Our Next Prez?

But of course it is fine to be pro-death after the child is born, and the mother is hauled off to some forced-labor "welfare to work" job that pays her almost nothing, while the baby is left in the care of less-than-adequate (since all the funding has been cut and cut again) child-care facilities, if any....

I'm just quotin' from the Republican way of thinkin' here.... all's good as long as we stop those damned abortionists! Especially if we can keep the corporate welfare programs going for our "base" ("the haves and the have mores", as I recall it was titled once by a certain man whose initials are G.W.B.)

 

"Destroy another fetus now, we don't like children anyhow."--Leonard Cohen, The Future

 

Carl,
Your facts and logic are both wrong. Who do you think funds the care centers for poor women who choose to keep their child rather than kill it? It is Christians and Republicans. Many, many Christians, including myself, help out financially with these mothers.

Your logic is just plain ridiculous. Even if no one ever gave a dime to help these mothers they are still killing their babies by aborting them. Are you trying to say that murder is okay if there isn't an aftercare program? Puhleeze.... With that logic, we ought to go out and kill all the toddlers of low income mothers.

BLD

 

www.nasawatch.com has photographs of George 41 in a similar suit at NASA KSC.

 

Abortion isn't a particular partisan issue. Many Democrats oppose abortion. Many Libertarians oppose abortion and the Socialist Party presidential candidate, Walter Brown, is personally opposed to abortion. Most Democrats I know in my area are opposed to abortion.

 

If most Democrats are opposed to abortion, why do the vast majority of their legislators hold a pro-death postion and why is it a part of their party platform?

BLD

 

Where to start...
I would guess that for many people, including me, abortion is an extremely complex issue. I don't think it can be boiled down to a 'life vs. death (or choice) issue', a 'woman's right to making decisions about her body vs. the "historically" male preponderance of lawmakers issue', a ' Republican vs. Democrat issue', nor even a 'religious vs. non-religious issue.'
It seems the real issue that abortion hinges on is...
when does a "life" become a "life"?

I am very interested in different people's ideas and feelings on this (what is life) issue.

Tony

 

Tony,
While it might seem like an oversimplification, here is the fact that we cannot ignore. Without an abortion we have a live baby, with an abortion we have a dead baby. No one seems to want to deal with that basic fact.

Even John Kerry has stated that life begins at conception, which makes his stance on abortion even more reprehensible.

BLD

 

I doubt they know it, too--because the Democratic Party platform does not support the current version of the Patriot Act. See page 22 of the platform (emphasis mine):

"Guarding liberty. We must always remember that terrorists do not just target our lives; they target our way of life. And so we must be on constant guard not to sacrifice the freedom we are fighting to protect. We will strengthen some provisions of the Patriot Act, like the restrictions on money laundering. And we will change the portions of the Patriot Act that threaten individual rights, such as the library provisions, while still allowing government to take all needed steps to fight terror. Our government should never round up innocent people only because of their religion or ethnicity, and we should never stifle free expression. We believe in an America where freedom is what we fight for – not what we give up. "

If Bush follows up on his promise to appoint more justices in the mold of Thomas and Scalia, then not only will we still have the Patriot Act, but we could very well see far more far-reaching legislation approved (which is the macguffin on the abortion issue--right-wing politicians run for office saying they'll ban abortion, then use abortion as a pretense to appoint justices who oppose a wide range of Supreme Court interpretations that support civil liberties, such as privacy rights and the incorporation doctrine).

I can find evidence of a nine point lead from February; I'm confident that I saw another poll at the time that showed a full ten-point lead, but it isn't coming up on a news.google.com search.


Cheers,

 

That's because pro-choicers tend to believe that we have a dead embryo or dead fetus or (in the case of the morning-after pill) dead zygote cells, not a dead baby. They also don't generally describe themselves as "pro-death," just as folks on your side don't describe yourselves as "anti-choice."

I happen to think that folks on both sides of this debate are entirely too glib about their respective points of view, considering that we have no idea when selfhood comes about. ("Life" is a vague and useless term because a kidney is quite alive, but no sane politician would say that removing a kidney is a form of murder.) I will say that I'm not comfortable with the idea of abortion, but there's nobody here to represent the pro-choice position and I refuse to join in on verse 8 of "those damn liberals."

I also think that folks on your side of the debate are being disingenuous when they claim they're against abortion, but oppose all medical means of avoiding abortion: health insurance coverage for birth control pills, distribution of contraceptives in schools, emergency contraception (unless you're really going to tell me that a two-day-old collection of microscopic cells is also a baby), and so forth. Conservative activists who claim to care about the unborn would have much more success if they were anti-abortion in practice rather than merely anti-sex and anti-privacy rights; people are going to have sex, but I doubt many women would have abortions if less painful and invasive options were easily available to them.


