Pro-Life = Anti-Gun?

B-b-b-b-but that’ not a g-g-g-g-gun! They’re scary!

What did Luke report that Christ said — “He who hath no sword, let him sell his garment to buy one.” Better to go forth naked than unarmed.

Everyone has different reasons for there beliefs, none are right. I respect everyones view on this. Scratch that I recognize it would be tyranny if I made everyone live according to my beliefs.

Why draw the line at conception? What makes a fertilized egg distinct from an unfertilized one?

Some of pro-life people say that it’s different because an unfertilized egg won’t “naturally develop” into a baby all by itself on its own. Well, let’s remove the fertilized egg from its mother’s womb without damaging it, and see how far it will naturally develop on its own.

Right after you volunteer to live immersed in hydrochloric acid for a few weeks.

Chip, I completely agree with all your points I have been seeing on this today. Here is one example of a 21 week, 5-day premature baby: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1380282/Earliest-surviving-premature-baby-goes-home-parents.html.

Nobody seemed to argue whether or not that there was a child before them! If someone had walked up to that newborn and chopped off its head, they would have been guilty of murder, yet if they had “aborted” it five minutes prior to birth, it would have been fine.

This isn’t a “women’s rights” issue, it is a “child’s right to life” issue. Considering every medical text for hundreds of years (including current textbooks) states that “life begins at conception,” it is interesting that people want that definition changed when it becomes “inconvenient.” It’s no different than euthanizing elderly parents that one has to take care of when they become “inconvenient.”

We live in a society that has developed a standard of “convenience” over “morality” (life in this case). I noticed that someone else stated further down in this discussion that pro-lifers are about “control.” Control (v), as defined by Merriam-Webster is:

1. to direct the behavior of (a person or animal) : to cause (a person or animal) to do what you want

2. to have power over (something)

3. to direct the actions or function of (something) : to cause (something) to act or function in a certain way

The “Pro-Choice” movement is in all reality the one that wants to control. It is this narcissistic idea that “just because I decided to have a little fun and now have an inconvenience (pregnancy), I can kill that child that has no say (or control) in the decision.” During the political season, I remember one commercial that kept playing on the TV. It showed a mom with her teenage daughter saying that she wanted her daughter to grow up having the same “options” (referring to abortion) that she did. Does that teenager realize what her mom is really saying about her??? She was glad that she had the option to possibly end her life for her own selfish reasons, all for convenience and “my rights.”

Your actions have consequences. Sleep around, and you may have a child. That action is not the child’s fault, and therefore they child shouldn’t be punished.

Until someone can PROVE that a fetus is NOT human life, I will ALWAYS error on the side of human life!

Nice slut shaming. Stay classy.

“Slut shaming”?

Either you have no clue what that term means, or you do know, and have intentionally misused it in ad hominem. You can keep your own advice about staying classy.

Let me put it plainly for you; accusing women seeking an abortion of “sleeping around” is slut shaming.

You have ZERO idea of her circumstances or what she is going through or how she came to be pregnant. But phsyco hyper-religious nuts love to slut shame women without any goddamn clue as to what they are doing.

99% of the time they are right, just saying.

Got any data to support that or is it just true because you said so and it fits your narrative?

Grindstone,

I don’t see anywhere in my 2nd to last paragraph that used the phrase “sleep around” where I directed my statement at women. For that matter, where did I call anyone a slut? There’s that old phrase, “it takes two to tango.” With the exception of pregnancies due to a sexual assault, the pregnancy happens by consequence of choice with a male and a female. Whether they intended to “get pregnant” or not is immaterial. It is no different than, “Your honor, I just meant to rob the store. I really didn’t mean to shoot the clerk. I flinched and hit the trigger.” Even if the discharge is unintentional, there is still consequence for your actions. If you sleep with someone, you risk a pregnancy. In this case, it may be a good consequence, but it may also be a bad consequence. It is wrong to take out that “inconvenience” from your actions on the child.

In one of the Guttmacher studies on abortions in 2004, they found the following:

“The reasons most frequently cited were that having a child would interfere with a woman’s education, work or ability to care for dependents (74%); that she could not afford a baby now (73%); and that she did not want to be a single mother or was having relationship problems (48%).”

If you look at more recent studies from multiple sources from the last two to five years, the results are staggeringly similar. Basically three out of four abortions are admitted as due to being and “inconvenience.” It is going to “interfere” with life. Once again, all actions have a consequence (positive or negative). If two people decide to engage in sexual intercourse, then they need to be prepared for the consequence of a pregnancy. Based on this premise, we should allow the killing of the child at six months old if things become “inconvenient” or the child would “interfere with a woman’s education, work or ability to care for dependents.” This isn’t about a woman’s body; this is about a child’s body and their right to live.

This also goes back to the question of why it is wrong to decapitate a premature baby that is born at 21 weeks (as in being charged with murder) yet it is ok to kill it on the other side of the birth canal??? I’ve yet to hear with one of these preemies, “Wow! Look at that cute fetus!”

As mentioned before, I will ALWAYS error on the side of life, especially when it is the life of the truly innocent child.

For those who think women who get abortions are sluts:

I’m married. I am not a slut. But if I ever got pregnant (very very low risk), I would have an abortion. You could call me whatever the hell you wanted to, but you would not stop me from maintaining control of my own body. I don’t care about your cute little theories about what rights I should have over my own body.

Pregnancy is not a mere inconvenience and no woman should be forced to endure it for 9 months as well as childbirth just because you value a fetus more than a living, breathing woman.

In this country no one can be compelled to have their organs used for someone else’s survival. If you are an exact kidney match for someone who needs one, even if you were the only person on the planet who was a match you could not be compelled to give up a kidney. We do not even take organs from DEAD people because we respect the dead. Apparently corpses are more valuable and more human than women. Clearly, to some, a fetus is.

@ Summer “We do not even take organs from DEAD people because we respect the dead….”

I think most states allow individuals to voluntarily donate their organs upon death. Then again, I don’t understand why you brought that up to begin with.

Yellow Devil, because it is a very similar case. A fetus can’t develop outside of its mother’s body. It demands that said body provide nutrients, a protective environment, and so forth.

In essence, when people talk about “right to life”, there are two rights at play. One is a negative right to not be killed. One is a positive right to be sustained. Most conservatives reject the latter (and all that goes along with it, such as social welfare) for adults. But for fetuses, somehow that right is in place, and they effectively demand that the mother provide all those things that the fetus needs to survive and develop.

If we’re truly only talking about the negative right not to be killed here, then an abortion that would remove the embryo/fetus from the mother without harming it would satisfy that criteria. Of course, it would then die shortly after, but that’s a different story. Somehow, I don’t see the pro-life crowd being happy about it.

False. Since you plainly assert that the fetus would die if removed, your removal violates the right to life (not to be killed). Cutesy rhetoric does not change reality.
If I immersed you completely in a pool of water for a few hours, I clearly have not violated your right not to be killed. Your inability to breathe the water would definitely result in your death in a short amount of time, but, no violation of your right not to die, correct?

So you’re okay with forcing people to do something to keep other people alive? Like, say, forcing them to pay taxes to feed those who’d otherwise die from starvation? Or forcing doctors to give medical aid to those who need it even if they don’t want to? Should a guy who observes a drowning man but refuses to jump into the water to rescue him be charged with manslaughter?

Or are you, like the state of Alabama, all for defending the rights of persons only up to the moment they’re actually born?

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/ouq3mw/the-unborn-ultimatum

False equivalence.
A woman who gets pregnant as a result of consensual sexual relations is fully aware of the purpose and expected outcome of such actions. One should not be surprised or drawn to murderous tendencies when the process works as planned. Just as the man should not be surprised at being saddled with 18 or more years of support, the woman should not be surprised at 9 months of pregnancy.

I agree, so no means no. Let the baby have control of its body, too.

Grind, are you a SJW?

Paul… fvck the fetus.

Look, you religious nuts… if God wants the fetus to have full rights, then he should incubate them himself with his own goddamned equipment. I am not “equipment for rent” to incubate another person against my will.

Screw that noise.

Then don’t have sex. Easy answer, huh?

Sure, Paul, let me just tell my husband that. Sure he’ll be thrilled.

It’s always about sex for religious FLAME DELETED

Actually, if you are following along, the only one making this about sex is the woman who would have an abortion no matter what. Hardly a religious person I would think.
For many, to include religious folks, it is about morality and human life. Even a secular world has constraints on people, like murder is wrong.

Yeah I know. They EXPECT women to have sex with them (at some point.) Women en masse cannot opt out of this activity unless we are lesbians or cat ladies. We all KNOW pregnancy makes babies and no birth control option is 100% (except not doing this one activity we aren’t allowed to opt out of). But then the onus is somehow on women for “consenting to sex.”

Almost all these fvcks would “allow” for a woman to get an abortion if she were raped. Somehow that’s a “virtuous murder”. Because it’s not REALLY about the fetus. It’s about controlling women’s sexuality and reproduction. Full stop.

Give women no options to be in a romantic relationship with a man without doing the one activity that… if precautions fail… her life is basically ruined (for women who don’t want to be pregnant), but then blame HER for the activity the man demanded.

Sounds reasonable. /sarc

I get it now. Everything in your life is somebody else’s fault. Even sex, it is always because the man demands it. You are a woman that must hate sex. Since you never really want it, you only cave in to male demands for it. See, most women, real women, like sex, and initiate as often as men do. FLAME DELETED

*and we all know SEX makes babies. (Not pregnancy. This typo correction will make sense when my comment gets out of moderation.)

Sure, the baby fetus can full control of its body, and its body alone. Let’s remove it from his mother’s body (to which it doesn’t have any claim), and see how well it fares for itself.

The fetus did not ask to be placed where it is. The mother made that decision. The least she can do is let the child grow enough to have a fighting chance.

The mother, not the father?

No means no, remember?

Seems obvious to me, but I have had anti-choice types tell me to my face before that one of their major complaints is women who go get pregnant on purpose just so they can have another abortion. Very similar to gun grabbers, they are ABSOLUTELY SURE this happens all the time, despite the fact that the very idea is completely ludicrous nonsense, and they were unable to show a single instance.

I have NEVER heard anyone say such a thing. I guess you feel a need to make things up as you go.

I’ve always thought the anti-choice people and the anti-gun people sounded exactly alike. I guess people think their exception to rationality is exceptional.

Summer, it’s because both are anti-freedom and anti-individual choice. They just have different routes to the same conclusion.

True, Grindstone.

And they both think the ends justify the means “if it saves just one life”.

I mean who cares about the real women who would SUFFER (because they are sentient and can feel pain). It’s all about the “babies”.

“women who go get pregnant on purpose just so they can have another abortion”

Ive personally heard many pro-life people claim this. Like the gun control crowd, they are adamant about using a few isolated, and statistically insignificant cases, to make a generalization about ALL abortions and women who get them. Ask them to produce data, and reap the deafening silence that is their response.

