musik_knut wrote: 

MK, I am an ABD in molecular biology.  I have human DNA in a test tube. It's not an unborn child.

And not everyone agrees that human life is more precious than other life.  I've had both tadpoles and kittens that I've respected more than some people.

 hippiechick wrote: 
hippie...
First, understand I appreciate your opinion on this topic. Second, having taken a course in embryology, I am quite aware of a what a developing human embryo looks like at various stages. And at ALL STAGES, human DNA is present. It might be difficult for some to understand, but that fact plays heavily in my feelings on this matter. We're not talking about the stages in the development of a tadpole or a kitten...

If I ruffled your feathers or that of others, I apologize. It is not my intention to be ham handed on this or any other topic.

 Beanie wrote: 
I agree. And my 2 cents about capital punishment, is that until they get that right, it should not be allowed, and I, also of 2 minds, do not believe in killing at all. 

 cc_rider wrote: 

CC, I think you've treated a tremendously difficult and emotionally-charged subject carefully and with sensitivity and just the right amount of righteous indignation.  Bravo. 

 Beanie wrote: 
As Bill Clinton said, "Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare."  Exactly.

It often seems that the pro-life side assumes that the decision to end a pregnancy is made with all the consideration of whether or not to have cream in the morning coffee.  I don't think so.  Not very often.  Certainly not in the case of the women I've known (and, for that matter, the men in their lives) who've made that decision.

This is one topic that really gets to me.  I'm so sick of people acting like pro-choice = pro-death.  You don't have to agree with abortion to agree with the fact that women should have a choice.  Some of us have had to make that very personal, agonizing decision we will have to live with the rest of our lives.  We don't need people judging us and telling us we are murderers and pro-death.  No one gave you the right to judge us.  I have so much more to say but I'll bite my tongue before I say something that I'll regret.

I'm not even going to bother to backscroll here. I'm just gonna say what I feel about the issue. And I'll throw in my two cents about capital punishment too, since somebody mentioned it.

- I am against abortions. I do not want any woman to have an abortion. It is traumatic, physically and emotionally. I have several dear friends who had abortions, and they were profoundly affected by it. They did not actually regret their decisions, but they understood what the stakes were, and decided to do what they thought was best at the time. Were they right? Wrong? Of course there is no way to know. They did not make the decision lightly, and to this day they live with the consequences. Even victims of sexual assault must agonize over their decisions: what right do WE have in such cases? Some women, for reasons of their own, decide to carry that child to term: God bless the strength of character it must take to do such a thing. Other women, again, for reasons of their own, cannot fathom the idea of carrying the child of a man who raped them. What possible moral ground do WE have to stand on here? It is NONE OF OUR DAMN BUSINESS.

- As a man, I do not have the right to tell a woman what to do. Whether it's grabbing me a beer from the fridge, or aborting a fetus. We men just don't have the authority, period. On an issue of such grave import, I cannot, with a clear conscience, demand a woman do one thing or another. It is simply beyond my (or ANY man's) authority: legally, morally, physiologically.

- HOWEVER, at a certain point, in this case proscribed by law, my (i.e. men's) authority DOES come into play. At some point, a cluster of cells becomes something recognizable as a human life. Self-sustaining? Not until much later, which the law recognizes and attempts to account for. As written, the LAW allows the woman's authority to hold sway TO A POINT. Beyond that, our society recognizes we (i.e. in this case men's authority) DO have a voice: the rights of the unborn begin to balance against the rights of the woman bearing the fetus. Eventually, when the fetus reaches a degree of development (again, proscribed by the LAW of the land), the rights of the woman become essentially equal to the rights of the unborn child.
Note the use of 'unborn child' instead of 'fetus'. Words DO make a difference. Calling a few hundred cells a 'human life' is disingenuous, moral imperatives notwithstanding. That cluster of cells is no more a 'human being' than a fertilized hen egg is a 'chicken'. Moralists can argue until they're blue in the face, but they will not convince me otherwise. It is a point upon which many people are intractable, for whatever reasons, but MY position is fixed.

