

quote:

---

As it stands, there is no real need to expand the term "pro-life" to the first group, as they are already reasonably well described by the term "pro-choice" -- since, after all, they believe that the choice in this case is more important than the life. Why would you change that?

---

quote:

---

Going back to the original topic for a moment, I wonder if OSC thinks that if everyone in the US were as outwardly religious as people supposedly were back in the 50's, the terrorists would hate us less. Suppose we were all pro-life, heterosexual, male-friendly Christians who only had sex with our spouses and never consumed pornography of any sort. Would the terrorists hate us less?

---

Are we also assuming we're all still non-intervening-in-the-middle-east type folks (going back to the very early 50s)?

[ October 27, 2004, 11:42 AM: Message edited by: Dagonee ]
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
Dag, I rememebr reading along with that thread. it was a good one -- I should revisit it. Thanks.

quote:

---

Certainly. The problem is, however, that I'm not sure how this actually helps your larger argument, as the intent behind abortion is the death of the fetus.

---

I think sometimes this is the case, perhaps more willing than people are likely to admit, given that one of the most common reasons given in studies of decision-making among women who choose to abort rather than adopt out is something like "I couldn't bear having a child of mine out there in the world and not know what was happening to it."

(This is both more and less problematic than it seems, and I'd dearly love not to take the thread into a tangent on that statment. However, as y'all see fit. )

On the other hand, sometimes I think the intent really is to end the pregnancy, not to kill the fetus. Classic Catholic doctrine of double effect. For example, when the pregnancy is ectopic, or when severe and unremitting pre-eclampsia becomes a life-threatening issue for the mother before the age of fetal viability outside the womb, etc. In these cases, I think the intent is clearly to end the pregnancy, not to ensure the death of the fetus.

Once again, I think artificial wombs would simplify things tremendously from my perspective.

However, for someone who "couldn't bear having a child of mine out there in the world and not know what was happening to it" but relies on the currently (coincidentally) necessary death of the fetus in order for the pregnancy to be terminated in order to avoid dealing with that issue, I think artificial wombs are going to be a real thorny problem.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"It's just a matter of accurately stating what we've meant all along by the terms."

You use the word "we" here, Xap, where I think it is inappropriate.

----------

Sara, I believe the active/passive distinction IS relevant, but is certainly not the only relevant factor in determining wrongdoing.
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
[From prior to Tom's above post]
Thus my caveat from several posts back:

quote:

---

As a follow-up to the my above post on abortion, I'd also like to clarify that I don't think the "right to have an abortion" (i.e., to have a fetus removed from one's body) is equivalent to "right to ensure the death of a fetus."

---

quote:

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Sara, I believe the active/passive distinction IS relevant, but is certainly not the only relevant factor in determining wrongdoing.

---

So -- and again, just to make sure that I understand you -- in my hypothetical case about Sophie, you would draw a moral distinction.

Your further development of a different hypothetical was not intended to clarify that active/passive distinction further, but instead was meant to address a different relevant consideration. Yes?

(I'm not trying to trap you, promise. I was just initially taking your further example to be an attempt at clarifying your position on the active/passive distinction, but now I think I understand it to be addressing a different consideration. Nonetheless, it seems, yourr initial commitment to the active/passive distinctions stands, regardless of whether the further example was specifically relevant to it.

Yes?)

[ October 27, 2004, 11:56 AM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
 

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Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
 
Why aren't you people doing something productive, like adding to the GNP?

Sure, you SAY you want a better economy, but when it comes to crunch time, what are you doing?

ARGUING SEMANTICS!

For shame!


 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"Your further development of a different hypothetical was not intended to clarify that active/passive distinction further, but instead was meant to address a different relevant consideration. Yes?"

Yes. For example, I do believe there is a distinction between turning off a breathing apparatus for someone who cannot breathe and shooting that same person, even if the expected result is the same. Allowing someone to die, even if the intent is that the person die, is not precisely morally equivalent to actually killing someone -- although I believe that intent is generally more relevant in most cases. It's a cube with multiple axes, not a flat graph.
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 

quote:

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*nod* The question, then, is whether you are content to abide by the current status quo until dependable artificial wombs are developed and the social care issues related to massive adoption are ironed out.

---

quote:

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* In 2000, for women whose weeks of gestation at the time of abortion were adequately reported, 57% of reported legal induced abortions were known to have been obtained at [less than] 8 weeks of gestation, and 87% at [less than] 13 weeks (Table 6). Overall, 23% of abortions were known to have been performed at [less than] 6 weeks of gestation, 18% at 7 weeks, and 17% at 8 weeks (Table 7). Few reported abortions occurred after 15 weeks of gestation; 4.3% were at 16--20 weeks, and 1.4% were at [less than] 21 weeks.
--From the CDC's Abortion Surveillance -- US 2000

[I had to replace the "less than" symbols with text for html reasons]

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quote:

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Allowing someone to die, even if the intent is that the person die, is not precisely morally equivalent to actually killing someone -- although I believe that intent is generally more relevant in most cases. It's a cube with multiple axes, not a flat graph.

---

Okay, I think I got it. Thanks!

quote:

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ARGUING SEMANTICS!

For shame!

---

Scott, you are absolutely correct.

I do believe I require multiple and prolonged spankings.


 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 

quote:

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"It's just a matter of accurately stating what we've meant all along by the terms."

You use the word "we" here, Xap, where I think it is inappropriate.

---

By "we" I mean you and I and the rest of us Americans. Yes, I think you've meant "people who believe a fetus has a right to life (and may or may not think abortion should be illegal to protect that right)" all along. It is possible to mean something but not entirely know what you mean - like when the child I mentioned earlier says "teacher" and thinks it implies being a woman, when it really doesn't - or like when the founding fathers said all men are equal, but didn't all realize that would include slaves.
 

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Posted by Telperion the Silver (Member # 6074) on :
 
meow!


 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"Yes, I think you've meant 'people who believe a fetus has a right to life (and may or may not think abortion should be illegal to protect that right)' all along."

Yes, I know that's what you think. And it's why I've been trying to explain to you that it's not what I think. Perhaps you would agree that you are supremely less qualified to decide what I am thinking than I am? *grin*
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
We both know what you think. The question is, what do you mean? And although I think you may be more qualified to know what you mean than I am, that doesn't mean you DO know what you mean better than I do.

I think valid reasoning would trump qualifications in the case of determining meaning (which is why we have the Supreme Court interpret the meaning of laws through reasoning, rather than polling the creators of those laws), if my reasoning is in fact valid.
 

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Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
 
:scuttles away, embarassed:
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
Xap, if you want to maintain faith in the justice system, don't investigate that claim about SCOTUS too closely.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"The question is, what do you mean?"

Yes. And I am telling you that when I use the phrase "pro-life," I do not mean "people who think a fetus has a right to life but do not necessarily think most abortion should be illegal." Furthermore, I suspect that pretty much no one does.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
The essence of a right is that legal protection of some kind is afforded it. So speaking of any kind of right implies at least some legal mechanism for protecting it.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
 

quote:

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The essence of a right is that legal protection of some kind is afforded it.

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quote:

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And I am telling you that when I use the phrase "pro-life," I do not mean "people who think a fetus has a right to life but do not necessarily think most abortion should be illegal." Furthermore, I suspect that pretty much no one does.

---

quote:

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The essence of a right is that legal protection of some kind is afforded it. So speaking of any kind of right implies at least some legal mechanism for protecting it.

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quote:

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Again, Xap, why do the semantics of self-identified terminologies matter to you, when the reality is considerably less ambiguous?

---

quote:

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Except when WE talk about the right to abortion, we are clearly talking about the right as enshrined in law. And the right to life, as part of the same debate, is used in the same manner.

---

quote:

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An expression of the form, pro+X, is such that it asserts a given meaning, favoring X. I can make up expressions like that on the spot and you'd know what they meant. If I said I'm pro-Red Sox in the world series you'd know what that meant even if you'd never heard the term before and I never explained it. (You might even be inclined to suspect that also meant I was against the Cardinals, but if you thought about it more, I think you'd realize it merely meant I am in favor of the Red Sox - yet another example of how beliefs about meaning can be mistaken.)

