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Author Topic: Is there a moderate position on religion?
King of Men
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Well then, we have the same sort of feelings about each other. What do I care for the opinion of a religious person?
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Puppy
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quote:
I value unborn humans too... but here's the thing. I can't find a reason or way to ban abortions, from secular grounds, without putting a higher value on unborn humans then on many other principles that the vast majority of americans would say are "reasonable" and important principles.
Well, yeah. That's why I said people want to ban abortions — because they DO value unborn humans more highly than the competing considerations that you're citing, and consider them to be an overriding exception, much the way avoiding murder is often an overriding exception.

I mean, the fact that a principle is considered "reasonable" or "important" to a vast number of Americans does not automatically imply that it will be considered MORE reasonable or MORE important than any other given principle you put in front of the same Americans.

You, personally, do not value these unborn humans more than the competing considerations. Fine. That doesn't mean that therefore, anyone else who comes to a different conclusion must be basing their opinion solely on religion. The system of values you espouse is a subjective thing that you determined on your own, based on your own conscience. You should not be surprised or need to explain it away when other people come to different subjective conclusions from the exact same set of facts and considerations. That's how humans work. We think differently.

quote:
Why is abortion viewed to be SO morally and ethically repugnant that people want to ban it? My contention is that people who view abortion to be morally and ethically wrong enough to want to ban it... do so based off of their religious beliefs, or from osmosified (word? Is now!) religious beliefs.
And I contend that your contention is highly simplistic, to the point of absurdity. People who have different values from you only ever have them for ONE reason, and that ONE reason should not apply to the debate, and therefore no one should disagree with you? It's a very self-serving position that shows quite a bit of disrespect to your opponents.

quote:
the arguments for banning abortion rely on abortion being murder, and that this is in fact the only secular justification for banning abortion, as other principles are involved that as a society we value highly enough that they are only overturned in order to prevent murder, and that this secular definition is never achieved because the only way to show abortion is murder is to say the embryo has a soul.
Your argument implies that the only reason that murder is illegal is the fact that murder victims have souls. Otherwise, proving that unborn humans do or do not have souls would have no bearing whatsoever on whether or not killing them would count as murder.

I contend that the presence or lack of a soul has nothing to do with our ban against murder, and that the presence or lack of a soul has nothing to do with my own reasoning when I consider my personal opposition to abortion. If we were somehow to prove the existence of a soul, and could determine when exactly it showed up, then it could become a consideration. But until then, the whole argument must be based on something else.

Probably the best way I can describe my conscientious impressions about abortion is this (and bear in mind that I consider this explanation to be imperfect):

If human gestation took five seconds from conception to birth, then I don't think there would be any question that killing an unborn human during those five seconds would be wrong. The technicality that this person isn't "really born" yet would be almost meaningless, since everyone would know that within moments, a fully-developed human would be right there, ready to grow up and experience a life every bit as valuable as yours or mine.

From that perspective, to me, it seems like the length of time between conception and birth is irrelevant to the value of the unborn human. That human may still be in the process of taking the first step through the threshold from unlife to life during the nine months while it is in the womb, but that does not give us an excuse to kill it just because that first step is incomplete. Once the step IS complete, that human will be every bit as capable of living a full and valuable life as you and I are right now, and WILL deserve whatever protection we do. That potential, to me, makes the incipient human almost as valuable as the complete human, and makes the idea of destroying it for our convenience abhorrent.

Now, you may disagree. But note that at no point does the presence or lack of a soul come into this ... UNLESS you already believe that fully-developed humans are protected because THEY have souls, and for no other reason.

[ January 17, 2005, 09:42 PM: Message edited by: Puppy ]

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Puppy
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Here's another example, to see if I can make this clearer:

Let's say you have a patient on an operating table that goes into cardiac arrest — a condition that, according to most definitions, makes that person technically dead. IE, when someone's heart doesn't beat for five minutes, they say later, "I was DEAD for five minutes!"

What if you happened upon this patient while the doctor was still getting out the defibrillator to revive him? Would it be okay to whip out a knife and stab the patient several times in the heart, making revivification impossible? Technically, they're dead. All you're doing is preventing them from coming back to life, right? It's not murder.

But to most observers, the fact that this person had the potential to come back to life made them every bit as valuable as a living human, and taking it upon yourself to destroy that potential does, in fact, make you a murderer.

Similar reasoning applies to humans who are not yet alive, but who are in the process of coming to life. Killing them just short of the point when they come to life, and thus destroying their potential for life, is very similar to actually destroying a life. It's not the same thing, but it is close enough that I cannot justify it while disallowing murder.