The irony is lost of them, and its quite comical.

Show me. Just another manufactured comment of the pro-abortion lobby. Or likely a misrepresentation of a real comment, one of women having abortions, then going out and getting pregnant again, only to have another abortion, etc…..
It is not the same statement. It is decrying the use of abortion as birth control. I know, comprehension is hard.

Yeah, Paul, but it’s an extremely small minority of women who think abortion should be the “first line of birth control.” Abortions are freaking expensive. And most women getting them are in poverty. (though certainly not all.) What kind of sense does it make for anybody to not use birth control, get pregnant a bunch of times, and keep getting abortions.

Most of these women who are not using birth control and getting pregnant a bunch of times are keeping the babies and on welfare. But I bet you don’t like THAT either.

So really, you don’t want women to have sex… except you obviously do want them to have sex. You want them to pay and nobody else to ever have to be bothered with it. So much for your grand moral logic about “baby murder for convenience”. You don’t want to be inconvenienced at all with any woman’s pregnancy or the resulting baby. That needs to always be somebody else’s problem, because your convenience and ability to pretend you’re moral and just is all that really matters, right?

I don’t personally know a single woman who thinks they shouldn’t use birth control because they can get an abortion. I don’t know a single woman who WANTS to get an abortion. It’s just what women who desperately do not want babies or pregnancy do to stop the thing they think is worse. The abortion is the “lesser evil” to them, not a trip to Disneyworld. Jesus.

Pretty sure Paul is simply lying here, one of the places I heard that was my sister and brother-in-law, heavily Catholic. There is no way a fanatic such as he hasn’t heard it at all.

See, every time you think, you make a mess of it.

I disagree slightly, only because for the most part abortion requires services from a healthcare provide or doctor to administer. The right to bear arms does not require the services (either voluntary or otherwise) from another person, which is why it’s not the right “to demand arms”.

The only right that I can think of that requires the involuntary services of another person in the U.S. Constitution is within the confines of the sixth amendment (Assisted council and trial).

Always rattling on about how pregnancy is a mere inconvenience when you don’t have a uterus to find out how very wrong you are.

I hope you come back in your next life as a woman so you can be disabused of your cute ideas of what pregnancy actually entails.

I seem to have more experience than you do. You keep making up things to justify.

So you have a uterus then? Your name is really Paulina?

Sit down.

I am sitting. So how many preganancies have you experienced first hand?

That’s none of your business.

How many times have you had sex doggie style?

See how invasive and personal that is?

You started it. Can’t take your own medicine?

Tell us about the time you carried a child inside you, Paul. Regale us with your infinite wisdom and experience.

You first.

Well, Paul, since both you and Grindstone are men… I sit here in rapt anticipation waiting to hear stories about both of your pregnancies.

I aborted it, Summer D:

That’s so true, Larry.

Also, why should I be made to suffer through pregnancy and childbirth because of someone else’s religious beliefs? If they are right, that little soul goes straight to heaven without having to suffer and die here (which is what happens when you are born into this world.)

Back in the middle ages, Christians used to TORTURE people to get them to confess and convert and then often killed them because they believed the SOUL going to heaven was far more important than anything they could do to anybody’s body. Even murdering someone was okay in their eyes if they got the soul to heaven.

Well, abortion sends the soul straight to heaven.

So, shouldn’t Christians be thrilled? Or has the religion evolved just enough to keep hurting women only?

Summer, while I agree with your descriptions, I have to amend your timeframe. In Islamist religions, that “middle ages” you mention is RIGHT NOW. And no one has shown me that Christianity makes any more sense than Islam.

“What? You ran out of facts, so now you turn to intangible BS? And what of this sicko moms who have children out of wedlock and force the dads into lives of servitude and poverty in order to pay their support”

BS? I’ll bite, just how many single mothers are you currently supporting because of their decision to forego abortion? Or are you all right with leaving them alone once you have exercised your control over their decisions?

On the subject of those dads, tho, you’re finally getting it. Those women should have at least considered abortions, perhaps if those men were not forced to pay out the bucks, that would have happened.

Irrelevancy becomes you.

I knew a guy who identified as a lesbian in a man’s body, but I don’t think he was.

I never said that there’s no such thing as a Democrat that’s also a Catholic. Simply that I’ve never met one. I’ve only attended three churches my entire life, in very conservative areas.

I was only refuting the previous poster’s claim that “Catholics are almost exclusively Democrat.” Not trying to make the point that Catholics cannot be Democrats.

And the “if someone identifies as ___, that is what they are” is also wrong.

I could identify myself as a red oak if I wanted, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m a white man.

If someone runs for public office as a small government Republican, and then subsequently votes 100% alongside Obama, would you present the argument that “Well, he identifies as a conservative, so that’s what he is”?

No, you wouldn’t. Just because you say you are something doesn’t automatically make it true.

If you’re born with a pecker, for example, but want to wear skirts and go by Sheila, that doesn’t make you a female. That makes you a confused male.

Correct, but you are now conflating things which are actual and real with religious identification, which makes no sense in any way. If you identify yourself as a Catholic, and lightning does not strike you dead on the spot, then you clearly ARE a Catholic, proven beyond argument. Any other religion, another verse, same as the first.

AHA!! Seems to be no edit function in the last column, I don’t have the word right at hand, the column with no “reply” option also has no edit function. Is that right?

No, it’s not. Now BOTH have an edit function, it was just slow. Sorry, never mind.

Check the DNA.

It doesn’t MATTER if a fetus is a person. A WOMAN is a person. Until 24 weeks a fetus is NON-SENTIENT. It doesn’t know what the hell is going on or feel anything. I’m sorry but MY body will not be put into service growing some little proto-human. You can like it or lump it but good luck getting between me and my bodily autonomy.

You don’t know that. You seem to make facts up as you go. Sounds more like you are non-sentient. Should we abort you right now?

Paul, you clearly don’t know what the word “sentient” means. Which doesn’t surprise me because you don’t seem to understand women are people who can feel pain and trauma, either.

FLAME DELETED and cry yourself to sleep knowing I would abort without a second thought. It’s still my body and is always my body no matter what you or any other dick hat thinks about it.

Manage your own reproductive organs.

Now you decide you are better at vocabulary? Hardly.

That’s really all you’ve got?

Bless your heart.

I’m thinking Paul may be non-sentient.

Come on, you don’t really think.
Have you found me that constitutional footnote on abortion yet? Or maybe where the Constitution gave scotus the power of judicial review?

Paul, your snot contains human DNA. Does that make it a person? Should we restrict you from “aborting” it, and charge you with manslaughter should you sneeze accidentally?

Does my snot have the capability of becoming a self-sufficient human being? Stupid arguments are just being repeated now.

You were the one who brought “human DNA” up as a criterion. The only stupid I’m repeating is the one that you said first.

Partial reads of the posts will draw you to stupid conclusions. The allusion to elbow skin has already been offered. And a refutation, even allowing for the possibility of a genetic clone.
You are late to the party.

Tainted logic, that. The point is accepting responsibility for the result of activities designed strictly for the purpose of procreation. Don’t try to make a baby if you plan to kill it if your plan works.

Paul, so then married people who don’t want children should never have sex? How many women do you think actually have the CHOICE to opt out of that while keeping their marriage in tact. The last I checked intercourse was pretty much MANDATORY in heterosexual adult relationships. I can’t see a lot of guys giving up their right to stick their dicks in women, particularly their wives.

So you all have all this entitlement for this activity that is harmful as shit for women, but if that harm befalls us… well we spread our legs, we’re such dumb sluts.

I can’t even.

I can say without any hesitation that ANY sex between me and a man who didn’t support my right to abortion would by definition be rape because I would never consent to sex with someone who would turn around and force me to bear his child when I made clear up front I wouldn’t have any.

Sounds to me like you are spending most of your time shirking responsibility and seeking the easy way out of every scenario, including resorting to murder for convenience.

Paul,

Sounds to me that you keep falling back on “convenience” and “baby murdering” rhetoric to avoid answering my real questions. Answer them or go masturbate somewhere else.

1. Do you approve of abortion in the case of rape?

2. Do you think a husband should reasonably be asked to NEVER have intercourse with his wife and that it’s wrong for him to insist upon it if she will not have a baby under any circumstances?

I’m sure I have other questions like: What self-respecting woman would ever sleep with you?

But that’s enough for now. If those questions are too hard for you, carry on with your “convenience” and “baby murder” rhetoric. You’ve already shown me you have ZERO compassion for any woman for whom pregnancy would be completely traumatic. If this is your “christian compassion” I’m super glad I’m not a Christian.

Do you ever not seek the easy way out of every situation? I have already answered some of these questions, the others are just cases where you want the easy way out. Just because you are too simple-minded and selfish to understand that, does not mean they do not exist.

Paul,

You are a foul human being. I do sincerely hope with every fiber of my being that you come back into your next life as a woman. Nothing would be more just for you.

And FLAME DELETED.

You did not answer if you think a husband should be asked NEVER to have intercourse with his wife or not.

But my suspicion is that being a dick-haver you feel it is your sacred right to stick it into SOMEONE’S vagina and that a woman pledging her life to you has signed on for intercourse no matter what it might cost her in the end.

I guess you are too simple minded. People have sex regularly, without procreation taking place, yet quite ready to be responsible for such an event should it happen. Men regularly undergo having their own tubes tied to facilitate preventing the possibility. Women also have been known to do the same.
Indiscriminate sex with murder as the fall back plan is pretty sick. I guess it is as deep-thinking, and humane as you get though.

And I bet it just kills you that you can’t do a goddamned thing about it? Stew in your impotent rage, FLAME DELETED.

Just good to remind you just how self-serving you are. Obviously you know it, and enjoy it.

Paul, everybody is self serving. Your bizarre fetishization of the fetus is entirely self-serving. You’re just a control freak hiding behind morality and virtue you can’t even pretend to have.

I am not a fetus, so obviously vocalizing about fetal right to life cannot be self-serving. Duh.

“Tainted logic, that.”

Tainted it is not.

Since you are opposed to “killing zygotes”, then you are probably opposed to killing your own cells via happy sock. Am I right?

Unfortunately, the simple fact is that cells die. That is probably why your “god” also produces statistically significant numbers of miscarriages within the first trimester.

“The point is accepting responsibility for the result of activities designed strictly for the purpose of procreation. Don’t try to make a baby if you plan to kill it if your plan works.”

So in other words, abstinance?

I agree with abstinance, but it is a poor strategy to reduce unintended births and does nothing to address incest or rape. In the case of the later, it is blaming the victim. Furthermore, if a woman’s life is in danger as a result of her pregnancy, you have no say when it comes to her self-preservation and the value of her life. Tough.