As a test, consider what you'd think if someone told you they were both Pro-Choice and Pro-Life. Would you understand what they are saying? I bet you would. In contrast, if they said they were both Pro-Choice and not Pro-Choice, you'd have no idea how to take that, just as much as if you math teacher told you a number is both positive and negative. That suggests that Pro-Life may be something more to you than simply not Pro-Choice.

---

quote:

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In order to be pro-Life do I have to demand that a law be created to enforce my views legally?

---

quote:

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Someone who genuinely believed that abortion constituted the wrongful killing of innocent children but did not think they had the "right" to legislate in that way would be, in effect, arguing that society has no right or reason to legislate against murder.

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quote:

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Dag, yes. Or, in that case, any laws that violate that freedom of choice must be eliminated. Otherwise, what would pro-choice be?

---

quote:

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Frankly, I find that particular position -- that a fetus is a living human being, possessed of all human rights, but that the freedom to kill it is such an inherent right that the act should be subsidized by tax dollars -- more odious than any of the alternatives. In my experience, few people who say they believe this really do; perhaps you should be concentrating your efforts on pointing out their hypocrisy to them?

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quote:

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But if the right to life can recognize exceptions such as "except when the mother of an unborn child decides to abort that child," why can't right of a person to choose which surgical procedures are performed on her recognize the exception "except when that choice is to directly terminate the life of an unborn child"?

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quote:

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[/quote]Frankly, I find that particular position -- that a fetus is a living human being, possessed of all human rights, but that the freedom to kill it is such an inherent right that the act should be subsidized by tax dollars -- more odious than any of the alternatives. In my experience, few people who say they believe this really do; perhaps you should be concentrating your efforts on pointing out their hypocrisy to them?

---

quote:

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Okay, let's be clear about this. You say YOU believe that abortion is murder, but that you don't feel right banning it because you can't prove that it's bad for society?

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quote:

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Xap, it appears that you are talking about what is right to do, not about what you have a right to do.

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quote:

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If the boundary is going to be rigidly abortion-related, then the policy that favors the right to abortion over life can't be called pro-life.

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quote:

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Wait a minute...so you do believe that a fetus is a human being, but you endorse abortions just to avoid hypocrisy? Or just because banning it would be bad for society?

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quote:

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I am talking about both - they are both ethical questions that come into play (but need not be enforced by law.)

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quote:

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As far as I know, widespread use of the term "pro-life" has always been connected to the abortion issue and was a direct and deliberate response to the selection of "pro-choice" by abortionists. It is perfectly possible to be in favor of life in general -- and thus pro-life -- without being "pro-life," as the term is applied. (A classic argument against "pro-lifers" is that they're hypocrites, that they support things like the death penalty while claiming to approve of life; this is a semantic dodge, built upon a largely disingenuous interpretation of the "pro-life" label.)

---

quote:

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Our real duty is to maximize both the number and quality of lives

---

• I hold life to be sacred. (General)
• I hold the life of unborn humans sacred. (Specific, literal meaning)
• I believe that abortion should be illegal. (Specific, common meaning)

• I believe that choice is an important right. (General)
• I believe that a woman has the right to choose whether to abort a pregnancy. (Specific, literal meaning)
• I believe that abortion should be legal. (Specific, common meaning)

Note that the second and third definitions for "pro-choice" are nearly, but not quite, identical. By contrast, they are quite different for "pro-life".
Thus we have confusions like the following: Bob defines himself as pro-life in the second sense, but not the third. But Dagonee says that if Bob can do that, Dag can call himself pro-choice, because he is pro-choice in the first sense. He can, but this is not a parallel situation, which is only clear if you are careful about what you mean and in what context.

Then we have Xap saying that pro-lifers are wrong if they claim you can't be pro-life yet be against making abortion illegal. They are not wrong; they are simply using the third definition. Xap, you have a very good point that words can mean one thing even if the speaker thinks they mean something else, but this is not an example of that. This is jargon. The literal meaning is lost, overridden. When pro-lifers (in the third sense) say "pro-life", they are using a shorthand for their entire ideological position; there is essentially no meaning left in the word itself. I applaud you for pointing out the underlying discrepancy, but it is useless to claim that their definition is wrong because it isn't literal.

So, everyone, be clear in what you say, and let's try giving each other the benefit of the doubt.
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 

quote:

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By "we" I mean you and I and the rest of us Americans

---

Xap, I don't agree with what you are saying there, as most of the people engaged in this debate are NOT using your definitions for pro-life and pro-choice. I understand what you are saying, but I don't agree with the relevance of it in the context of the abortion debate.

According to your definitions, I would be both.

Now personally I would not ever consider having an abortion (rather, asking my wife to have one), and my wife and I talked about that when we were dating. I told her that while I think that a woman should have the right to choose what happens to her own body, on a personal level I would never consider it, unless it were medically necessary.

I am not sure when a fetus becomes human, but even if it isn't human while in the womb it is a potential son or daughter, and I would never want or allow it to be terminated.

So in effect, I believe in the sanctity of life, even in the womb. I also believe in a womans right to live her life and make her own choices.
I don't know her situation, her medical history, her psychological history...I am not her, and this fetus inside of her isn't mine, or inside of me.

So my personal beliefs are that unless it is my child too, I should have no say in her decision, and no legal right to bar her from making her choice to abort.

But if I had been dating Jenni and she aborted a child of ours, we would have been done, right there and then...no matter how much I loved her, I would have never been able to be with her again.

Jenni had the same exact beliefs as I did, thank God, so it all worked out....but it doesn't always, not for everyone.

I think Mike made one of the best "clarification" posts I have ever seen here. I would like to say thank you...even though you ruined a post of mine, where I was making some of the same points.

Of course, my post wasn't half as clear or concise, so it is better off in the trash bin..

Xap, changing the definitions doesn't mean that everyone would agree all of the sudden,. It actually clouds the issue rather than clarifying it.

In the context of abortion debate, pro-choice refers exclusively to the right to choose an abortion, and pro-life refers to the overriding right of the fetus to be born, blocking the womans right to abort.

Anti-abortion is what I really am...I don't believe that abortion is a good solution, and would never even consider it an option.....I hate them, and think they are a waste of potential for the whole race. A lot of people are pro-choice but anti-abortion....I think that is one of the points you were trying to make.

Kwea
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 

quote:

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You're just nodding your head, saying that it's not your place to do something about it.

---

quote:

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So someone is being killed, right now, at this very moment, and not only are you not doing something to stop it but you don't think it's any of your business?

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quote:

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Slavery, civil rights, women's suffrage, child labor, rape, sexual / racial discrimination in the workplace, segregation, religious intolerance...these are all things that, at one time or another, were acceptable to a majority of Americans but were stopped by the government. Before there was this consensus of which you speak.

---

The government had strong, clear reasons for doing each of those - and they weren't reasons based entirely or mostly on faith. It's clear that the government should stop SOME acts - acts that fall under it's realm of power. That includes things that allow the country to function smoothly and harmoniously, and other things that can be shown to be right based on reasoning stemming from widely accepted principles of right and wrong, and even things that are nearly universally agreed to be true.

However, when you look at when they've tried to stop things based largely on faith-based reasoning that only a part of the country accepts, the results are far poorer. Remember prohibition in this country, or the drug war now, or the various attempts that have been made to ban forms of homosexuality? Or the countless times "wrong" religions have been banned in nations around the world - in pre-Colonial England, or Soviet Russia, or even Nazi Germany? Those ALSO are examples of the government acting to restrict things that it cannot justify with any objective evidence and which it could not convince a its people to agree upon.

The government just can't ban things willy-nilly based on whatever we feel is wrong. It has to be limited, or else it becomes more dangerous than the things we are combating.

Limited government is good!
 

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Posted by The Silverblue Sun (Member # 1630) on :
 
government wants smaller government

and I want the world to heal
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
Whatever that is suppose to mean...

Xap, there is a good point to the pro-life movment, and it's core belief is that the fetus is already a person.

Personhood is a nebulous term at best, but murder is a fairly clear one.

There are some studies that suggest that the fetus is aware in the womb, and reacts to stimulas fairly early in the pregnancy. I don't know what to believe, because so much of the research inthe feild is done by obviously partisan people, many of whom are willing to do or say anything to eand abortion rights.