Anyway, again, that's just me, so you don't have to agree — but do note that I'm speaking ethically, without the benefit of religious reasoning.

[ January 17, 2005, 09:51 PM: Message edited by: Puppy ]

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King of Men
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Fully-grown humans are protected from murder because, if I don't recognise your right to life, why should you recognise mine? Embryos have no such protection, in that they cannot threaten to kill anyone. Power and ethics spring ultimately from the barrel of a gun. The state, the entity with a monopoly on legitimate violence, enforces whatever we want it to enforce. (Please note, these are descriptive statements, not prescriptive.)

Your five-second example is interesting, but I think wrong. I have to think a bit about how I want to argue against it, though; I'll post later.

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Puppy
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quote:
Fully-grown humans are protected from murder because, if I don't recognise your right to life, why should you recognise mine?
That has been a consideration at the foundation of many of humanity's legal decisions throughout time. But in the modern era, most particularly in the western world, we have made many laws designed specifically to protect those who cannot protect themselves or threaten anyone, based on the idea that all human beings should have equal value under the law, even when they cannot enforce that value themselves. This is why I have trouble understanding why abortion advocacy is such a shibboleth for American liberals, who rely so heavily on this principle for the rest of their platform.
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twinky
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There are other positions between "no abortion should ever be allowed" and "abortion should be available at any time for any reason," you know.
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King of Men
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Guns take many forms. If you do not recognise the value of my children, why should I recognise the value of yours? Similarly for animal rights, a fairly clear-cut case of a small but vocal pressure group forcing their wishes on a larger but less committed group.

As for the liberals, you are focusing on the embryo while they are focusing on the mother, who is (presumably) an adult with a vote right now.

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newfoundlogic
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quote:
Fully-grown humans are protected from murder because, if I don't recognise your right to life, why should you recognise mine? Embryos have no such protection, in that they cannot threaten to kill anyone. Power and ethics spring ultimately from the barrel of a gun.
Once we evolve past the state of nature that's no longer the case. Otherwise, why do we protect minors from abuse let alone death from their parents? Theoretically a sixteen year old could also pose a physical threat to your being, but a newborn can't. Those who oppose abortion say that an living entity outside of the womb is a person, but a living entity inside of the womb is just a fetus or embryo.
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King of Men
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quote:
Otherwise, why do we protect minors from abuse let alone death from their parents? Theoretically a sixteen year old could also pose a physical threat to your being, but a newborn can't. Those who oppose abortion say that an living entity outside of the womb is a person, but a living entity inside of the womb is just a fetus or embryo.
What's theoretical about the threat of a 16-year-old? Hulking toughs, many of them. As I say, we extend protection to the children of others because we want protection for our own children, even from ourselves. I certainly hope that if I was irrational enough to mistreat my child, that child would be taken from me. Your last sentence appears tautological, and also irrelevant. What were you trying to say?
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A Rat Named Dog
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quote:
There are other positions between "no abortion should ever be allowed" and "abortion should be available at any time for any reason," you know.
Who was this aimed at, twink?
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newfoundlogic
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quote:
What's theoretical about the threat of a 16-year-old?
Because as you yourself has sort of implied, the real power in today's society is the vote. Minors do not have the vote, therefore, there is no obligation to protect them.

quote:
As I say, we extend protection to the children of others because we want protection for our own children, even from ourselves. I certainly hope that if I was irrational enough to mistreat my child, that child would be taken from me.
None of that provides a reason why we would protect newborns from ourselves, but not fetuses.
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twinky
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quote:
Who was this aimed at, twink?
It was aimed, shotgun-style, at pretty much the entire thread.
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King of Men
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quote:
None of that provides a reason why we would protect newborns from ourselves, but not fetuses.
We do not start to become psychologically attached to the embryo / child at the moment of conception. For some people, it never happens; for many, it occurs at birth. There's a reason newborns and babies are so excruciatingly cute : Children whose mothers did not find them cute had less chance of surviving. I suspect that the earliest moment at which a pregnancy becomes emotionally real is when it start to show. By an interesting coincidence, that's also approximately when the limit for abortions is set.

Sixteen-year-olds come under the same protective umbrella as children : If you protect mine, I'll protect yours. And a vote acquired in two years is not so theoretical as all that, even in today's shortsighted political environment.