But again, is it up to men, governments, and the church to enforce abstinance via legislation? No and it shouldn’t be. The better option is informed consent and not closing off abortion to women. Like I said before, even if it is illegal, women will walk on glass to get one if they are determined enough (which leads to terrible things). No different than criminals that manufacture submachine guns in Australia or the UK. Does that analogy make sense?

Like I said, tainted logic. I have explained elsewhere here. Even your supposed response had nothing in common with your original statement. You are grasping.

Abstinence also doesn’t address adult women inside marriages, which is most women past a certain point.

Abstinence sounds like lovely logic for unmarried teenagers (even if unrealistic.) I guess folks like Paul believe either “all women want pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood once they’ve found the right man” or he thinks once women are married adults who cares about consent?

Consent or live with cats, ladies! That doesn’t sound coerced at all.

And if you consent… tee hee, and you get pregnant… well those are the consequences for the consent you don’t actually really have since you won’t be loved by any man without it.

Makes me wonder how much most men really love women at all or if they know what the word love really means. I’m thinking not.

Of course, if abortion were a given right that nobody was questioning at all… regular normal married sex wouldn’t come off so rape-y. But when it includes implied reproductive control there is nothing moral about that situation.

Paul,

You have the intelligence and moral reasoning of a fetus. Sorry for my confusion.

“result of activities designed strictly for the purpose of procreation. ”

The activities you refer to were not designed at all, and even if they were, there is no obligation to you or anyone else to use them for one purpose only. YOU certainly did not design them, so it is not your business.

Ok, it was totally accidental. But it is the point of such activities. Quit trying to think, you will hurt yourself.

If the baby is in there, you had a hand in that happening. Take responsibility for your actions. Murder is not a method of shirking responsibility.

And what if I were raped? If I had no hand at all in that “baby being in there” would abortion be okay then? (according to you?)

Right now, abortion is a right in this country. It is legal. So if I got pregnant, I would abort. You can call me the devil’s harlot if you like, but MY body is MINE.

Again, when the excuses fail go to a worst case scenario. Even if baby-murder was allowed in incest and rape cases, it would eliminate 99 percent of the baby murder going on. Seems people make too much of their fall-back scenario.

Oh, honey I wouldn’t care if I would somehow have a perfect pregnancy and if childbirth felt like an orgasm. I said NO. No means no! And your insistence that I should carry a fetus I don’t want sounds unbelievably rape-y.

NO my body will not be used in this way. NO I will not carry any fetus. NO I will not give birth. NO. NO. Motherfvcking NO.

The lengths your or anyone else would have to go to “make me” do it would be so evil and inhumane that no rational and caring person would be able to say you were in the right and “just protecting the unborn”.

Let me tell you something… None of this shit is “excuses”. But they are REALITIES in women’s lives. Your lack of compassion for physical end emotional trauma for women tells me what a piece of shit you are. It’s convenient that you hide behind “protecting innocent life”. There is no more convenient a position to abuse and control women from.

The thing about pregnancy is… it is not a mere inconvenience. A lot of women are pretty sick throughout most of their pregnancy. It can be intensely painful and very risky. It’s not that rare to have serious risks and complications with pregnancy. You either don’t know that are are such a woman-hater, you don’t care. Hell, you may even be a sadist who takes special glee in women’s pain. I mean, I’ve seen no evidence here to contract that.

Another thing about pregnancy is… you can have a perfect pregnancy and at the end of it die in childbirth. Really. You can. Even in 2015. Even with medical technology. I know a HELL of a lot more about pregnancy than you do. And if you actually know as much about it as I do then you are most definitely a criminal-level sadist who probably has murdered baby animals under your house.

But let me disabuse you of the notion that I’m looking for “excuses” to “murder babies”. If I got pregnant, even if I were psychic and knew the pregnancy woudl be PERFECT. I would barely even know I was pregnant, and giving birth would be literally orgasmic, I would still abort.

Because it is MY body. And MY life. And MY choice. NO means no. NO I will not give birth. NO I will not carry a fetus. NO. NO. Motherfvcking NO.

You can be as mad about that as you want. You can rail and whine and stamp your little feet, but you can’t do a damn thing about my bodily autonomy.

Enough anecdotes. Facts and personal experience. Since you are spewing rhetoric.

I’d have an abortion no matter what. Even if I were guaranteed a perfect pregnancy. Just like I don’t have to consent and have sex with a man just because he’s hot and nice and “wouldn’t hurt me”, I don’t have to have my body reproductively enslaved in service of forced birth.

If you can’t see how rape-y you’re being, I don’t know what to tell you but no means no.

I’ve said no now very clearly and very repetitively. If someone tried to force me to carry a fetus and give birth against my will they would only be performing a different version of rape.

Rape is rape, no means no, but if you get pregnant through an act designed just for that purpose, life doesn’t mean life. You reserve the right to commit murder and still call yourself a moral being. Tragic.

I reserve the right to kill anything growing in my body that I didn’t give express permission to be there. Yes, Paul, you are correct.

Also, the super redundant posts back to back, like I mean VERY redundant were because some of my posts didn’t post the first time through and I thought they got eaten by the internet.

“it would eliminate 99 percent of the baby murder going on”

Did you PIOOYA with that statistic, Paul?

and no, it wouldn’t. That is the SAME logic that anti-gunners use for assault weapons bans. “it will dry up supply” blah blah blah…

Thats not even addressing the substantial rise in crime that would result, particularly the united states. Yay, increased violent crime and murder rates. More ammunition for anti-gun people.

You are a special kind of genius.

“You reserve the right to commit murder and still call yourself a moral being. Tragic.”

Oh horses–t

Then I sure hope your cells in your body dont die and I hope you dont touch yourself.

Its “murder” after all 0__o

So you have no statistics? What percentage of abortions do you think are because of rape and incest?
This has nothing in common with the assault weapons BS. Trying to make such a false equivalence betrays you.
In a study conducted by the pro-abortion Alan Guttmacher Institute, entitled
“Why Women Have Abortions,” women were asked to give specific reasons why they
had an abortion. The top three answers were:
1. Unready for responsibility
2. Can’t afford baby now
3. Concern about how having a baby would change her life.
The three reasons, which came in last place and were tied at 1 percent included:
1. Was a victim of rape or incest
2. Husband or partner wanted the abortion
3. Didn’t want others to know she has had sex or is pregnant.
Studies and statistics consistently show that pregnancies due to rape and incest are rare.
According to Guttmacher that 1% due to rape and incest is 14,000 babies per year.
Therefore, abortion is not mainly used as a last resort.

Can you challenge that?

“Take responsibility for your actions”

Rape, incest, or none of the above is unimportant. Abortion is one of several possible courses which all would equate to taking responsibility. Regardless of what you say.

And, if I’m not mistaken, “murder” is a legal term, and refers to a criminal act. Abortion is legal, therefore you are deliberately mischaracterizing it, IOW lying. To help you out, the word you are looking for, while still questionable, is “killing”

Nope. There you go trying to think. I said what I meant. Speaking of legal terms, aren’t you supposed to be finding that footnote in the Constitution that you brought up?

I don’t see anybody trying to control your body. That tired lie is inane. We just advocate taking responsibility for the affects of your actions, especially those that bring another human life into the world. Reminding you that murdering another human is wrong is hardly “controlling”. It seems to me the person using murder for convenience is the controlling one, denying life that they created from having a chance to live a full life.

Getting an abortion IS taking responsibility. In the end you just want to punish women for consenting to sex that is pretty much compulsory in our culture. Almost no heterosexual woman can opt out of intercourse and still have the love of a man.

Your rationale that getting an abortion is “shirking responsibility” is like saying if you have sex and get a sexually transmitted disease that can be treated, you have to just live with or die from the STD because oh well, if you try to treat it and get rid of it you’re “shirking responsibility!”

You DO realize that an STD is LIFE right? I mean you’re so fetishistic about life that I’m surprised you would support killing an STD.

Spewing rhetoric, and trying to compare an STD to a baby? Are you mentally deficient? Morally, you have made your deficiency quite clear.

Yep, I’m a male and I know that I have zero right to tell a woman what to do. Women being in control still upsets some morons it seems.

Paul,

Actually, yes. And technically pregnancy IS an STD. Hate to tell you that.You have this weird scale where all life is not sacred, just all HUMAN life.

Do you eat meat, Paul? What about those poor little chickens. What about the aborted chickens you eat when you have scrambled eggs. I mean I know the unborn mean so much more to you than the actually born because screw the suffering of others, so long as we get it through the birth canal, amirite.

Also… speaking of “spewing rhetoric”… if you don’t think “baby murder” isn’t rhetoric… yeah… that’s special.

Morally you’ve made YOUR deficiency quite clear since it seems clear to me that you would support keeping me under 24 hour surveillance and forcing me to keep a pregnancy I didn’t want and give birth. How the hell that is NOT enslavement I can’t even fathom. But you live in a special little world where by virtue of the privilege of your penis you can debate making horrific and cruel legislation that cannot ever in any way hurt or affect you.

Pregnancy is an STD? Your IQ keeps getting lower the more you write. Sexually transmitted, yes. Maybe you think of yourself as a disease, but a baby is not a disease. Nor is pregnancy.
Chickens are not human. Nor are eggs. Eating meat doesn’t kill humans. The IQ you display keeps falling lower.
Odd though, vegans typically disavow eggs. Something about them being animal life, or possibly (if fertilized) an animal. Thanks for bringing it up.

Grindstone, thank you for being a counterpoint to Paul, reminding me that “all men” are not like this. (And I know they aren’t. I wouldn’t have married a man who wouldn’t support my right to control my own body, but out and about in the world it’s easy to forget he’s not the only man who isn’t a monster.)

And yes, Paul, I think you are FLAME DELETED and if there is any justice in the world your next spin around this planet will be with your own bright and shiny uterus so you can understand exactly why your rhetoric was problematic.

This shows the lack of intelligence on your part. I have never raped anyone. To assume that being pro-life is commensurate with being a rapist is moronic.
Not much else worth saying to you. It would all be over your head.

Paul,

“chickens are not human”

I see, so you only care about HUMAN life. So everything else can just go die in a fire.

Why are you so OBSESSED with human life while not giving a crap about the life of any other sentient creature.

Also, note SENTIENT.

My cat has more of a stake in life and more of a right to it than a fetus. My cat is SENTIENT. She is having her own little internal cat experience. She’s aware she exists.

A fetus? not so much.

Pregnancy is not a state of health. It’s simply not. “Natural” does not equal “good”. Viruses and bacteria are also natural. Just because it’s the way humans reproduce does not mean it is not an unhealthy situation. The opposite of health is often called “disease”. So yes, pregnancy is an STD.

And yes, Vegans disavow all animal products. Many vegans are also pro-choice.