But it IS the place of the goverment to decide what is and isn't murder, and to stop murders whenever possible. And if people believe the definition should chnge, they have the right to activly work towards that goal.

However, they don't have the right to berate young mothers going into family planning centers, or to blockade abortion clinics. To threaten of corerce people who don't believe the same as they do. That is where I find pro-lifers the most offensive, and where I feel that they do themselves the most harm.

Not that I think all pro-lifers are the same, any more than all pro-choice people are, but those "activists" are the ones I dislike. The ones holding signs in front of the doctors offices because the doctor perscribes the morning after pill....

Kwea
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 

quote:

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Xap, there is a good point to the pro-life movment, and it's core belief is that the fetus is already a person.

---

quote:

---

Personhood is a nebulous term at best, but murder is a fairly clear one.

---

quote:

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But it IS the place of the goverment to decide what is and isn't murder, and to stop murders whenever possible.

---

Always? Why so?

Would you be in favor of transforming the U.S. into a police state if it would prevent more murders?
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
Xap, I didn't see Tom disagreeing with that at all. He feels that that right supersedes the others right to have an abortion, so he defines himself as pro-life within that context, for the purpose if the abortion debate.

I LOVE how you try to speak for all American by redefine terms we are using, and then claiming victory when we refuse to use your redefinition... I KNOW what the terms could mean, linguistically, but I also know that there is a common usage that you are refusing to acknowledge.

You are the one who made a push to define pro-life as a stance that could accept abortions, not Tom.

Murder, by definition, is a legal issue, and so the government is involved from the first. I believe that is a good thing, and that the government should be actively involved in discouraging them, and punishing them is they are caught and convicted.

That is worlds away from a complete police state.
Not everything is black or white, Xap....but abortion is one of the exceptions to that.

Xap, you should be glad we live in a society that has law and order, but also allows personal freedoms. If we lived in the state that you seem to be constantly advocating, I doubt you would like it very much. It is called anarchy...I'm sure that isn't what you would be aiming for, but that is what you would get.

BTW, anarchists aren't very tolerant of argument that consist almost completely of semantics.

quote:

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That's precisely what I've been arguing pro-life means... Tom and a few others seem to think that's not what pro-life is all about though.

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quote:

---

TomDavidson
Member
Member # 124

posted October 27, 2004 12:38 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The question is, what do you mean?"

Yes. And I am telling you that when I use the phrase "pro-life," I do not mean "people who think a fetus has a right to life but do not necessarily think most abortion should be illegal." Furthermore, I suspect that pretty much no one does.

---

quote:

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In the same way, being labeled pro life doesn't mean you favor protecting the right to life in all possible contexts. When used within the abortion debate, it's only referring to the life of the fetus. Thus, in that context, the pro-life position is the view that the life of the fetus is sacred, or in other words, that the fetus has a right to life.

But again, it is incorrect to equate the anti-abortion position with the pro-life position, just because the anti-abortion side of the argument would have you do so. This is because many people are pro-life but not anti-abortion - they think abortion should be legal, even though the life of the fetus is sacred.

---

I don't agree with you, and I don't consider myself pro-life...I am pro-choice, within the context of the abortion debate.

You tried to singlehandedly re-define the terms, and then used that "new" definition to claim a moral victory. That is intellectually dishonest, and completely transparent.

We don't accept your definition of those terms, within the context of the abortion debate, and I am sure that when people define themselves as pro-life they most assuredly do not agree with your stance at all.

It is understood by all involved in the debate, Xap, and closing your eyes to that doesn't do any good, it just makes you blind to points being made.

And it makes you look ridiculous.

I know you have some good ideas,but this wasn't one of them. Make the points vs the ideas we are discussing rather than trying to tell every person involved that their self-definitions are incorrect, so therefore they must all bow to your definitions of their viewpoints or lose the argument.

I am pro-choice, but anti-abortion on a personal level....but I wouldn't expect Tom or Dag to share the same views I have on this issue.
However, we can work together to reduce the number of abortions, and I would not feel that I was not being true to my beliefs.

Now, if they tried to make abortions illegal, then we couldn't work together on it.

Pretty simple, really.

Kwea

[ October 28, 2004, 09:58 AM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"Those ALSO are examples of the government acting to restrict things that it cannot justify with any objective evidence and which it could not convince a its people to agree upon."

Hm. I think the flaw in this argument is the "objective evidence," Xap. Because, of course, the government does meddle and make illegal those murders it can practically limit -- and make no mistake about it, it could practically limit American abortions in a way that it could not practically limit despotism overseas.

But your argument is not that the government shouldn't do everything in its power to do the right thing; it's that it shouldn't do anything unless it can prove it's the right thing. In other words, you expect the government to prove that the life of a fetus has value in excess of its mother's desire to kill it before you will acknowledge that the government has the right to defend that life.

Me, I accept the opposite default. I believe, by default, that a living being has value in excess of anyone's desire to kill it unless that value can be disproved. So if you grant that a fetus is a living being, the burden of proof rests on pro-choice advocates to demonstrate that it is worth killing a baby to keep the mother happy.
 

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Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
 
Stop the baby killing.

Mormons need the food.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
You know, anybody but a Mormon would have given up on that joke after the fifty-thousandth time.
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 

quote:

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to keep the mother happy.

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quote:

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However, they don't have the right to berate young mothers going into family planning centers, or to blockade abortion clinics.

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quote:

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Perhaps this isn't the stronger version of the opposing argument. It's a pretty spindly version of the mannequin, no?

---

Logic question -- is it a strawman argument if you express the opposing viewpoint as it appears to you? I know that the pro choice people would never couch it in such terms, but from my view point, it looks an awful lot like what Tom said.
 

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Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
 
Tom-- I knew you'd be reading it, and I knew you'd say something about how I should give the joke up.

You're becoming predictable.


 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 

quote:

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Logic question -- is it a strawman argument if you express the opposing viewpoint as it appears to you? I know that the pro choice people would never couch it in such terms, but from my view point, it looks an awful lot like what Tom said.

---

If you want to make the strongest possible case for your perspective, you argue against the strongest opposing case. To pick out a weaker argument to oppose makes one appear, by default, as if one's perspective can only deal with the weaker version.

I personally can beat up a five year old, and so that proves I'm a boxer.

(Not that this is what Tom is trying to do, of course. I think this is more a case of speaking quickly in a casual format.

But the primary reasons women give for having abortions are not along the lines of "wanting to tiptoe through the tulips unburdened by a little pooch around the middle." Rather, women talk more about fear, concern, distress, and depression. We may not think that these are good enough reasons justify destroying a life, but they aren't properly characterized as "seeking happiness."

If you see differently, then you likely haven't talked to many women who have decided to have abortions (or read the literature about decision-making), and the characterizations of what you see could be better informed.)
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
I think there are a lot of reasons to voluntarily abort that are ill-informed, unreflective, poorly thought out, rationalizations, and poor justifications. Some of these decisions are made under duress, with the influence of mind-altering substances, and without sufficient support.

Some aren't.

I think those decisions which are throwaway are few, nonetheless, and this is supported by those who interviewed such women.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"You're becoming predictable."

I've always been predictable. You're just getting better at predicting me.
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
Sara obviously knows a lot more about this than me. (In a complimentary way )

But from my experiences, from women I've talked to and from my mother's experience as a GP (generally, not specifically shared, of course) I think most women who seek an abortion do not do so for convenience's sake, or for their own "happiness".

To assert this, in my opinion, shows a very narrow understanding of what abortion actually means to women.

[ October 28, 2004, 11:08 AM: Message edited by: imogen ]
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
*holds tongue*
You know, imogen, I might actually have some understanding of what abortion means to women. I might even understand what it means to men. I certainly understand what can motivate someone to have one. And let's be clear: while it seems to make light of someone's motivations to refer to it as "happiness," that is generally the primary motivation behind unnecessary abortions.

If you can't cope with the thought of carrying a baby because you can't afford it, or your parents would disapprove, or your boyfriend doesn't want to be a father, or you'd die of shame, or you're not mentally able to take care of yourself, much less somebody else, or you just don't want to be a mom right now and you wouldn't be able to go to college and it would ruin your life -- all of which, I might add, are perfectly good reasons to not want to have a child -- then it boils down to "happiness." Emotional well-being. And I think it actually sells happiness short to suggest that this is a minor thing; it's a major human motivation.