- As some you know, there are a number of adoptees here. Myself and PP are two who spring to mind, but I know there are others, and several dear friends IRL as well. We were born before our mothers had a CHOICE. Well, that's not technically true. They had four choices: marry the father (often against his/their will, as a close friend of mine attested), carry the child to term and place it for adoption (a fairly common occurrence at the time: my grandparents ran a home for 'unwed mothers'), risk permanent sterility or death at the hands of a back-alley hack, or spend a fortune to bribe a qualified doctor to perform a safe procedure. I can assure you the vast majority of girls 'in trouble' really had only two options, neither much good. My birth mother was a coed at SMU in Dallas in 1965: how many options do you think SHE really had? I've never met, and know very little about, my birth father beyond a few medical issues worth noting. And have no interest in seeking him out, but that's another thread.

- But it begs the question: would I, ME, personally, have been aborted? Maybe, maybe not, I don't know. My birth mother never had any more children, so I cannot say one way or another. I know very little about my birth father but I suspect he was not in a position to acknowledge the existence of an illegitimate child. But really, does it matter? Of course 43 years later, the answer appears obvious to some people. Not so much to others, but they can go pound sand: I'm here now, so freakin' deal with it.

- The upshot of all this ranting? It (abortion) is not my decision to make. It is not ANYONE's decision to make, except for the principals involved. HOWEVER (again with the caps), at some point, proscribed by THE LAW, society has the authority, the moral, legal authority, to say the rights of the fetus must be weighed against the rights of the birth mother. If some dumb-ass pregnant chick waits 'til the eighth month to decide whether she wants to keep the baby, well, she has abdicated her rights as the birth mother, and the rights of the fetus now hold far more weight.

That's my opinion. Worth every penny you paid for it.

- Okay, if you're still reading this (God bless your patient soul), I'll toss my two cents in about capital punishment. I am of two minds here (hey other mind, shut up over there!), but my position on the legal system of capital punishment is clear.

- I have no moral qualms about killing a dangerous criminal. Kenneth Duff is a famous local example, but of course there are hundreds. For people who I KNOW perpetrated such heinous acts, I would have no problem pulling the trigger myself. Well, being the vindictive SOB I am, I'd have to pull the trigger several times: my aim ain't so good, and I might hit a knee first, or take off an ear, then of course I'd have to reload, and well, it could take awhile. Point is, some people need to be eliminated from the face of this planet, if only to prevent them from doing any more heinous deeds. Throwing in a little extra suffering for them is just desserts, in my opinion. Only thing better would be to gut 'em like a fish and stake their intestines out for the crows, but dang, that's a lot of work, and messy besides.

- However, that's not how our Justice System works. Our Justice System is fraught with errors. From notoriously inaccurate eye-witness testimonies, to over-zealous prosecutors, we have real problems with our Justice System. To be fair, it probably works better than many others around the world, but, uh, we are one of the very few who still perpetrate state-sanctioned murders. I am not saying truly guilty people do not deserve their fate, far from it. I am only saying our system, like any other justice system, makes mistakes. Problem is, if you execute a legally-convicted criminal, and later some kind of exculpatory evidence comes out, like, oh, say, DNA, well, then what? At that point, our society, our system of 'justice', has KILLED an innocent person. I would rather not be party to MURDER, thank you very much.

- Besides the moral and ethical considerations (dang pesky ethics!), there are the raw financial considerations. Yes, keeping a prisoner behind bars for the rest of his(or her!) life is expensive. Something like $20K/year, I don't know what the actual number is, and don't much care. The real point is, by imposing a death sentence, an elaborate appeals system is AUTOMATICALLY enstated: $20K/year is chump change compared to what THAT costs. If we just locked the bastards up, no possibility of parole (anybody remember Sirhan Sirhan, or Chuckie Manson? Think THEY are ever getting out of jail? Not hardly), we would save MILLIONS on the costs of incarceration.

- The death penalty is too capricious and too expensive. As much as I'd like to personally blow the heads off some of those scumbags, I understand the realities of the situation, and know imposing capital punishment is NOT the way a civilized society should act.

Wow. Give me a few beers, and a couple hot-button issues, and I'm a veritable FONT of opini...uh, long-winded crap.

Take issue with me, argue with me, I'm cool with it. I've thought about this stuff a long time, I've tried to formulate reasonable, practical answers. It's unlikely you'll change my mind, but hey, go nuts. I'm happy to talk more about it, if you can stand it...

Peace Y'all,

chris

 

 musik_knut wrote: 
If you hear this a lot, could it be because it's true?

And I think you're being unfair in your depiction of those who are pro-choice.  I think that abortion is something most people wouldn't choose, but I think most who advocate for choice do so because they don't believe they have the right to make that decision for another woman in crisis. 