Re: you not being a rapist. Forced birth IMO is worse or “at least as bad as” rape. Both rape and forced birth are violations of a woman’s body and bodily integrity. They both can be extraordinarily painful and dehumanizing events. Difference is, a rape usually lasts a few minutes, a pregnancy lasts 9 months. Childbirth lasts hours and hours.

Sex that is WANTED is of course not rape. But when sex is not wanted, it’s an unimaginable violation to a woman.

The SAME thing is true of pregnancy. When a pregnancy is wanted, it’s not a violation, but when it’s unwanted and when people force you to keep it and go through birth, then it’s a violation as bad or worse than rape. You not being able to see that has nothing to do with the truth of it.

Paul, are you over 12? Check your last 30 posts before you answer. Lotsa nanny-nanny-boo-boo, I know you are but what am I, zero factual or intellectual input.

Sorry Larry, reading must be really hard for you. None of that in any of my posts, I am not sure what you are referring to. Granted, you probably aren’t sure either. I did spend a lot of time disavowing words that others put into my mouth. Also, questioning how that made for an argument, and pointing out that it is not a sincere form of argument to put the word’s into the mouth of your opponent.
Remember “hooked on phonics”? Try it, your reading skills will improve, I am certain.

Summer, there’s plenty of pro-gun pro-choice folk out there, just don’t look for them in the Republican party (not that they don’t exist, but social conservatives have largely taken over, so the others aren’t very visible right now). But there are plenty among libertarians. And, of course, pro-gun liberals, like yours truly, are consistently pro-choice as well, though we aren’t exactly a crowd.

Paul, I’m starting to sincerely wish your mother had kept her legs closed.

Truth hurts, huh. It isn’t nice when you realize how barbaric you are,

So, Paul… would you FORCE me to stay pregnant and give birth? Or try to imprison me for life for the act of abortion? If you wouldn’t do either of those things, you’re just trolling me. If you would, we would know immediately which one of us is the barbarian.

First off, I said no such thing. You have a penchant for putting words in my mouth. You do it almost as well as you disavow responsibility for any of your own actions. Yet you continue to assert that I am the troll? Keep trying to convince yourself of that. The proof of the summer troll is all over this page.
Your choices to me are bullshit. Do you like ice cream? If you do you are a fat bitch and if you don’t you are insane. I can make things up that make no sense as well.
Apparently it really hurts you to understand how cruel and heartless you are. That does explain your anger issues here.

So you don’t think women should be forced to stay pregnant and give birth?

You DON’T think a woman should be imprisoned for life for having an abortion?

(Also, stop calling me a troll when you will not ACTUALLY ADDRESS questions put to you. If you do not answer the above two questions, no one who doesn’t have an insane bias can take you seriously.)

Oh really? So if you don’t think women should be stopped from “murdering babies” and you dont’ think women should get the normal murder penalty for “murdering babies”, then I fail to understand why you expect me to believe this is really about “saving innocent babies.”

It’s not. It’s about controlling women. You just have the vaguest notion of morality perhaps to know how barbaric it would be to actually FORCE birth or imprison women for life who somehow find ways to get abortion (if it were illegal.)

Let’s all keep in mind you are rambling on about the horrific evil of a legal activity.

My “anger issues” are because to YOU this is all a thought experiment. To ME, your callous disregard for my rights to not be subjected to pregnancy or childbirth is something that could actually REALLY horrifically affect me or someone I love in the REAL WORLD.

That explains why you are such a FLAME DELETED about this and somehow me caring about something I consider equivalent or worse to rape (forced birth), makes me “crazy”. If you were speaking casually about rape and acting like it was just something women should be forced to endure because whatever dumbass reason you came up with… I would be equally upset and “frothing” about that, too.

Yeah, you keep going on with that. The reason you can be so mockingly casual about it is that it can never affect you.

Most people against gay marriage hold that stance from a control perspective.

Another swing and a miss.

Most religious people who oppose gay marriage don’t care what consenting adults do or how they live their lives. Rather, such people oppose the State intruding on a religious institution, and imposing its will on the definition of that institution.

Personally, I believe the State should not be involved in marriage at all. Let the church conduct marriages, and let the State recognize civil unions, however it wishes to do so.

I actually completely agree with you on this one, Chip.

Believe it or not, I’m a pretty conservative person, but my pro-freedom stance compels me to look at issues from the perspective of both sides.

Chip, if that were the case, then most anti-gay marriage people would be anti-state marriage in general, like you. But this stance, while not rare among libertarians, is extremely rare among conservatives at large. I doubt that even one out of ten anti-gay marriage people share it with you.

No, they very much want it to remain state institution, and being exclusive to hetero marriages only. Because they believe in some form of Dominionism – i.e. that government should be run on “Christian principles”, whatever they understand them to be.

But it’s not control as long as it’s for something I approve of!!!

Since no one seems to think they should lose their gun rights to save an innocent child who might accidentally be shot, it seems highly disingenuous to me that they think I should lose the right to control my own body because I’d want to get rid of a non-sentient cluster of my own genetic material that would by that point still be smaller than a kidney bean. But you do you, anti-choice assholes.

Anything that is YOUR genetic material, go ahead. That baby’s DNA is not the same as yours. It is a unique individual.

And when it can live without leeching off my internal organs for sustenance, then you’ll have a legitimate argument.

You engaged in an act that is designed to put it there. Maybe you should try living without leeching everyone else’s oxygen. It seems a lot has gone to your brain.

Again, Paul… let us discuss my right to “consent” to intercourse inside heterosexuality where intercourse is compulsory in the relationship. There are SOME women out in the world who manage who have heterosexual relationships without intercourse, even marriage. But it is RARE. Women by and large do not actually have that option. The choice is… have intercourse and do “harm reduction methods” like birth control and hope they work… or don’t have intercourse and be lesbian or only live with cats.

Explain to me how MOST women can have a marriage and be loved by a man without spreading their legs for him to stick his dick in. I’ll wait.

The things you take as compulsory…you must live in quite a warped world. Either that, or you choose to warp it in your mind in order to justify your thoughts. That you cannot fathom a difference between an STD, a tapeworm, the skin on your elbow, and a human baby is quite illustrating.
Anyways, I have explained that already. Seems you are not reading anything, just going off on your little tirade.

Paul,

Show me the vast multitudes of men who are A-okay with only engaging in sexual activities with their wives that do not include intercourse.

Where are these vast swaths of men who do not EXPECT intercourse in all long term relationships with women, including marriage?

Show me where women have any real choice to opt out of this one activity as a group. Show me where my consent is.

This wouldn’t be an issue if abortion were not a wedge issue. If every rational and reasonable person just said “Of course women don’t have to be kept pregnant against their will. That’s barbaric.” If THAT were the case in this country I wouldn’t even care that most men consider intercourse a requirement for a romantic relationship and for marriage. Because it wouldn’t be so harmful.

Because the real harm is that that activity can cause babies, and we are blamed for it when it causes one we don’t want… even though we had no legitimate opt out clause other than… just don’t get involved at all with men.

I can’t fathom the difference between an STD, a tapeworm, the skin on my elbow, or a FETUS, no Paul.

Stop calling a fetus a baby. It’s scientifically inaccurate and you’re just using emotive words to try to sound like you aren’t a sleaze.

And you haven’t “explained that already”. Where the hell have you agreed that married women should be able to say no to intercourse FOREVER and still be able to keep their relationship? (Note: I’m not saying no sexual activity at all. there are a lot of other things couples can do. And intercourse wouldn’t even be an issue if it weren’t for men like you who feel women should be punished with pregnancy and childbirth for consenting to an activity more universally demanded and expected by men than any other.)

Your pathological mental disorder is showing through.
You decide what is and what is not worth saying. Your questions about marital intercourse are irrelevant. It makes no sense whatsoever.
Actually, your mental disorder seems to go much deeper than tokophobia. Your inability to refer to men and sex without reference to “demands for sex”, your ability to refer to female reproductive parts in proper terms but male parts only in street vernacular, your referencing pregnancy being the result of a man putting his d*ck between your legs, etc….all presage much deeper problems.
Then there is your refusal to accept that at any state, the developing human child may be referred to as a baby. I reference the Mayo Clinic, not planned pregnancy. I have much greater faith in the Mayo, it is not a racist organization originated to practice genocide towards minorities.
No, a developing human child is not in any manner similar to an STD, virus, or tapeworm. It is imbecilic to make such allegations, unless one couples it with your already admitted mental disorder, then it only reinforces the extreme nature of your mental disorder. It is much more than just tokophobia.
You should contact your mental health professional, they likely would not approve of your taking part in this discussion, it may lead you to a breakdown.
For your sake, I will discontinue my part in the discussion with you.

I don’t know if my comment got eaten or if it’s going to show up at some random point in the future, so I’ll give you the cliff’s notes in case the original longer version posts later:

Show me the vast swath of married men who are willing to NOT engage in intercourse with their wives EVER. (Note: I’m not ruling out other sexual activities.)

IMO the only man who has any right to expect or feel entitled to intercourse even inside marriage is men who support abortion rights. Men who don’t support abortion rights and want to blame women for “consenting” to sex need to admit they are coercing and demanding that sex they later wish to punish the woman for. They should be okay with NO intercourse ever or only getting together with women who don’t mind being perpetually pregnant.

i.e. you admit abstinence is the only 100% effective birth control and given that it takes two to tango, men who don’t believe in abortion should not involve themselves ever with any woman who doesn’t want to be pregnant or they should abstain from intercourse. It’s not “only” the woman’s responsibility for opening her legs when men demand that she do or leave or cheat on her.

I think you missed my point, Chip.

The fact is that not everyone agrees with me, which makes this a moral issue. That grey area will always be there unless and until science can prove the existence of a soul (and when it appears in a fetus) or when a fetus starts thinking for itself.

As such, I believe (since I am pro freedom) that regulating abortion is wrong.

Does that make more sense? I don’t believe anything should be regulated on the basis of a belief, because beliefs are based on emotion.

…until science can prove the existence of a soul (and when it appears in a fetus) or when a fetus starts thinking for itself.

And where are such standards codified in law?

The existence of a soul is a philosophical/religious matter. I’m curious why you bring it up? And what does the moment when an unborn child starts thinking for itself relevant? Do born humans lose their fundamental rights and legal protections if they are rendered unable to think for themselves?

I find it amazing how pro-aborts castigate “religious fundamentalists” with one breath, and then invoke a religious argument (soul/personhood) with the next, in an attempt the rationalize away the fact that a biologically and genetically distinct human life begins at conception.

Interesting isn’t it, that if a woman is involved in an accident on the way to the abortion clinic, and loses the child she was on the way to abort as a result of the accident, the other driver can be charged with vehicular homicide? Apparently the unborn child is only human when it is convenient?

Forgot to reply to this one:

I don’t believe anything should be regulated on the basis of a belief, because beliefs are based on emotion.