And, yeah, some people have abortions for medically necessary reasons. I've got nothing against that, obviously. And in fact the courts originally left that exception open. It was only when we decided that emotional well-being -- ie. happiness -- counted as something medically necessary that the floodgates popped open.

[ October 28, 2004, 11:19 AM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
 

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Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
 

quote:

---

Rather, women talk more about fear, concern, distress, and depression. We may not think that these are good enough reasons justify destroying a life, but they aren't properly characterized as "seeking happiness."

---

To me "seeking happiness" perfectly characterizes those reasons. I don't see why to you it doesn't.

Edit: I am almost in complete agreement with Tom on this. Seeking happiness is not selfish -- it's a good thing.

[ October 28, 2004, 11:31 AM: Message edited by: mr_porteiro_head ]
 

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Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
 
Should we kill poor people because they're poor, and may always be poor, and may, by cultural pressure, make others poor(er)?
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
{Edit: when I posted, Tom's post was a lot smaller! Going back to re-read the extras now }

Tom, I don't actually think that abortion is a women-only issue.

(For the record, I don't think it is desirable or moral (in my view) in most circumstances)

But I also think that arguing it is for convenience or happiness trivialises the issue.

[ October 28, 2004, 11:22 AM: Message edited by: imogen ]
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
Ok...

quote:

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And I think it actually sells happiness short to suggest that this is a minor thing; it's a major human motivation.

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I assumed when you meant happiness you meant something trivial and fleeting.

I assumed this because, in my experience, when people characterise women who have abortions as "seeking happiness" they do not mean that the women are "not mentally able to take care of themselves" or likely to "die of shame" or the other extremes in this situation, but rather that they are being superficially selfish.

I responded to what I felt "happiness" meant. If you indeed meant true happiness including long term emotional, physical and psychiatric health, then I misread your words.

I should also add that concerns about family and "dying of shame" are not hyperbole. Some young women feel that their only alternative to abortion is suicide.

[ October 28, 2004, 11:29 AM: Message edited by: imogen ]
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"Some young women feel that their only alternative to abortion is suicide."

*nod* This is very true. However, I have come to believe that such women would be better served by professional counseling than by permitting them to kill what they believe is the source of their unhappiness.
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
I'd agree with you that the best potential situation is that the woman receives counselling and decides not to kill herself.

But that isn't always the outcome.

{Edit: pesky plurals}

[ October 28, 2004, 11:42 AM: Message edited by: imogen ]
 

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Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
 
This is true.

But still, just because some women feel that their only choice is between suicide and X, that in itself doesn't justify X.
 

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Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
 
Or suicide.
 

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Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
 

 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
Nope, and I'm not saying it necessarily does mph.

Rather all I wanted to contend/clarify is what happiness was being used to mean.

Regardless of whether abortion is justified or not, I think it is vital to have a real understanding of the motivations of those women who do undergo the procedure.

I have come across people who argue against abortion and who honestly believe that women do it because they can't be bothered with being pregnant. That kind of attitude, though it may reflect some women, does not in any way encompass the spectrum of issues that surround the decision to have an abortion. I feel that if you are going to argue to legislate against abortion, you should understand those issues, and not trivialise or dismiss them.

[ October 28, 2004, 11:49 AM: Message edited by: imogen ]
 

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Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
 
Imogen, you can't assume that because someone does not sanction one solution to a situation, they do not understand what it is like to be in that situation. And you don't know whether or not the people you are talking to in this thread do understand the situation. I know the temptation to think that if they did, they would share your point of view, but it's very possible that they understand it better than you do and have the stance for reasons more concrete than vague abstractions.

[ October 28, 2004, 11:50 AM: Message edited by: katharina ]
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
Katharina, I don't think I am suggesting that if people understood the motivations they would necessarily be pro-life or pro-choice.

Rather that without understanding them it is impossible to really understand one aspect of the debate.

When I first read Tom's point about "happiness" I did assume that he labelled these motivations a certain way. But when I read his clarification of what he meant by happiness I realised (and stated) I had misread his meaning.
 

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Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
 

quote:

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I feel that if you are going to argue to legislate against abortion, you should understand those issues, and not trivialise or dismiss them.

---

I can agree with this statement. Understanding does not always lead to tolerance, however.
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
I understand that Scott. But understanding is at least a step to an intelligent discussion.

I would be happier to avoid the trivialisation of women's reasons for seeking abortions in the debate.

On this thread it appears that trivialisation has not happened.

I would also suggest that when many people say "Women get abortions so they can be happy" they do not mean the kind of happiness that Tom and Porter mean.

{edit for clarification}

[ October 28, 2004, 12:04 PM: Message edited by: imogen ]
 

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Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
 
Imogen, am I correct in saying that you feel people are not taking the women's distress seriously enough?

It's a scary and sad situation to have a life-changing event coming that was not in the plan and that someone may not be ready for. Even if they give the baby up for adoption, the mother's life is changed forever. I agree with that, and I can understand unexpected events changing everything and not for the better.

I think the stance of most people in this thread is that the women's lives were changed from the moment they got pregnant, and getting an abortion doesn't make it dissapear. Taking the life of the baby doesn't erase the pregnancy as if it never happened, but instead adds another layer of tragedy to it.

[ October 28, 2004, 12:06 PM: Message edited by: katharina ]
 

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Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
 
Imogen:

When stacked up against the effect of a murder, most reasons for committing it DO seem trivial.
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
Katharina: Yes to most people. No to people in this thread (once I understood what Tom meant by happiness)

But I do understand your point and I do agree with it. Abortion does not make things magically disappear, and is not a wonder solution.

Scott: I can understand how you can say that but if you start from that end (every reason is trivial concerned to murder) how can you ever be truly empathetic to a woman in that position?

I'm not saying you have to support abortion. But if you pre-suppose any reason against it is trivial, how can you understand anyone's reason to consider it? And if you can't do that, how can you properly argue against it without really understanding that view-point?

[ October 28, 2004, 12:14 PM: Message edited by: imogen ]
 

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Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
 
Imogen, how do you know that most people trivialize it? You don't think the people here do, but you know these people. For most of the arguments against abortion, you don't know the speaker but only what they are saying. If you came to this thread and knew only the arguments in it, you wouldn't have any reason to believe that they are taking the distress seriously. How do you know that other people aren't?

You see the decision that the distress is not worth murder, but you don't know if that was the beginning or the conclusion of the thinking.

[ October 28, 2004, 12:20 PM: Message edited by: katharina ]
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
Kat: I guess even if the end conclusion was that the reasons in themselves are trivial compared to murder, I would like to be assured that those reasons have been considered and not just dismissed because "all reasons are trivial compared to murder".

Here I can see that people do have an understanding of the reasons because they have demonstrated that. So I can appreciate in their minds that they have at least considered the distress before reaching their end decision.

In real life, I have come across people who have very clearly demonstrated that they do not understand, and do not even want to try to understand, any potential reasons.

You know, I'm not saying that if people understand the reasons of women seeking an abortion they will become pro-choice. Rather only when all particpants understand these reasons (as well as other issues) can a meaningful discussion actually be had.

[ October 28, 2004, 12:25 PM: Message edited by: imogen ]
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
And now it's almost half past midnight, I've had my chocolate cake and glass of milk and it's time for bed.



Good night y'all
 

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Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
 

quote:

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Unless you disagree with the conclusion, why are you concerned that thought has gone into making it?

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quote:

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Xap, I didn't see Tom disagreeing with that at all. He feels that that right supersedes the others right to have an abortion, so he defines himself as pro-life within that context, for the purpose if the abortion debate.

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quote:

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We don't accept your definition of those terms, within the context of the abortion debate, and I am sure that when people define themselves as pro-life they most assuredly do not agree with your stance at all.

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quote:

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Murder, by definition, is a legal issue, and so the government is involved from the first. I believe that is a good thing, and that the government should be actively involved in discouraging them, and punishing them is they are caught and convicted.

That is worlds away from a complete police state.

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quote:

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Me, I accept the opposite default. I believe, by default, that a living being has value in excess of anyone's desire to kill it unless that value can be disproved.

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quote:

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saying you think mothers don't have a right to abort is very different from saying it should be illegal to choose to have abotions

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The two seem pretty much the same to me. If it isn't a right then it should be illegal.