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newfoundlogic
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Some people are emotionally attached the moment they know they are pregnants so you still haven't shown a real reason why we shouldn't have the same protection for newborns and the unborn except that the former is excruciatingly cute.
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King of Men
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Well, we are now in the realm of assertion. You assert that some people are emotionally attached from the moment of conception. I assert that if so, they are plainly in a minority. In fact, perhaps they are the minority pushing for sharper limits on abortion?

Further, like it or not, men still have an impact on our alws out of proportion to their actual numbers. And I think there are few men who would consider a pregnancy real emotionally as well as intellectually until they could, at the very least, feel the fetus kicking.

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mr_porteiro_head
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quote:
There's a reason newborns and babies are so excruciatingly cute : Children whose mothers did not find them cute had less chance of surviving.
The problem with this theory is that all newborns are amazingly ugly. My kids were the most beautiful newborns ever born on earth, and they were still ugly.
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King of Men
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You refute your point in your own words. You felt an immediate attraction, right? Hence 'the most beautiful newborns'. So their propaganda worked. You would have fought a tiger to save them, yes? Newborns without that defense were eaten by tigers.
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twinky
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quote:
Newborns without that defense were eaten by homicidal psycho jungle cats.

There, fixed that for you. [Big Grin]
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Kayla
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You know, John Kerry actually had a moderate position on religion. He's Catholic and he holds certain personal views about abortion, and other subjects. However, as a President, he doesn't feel it's his job to legislate his religious beliefs. He believes what he believes and thinks others should be allow to believe what they believe, even if it something he disagrees with.

I agree with him. While I'm not personally in favor of abortion, I don't feel it's my right to legislate my moral beliefs on the whole county.

Isn't that the middle ground?

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mr_porteiro_head
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quote:
He believes what he believes and thinks others should be allow to believe what they believe, even if it something he disagrees with.
Even those of us that you would consider to have an extreme position on religion agree with that.
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mr_porteiro_head
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quote:
You refute your point in your own words. You felt an immediate attraction, right?
Absolutely not. My first reaction to my first child was that he was hideous. I seriously thought there was something wrong with him. He looked like a purple Yoda.
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King of Men
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Well then, for you the emotional attachment came later. For a large number of people, though, it occurs at the birth, at least by popular accounts. Either way, though, you're proving one of my points : Either you were strongly emotionally attached at the moment of birth, or not too long after, as I've been arguing with you. Or you weren't, which proves the point I made to nfl, to wit, that the emotional attachment doesn't necessarily happen at conception.
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Mr.Funny
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I would so vote for Dagonee if I could vote.
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mothertree
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quote:
I value unborn humans too... but here's the thing. I can't find a reason or way to ban abortions, from secular grounds, without putting a higher value on unborn humans then on many other principles that the vast majority of americans would say are "reasonable" and important principles.
I don't think financial gain or status is worth even a potential life. It's funny, we were discussing "Indecent Proposal" on the Q&A thread. (For the very young, that was a movie where a young couple facing bankruptcy are offered $1,000,000 if the wife sleeps with Robert Redford. Actually, I think it was they got the million either way, but they would roll the dice and if they won the million was unencumbered but if they lost she had to... anyway... there are more important things than money.)

The 5% of abortions that are due to rape, incest and even severe deformity (which I can't imagine doing but wouldn't excoriate someone else choosing) could be initiated at a doctor or legal order. I don't believe abortion should be a consumer initiated service.

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Paul Goldner
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The problem is, those 95% of abortions aren't all about financial gain, or status.

I'm going ot put on the record here that I have a hard time with your stances on guns, and abortion, given the way you phrased the gun position. Abortion has been far far more important to women's rights and equality then gun ownership. And guns kill actual people, rather then potential people.

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mr_porteiro_head
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quote:
And guns kill actual people, rather then potential people.
None of my guns have. And yet every abortion kills.
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Lyrhawn
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Following the theory that aborting a pregnancy from the point of a zygote on is murder, what's to stop us from taking it one step further?

A child was previously a fetus, was previously an embryo, was previously a blastula, was previously a zygote and before that was previously a sperm and an egg. Thus the theory follows that any destruction of sperm or egg cells is also murder. After all, that's potential life you are throwing away there.

So from now on, when you speak of abortion being legal or illegal, you must also include the legality and morality of male masturbation and female birth control.

Call if ridiculous if you want, but it's really just taking it one step further. A zygote is just the combined formation of a sperm and an egg, so why aren't those considered just as sacred? A zygote is no more a life than a sperm is. A blastula is no more well formed than cancerous clump of cells, or a parasite.

So if terminating a pregnancy a day after it has been diagnosed is murder, so is masturbating and letting all those little sperm die.