The existence of a distinct human life at conception is not belief; it is fact.

The passage of that human life out of the uterus is highly symbolic, but utterly arbitrary with respect to conferring upon that life all of the natural rights and constitutional protections enjoyed by all other humans.

Uhh, Bear, if I say that I believe the earth is flat, does that mean that the question of whether the earth is spherical or not has now become a “gray area”? I think there’s a flaw in the reasoning there. Also, I would be interested in knowing your view on the extent that a full-term, newly-born, umbilical-cord-just-cut infant is able to “think for itself” and therefore counts as a “human”.

Maybe you guys missed the part where I believe abortion is morally wrong. I don’t know why you’re arguing with me trying to prove that.

I believe that in any morally grey area, the law should side with freedom. Period.

However, I also think this whole issue could be largely avoided if contraception was legal for all ages and free. This would serve to save a lot of money for the citizen and the state.

I believe that in any morally grey area, the law should side with freedom. Period.

Again: where does the freedom of the unborn human child fit into this belief?

An unborn baby is not a citizen yet.

“Somewhat forgotten in your pro-freedom stance is the freedom of the unborn human child who has his life taken away”

Not forgotten at all. It was considered by SCOTUS along with every other thing you can imagine before they came to the decision that it is impossible to reach a fair decision, so each person who is pregnant has to make his or her own decision, and those not pregnant should STFU. They dug around in their bag of tricks and discovered a previously invisible part of the constitution to base their findings on. It was far fetched, IMHO, but it was done in a court from which the only legitimate appeal is called a constitutional amendment. If anyone actually believed the position (anti choice) was popular, an amendment would have been passed (or not) 30+ years ago, everyone knows it would not pass. So we scream nonsense from the rafters, destroying any and every chance of returning our nation to fiscal sanity by tilting at windmills.

I would bet money that if someone ever actually manages to unconstitutionally outlaw abortion, in less than 5 years an amendment would be passed legalizing it.

@ thebear, since when are natural rights and freedom based on citizenship? Every human being on earth has the same rights, many just live in areas where they are not protected or respected.

One person’s beliefs should not limit another adult’s personal choices. Better to have the option than not. This is the classic anti vs pro clash which includes the 2nd Amendment.

If X is not for you then don’t do X. Don’t bar X from those who choose X when X, in itself, has no bearing on you. Those wanting to bar X as an option for everyone must wholly provide for relief of X. If you can’t or won’t, then you are merely using emotion as an argument. Would you let someone else choose the right religion for you, speak for you, make your personal security decisions, etc?

Codified in law, you ask? That would be Roe v Wade.

When did they add that to the Constitution? As a further point, what exact law is that? Roe v. Wade is a famous court case, but I never saw a law called that. Give me the exact transcript of the law, maybe? Or even where in the US code it is located? I know for a fact that it is not in the Constitution, as you originally alleged. Unless of course, there is some unknown footnote that only you are aware of. Share it with us.

The question is not whether it is a human, but rather whether it is a person.

For example, a human with most of his brain amputated is still a human by strict scientific definition, and you can maintain its life pretty much indefinitely until it dies of old age or illness, but it cannot think, empathize or suffer. It’s not a person. I don’t think that killing it is a murder.

Similarly, a fertilized egg is a human in a sense that it is an organism in its own right and is of species Homo Sapiens Sapiens. But it does not even possess a basic neural system. Why on Earth would I consider it as having any rights, when it cannot even think of itself as existing, much less having rights; and when the exercise of those rights is only possible by restricting the rights of another human which is a person, self-aware, conscious, thinking and suffering?

It doesn’t contain a neural system? Wait a month or two, and check again. It must be your faulty eyesight. Further, the reason it is in the present position and form is completely a result of the actions of the person you claim is restricted by it. That person was quite aware of the possible consequences of their actions.

So, you’re okay with aborting embryos before they have a neural system?

The reason why it is in its position may not have anything to do with the actions of the person that’s carrying it, either, or be within the boundaries set by “reasonable precautions”. It may be a case of rape (your real name is not Todd, is it? just checking). It may be a case of a burst condom, or other failure of contraception.

Not that it matters, because having sex is not in and of itself consent to becoming a walking incubator.

If the woman and man had consensual intercourse, a pregnancy, planned or accidental (trite idea, huh) is a possible outcome. Live with it. Or abstain. Or get fixed.
Again, you are late to the party, reiterating tired old faulty ideas.

We live with it. The fetus doesn’t.

You may dislike it, but that’s how it works. And I’m really glad that this is one question on which the consensus is undeniably shifting towards pro-choice as time comes by. I don’t like Roe v. Wade on constitutional grounds, but even should it be repealed, in another decade we’ll have a solid majority to just enact the same into law all proper like, through Congress.

That is makes social conservatives obsolete as a political party is also a neat side effect.

I think you are wrong on all counts. Time will tell.

Have a look at the numbers here:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/160058/majority-americans-support-roe-wade-decision.aspx

The key takeaway there is the age distribution. Note how the 30-49 age group is already slightly more pro-choice than pro-life compared to the overall distribution. Then look at the numbers for 18-29 – slightly more pro, and significantly less anti. Compare to 50-64 and 65+ age groups.

Now, all these will shift upwards in another 10 years, and the new generation that will then fit the 18-29 niche will be even more skewed towards pro-choice – the trend is clear.

The age distribution shows something….people get smarter as they age, usually. Need I quote Sir Winston?

It’s an oft-quoted meme, but wrong. It’s kinda obvious from the fact that overall politics of society does shift liberal over time, as is clearly evident by comparing the social mores and laws today and, say, 50 years ago.

There have actually been meta-studies on this – I’m not aware of one for abortion, but there is one for same-sex marriage support, and they have noticed that such support not only is increasingly popular with younger age groups, but when you compare the results to the same polls from 10 years ago, the percentage is actually static for a given generation even as it ages (i.e. if people in the 20-29 bucket expressed 40% support 10 years ago, then people in 30-39 bucket express 40% support today; and the new guys in the 20-29 bucket are 50% in support; etc).

So, yes, the young liberals of today are going to be conservatives tomorrow, but not because they change their views. Rather, the society’s baseline for determining what is conservative and what is liberal gradually changes towards liberal. As 30 year old liberal myself, I wholly expect that some of my notions – such as preference for monogamous marriage (or perhaps marriage at all, as any sort of long-term commitment), for one likely example – to be considered hopelessly outdated and very conservative by the time I’m 70. Such is life.

For every targeted study that preaches the results you claim, there are others that use real data and reach the opposite conclusion. Such is life.

Can you quote or reference a single one?

Your correlation is faulty. If a majority of people under age 10 believe in Santa, one cannot postulate that in 10 years the majority of people 10-20 will believe in Santa.
People grow up. The pressure to engage “group think” wanes. Lots of factors are involved.

10 year olds are kids who don’t yet have any well-defined value system and such. By 20, many people already do have the skeleton of theirs, and by 30 most people certainly do. You’re comparing apples and oranges.

In any case, like I said, there are studies that plainly show the effect of generational “waves” of political opinions, in raw numbers. If you have any other explanation for that effect – i.e. why the polls on the same subject at different times show the same level of support or opposition to something moving “up” across the age buckets, with the velocity of that move matching the time delta – I’m all ears. But you can’t just dismiss it as “correlation”, sorry. You’ll need to come up with some viable hypothesis explaining it, that is simpler than “people just stick to their views once they’re set in them, even as they age”.

Actually it was a perfect analogy. It exposes the silliness of relying on polling data. It is too easy to induce biases into polling questions. It is easy to design polls to facor the result you desire. Interestingly, the previous rendition of the same poll that you cite found that younger people were trending more and more anti-abortion in all cases. All that polls amount to are false accumulations of statistics designed to sway people to your view.
“As a result, 18- to 29-year-olds are now roughly tied with seniors as the most likely of all age groups to hold this position on abortion (totally against) — although all four groups are fairly close in their views. This is a sharp change from the late 1970s, when seniors were substantially more likely than younger age groups to want abortion to be illegal.”
Polls are crap. Maybe you missed their own disclaimer?
“Survey Methods

Results for this USA Today/Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Dec. 27-30, 2012, with a random sample of 1,012 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking. Each sample includes a minimum quota of 400 cellphone respondents and 600 landline respondents per 1,000 national adults, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents by region. Landline telephone numbers are chosen at random among listed telephone numbers. Cellphone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.

Samples are weighted by gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, region, adults in the household, population density, and phone status (cellphone only/landline only/both, cellphone mostly, and having an unlisted landline number). Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2011 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older U.S. population. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.”

Hardly a judicious and comprehensive poll, huh?

The “walking incubator” meme is as asinine as it gets. Rhetoric seems to be all the pro-choice movement has these days.

How about pointing out where I supposedly did so? Otherwise your statement just reads, “I am outraged but unsure how how to put my feelings into words!”

I think Chip handled that really well. And I am sure that you BELIEVE that anything based on beliefs is emotional. I bet you believe it quite emotionally. Semantics. It is so much easier than reliance on fact.

So… you don’t have any words of your own, just veiled insults.

Cute.

Why be repetitive. I’m not your type either, though the wife has called me handsome.

In the Old Testament God actually told the Israelites to wipe out the Molech-worshippers in the Promised Land. Along with the other Canaanites, who made a practice of killing an infant and burying it under the foundation of a house in order to bless the home. That would pretty much stop them from killing any more babies.

@Another Robert: God (presumably the same God) also instructed the 12 tribes to kill every man, woman, and CHILD of different groups several times in the OT.

God is (in the Bible) not against killing babies.

He also presumably instructed to Angel of Death to kill every firstborn in Egypt (if Egypt actually ever had any Jewish slaves)… remember?

Basing morality or pretty much anything on the word by word account of a book that is thousands of years old, contradicts itself, translated and retranslated multiple times, added onto or taken away from over thousands of years, and was written by bronze age men (when men are fallible) is kind of stupid imo.

I am not an Atheist, but I think the Holy Spirit means we can figure things out for ourselves.

Ahhh, God actually gave the Egyptians a choice in the matter. Nevertheless, you have something of a point in that, if God is completely sovereign, He has done things that have resulted in the deaths of children. I think the point is that God, being sovereign, is not to be questioned when He does things. Humans, being fallible, are not allowed the same latitude, and are instructed by the sovereign God as to when and under what circumstances one human may kill another.

Ah – but while God is sovereign, he also cannot look at, engage in, or even really speak of sin.

This means that anything God does is by nature not sin, and therefor not wrong.

So if God killed children, it is not a sin. Also, in the OT, parents were allowed to kill their children if they were being disrespectful which is consistent with the above point.

There is nothing in the Bible that specifically says killing a baby (much less an unborn baby) is a sin. The Bible says murder is wrong, but murder is kind of ambiguous in the Bible. Based on my understanding (and I studied the Bible for 15 years), “murder” means killing another male human being older than the age of adulthood without the blessing of the state or a person in religious authority or without the blessing of the Torah.