Cheers,

 

Medical science has certainly leaned toward the pro-life crowd's postion. What 20 years ago was described by the pro-abortion group as "a blob of tissue" is what we now know to experience pain, and be quite advanced in many other ways. I believe that life begins at conception (as does John Kerry). But even if I weren't sure, I'd much rather be on the conservative side of this issue and protect life from the very beginning, rather than take a chance that I was killing a child. I find it somewhat humorous that the baby is always a "fetus" when you're getting ready to kill it, but I've yet to hear an OB/GYN tell a mother that they are going to have a fetus. They ALWAYS say a "baby" because they know that is what it is.

If someone doesn't want to have a child, they shouldn't get pregnant. Why should I pay for their contraceptives? They have a "choice" to go buy their own.

Yes, it is a baby.

They have a less painful and invasive option, and it doesn't cost a dime. It's called "keep your legs together." If they choose to have sex than they have made a choice already and they should be held responsible for it, rather than expect the government to bail them out.

We have a modern holocaust going on in our midst, and you're concerned about using tax money for contraception? How about throwing the good doctors in prison for performing such sadistic killings on our young?

BLD

 

So let me get this straight: Given the choice between reducing the number of abortions and promoting abstinence, you're picking abstinence? Fact is that people are not keeping their legs together, and if you're really concerned about abortion, you'll try to find a way to prevent it in the real world--not in the ideal world, where folks all base their sex lives around the expectations of conservative Christians.

This kind of comment annoys me because it indicates that abortion is murder when it's politically expedient, but suddenly not murder when it isn't. When the polls say 48 percent of Americans oppose abortion but 66 percent oppose gay marriage, Randall Terry and millions of other Americans suddenly decide that the rights of the unborn aren't so important after all. And when reducing the number of abortions might come at the cost of promoting abstinence, many conservatives are equally willing to shift gears. What gives? Is abortion murder or not? And if it's murder, why are you trying so hard to prevent policies that could make it obsolete?


Cheers,

 

Yes, abortion is murder.

There are no governmental policies that will make abortion obsolete. In addition, why should I fund someone else's immoral behavior? In addition to that, have you ever read any of the studies concerning contraception being given out? It doesn't stop unwanted pregnancies -- not by a long shot.

When my wife and I decided we didn't want any kids, we took the steps necessary to quit having them. Everyone else has the same choice. If they choose not to avail themselves of those choices they are responsible for the outcome.

Regardless of any of this, the fact is abortion kills children. Are you saying that you are for that?

BLD

 

You should fund someone's immoral behavior in order to reduce the number of abortions. If you really believe that abortion is murder, that should be a no-brainer.

Look, BLD, you know as well as I do that an abortion ban isn't going to happen anytime soon; even conservative Republicans who campaign on abortion tend to sit on the issue once they're elected. It's just a focus-group tested wedge issue, much like gay marriage. So why not take whatever measures we can--measures that very well could receive bipartisan support, if properly presented--to replace abortion with other alternatives?

Let's increase the quality of high school sex education so fewer people become accidentally pregnant (and if you really want to promote abstinence, public school programs promoting girls' self-esteem would probably make them less vulnerable to the sharks later on; I've seen church tutoring programs that use this approach, and every indication is that it can work). Let's make adoption laws simpler to work with, and bring more federal funding into that process. And for crying out loud, let's fund contraception. Pro-choice versus pro-life issues aside, there is no good reason why people should be having so many abortions in 2004. It's barbaric. There are alternatives, and we should be promoting them--even if that means footing the bill for other peoples' sex lives.


Cheers,

 

Jimmy, here's that poll I was thinking of that showed Kerry with a double-digit lead (12 points instead of 10, but I knew it was in that ballpark).


Cheers,

 

Tom,
We agree on one thing -- abortion is barbaric. I also agree with you that even conservative politicians don't have the backbone to really outlaw abortion, which is inexcusable, but factual nonetheless.

The problem I have with what you are suggesting is that I don't believe any of these programs will stop even one abortion. In fact, I believe that handing out contraceptives simply brings legitimacy to immoral behavior, and actually cause more abortions to take place.

BLD

 

No Convention Bump In Polls for Kerry

CLICK HERE FOR STORY

 

BLD, you may be right; I don't know of any way to be sure without trying. Maybe a temporary pilot program in a city with an unusually high number of abortions--NYC or San Francisco, maybe?--is in order.


Cheers,

 

The Kerry convention bounce issue is an interesting one; most polls I've seen indicate a non-bounce (though helpful increases in areas like likability, strength, etc.), but Newsweek recorded a 7-point bump. You're right that it isn't a particularly impressive scenario, though; I blame this on the number of voters who have already committed to one candidate or the other, plus the fact that Kerry selected his VP nominee earlier than Democrats ordinarily do. Folks are paying much more attention to this race than the 2000 race (polling 8 out of 10 instead of 5 out of 10), so it could be that the determining questions will be (a) how well can Bush appeal to the tiny sliver of undecideds and (b) how much of a factor will Ralph Nader be?

One piece of good news for Kerry is that incumbents don't tend to get much of a convention bounce, but then given the neck-and-neck race, Bush doesn't really need much of a convention bounce.


Cheers,

 

But it is highly unusual to get no bounce when naming the vice-presidential case and no bounce from the convention. Has that ever happened before?

BLD