I think nearly every pro-choice advocate would rather there were sufficient choices and protections and education available to every woman before conception, so that no one would ever have to face a tough and heartbreaking choice after conception.

Just one woman's opinion.  YMMV

 musik_knut wrote: 
That's what I like about you, you're so open minded. 

This is what a 6-week fetus looks like:



This is not a baby; this is tissue. 

This is what a 12-week fetus looks like:
 

This is when a fetus starts to become viable, but would you call a chick embryo a chick?

And of course, who cares about the young men and women, over 4000 of them, who are dying in a senseless war? Where are their rights?

 jadewahoo wrote: 
The thread has been around for a while, Jade. This little brouhaha started because I posted a reference to Henry Morgentaler, the Canadian who had Canada's abortion prohibitions reversed by the Supreme Court of Canada.

It seems that there are some subjects that just can't be discussed.

 hippiechick wrote: 

The usual shop worn Liberal mumbo jumbo about the repressed and the downtrodden. Must everything be couched in such a manner?

...and never a word about the unborn, as defenseless as the term can be defined. Like most who embrace life, I have no problem with an abortion that will save the life of the mother or an abortion to terminate a pregnancy born of rape or incest. But by damn, those who favor choice make no concessions, provide and give no thought, to unborn human beings.

I would like to preface my comment by saying that I really don't think abortion is good, I would never have one myself, and I think that after the 12th week, there needs to be a good reason for it.

However...women have been giving themselves and each other abortions since the Bible. A man comes and plants his seed, sometimes by force, and a women is left with a huge lifelong responsibility, sometimes with no support from the father.

And along with abortion, there is no easy access to birth control, or the church uses its power to prevent women from using it, and creates situations where women have way too many kids to take care of, and everyone suffers. I know many people from Catholic families with lots of kids, and the whole family is all f'ed up.

And of course, women have been subjugated, oppressed, raped, denied medical treatment, live far away from help, etc.

My mother had an abortion when she was 16, in 1935. She had no knowledge of how a girl gets pregnant, and when she got pregnant, my grandma took her to some dr that women knew about and had the fetus aborted.

Until children are educated about sex, birth control is widely available, and women are treated as equals, abortion needs to be available, because giving birth without choice is just another form of repression .

Edit: Oh yeah, and we can stop abortion when we stop killing people in wars

 joan_c wrote: 

Joan, you're a good egg, but with all due respect you ARE trying to convince those who believe differently than you that they are wrong.  And that's OK, if you think it's your place to do that, but you shouldn't tell us (or yourself) that you're not doing it.

 

 jadewahoo wrote: 

You took the words out of my mouth. 

Apparently we've tired of scorching the Earth in the other political and religious threads. 

 MonkeyPod wrote: 
I agree that this is a strange subject for this place.  My goal is not to convince others that they are wrong, but to give them something to think about. 

 islander wrote: 

Actuall, they don't, in a sense. Zygote, blastula, gastrula are stages of a life. They do not specifically speak of 'the unborn'. Embryo and fetus, do.

 joan_c wrote: 
It is not outside my ability for reason to understand why you feel the way you do about this subject.  

Trying to convince other people here that they are wrong doesn't make much sense to me but you are welcome to try.  I just found the subject to be a strange one for this place and my comment was meant to reflect how ridiculous it was to try and sell the idea here tonight. 

The subject is serious and I hope everyone can find peace with the it in their own way.

 islander wrote: 
Sorry, not the actual feet of a ten - week - old, but her pin was the actual size of the feet of a ten - week - old unborn child.  It was meant to be a gentle reminder that fetuses are people too.

 islander wrote: 
I am not opposed to the death penalty. There are those among us who are nothing but predators and as such, they represent a threat to the lives of others.
The unborn are not a threat.
The whole notion behind Roe of 'due process' is a stretch. A woman denied abortion rights is denied due process? And that is why today, abortion right's activists will fight to the death, any move to define the point at which life begins because if life is defined as the moment conception occurs, a point I agree with, then due process, Constitutionally guaranteed to 'all persons', would bring an end to Roe. If life is defined at any point during gestation, Roe would end. It is madness to not determine that life exists during gestation. There are metabolic processes taking place, a heartbeat comes at a set point, there is movement, cognition of an external environment and so forth. Non-life forms do not feature any of those life attributes. We are not discussing the polymerization of paint or the stillness of a rock when we discuss the unborn. We are discussing biological life born of human DNA.