In case I am not being clear, there is nothing in the Bible to show that women and children are considered full fledged people.

Hell, God killed off Job’s whole family just to play a game with Satan.

Christ seemed quite content to allow women full rights.

Not seeing how your point refutes mine on that one, Bear.

@Another Robert

I am just trying to show that using the Bible to base a stance against abortion is shaky since there isn’t anything in the Bible to say killing children is wrong, much less unborn children.

Hell, if we took the Bible literally, we could kill our own 11 year olds for mouthing off.

I’ve actually made this same point against “True Love Waits” too since there isn’t a single thing in the Bible that mentions male virginity, only female.

No, it doesn’t say that at all.
https://erikbrewer.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/bible-teaching-rude-children-punishment/
I see you really studied nothing.

@Paul G

I am not a verse-cherrypicking Atheist. Yes, I know what I am talking about. In the OT, parents literally have the power of life and death over their children.

I just gave several examples above of times when /God/ either killed or instructed others to kill children. Jacob absolutely believed God really wanted him to kill/sacrifice his son before he was stopped.

Also, if you’re going to argue scripture with me, use legitimate scripture, not websites please.

TO BE CLEAR – I use the Bible as the closest thing I’ve found to a religious how-to book since I haven’t found anything better. That said, I believe that quite a bit of it is bullshit and filler written by pseudo mystics and storytellers thousands of years ago. I don’t disrespect the Bible’s potential. I disrespect people who believe the entirety of the Bible is truly the divinely inspired word of God.

I believe in God. I believe Jesus was special. I just refuse to bury my head in the sand and ignore logic nor what the book actually says that other people claim to be upholding. Basing an anti abortion stance (which I respect) on the Bible is ludicrous because a pro abortion stance could also be based on the Bible.

My own study, and the refutation I provided make it quite clear that you are wrong. It quite well addresses the actual words and definitions used, not your false assertions.

If you don’t use your own words I won’t bother using mine. I could just as easily throw up a whole bunch of websites that contradict what you put up. That would just end up being a vicarious pissing contest.

If you disagree that is fine, though. I don’t think this type of argument is “winnable” so I’m ok with just letting it go with the understanding I don’t respect those who cannot do more than hide behind the words of others.

You used other’s words, remember? I used the same words, defined, The same phrase you referred us to, analyzed properly. Something you obviously didn’t do, and I am not nearly as qualified to do as some others. You can post websites as well, however they are as easily refuted as you are.

Ok bro. I hope that makes you feel really self righteous and warm while simultaneously not being willing or able to defend your faith yourself.

/faith high five!

Now that was an asinine statement. I did defend, using research from someone better able to do such research. Just like I would not do my own open heart surgery if I needed it. Or many other things.
You yourself base your claims on poorly translated, misconceptions of what the bible says. That you think you are better off using your own misconceptions than relying on proper, well researched explanations of what is said says a lot more about you than anything else.
Stupid is as stupid does.

TheBear,

The Bibles that I read are NOT translations of translations of translations … Nor are my Bibles a willy-nilly hodgepodge of writings. Rather, my Bibles are direct translations of the original manuscripts in Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek. You will never find a more accurate and reliable book.

Granted, no one today has an entire original Greek manuscript of the New Testament dating back to 73 A.D. What we do have are thousands of fragments dating back to the first century which match 99.99% with the oldest complete Greek manuscripts in existence. And Dead Sea Scrolls, which date to around 600 B.C., match 99.99% with the oldest complete manuscripts of those books of the Old Testament — a gap of nearly a thousand years. Furthermore, the places, names, events and dates in the Bible match exactly with external sources.

To summarize there are no obvious errors nor is there any reason to believe that there are any errors in the Bible. What evidence do you have for the massive unreliability that you claim is in the Bible?

Not to mention the letters between the original churches, debating doctrine and meaning, and quoting the appropriate scripture being discussed. I believe about 97% of the NT is fully recoverable just from these.

Also, the lines of transmission and translation did have discrepancies and errors, and they act as breadcrumbs to track the propagation in both directions, and further ensure reliability. Even with the discrepancies, no meanings are changed.

@Uncommon,

You are not being rude and you are being sincere so I will tell you how I came to my conclusion.

I believe that any argument or belief that cannot stand on its own against scrutiny is false. This is part of why I feel so strongly about the RTKABA. Nothing the opposition says has any factual merit whatsoever.

However, I used to be a very, very conservative evangelical Christian. I tried to apply the same logical, intellectual rigor to my religion as I did to my politics and well, it didn’t stand up. My FAITH is rock solid, because I have witnessed simply too much supernatural stuff of both the Light and the Dark to ever deny the existence of a supernatural world and some sort of higher power.

That said, I challenge you to research the works of intelligent and educated atheists (not just the folks who hate and like to scream at Deists) and not admit they have some points.

Ever since I was a kid, I questioned some of the contradictions I was taught in church and heard in Sunday School. I did a lot of my own study. I’ve probably read through the entire Bible thrice. I studied other religions, and unlike Joseph Smith’s bullshit story, Jesus did not appear to me and tell me that the truth is written on golden plates under a rock.

I have come to the conclusion that God is real, and the reason the Holy Spirit exists is to discern the true from the silliness and dogma. Just faith is enough for some people. That’s fine, I don’t begrudge them that. The problem is when they try to limit other people’s freedoms by the literal translation of a book that was supposedly written by famous people thousands of years ago.

Yes, I am aware of the incredible things in the Bible we know to be true now. Like the stars “singing” or the reason for Kashrut. But there are also things like the questionable enslavement of the Jews by Egypt and many of Jesus’ miracles being possible through modern day science.

Then there’s all the evidence of other culture’s curious advancement around the world and the apparent descriptions of UFOs in the Bible. …And the fact that the Dead Sea Scrolls were omitted from the Bible. Who decided that?

I just could not just take it on faith anymore that the Bible is above reproach. So now I consider myself a Christian who sees the Bible as more of a very, very loose guide rather than a guide post. I trust my conscience, my spirituality, and my intellect much more than the (hopefully correctly translated) words of bronze age shepherds who believed in spontaneous generation.

BTW, the belief in spontaneous generation is the reason I don’t take hard core Evolutionists too seriously either.

The mosaic laws regarding the treatment of wounds, quarantine, etc, all argue against a belief in spontaneous generation. Your commentary on the Dead Sea scrolls is odd to say the least.
http://www.centuryone.com/25dssfacts.html
I don’t think the library of Congress is in the bible either. Who would have thunk it?

Because religious “fundamentalists” are doing for the right wing what communist fundamentalists are doing for the left wing.

Thebear,

Thank you for your detailed response. I would love to continue this offline and delve into your findings/conclusions. I do not know of a way to do this without divulging our e-mail addresses to the world … which I definitely do not want to do. Let me know if you have any ideas.

Is there some videotape of god telling anybody to do anything? Allah? Krishna or whatever? Zeus?

And Uncommon_sense, RF has everybody’s in theory, have him trade emails for you, so no one else will have access.

In the old testament, biblegod ordered the israelites into war where he ordered them to “smash pregnant women’s bellies against rocks”. Not exactly the most anti-abortion god.

At least half of naturally occurring pregnancies spontaneously abort, with no intervention from anyone. If that is an ‘act of god’, which a believer would have to admit that it was… then God is an abortionist himself. Why kill off so many of the “innocent babies in the womb” if God is so pro-life?

The “great flood” in Genesis, I’m pretty sure a LOT of pregnant women drowned in that story. Again, god didn’t give a SHIT about the fetus.

In much Jewish thought, the soul comes into the child AT BIRTH with the first breath of life… so what you’re talking about is getting rid of a vehicle for a soul, not killing an actual person.

I can debate religion even better than I can debate abortion if anybody wants to “bring it”.

Cherry-picking religious and especially OT religious texts, go ahead. Please do. Since you are doing so, can you give us the exact words, their meanings in the original language, alternate meanings, and the supporting texts so as to fully understand context? Or are you just grasping straws and talking out your ass?

Paul,

FLAME DELETED

See? I can make ridiculous demands, too.

You are ridiculous. Period.

And you’re heartless, cruel, and sadistic.

I’d rather be ridiculous.

Killing babies is pretty sadistic.

So, are you saying that God’s Word is murky and extremely unclear? What a bang-up job.

No, I did not say that. However man, and our own language and translation of language, is always less than concise. Big difference. But your own statement only underscores how bad our own comprehension of things can be. Thanks for being a good example.

Paul,

Given how weak “our own comprehension of things can be” you STILL think it’s more moral to force women to go through pregnancy and childbirth they don’t want?

Alrighty then.

If in doubt, punish the ladies who have sex!

“killing babies is pretty sadistic.”

Forcing women to give birth no matter how desperately they don’t want that invasive and humiliating experience is pretty sadistic, but it doesn’t bother you.

“my Bibles are direct translations of the original manuscripts in Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek. You will never find a more accurate and reliable book.”

Unbelievable! We have gone from “My god is bigger than your god!” to “I know more bible BS than you do!”, finally reaching “I am right because my bible is better than yours!” Pitiful. Why not just ask god, I’m sure it’ll straighten it all out. Please video the result, so we don’t all have to ask it the same question.

Indeed, “direct translations” of bronze age nonsense. “Accurate”? Please!

Your opinion on abortion almost exactly mirrors that of SCOTUS, what, 45 years ago? And opponents only keep pretending that if we can just stack the SC, they will instantly overturn that decision. That is not a constitutional possibility, or all our most basic laws would change every few years and Congress doesn’t have to come to work any more.

Those who oppose a woman’s right to decide what happens inside her own body need to work on an amendment or STFU and let us vote for HONEST GOVERNMENT, not religion.

Just BTW, I believe in that SCOTUS decision so much that I would not vote on such an amendment. I am male, it is not my business.

So then you are either celibate or shooting blanks? Seems you quote non-existent laws (life begins at birth) and neglect ones that actually exist. If you father a child, you have responsibilities. Responsibilities with no say in the matter.

Paul, I am a man, I cannot get pregnant, it is not my business what someone who IS pregnant wants to do. If you are a man, it is not YOUR business unless that pregnant person is your wife, and if that is the case you can take it up with HER! Otherwise, it is none of your business, and if you disagree you can take it up with the SC, which is where “life begins at live birth” came from, you idiot. That is the LAW. Correct it if you wish (I don’t care, it is none of my business) by a constitutional amendment, instead of continuing to hand elections to gun-grabbers by pretending there is anything Congress or the President can do about it.

Show me that law. Oh, you can’t. The SC issued an opinion, they don’t make laws. It doesn’t take an amendment for an opinion to be reversed. Damn, if an idiot knows more about what you are talking about than you do, what does that make YOU?