AJ
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
Well, if I say Kerry doesn't have the right to call Bush an idiot, is that the same as saying it should be illegal for Kerry to call Bush an idiot?

[ October 28, 2004, 04:08 PM: Message edited by: Xaposert ]
 

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Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
 
Great, now we're going to have to define "right".

Hobbes
 

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Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
 
Just because you don't have the right to do something, it shouldn't be automatically made illegal. But it can be made illegal.
 

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Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
 
Exactly. If tresopax is so all fired upset about precise language he shouldn't make vague statements like the one above. Observe the different mental interpretations one can make:

quote:

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saying you think mothers don't have a right to abort is very different from saying it should be illegal to choose to have abotions

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quote:

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... the burden of proof rests on pro-choice advocates to demonstrate that it is worth killing a baby to keep the mother happy.

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quote:

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a deep, well-developed, mental- stability- and physical-health -oriented, reflective, non-frivolous and philosophically rich interpretation of "happy,"

---

quote:

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... ... the burden of proof rests on pro-choice advocates to demonstrate that it is worth killing a baby to keep the mother happy.

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quote:

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I think there are a lot of reasons to voluntarily abort that are ill-informed, unreflective, poorly thought out, rationalizations, and poor justifications. Some of these decisions are made under duress, with the influence of mind-altering substances, and without sufficient support.

Some aren't.

I think those decisions which are throwaway are few, nonetheless, and this is supported by those who interviewed such women.

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quote:

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We may not think that these are good enough reasons justify destroying a life, but they aren't properly characterized as "seeking happiness." [in the lah-di-dah sense]

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quote:

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You are giving the definition I proposed - that pro-life is the position where fetuses have a right to life (which of course entails the mother doesn't have a right to abortion, without special circumstances). The definition Tom was giving earlier was that pro-life is the position where mothers should be banned from having abortions. The two are NOT the same (saying you think mothers don't have a right to abort is very different from saying it should be illegal to choose to have abortions.) Thus, if Tom agrees with the position he was giving earlier, he can't agree with the position you just gave now.

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Not true, Xap, that isn't what I was really saying....and I should know, as I was saying it.

I don't think that is what I was saying at all, and I don't think that is what most people, within the confines of the abortion argument, mean when they say pro-life.

To me, and every person i have ever debated this with, pro-life means they are for outlawing abortion, and pro-choice means not outlawing abortion.

The problem with labeling pro-lifers as anti-abortion is that a lot of people like me are anti-abortion but pro-choice....I hate abortions, but I don't think it is my opinion that matters.

So that label would not be any more true than the pro-life one is now.

And you can't call pro-choice people pro-abortion either, because of the same reasons....not everyone who is pro-choice is pro-abortion, they may just think a womans right to privacy, or her right to her own body, is more important than the possibility of life that is within her womb.

So your labels aren't any better than the ones we use now.

Don't make me quote a dictionary at you, Xap, because I will...

MPH:

quote:

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I disagree with part of this. While I don't think it is good or right to berate people for having an abortion, I do think that we all have a right to express our feelings about others and their actions.

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Express away, just keep it out of their faces. You (not you specifically, you know what I mean.. ) don't have any right to interfere with any legal procedure, nor do you have the right to block access to such buildings/treatment centers.

At the BigE this year (the NE version of a State Fair, which is a huge draw every year) there was a booth in one of the state buildings that was a pro-life booth. Complete with pictures, and the people manning the booth were pretty obnoxious to me and my wife. They had no idea of my views, and some of their information was just completely false and misleading...typical shock value stuff, nothing I had never see before. But the way they went about "informing" people was way over the line.

There were people with their little kids there, and they would just begin a conversation with the family, spouting all sorts of facts and figures, regardless of whether the family wanted to discuss it or not.

I'm not saying that they should have been muzzled (although I would have LOVED to do that to them), but there is a time and place for everything, and the BigE wasn't it....so when they started to bother me, and it was too crowded for me to move away immediately, I sort of enjoyed bursting their bubble. They weren't particularly informed, nor eloquent, so I made fools of them, and when I left there were a number of people giving them a hard time about their choice of venue.

Normally I would have left them in peace, but they wouldn't leave me alone when I asked them to. so I don't feel bad about it at all.

My point is theis...you are free to have whatever opinion you want, but so am I...and if I don't want to discuss it with you, you can't force me to do so. And if you DO corner me in a situation I can't avoid, better be prepared to face the concequences.....I won't be happy, and I will fight back.

The funniest part of it was that I agreed with a lot of their starting points, but they were so far out of bounds with their approach that they completely alienated everyone who was anywhere near us that day.

And from what I heard recently (I have a friend who works at the fairgrounds) they have been told that they won't be allowed back next year.
They have the right to be heard, but not the right to berate others in violation of the required rules of conduct that all booth vendors must follow.

Kwea

[ October 28, 2004, 06:18 PM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
Also, Xap...I said what i said about murders because you were insisting on an absolute, while I never did so. I said all possible murders, not all murders.

You can't murder someone in the absence of the law, although you can kill them. Murder is killing without legal excuse.

Some people believe that aborting a fetus should be murder, while some don't think you can kill something that hasn't been born yet....and if it isn't alive, then you aren't killing it, just removing it from it's host.
 

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Posted by CStroman (Member # 6872) on :
 
Hmmmm, isn't that censorship if they do that? Also, would you agree to the same if there was a "pro-Homosexual" marriage booth there as well that reacted the same?

Just curious.
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 

quote:

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*nods* That makes sense. It's asking for respect for the other viewpoint.

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quote:

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Is there a way to respect something without granting it legitimacy? I think that some see abortion as such a monstrous act that giving respect to the reasoning for it is like giving respect to an abuser's reasoning for hitting his kids. I know it's a laden analogy, but it's the closest I could think of.

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quote:

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Hmmmm, isn't that censorship if they do that?

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quote:

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This is, for example, how I gather evidence to prosecute child abuse. Were someone I worked with to make up things in order to try to make the prosecutor's case stronger, or to be rushed about collecting the evidence, I would consider them to be placing something precious at great unnecessary risk.

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If only all people involved in these cases thought as you do (including police and prosecutors).

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
Yes I would...and no, it isn't censorship. The Bid E isn't telling them what to say, or what not to. There is a code of conduct that they had to sign, and part of that was that they were able to dicuss it, but that they couldn't force people to listen, and that they were not allowed to make a bother of themselves.

The Big E is non-profit, but it is private land, run by a not-for-profit company, and they have vested interests in keeping people happy about their own experiences at the Big E.

If a booth wanted to advocate gay marriage, that would be fine. However, if they put up large posters of male-on male, or female-on-female sex on their booth, in front of little children, I would be just as pissed, if not more so.

I didn't want to see that at a fair, but that wasn't the problem, really, the problem was that they were way too pushy about it, and when I moved away, one of them followed me for a while. They were in a corner, and wouldn't leave me alone.

They have a right to say what they want, but as a person who payed admission, I had the right to object to their attitude, and to complain about their customer relations skills.

That booth got more complaints filed against them than any other booth in the history of the Big E, so that should tell you something.....it wasn't just me who had a problem with it.

Kwea
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
You are my Eliot Ness, Dag.

The Ideal, not the real man. The original Untouchable.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
My post was only relevant to government-run events. If the government gave special treatment to the organizer or promoted the fair, those rules might apply as well.

In addition, some states limit the ability of the owner of a public accomodation to ban people based on the content of speech. For example, in California, the owner of a mall can't stop people from passing out pamphlets based on the content of the pamphlets, although I think they can (and many do) ban ALL pamphleteering. It's an abrogation of the right to property made in the pursuit of free speech.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
A couple of years ago I wrote a short story about child abuse ("Ash Leaves") in order to try to understand it better. It was a tough story to write, but it helped.

I didn't want to characterize abusers as the Sunday-movie-special version of evildoers (slavering, wild-eyed, praying to Satan). i wanted to understand how somebody with generally good impulses and with real and undeniably overwhelming stressors could come to commit these acts. Where did the despair, the rage, the lack of control, the drive to violence come from? How do otherwise normal-seeming people get to that point? What happens inside, what happens in their environment, what is "the perfect storm?