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mr_porteiro_head
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Straw Man
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Kwea
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And not a new one, or a particularly good one from the past either.

You could have at least said something about cells being cells, and therefore brushing your teeth is murder... [Big Grin]

It would have about the same amount of truth to it, and it is something that the search option wouldn't have found 300 times. [Roll Eyes]

quote:
What do I care for the opinion of a religious person?
Depends on who he is, I suppose....if he is a good person, an intelligent one, or one who is pretty tolerant of other peoples opinions you might take another look.

Perhaps you could learn something from him.

It seems that your aversion to religion, and religious people, is every bit as irrational as you think their beliefs are.

[ January 18, 2005, 02:22 AM: Message edited by: Kwea ]

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Lyrhawn
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Did I just get dissed? It felt like it, but didn't overtly look like it.

(And there is a difference between sex cells and every other cells in your body, such as those in your teeth, which you should very well know if you speak about it with confidence. Sex cells have only half the chromosomes, and the linkage between sperm and egg sex cells creates a cell (zygote) that is similar to but not identical to the parent cells. Thus killing a tooth cell would be tantamount to killing a potential clone of yourself, and not the possible creation of a new person. So yes, there is a difference, which is why I didn't make that connection on my post)

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Mean Old Frisco
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quote:
It's funny, we were discussing "Indecent Proposal" on the Q&A thread.
Not the first time in my life I confused "Indecent Proposal" with "A Modest Proposal". For a split second, I thought we were talking about eating one-year-olds.

And I do believe, Paul, that there are non-religious reasons to be anti-abortion, since I happen to be both. I think both Tom and I have provided examples of such in past abortion threads.

[ January 18, 2005, 03:44 AM: Message edited by: Mean Old Frisco ]

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A Rat Named Dog
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quote:
(And there is a difference between sex cells and every other cells in your body, such as those in your teeth, which you should very well know if you speak about it with confidence. Sex cells have only half the chromosomes, and the linkage between sperm and egg sex cells creates a cell (zygote) that is similar to but not identical to the parent cells. Thus killing a tooth cell would be tantamount to killing a potential clone of yourself, and not the possible creation of a new person. So yes, there is a difference, which is why I didn't make that connection on my post)
Then, along that same line of reasoning, uncombined sex cells do not represent genetically distinct individuals, and therefore also do not warrant the same consideration as a zygote [Razz]

Convenient when the builders of straw men volunteer to take them back down again on their own [Smile]

[ January 18, 2005, 03:54 AM: Message edited by: A Rat Named Dog ]

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Scott R
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quote:
Fully-grown humans are protected from murder because, if I don't recognise your right to life, why should you recognise mine?
No-- fully grown humans are protected from murder because murder is wrong, and civilizations recognize it.

Honestly-- ~10,000 years of human history, and the only thing that's been keeping mass, rampant murder in check is the idea that 'you might get me before I get you?' What a sad thought.

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Mean Old Frisco
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There's also that five-day waiting period.
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Scott R
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'Forsoothe! I wouldst purchase yon crossbowe!'

'Havest thou thine identifying marke?'

'Behold it, sirrah.'

'Goode. Now thou musteth wait for half a fortnight.'

'What deviltry dost thou mutter? Give me yon crossbow immediately!'

'I will not.'

'I tell thee, give it me now!'

[Smile]

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Dagonee
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quote:
I agree with him. While I'm not personally in favor of abortion, I don't feel it's my right to legislate my moral beliefs on the whole county.

Isn't that the middle ground?

No, because we're talking about the law, not just personal beliefs. The middle ground would be somewhere between unfettered access to abortion, which, for legal purposes, we have now, and absolutely no abortions. The lines can be based on fetal age, reason, etc.

Anyone with a line between these extremes is in the middle ground, although I freely admit my middle-ground is almost as close as you can get to one extreme end: physical threat of severe injury or death the only reason.

Dagonee

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Lady Jane
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1. Have I mentioned how hilarious ScottR is?

2. It's true - white babies are ugly and wierd-looking for the first couple of weeks. Black babies, however, are beautiful. White babies look weird because of their coloring, but darker babies come out looking perfect.