Paul G refuses to acknowledge a point or even legitimately debate. I have no idea why anyone is still talking to him. I stopped a while ago.

Bear,

It’s obviously a deep-seated masochism on our part.

“The SC issued an opinion, they don’t make laws.”
Are you from around here, or outer space? That was not an opinion, it was a RULING, fool! Binding to the point that the day before abortion was legal in 2 states, the day after it was legal in 48 states, eventually to become 50. Not just law, but CONSTITUTIONAL law, Congress and the president cannot change it, it can only be changed by amendment. If you really don’t know that, wait for next year’s civics classes.

Ya know, I just pulled out my copy of the Constitution, and Roe v Wade Law isn’t in it. Maybe my copy is too old. Care to show me again where it is?
You could also show me where scotus is tasked with making such determinations. (Hint: they aren’t).
Just post a copy of the Constitution and highlight the right parts, ok?
I am just asking you to show what you claimed.

@LarryinTX

“Somewhat forgotten in your pro-freedom stance is the freedom of the unborn human child who has his life taken away”

Not forgotten at all. It was considered by SCOTUS…

So unborn babies got the Dred Scott treatment by the Black-Robed Tyrants. That doesn’t make the decision morally right, just legally binding.

…so each person who is pregnant has to make his or her own decision, and those not pregnant should STFU.

And most critically, the unborn child who is murdered must STFU.

“The existence of a distinct human life at conception is not belief; it is fact.”

Apparently not!

Fact. Settled science. Biology 101 and Genetics 101.

You cannot disprove that statement scientifically. You’re welcome to try, but I would demand the context remain the scientific definition of life.

Chip, you are talking about something entirely different from the law. Legally, life begins at live birth, period, end of sentence. Not conception, never has been, and will take a constitutional amendment to change. Ranting about a completely different subject, for whatever reason you choose to do so, will not change that fact, and will continue to hand elections to those who wish to remove our RKBA, and spend us into the poorhouse funding moslems and MexicanQuick rephrase, maybe you’ll get it; The SC has ruled that it is legal to murder unborn babies. Pick up your rifle, or pass an amendment, but CONGRESS cannot change that.

IOW, that context does not have anything to do with the question. I don’t CARE when science says life begins, the constitution now says it is legal to murder the unborn. You and I do not need to debate science, it is a waste of time. The change you apparently seek is an amendment. Why is that tough to understand? Science has not changed since Roe v Wade. Doesn’t matter, is a diversionary tactic and meaningless. To reverse a SCOTUS ruling takes an amendment. Has nothing to do with science.

An amendment? Why all this talk of amendments? Where in the Constitution does it state any of that which you claim?
Nice though, that you dropped the fluff talk and got to reality.

Paul, please. I was aware of what was happening when Roe v Wade was decided. I followed the news and I was aware. The SCOTUS ruled that it was UNCONSTITUTIONAL to interfere with a woman’s decision regarding an abortion to be performed on HER, and her alone. There is no court to appeal that decision to. I think (and thought at the time) there was no real basis for them to do that, it was what we now call judicial activism, and a lot of us consider it to be absolutely horrendous, should never have happened in this case or any other. But that is unimportant, the decision was made, and published, and is now precedent. That means it is now constitutional LAW! You don’t like it, fine! But whether you like it or not does not change it. What changes constitutional law is a constitutional amendment. THAT is where all my talk of an amendment comes from, what did you think we were talking about, something to do with an Ayatollah, perhaps? America can ban all abortions with a single constitutional amendment, or continue shooting ourselves in the foot with thermonuclear warfare in the attempt to establish a state religion. The current course is stupid to the point of suicidal. I suspect the Democratic party enjoys these conversations, no end. Solution is easy, constitutional amendment. Why not?

So you agree, there is no law. Also, that no changes were made to the constitution? Thus your inane claim that an amendment would be needed is totally moronic? Maybe you slept through all of your civics classes?

” Also, that no changes were made to the constitution?”

Are you blind, ignorant, or simply lying? The SCOTUS altered the constitution when they ruled on Roe v Wade. I said that rather clearly! Are you too stupid to understand that, or just pretending to be? That was a CHANGE TO THE CONSTITUTION!!! That makes it settled law. The way to reverse it is an AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION!!! Pardon my nasty caps, but you are acting like an imbecile! And again, why are you not advocating an amendment? Is there any excuse at all? Explain it to me! Why NOT!?!? Can’t you understand it would satisfy all your deepest desires, controlling all those sluts to do your will? Why. Not?

Where? I don’t see it. Is there a footnote I am missing? Or is it too late on a Saturday night for you too think straight?

YO! Paul! Did you miss “why not?”

No. The Constitution is not at issue.

Paul, the Supreme Court would disagree with you. This is why so many of these abortion bans go up through the courts and are determined to be “unconstitutional.”

FLAME DELETED

FLAME DELETED

Then having your tubes tied is quite a good option.

I guess you prefer to murder instead.

Paul, “having your tubes tied” is not 100% full proof. It can fail. It can come undone or grow back. Further, all surgeries carry risks and complications. I should not have to have surgery against my will to fix something that isn’t yet broken. MY body is MY body. I don’t know what is so hard about that for you!

You can no more MAKE ME carry a fetus to term than you can MAKE ME get my tubes tied. YOU CANNOT CONTROL MY BODY.

Take out a pad and a piece of paper and write it out 5,000 times or however long it takes for it to stick in your pea-sized brain.

Also, you can call it ‘murder’ all you want. You are not shaming me. I feel not the slightest guilt about how I would handle an unwanted fetus trying to take over my body.

You keep relying on worst-case scenarios to justify your murder for convenience. You also keep talking about YOUR genetic material, which the baby is not. Then you bemoan control over your body, the body which you consented to engaging in procreation or else their would not be a baby. Finally, your body is sooo damn important, but that of the life you created is inconsequential, murdering it is no problem for you. Pretty arrogant and self-serving, aren’t you?

Paul,

People like you make me want to get pregnant intentionally, have an abortion, put it in a little jar, take a picture of it, and post it for your horrified displeasure.

You still seem to think women who want to be married to men have some kind of real choice about intercourse. We don’t except in the most rare exceptions. Men feel ENTITLED to intercourse, particularly with their wives. Any woman who wouldn’t do that one activity is likely to get cheated on or left. So yeah… that’s a lot of “consent” I have there. DO THIS OR LOSE THE MAN YOU LOVE!

Fvck you.

Talk about control. You seem to be a psychic, or think you are, deciding what people think and want you to do.
You equate being pregnant with having syphilis.
You want to tell everyone else what to do or think, yet be exonerated for responsibility for your own actions.

Hey, Paul, have you had YOUR tubes tied? Have you paid up for all your babies? Are you honest and open with your family about every female you have ever had sex with? You are a lying piece of shit, pretending it is your business what a woman 1000 miles away does with her own body, while opposing any attempt to educate young women as to how to avoid pregnancy other than by means available 10,000 years ago. Why don’t you answer that? Why do you have such a problem defending your OWN beliefs? I have repeatedly explained where I am coming from, and you have repeatedly criticized and complained without a single bit of original input. WHAT MAKES YOU THINK SO???

The answer to your questions is yes to all of the questions, excepting having my tubes tied. Of course, I am married, my wife is post-menopausal, and actually had her tubes tied long ago. No, I did not in any way coerce that decision. Actually, the only debt I have today is being co-signatory to my niece’s car. I even bought my step-daughter a starter house. She isn’t even my child. Granted, her father is no longer alive.

Granted, none of that changes things, abortion is what it is. You can keep searching for justifications, but your argumentative, vulgar tone makes it clear even you don’t believe your own bullshit.

Keep making false statements as a means to try and support your militancy. It is obvious.

He’s a troll, Larry. I don’t know why I keep feeding him.

Stop pretending you’re some great noble lover of the female gender simply because you helped your niece buy a car and bought your step-daughter a starter house.

Plenty of sexist men “buy stuff for women”. Usually so they can hang it over their head and influence their life decisions later.

The question still remains, Paul… why are you SO goddamned concerned with private decisions about women’s bodies that have literally nothing to do with you?

It’s not about “saving babies”, we’ve already established that because you are supposedly “claiming” that you wouldn’t force a woman to give birth against her will nor would you support her being locked up for life.

But if you really think abortion is “murdering babies”, like REALLY think that and not just talking out of your own woman-hating ass, then you would support STOPPING women from doing it or PUNISHING them with life imprisonment if they did manage to do it.

Because that’s how you deal with murder, Paul. In the real world. When you actually think something is really “murder”.

But you just want to hurt and control women. You want to cause women who have the temerity to control their own lives, as much distress as possible.

But even you know literally forcing a woman to keep a pregnancy and give birth is barbaric. ANd even you know life imprisonment for having an abortion is not a fitting punishment for a woman wanting to control her own body and life.

Pregnancy is not a punishment from a nonexistent god. It is a normal result of hormonally driven desires, which can be a really good thing, or a really bad thing. Today, if it is a really bad thing, a girl can refuse it. And it would be totally her choice. Let me repeat, “choice”. That is the law. Because CONSTITUTION! I’m thinking most people here SUPPORT the constitution. Except for their desire for controlling some little girl’s life, I guess. How do you face yourself in the mirror when you shave in the morning? Why is this your business? Haven’t heard any answer yet. Why don’t you advocate an amendment? Haven’t heard any answer yet.

Dude, Hillsdale college offers free online classes on the Constitution. Maybe you should take one. Your being amendment happy and making claims that scotus changed the Constitution proves that you really need a class or two on the subject matter.
Since we are mentioning scotus, can you show me where in the Constitution it empowers scotus to interpret the Constitution. Look really hard. Don’t give up til you find it.

Larry,

That’s an excellent point regarding the constitution. I love how they are all big badass constitutionalists when it comes to gun rights, but not when it comes to a woman’s right to manage her own body.

Little girl or grown ass woman. Either way. But THAT also brings up a good point. There is a not tiny percentage of pregnancies that happen to very young girls. 12, 13, 14, 15. We can say they are terrible sluts, but kids make mistakes. And with the way boys often pressure girls and the way our culture is so oversexualized… it’s a little crappy to ruin a little girl’s life FOREVER based on somebody’s stupid belief in a magic sky fairy.

They think it’s “their business” because they are the moral crusaders for justice and protecting the life of the innocent. the thing is… being “pro-life” is something you can do from your sofa. Lots of hashtag activism there. Not something hard like going and feeding poor people or focusing on things Jesus told these people to do.

What stellar Christians. Not.

So abortion because boys are at fault. Maybe start a hashtag campaign? “Girlscansayno”. Oh wait, stuff like that is going on already, like the anti-bullying stuff.
You really like to blame any and everything, except yourself. You eschew personal responsibility at all costs. It is always someone else’s fault.