I still don't think it is ever justified, though.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 

quote:

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You are my Eliot Ness, Dag.

The Ideal, not the real man. The original Untouchable.

---

That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
I count on you to stay true.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 

quote:

---

I didn't want to characterize abusers as the Sunday-movie-special version of evildoers (slavering, wild-eyed, praying to Satan). i wanted to understand how somebody with generally good impulses and with real and undeniably overwhelming stressors could come to commit these acts. Where did the despair, the rage, the lack of control, the drive to violence come from? How do otherwise normal-seeming people get to that point? What happens inside, what happens in their environment, what is "the perfect storm?

---

One thing most child abusers, molestors, and serial killers have in common is that they were the victim of child abuse and/or molestation.

And this is NOT a justification - far too many do rise above it for this to be an excuse. But it's an important truth to recognize: the only way to stop child abuse is to stop child abuse.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
I think real truth underpins real power.
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
Dag, I'm not sure that would be a problem, really. The Big E is a company, not a public trust, and they can ban whatever they want.

I don't think political issues have any place at an event like that, so if they wanted to ban all such issues from the grounds, I am sure they could.

What happened is that that group violated the rules that they singned, and are banned from taking part in the fair next year. I don't know if any other groups will be allowed, but as far as I know, it is only that group that is banned, and it was because of their behavior.

Also, the guy I know who works there isn't managment, so I don't know for sure what he really knows....but I trust him, and when I mentioned I had had a problem with a booth at this years fair, he said "Wait...let me guess. It was those a$$hole$ at that abortion booth, right? We had a ton of complaints about them..." so I am reasonably sure he knew what he was talking about.

I was going back to one of the original points, about how some people are so focusesd on the little things, like this fair, that they have no idea how much damage they are doing to their own causes.

They didn't change anyones mind that day, I am sure about that..I got applause from the crowd when I walked away,and now they won't even be allowed back next year....

Kwea
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
Kwea, I thought I was pretty clear that either way, the ban was allowable. I guess I hedge too much.

Too often, people aren't even aware what the relevant issues are, especially in first amendment cases. No big surprise or blame, there. The important issues are really not intuitivly important.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
Could we perhaps list some practical things that perhaps we could all agree on...or not...that might have an effect on reducing the number of abortions through avoidance of unwanted pregnancies?

I'm just wondering. I mean, it seems to me that this debate never really does get us anywhere. Who's rights supercede whose, etc.

I think that sex education and a bit of "reality" training for teens would lower the teen pregnancy rate.

I think free birth control, along with education, would reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.

If the goal is to make abortion a rare event, shouldn't we work to convince people that there are better ways to conduct their sexual lives?

There's a worry that I have about the kids saved by a ban on abortion. That is: I believe that child abuse is linked at least moderately to unwanted pregnancy (as well as poverty, and some other factors that probably all kind of run together).

At any rate, I wish that instead of trying to figure out the appropriate semantics and where lines are drawn that we could work on things that will have the effect of reducing the "market" for abortions in the first place.

I keep hearing about how the teen pregnancy rate is dropping in this country. How is that being accomplished? Is it the "abstinence message?" (that'd shock the heck out of me if that really worked, but if there's data to prove it, I'll acknowledge it. Maybe it's better programs of sex ed in the schools? Maybe it's better parenting?

But shouldn't we work to get the mileage out of those programs that we can.

And I've had kind of an epiphany on this, by the way. I don't care what another person's stance is on abortion. The reality is that these educational/experiential programs would be a good idea whether or not abortions are legal. They'll be needed whether or not abortions are legal.

Because people who don't want children can STILL get pregnant. The more we get the message through to people, the less pressure there would be to have an abortion -- legally or otherwise.

Right?

Sorry if I'm jumping in too infrequently in this debate. I have been trying to avoid re-offending people so I've held back until I could figure out what I really wanted to say.

And that was it.

special to Mike -- My version of "maximize the number and quality of life" is more global than what I presented. It basically takes into account all life, not just human. What I believe to be true is that good stewardship by humans of this planet means something other than populating it to the maximum extent we can. Somehow, we have to find ways to have less of a deliterious impact on the lives of other humans and other animals and plants if the Earth is going to remain viable for all of us in the long term. To that end, we have some serious choices to make about not just the number of humans, but our consumption of resources, and disposal of our waste products.

Into that mix, I would toss the bit about quality of human life. And the point there is that if children starve to death, we are not doing our job right. Either those children should have been taken care of, or their birth under those conditions was a mistake that they paid for. This is not universally true, of course, but family planning (in the literal sense, not the sense that has come to be synonymous with "abortion counseling" in some peoples' minds) could and should be used to avoid the tragedy in the first place.

I don't know the right name for that position. But the point is that it maximizes two things -- life and quality.

I don't define quality by how much STUFF one has, or the superabundance of resources, etc. I mean something more simple like (for humans) a set of basic rights and basic needs being met (food, shelter, clothing).
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
Dag, I began posting that second message before your second reply...you were really quite clear, as clear as the issue would let you be. I was mainly replying to CS, because he asked a good question. I wanted to be clear...not only would I feel the same if a gay marriage group did the same thing, I would feel that way if my own church acted that way in public (or private, for that matter... ).

I do think that the subject matter was too mature for children to be exposed to it, but my main problem with them was their attitude, and their assumption that is they spoke loudly enough you would allow them to preach at you to avoid confrontation.

I don't like confrontations, but I am not afraid to speak up if necessary, that is for sure.

If they had left me alone I would have found it very distasteful, but I wouldn't have argued or complained about them...but they wouldn't have won any points either.

This booth will self-destruct in 3,2,1....BOOM!

It was funny, sort of, but sad at the same time.

Kwea

[ October 28, 2004, 07:53 PM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"Can you PROVE animals don't have a right to life like fetuses would? If not, do you think we should ban eating animals?"

It is impossible to "prove" a right, as all rights are arbitrary. At best, one can merely convince someone else that something should be a right, which is where the animal rights crowd is now: trying to convince people that animals have as much right to life as we have. So far, they have not largely succeeded.

However, once a right is agreed-upon, then you can prove whether or not it is violated. You have agreed that human beings have an inherent right to life; all that remains, then, is to demonstrate to you that fetuses are human beings and it then becomes incumbent upon you to demonstrate a compelling reason to permit the killing of fetuses. And yet even this isn't necessary in your case, as you have also said that you agree fetuses are human beings.

Ergo, you must demonstrate a compelling need to override an inherent human right to life. It does not fall to the government to demonstrate a need for life, as the sanctity of life is a default assumption.

-------

"If the goal is to make abortion a rare event, shouldn't we work to convince people that there are better ways to conduct their sexual lives?"

Isn't this already the case, however? Is this not already something on which many, many groups have focused efforts?

[ October 28, 2004, 08:53 PM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
I'm eloquent.

While I slept, both AJ and Sara enunciated perfectly what I was attempting to convey. So I'll just rest on their words and let the thread move on.
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
I'm not coming back to this thread.
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
Bob_S: I wish you would, as we are no longer debating semantics...I think...

I liked your last post, and thought it was very well thought out. I didn't post on it right away, because I have been away from my computer, and felt like taking a break from this topic myself.

I will probably be back tomorrow,.

Kwea
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 

quote:

---

To me, and every person i have ever debated this with, pro-life means they are for outlawing abortion, and pro-choice means not outlawing abortion.

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quote:

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It is impossible to "prove" a right, as all rights are arbitrary. At best, one can merely convince someone else that something should be a right, which is where the animal rights crowd is now: trying to convince people that animals have as much right to life as we have.

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quote:

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I believe you've THOUGHT that's what you meant, but I don't think that really is what you and every person you've debated with meant

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Do you have any idea how arrogant that is...now you are going to tell me what I meant in each and every conversation I have had about this over the past 25 years???

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You can't seem to enter any of these serious debates without arrogantly assuming you know better, better than anyone else, what everyone else means.

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That's untrue and unfair.

We just had a thread about this. It is true that I can't enter a debate without BELIEVING I'm right, and neither can you, and neither can anyone. However, I don't know I am right, and I don't assume I am right. If I assumed I was right I wouldn't bother making these arguments - I'd just say I'm right and I say this so it must be true.