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Destineer
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quote:
The middle ground would be somewhere between unfettered access to abortion, which, for legal purposes, we have now,
In many states that's not true. And if you're looking for a nation-wide ban on late-term abortions, that won't even happen if Roe v. Wade is reversed. Abortion will always be legal in (eg) New York.
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Destineer
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quote:
physical threat of severe injury or death the only reason.
It seems to me that in cases of rape the "famous violinist" example applies. If people abduct you and hook up your kidneys to a sick violinist, so that he'll die if you disconnect him, you have the right to do so at any time. You didn't sign up for the hardship of filling in as his life support.
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Storm Saxon
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Yeah, the comedy stylings of Scott R aren't too bad sometimes. [Wink]
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mr_porteiro_head
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quote:

2. It's true - white babies are ugly and wierd-looking for the first couple of weeks. Black babies, however, are beautiful. White babies look weird because of their coloring, but darker babies come out looking perfect.

Well, it looks like I'm forever doomed to have ugly babies. [Smile]
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mr_porteiro_head
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quote:
It seems to me that in cases of rape the "famous violinist" example applies. If people abduct you and hook up your kidneys to a sick violinist, so that he'll die if you disconnect him, you have the right to do so at any time. You didn't sign up for the hardship of filling in as his life support.
It seems to me that if you just disconnected yourself and allowed him to die, you are guilty of murder. The moral thing to do would be to give doctors the opportunity to put him on a kidney machine before you left.
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Dagonee
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quote:
In many states that's not true.
Under Roe and Casey, a mother can abort upon threat of harm to the mother's health. Harm to the mother's health includes psychological harm. In essence, anyone can legally get a late term abortion with little or no difficulty. Some states lack "sufficient" abortion resources, but that's not a legal bar.

quote:
And if you're looking for a nation-wide ban on late-term abortions, that won't even happen if Roe v. Wade is reversed. Abortion will always be legal in (eg) New York.
I think I've been upfront about what I'm looking for, a ban on all abortion except in cases of physical threat of severe injury or death to the mother.

quote:
It seems to me that in cases of rape the "famous violinist" example applies. If people abduct you and hook up your kidneys to a sick violinist, so that he'll die if you disconnect him, you have the right to do so at any time. You didn't sign up for the hardship of filling in as his life support.
I'm really not here to argue my position; I stated it in the interest of clarity, and am interested in clarifying the extent of the possible positions.

Dagonee

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SausageMan
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Hmmmm...

I'm religious (Evangelical Christian), and yes I'm a conservative (stereotypical, I know), but...although I would say that my religion does affect my political views, it's not in the way you might expect. The thing is, my faith precludes everything I do. I strive to not make a single decision unless I know that it's pleasing to God (although I do fail often [Smile] ), and so I often make moral decisions without, at first, knowing why. I know that God wants what is best for me, so I often have to obey Him without question. So sometimes it's not for a while before I realize why He put certain rules in place.

So in that since I sometimes do take the "Bible tells me so" way of looking at morality, but I always strive to learn why the Bible says certain things. After that, I have to determine whether or not certain morals are 1) practical to legislate, and 2) practical to uphold as law.

For instance, the Bible says that you are not to sleep with anyone but your wife (before or after marriage). Now, I know for a fact that society as a whole would be better off if everyone followed this rule. But there is no way in the world that this could possibly be carried out as law, as it would be nearly impossible to track everyone down who was involved this and punish them all.

But I know, because I know who God is, that a society that perfectly followed God's law would be a perfect society. Granted, this is an impossible scenario, but it would be true.

The problem is not in trying to force people to do what they don't want to do, but in changing people's hearts so that they desire to do good. So my greatest task is evangelization, not legislation.

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TomDavidson
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"I know that God wants what is best for me, so I often have to obey Him without question."

Out of interest, have you ever acted in a way that you thought God wanted, but which turned out to be wrong?

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SausageMan
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I've wondered. [Smile]

I think for the most part I've had to make simple enough moral decisions that I knew for sure whether it was God's will or not, though I sometimes still make the wrong decision.

Otherwise, He usually shows me where I've gone wrong when I've misinterpreted.

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jeniwren
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Destineer:
quote:
It seems to me that in cases of rape the "famous violinist" example applies. If people abduct you and hook up your kidneys to a sick violinist, so that he'll die if you disconnect him, you have the right to do so at any time. You didn't sign up for the hardship of filling in as his life support.
I'm trying to imagine how awful I would feel about disconnecting the sick violinist knowing that if I would just wait a matter of months, he would be well enough to continue on his own without me. That might make beauty out of a situation I didn't ask for, didn't want, wouldn't have chosen if I had had a choice.
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Scott R
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What if the violinist insists on playing only baroque era music?

Can I disconnect then?

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jeniwren
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That would only endear him the more to me. I like baroque era music. [Razz]
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maui babe
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I just wanted to state that every one of my six caucasian babies was absolutely beautiful from the moment of birth and then proceeded to become even more beautiful.

That is all.

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