I don't believe it is arrogant to give arguments for a position I believe to be true - even if that position is about what a word means. If someone tells me they think "Democrat" and "liberal" are the same thing, I don't think it is arrogant to try to give reasons why I think they are wrong (even if it were to turn out they WERE the same thing, contrary to my opinion!) I think it would only be arrogant if I rejected their belief out of hand, or refused to listen to their counterarguments.

And, back to the questions at hand, you gave me arguments and I gave you a counterargument that I think is pretty good. Do you have a response to my question - which of the two slightly (but significantly in my view) different definitions do you really mean?

[ October 29, 2004, 12:11 AM: Message edited by: Xaposert ]
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
One leads to the other, Xap...at least to some people.

They aren't mutually exclusive, as you seem to feel. There doesn't have to be ONE reason that pro-life means against abortion rights.

And unlike you, when I have discussed this withn others I didn't waste everyones time telling what they meant when they spoke, I actually listened to what they were saying, instead of debating semantics.

BTW.... here try this...

Look up any of those sites and see if they agree on your definiton of pro-life and pro-choice...unless they don't really mean what they are saying as well..

Or this dictonary listing .....type in pro-life yourself, so you don't think I am "cheating"...

this one as well...

Here is another... duh!

So, since we are talking about common usage by almost everyone but Xap , can we agree that no one I can find other than yourself agrees with you re-definiton of these terms?

Never mind, I don't think this will change you mind, and I don't really care if it does.

Thanks for killing another thread....

Kwea

[ October 29, 2004, 12:23 AM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 

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One leads to the other, Xap...at least to some people.

They aren't mutually exclusive, as you seem to feel. There doesn't have to be ONE reason that pro-life means against abortion rights.

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There doesn't have to be ONE reason that pro-life means against abortion rights.

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So, since we are talking about common usage by almost everyone but Xap , can we agree that no one I can find other than yourself agrees with you re-definiton of these terms?

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Never mind, I don't think this will change you mind, and I don't really care if it does.

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The California Family Planning, Access, Care, and Treatment Program was implemented in 1997 to provide family planning services for uninsured, low-income women and men. We estimated the impact on fertility of providing 500,000 women with contraceptives. ... One year of Family [PACT] services averted an estimated 108,000 unintended pregnancies that would have resulted in 50,000 unintended births and 41,000 induced abortions.

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[To clarify: whether various forms of birth control are covered by Medicaid is decided on a state-by-state basis. Medicaid is underfunded, and some physicians are opting to take no Medicaid or Medicare patients because reimbursement does not even cover operating expenses for keeping the office open during those visits.

To address this, many states have moved to managed-care plans to provide Medicaid funds. Some of these Medicaid managed-care plans are religiously run and do not cover birth control (such as the Fidelis Health Care Plan in New York)]

[ October 29, 2004, 11:10 AM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
 

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Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
 
You could always come vist and discuss it in person.

I can’t speak for Bob, but I think we could be doing a much better job at preventing unwanted pregnancies. Purely anecdotal example: I know a young woman who had a child at age 16. She was surprised – her school sex ed curriculum was abstinence only, her parents had warned her that having sex could lead to getting pregnant, but her much older boyfriend had not told her that what they were doing was having sex. She’d been having sexual intercourse since she was 13 and didn’t know it. (She knew all sorts of other euphemisms for it, but no one had ever made the connection for her that this was what she was being told not to do in her so-called sex education.)

I’d like to think she was a fluke, but hanging around elementary and middle school kids the last few years, I’m not sure that she is. What these kids think is normal dating behavior, and what they don’t know about the possible consequences, is scary. And some of my colleagues on the ministerial association are determined to keep them from learning -- encouraging parents to opt their kids out of sex ed and not to talk about it at home except to say not to do “it,� again without ever defining what “it� is.

Kids who get accurate and healthy information about sex from parents/schools/doctors/churches are lucky. They’re also much rarer than I would have thought five years ago.
 

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Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
 
I'd just like to say that everytime I read this thread title I get this image of OSC in armor, sitting on a mule, holding a lance and charging down windmills.

Thank-you for your time.

Hobbes
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
What Dana said (so eloquently).

And we have the initial stirrings of some pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control pills.

Note, too, that only 19% of abortions in 2000 were to women less than or equal to 19 years old. Although teenage pregnancy is a real and important concern, if you want to have maximal effect on decreasing the number of abortions, you will find the most effective area to target to be among white women who are 20-34 yrs old. (20-24 = 33%, 25-29 = 22%, 30-34 = 13%)

Make contraceptives readily available and supported by readily accessible family planning services, and the numbers of unwanted pregnancies fall (as per California's PACT program above). Make the rules Byzantine, the funding of the programs minimal, and the accessibility sporadic, and the effectiveness of such programs is severely undercut.

[By the way, I am delighted to have my tax money going to fund contraceptives for those of my community who could not otherwise afford them, as I am delighted to prevent unwanted pregnancies even if that means I might be funding other people having sex, regardless of whether they are 1) married, 2) not poor, 3) have religion as a part of their choices, etc.

I'm pretty sure that this is not the case for some of my fellow community members. I don't know whether this is the case for various people here on Hatrack, and I wouldn't be so bold as to even hazard a guess.

However, I find the urgency of preventing unwanted pregnancies (and all the sequelae thereof) to be so great that I wouldn't insist on placing those restraints on the most effective means we have found to prevent them.]

[ October 29, 2004, 11:08 AM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
That is, to be blunt -- although a bluntness in the general sense, not directed against anyone in particular:

I think being effective at preventing abortions is a critical issue for our society. I think this regardless of the fact that I am not troubled by the majority of abortions (less than 13 weeks gestation) myself. However, when a substantial number of people in our community are deeply and urgently troubled, than it is an issue which should be addressed.

I am sympathetic to the claim that the burden of proof is on those providing an procuring abortions to prove that the reasons for doing so warrant the destroying of this life (regardless of its ontological status). I am also sympathetic to the claim that very very few reasons would be substantive enough to justify this action when the claim is made by those who believe 800,000 persons are being murdered each year by abortion providers.

For those to whom this claim is a heartfelt truth, stopping abortions must be a priority. I can see that, even if I don't agree with it.

I find less tenable the position that abortions must be stopped but not by any means which might fail to discourage sex outside of marriage, even if it does not result in a pregnancy. In that case, someone would be arguing that upholding the principle of prohibiting sex outside of marriage trumps the goal of preventing 800,000 murders per year.

I think once an individual grants that upholding such a principle trumps preventing those murders, then he or she is obligated to at least consider whether other principles might trump it, too. That is, if preventing the murders is paramount, then it is paramount. If it is not paramount (but must instead be subject to discussion of competing principles), then we must have a further discussion. And, in such a case, there should be no arrows slung at anyone for suggesting that another principle might trump the importance of preventing those murders.

Of course, I am not attributing this stance to anyone here, but just clarifying what has become a sticking point for me in these discussions.
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
That has always struck me as questionable too, Sara..I understand some religions don't like birth control.

But when they try to block access io it, they are, in effect, saying that their view on birth control is more important than the lives of those unborn children they portest to save every year..

Because if the pregnancy never happend there wouldn't be any abortion in the first place.

So in effect they are saying that their opinion of birth control is more important than a womans right to live her own life, and more important than saving the lives of thos fetuses.

I KNOW this is an oversimplification, but it just seems to jar my sensibilities every time I think of it.....
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 
Yeah, me too.

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So in effect they are saying that their opinion of birth control is more important than a womans right to live her own life, and more important than saving the lives of thos fetuses.

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Even your own sources mention that pro-life excludes abortion in most to all situations.

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Pro-life, to aeevryone here but you, means, in common usage, against the leagal right to an abortion.

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You keep the discussion centered on terms and definitions-of which you are always arbiter-and simply cast aside any objections or relevant points anyone makes by pointing out they don't match the terms you have picked.

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If I were the arbiter, I wouldn't bother trying to convince you, would I? I'd just say *this* is the definition, and that's that, no matter what you argue. (Some in this thread have used that tactic though. )

I also haven't cast aside any objections to my definition as of yet - I've offered a counterargument to each. If you think I've missed one, please give it and I'll see if I have an answer or not.

[ October 29, 2004, 01:04 PM: Message edited by: Xaposert ]
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
Just to raise a possibility... if we are going to start banning things, why not start by banning premarital sex?

I'm willing to bet a majority of abortions would be prevented by doing that AND we wouldn't have the huge problem of forcing mothers to raise kids they can't supposrt (which is a big problem with banning abortion.)
 

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Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
 

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I'm willing to bet a majority of abortions would be prevented by doing that

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How would you enforce the ban on premarital sex effectively enough to have this effect?

(just curious)
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
dkw can answer for me anytime!

She expressed my opinion on Tom's question eloquently. I think there's more we could do regarding education and availability of birth control, counseling prior to sexual activity and certainly prior to pregnancy. It's something that perhaps almost everyone could work on, no matter what side of the debate they are on.

Even if we're already doing it, are we doing it well? Are there further gains to be made? Would more funding and more volunteers make a difference?

If we reduce the rate of unwanted pregnancy don't we also avoid abortions, and, at the same time, spread a positive message that spreads through the community and through generations?

Is there a good reason NOT to do more of this, regardless of what we ultimately decide about the legality of abortion?
 

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Posted by Foust (Member # 3043) on :
 

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In fact, Kerry's campaign has been one long promise of hope to the embattled terrorist movement within Islam. They firmly believe that if they can just keep up the pressure, the American Left will deliver them a victory just as forty years ago the American Left delivered the North Vietnamese a victory that they could not win on the battlefield.

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Again, I don't think so - I think we all mean the same thing by the term

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Xap, it amazes me, that you still don't see the hubris in telling other people what they meant !

Good thing everyone else here can.

For the last damn time, that isn't what I mean, not matter how many times you try to tell me it is!

We all know what YOU mean by it, but not one person has agreed with you since you bean this crap, and if you cared what others thought you would have noticed that by now.

Pro-life in the context of most (as in every one other than with you, so far) abortion conversations means against the legalization of abortion....as in abortion should not be legal.

Pro-choice in the same conversation means in favor of keeping abortion legal.

Many people come to those destinations via different paths, and I am not saying they are all the same, or all believe exactly the same things for the same reasons....What I AM saying (over, and over, and over....) is that in normal usage, that is what most people mean when using those terms.

Some people believe that ALL abortions are evil and must be stopped, while others think that abortions should be allowed under very limited circumstances only....but they would be considered pro-life, regardless of their motivations, because they are in favor of outlawing abortion and removing the choice from the mother.

Some people believe that abortions is a right that should never be removed, and don't think that a woman should EVER be questions on why she wants one, while others (like myself) hate the concept of abortions but feel that a woman has a right to determine what is best for herself, and that right trumps all others in regard to her medical care...so they think that the choice MUST remain hers, and the law needs to protect that right (and not be changed).

Even your own sites that you quoted made reference to the fact that pro-life is in favor of outlawing abortions.
They may not agree on if a total ban should be instituted, but they all agree that outlawing it is neccessary....removing the right to choice a woman currently holds.

You have successfully derailed a good topic once again, and no one is surprised. You would rather argue your perceptions any day than debate what the other posters are really saying.

Or am I wrong yet again, oh omniscient one?

Please tell me what I really mean by all this..I can't possibly be disagreeing with you again....

Even though it would mean I agree with everyone I have seen posting in here...

Kwea

[ October 29, 2004, 11:26 PM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 
Sara,

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How would you enforce the ban on premarital sex effectively enough to have this effect?

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Xap, it amazes me, that you still don't see the hubris in telling other people what they meant !

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We all know what YOU mean by it, but not one person has agreed with you since you bean this crap, and if you cared what others thought you would have noticed that by now.

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Even your own sites that you quoted made reference to the fact that pro-life is in favor of outlawing abortions.

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You have successfully derailed a good topic once again, and no one is surprised.

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Well, I'm thinking the semantics of "pro-life" is a much better topic than the ways in which we think OSC is attacking people.

[ October 30, 2004, 01:09 AM: Message edited by: Xaposert ]
 

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Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
 
So this is wrong and broken but it made me chuckle...

Sara: How would you enforce the ban on premarital sex effectively enough to have this effect?

(just curious)

Bob: dkw can answer for me anytime!

(I had to leave the kiss in for maximum effect)
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 

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However, speaking for myself, I am unlikely to accept any delay on an abortion ban while we work out the "wrinkles" on a birth control plan, especially since one is not dependent on the other; it would be too easily used to stall the process.

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So, is there any way that we can actually start something here?

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The problem begins with finding a direction that everyone feels comfortable working on. Most religious groups won't support any type of birth control, and mosr non-religious people ooften consider that to be the best place to start....

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Kwea, well, we can find SOMETHING to work together on, I hope. If not, then everyone should just concede the truth of what I said in my first post and kill this thread right now!!!

j/k. Seriously, though I think there have got to be positive things we can work together on. And those things that are "too far" for some folks to agree on, they can duck out or start their own coalitions.
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Tres,
I don't know what to say. You must not have read my earlier posts or the responses to them (back around pages 4-6, I think.

I should've just stayed out of this thread entirely. Sheesh!

Anyway, I have a problem with waiting until we change the nature of the debate. I seriously believe we'll still be talking about "legalize it or make it illegal" 10 years from now. I don't see "progress" in any direction on this.

Meanwhile, people are still having abortions for reasons that were avoidable (like the person dkw mentioned). I think people of all points on the spectrum on the "legal/illegal" issue can still come together to do something positive.

And I think we need to.

And maybe in the process we'll learn to have constructive dialog on the other issues surrounding pregnancy, sex, child rearing, etc.

I just can't give in to the thought that we're just going to stay at loggerheads on this issue.

Or that we have to "change society" first before we can reduce the number of abortions.

Oh well.

This thread really has become too labor intensive to be of interest anymore.

If anyone is seriously interested in working on anything like a coalition of moderates, maybe we can have some offline discussions. As I told Dag, I'm not really looking to lead this, but I would be interested in being involved if there's any one who wants to.

Maybe someone knows of an organization already doing something along these lines that we could check out?
 

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Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
 
Bob, if you really want to work on this issue, I can plug you in to a few organizations. I think it’s the kind of thing that has to be done locally though, and Hatrackers are too spread out for direct action. Coalitions are good, but we’re not likely to be forming an effective one online.
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
I hope so too, Bob. I actually think that Tres had a few good points in his last post, even though he still insists on re-defining the label...and I doubt that will ever take hold.

But I can be sure that when I enter a debate like this I make sure that I let people know that I am pro-choice but not pro-abortion...meaning that I don't think abortions are the best solution to the problem.

That won't matter to most people who think about this issue as a black and white situation, but I rely care about those people's opinion anyway.

I DO think that it is the people in the middle who will have to do this, as the issues is too polarizing for a lot of people. We will have to be pretty thick-skinned too, because a lot of people who share our stance on the rights of women to have/not have abortions will see this coalition as a bunch of people who are merely placating the other side.....

But I think that in the long run it is people like that, who are willing to work together despite their difference, who will make a difference....and are already doing so.

My parents said to me that the way to make real, lasting changes in perception is person to person, not cause to cause....cause to cause is too impartial, and it becomes too easy to demonize the other side of the issue, too easy to forget their faces and names...that their sons and daughters play soccer with yours, and you have cookouts with them on Sundays.

When you realize that they are more like you than different, it becomes a lot harder to justify hatred, and harder to paint them as the enemy.

That is what they tried to teach us...not in so many words, but by th way they treat other people from all walks of life.

That type of respect is what will make something like your ideas work in the long run.

Kwea
 

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Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
 

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Anyway, I have a problem with waiting until we change the nature of the debate. I seriously believe we'll still be talking about "legalize it or make it illegal" 10 years from now. I don't see "progress" in any direction on this.

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A good policy might be one banning officers and/or those who speak for the organization from publically expressing opinions about any law concerning abortion.

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I would say that the official position o this would be for the person to say that he cannot discuss it while giving a persentation, but that he would be willing to discuss it after, making it clear that he is NOT speaking for the group.

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Another approch would be to send people out in pairs, one pro-life and one pro-choice, and making our diversity a selling point rather than a distraction. Neither would be able to speak about it during the presentation without the other mentioning his views as well, emphisising that we are working TOGETHER to achive some real results.

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