Paul,

So then in your opinion a woman who never wants to be pregnant under any circumstances should not engage in intercourse. Even if she’s married?

Forget that most men would cheat or leave under those conditions.

Saying “girls can say no” (and I think the word you are looking for here is “women”, since we are not discussing little girls here), is ignoring that most men feel ENTITLED to sex. They will pressure and coerce and whine and wheedle until they get it. And inside a marriage, they DEFINITELY feel entitled to it (not all men, but the vast majority). A woman who won’t “put out” in marriage is quickly cheated on or left.

So you obviously think any woman who doesn’t want to be a baby factory only deserves to live with cats or other women. Because your logic works no other way.

Or more likely you KNOW this is the situation for women wanting to be in relationship with me and you don’t care because in your opinion women should “put out” and then they should just take whatever consequences transpire, including babies.

*relationship with men (not me)

Wow, you really do equate a baby with having syphilis!

I think pregnancy is worse than syphillis, actually. There is NO ONE standing around saying if I got syphillis I’d have to respect the life of that syphillis and go ahead and just let it do its worst.

Paul, as I have mentioned, I was alive and paying attention when Roe v Wade happened, you seem to be from another planet. So tell me, in your vast wisdom, exactly how DID abortion become legal in every state? Moron.

You said it was a law. Show me. Unless you are dead wrong. FLAME DELETED
By the way, I know it isn’t a law. Care to double down again?

You keep thinking I’m disavowing responsibility. “murder” is an emotional code word used to sway sensitive republican women to your side of the cause. It’s the emotive word for useful idiots.

All killing is not “murder”. Even all “killing of someone innocent” isn’t murder. As mentioned several times by me in this thread, if a violent mentally retarded person breaks into your house and you shoot him, that is justifiable homicide by self defense. It does not MATTER if he is “innocent”, it’s not “murder”.

I’ve never said a fetus isn’t “life”. But the skin on my elbow is life also. the bacteria in my stomach is life. STDs are life. There is a LOT of life I simply do not care about and whose rights do not trump my own. I would remove a fetus in the same way I would remove a tapeworm because I have a right to correct a medical problem if there is a cure. To me, pregnancy is a medical problem and the cure is abortion.

You can call it “murder” all you want to. That is your JUDGMENT on extinguishing that group of living cells. But “murder” is a legal definition. And you can’t call all “killing” murder unless you’re a complete idiot who doesn’t understand you are not entitled to your own facts and definitions.

Murder is what it is. First degree even.

A fetus has no right to take over my body. I have the right to bodily autonomy because I am a person, not an incubator. You have NO right to control what I do with anything inside my body. It all really comes down to male control of female reproduction and “punishing women who consent to sex”.

You can say whatever you want about me, but you’ve proven by what you say here that you are a woman hater. It has NOTHING to do with “life” or “innocent babies” or “murder”. It simply doesn’t. The way you talk makes it clear you have no compassion whatsoever in your heart for any actually born human.

I bet you don’t support welfare either. As George Carlin said: “pre-born you’re safe. pre-school, you’re fvcked.”

Since you care SO much about life, let’s talk about all the crack babies you’ve adopted from mothers who would have aborted if people like you could keep their nose out from between her legs. Let’s talk about how much you support welfare benefits. Let’s talk about what you’re doing to help the women who can’t afford these babies to have easier lives.

Let’s talk about that. Mr. Compassionate Moral Virtue.

I support welfare reform. The rest of your vulgar insinuations are nothing but you trying to create false creedence for your own hideous nature. When you cannot justify your own actions, try to attack the other’s morality. Sorry, you are wrong on all counts. At least you are illuminating your own nature.

Define “welfare reform”. What I’ve seen of “welfare reform” means cutting welfare, not actually helping women.

What vulgar insinuations have I made? You are the one who wants to punish women for consenting to sex. You’ve said it multiple times.

“When you cannot justify your own actions, try to attack the other’s morality.” <—- this is EXACTLY what you've done to me this entire conversation.

You know and I know that the logical endpoint to all this "pro-life" nonsense results in barbaric outcomes for women. We've already had brain dead women IN THIS COUNTRY kept on ventilators because they were pregnant. Against the family's wishes. Against the woman's living will. A corpse incubating a fetus was considered morally appropriate. Even though it was vile and disgusting and torturing her poor family and defiling her corpse.

We've already had women imprisoned IN THIS COUNTRY for miscarriage.

It will only get MUCH worse.

The things you advocate for are so heinously cruel that no right thinking person would stand for it. Which is why female republican legislators were balking at aspects of the recent 20 week abortion ban and fought aggressively against it.

The actual outcome of your philosophy is basically torturing women. FORCING them at any cost to undergo childbirth, and if they manage to get an abortion imprisoning them for life. (because that is the penalty for murder. And if you really believe it's murder, you'll have no trouble with women being put in prison for the rest of their lives if they get one.)

YOU have a hideous nature, made even more hideous by your obsession with whether or not women consent to sex or are raped as the litmus test for whether or not the are "baby killers".

Stop gaslighting me. You are illuminating your nature. Anyone with half a brain can see the barbaric outcomes of what you think is right. And the people on your side who don't have any sense or compassion, they're already lost. I'm not speaking to them. My words are intended to wake up people who are on the fence about the issue and don't realize how they are being emotionally manipulated to hurt women.

I would support men having reproductive rights in the sense of… if they don’t want this kid but the woman overrides them and insists on having it anyway, they could sign a legal document that would make them not financially, emotionally, physically or in any other way responsible or co-responsible for the resulting child. Caveat would be that they could not in any way associate with the child or the mother. (i.e. you can’t just decide you don’t want to be a father, but keep porking the woman you knocked up.)

And if the man wants the child, the woman’s responsibility ends at birth, and she can sign off any further responsibility for the child.

@summer, curiously you would “accept mans reproductive” rights in certain circumstances, Wow. Thanks for at least admitting men have no rights here.

Pg2, no problem. Men DON’T have any reproductive rights really. There is no way to have true equality on this issue because men and women have such drastically different experiences. I don’t believe a man has ANY right to force a woman to have a baby she wants (or to force her to have an abortion she doesn’t want either), but… to the extent where it begins to affect him… like in his wallet and taking on responsibilities he did not consent to, I absolutely support men having the right to opt out of parenthood or financial responsibility for children they did not consent to.

Paul,

You don’t get it. Or you don’t care. I don’t just “not want a child.” I do not want a pregnancy or childbirth. I would do ANYTHING I had to do to stop that from happening even at the cost of my own life because I will not be enslaved to your stupid batshit insano ideas that means a fetus’s right to occupy my uterus somehow trumps my right to expel it from MY uterus.

So “adoption” doesn’t work here. Also, that’s really gross. You would force a woman to continue a pregnancy against her will and force her to go through childbirth but then she can just give that baby to someone else. I am not your freaking broodmare or incubator. NO.

Except undergo a surgery that would solve your problem completely. You would prefer to roll the dice and abort instead. Says alot.

typo: “force a woman to have a baby she DOESN’T want.” (obviously if she wanted it, there would be no force.)

Sure, once men are able to implant a uterus inside them.

Hey Grindstone,

What do you think about men having the right to opt out of child support with some kind of legal document if they made clear they didn’t want the baby? I think you and I are both libertarians. I don’t believe in compelling people to do much of anything, so I can’t see how it would be morally okay to say I expect to have the right to opt totally out of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood, but some guy gets someone pregnant and he’s tied to them through finance for the rest of his life.

When people tell men “Well if you don’t want to pay child support, you should have used birth control. Or too bad the birth control failed now you have to take responsibility and pay” sounds WAY too much like what people say to women to try to force them to have babies against their will.

What do you think?

You are missing the point by focusing only on the after the fact situation. A life is created through consensual activity. That life is an amalgam of DNA from both participants. Why does only one side get a say in the life or death of the creation.
After the fact, it is about the woman leveraging control over the father using the child as a tool.

Paul,

All life is not created through consensual activity. You claim you have but you’ve “addressed this” but not ONCE have you told me that you SUPPORT a woman getting an abortion if she was raped even when directly asked multiple times.

And how “consensual” is sex inside of a relationship in which the alternative is the person you love will cheat on you or leave you?

What I’m telling you is women’s consent inside of something like marriage is questionable because a woman can say “Not tonight, honey”, but she can’t say: “Not ever again, honey” unless she wants to be divorced.

So inside a relationship with someone she loves intercourse is pretty much compulsory.

It doesn’t “have” to be. Men could decide intercourse is just ONE of many sexual activities and if they don’t want babies they can avoid that one specific baby-making activity, but in practice this is almost never something men are willing to do.

So your insistence that all this sex is super duper consensual is just bullshit. You don’t understand women’s reality. Which isn’t shocking because you aren’t a woman. But your tone deaf lack of ability to feel even the smallest sympathy is what gets me.

You saying “Why does only one side get a say in the life or death of the creation” just outed you. This is, just like I said, about controlling women’s reproduction. Men don’t like that women have that kind of power. So they want to squash it and pretend they are doing so for moral reasons.

“After the fact, it is about the woman leveraging control over the father using the child as a tool.” — yup… more woman hate. Right there.

Thank you for making your agenda more clear. I saw it from the beginning, but now all the people who are reading this thread see it.

I think that men being able to waive all legal and financial responsibility for a baby they don’t want and didn’t agree to would be a huge step in the right direction since women already have several options at their disposal to do this very same thing. I think we are on the same page, Summer.

This is why I am a Libertarian. Both Reps and Dems are all about control – they just seek to control different things.

Bear,

I would vote if a strong libertarian candidate was actually a real possibility or if the republican party would disavow their nutty extremists and go more libertarian. Until then I’m not wasting my time standing in a long line to throw away my vote on someone who can’t win, nor am I voting the “lesser evil”.

There is NO lesser evil when one side wants to take guns and the other side wants to force women to endure pregnancies and childbirth they don’t want. Both rights are equally valuable and important to me remaining free.

I think a lot of the feminists on the liberal left are doing themselves a disservice by not taking into consideration the fact that men should also be able to consent to whether or not they are responsible for a baby/child.

@Summer,

The problem is that “feminist” now means many things to many different people. I can think of 6 different types of feminism off the top of my head.

I consider myself a sex-positive feminist, in that women should be able to do what they want with the same rights as men and vice versa. Once again, I believe in freedom.

But then you have the very, very vocal misandrists who seem to advocate for sex-negative feminism like Sarkeesian. The problem is that right now this camp of feminism is either more in vogue or louder, so we have constant “stories” on Buzzfeed etc. about super heroines covering up in ugly, puritanical clothes, or stay at home moms being shamed.

Women being pigeonholed and shamed into any one role or personality type is exactly the same behavior that a-hole men engaged in when women didn’t have equal rights. And yet, if anyone points out that this is the case, they’re labeled as “bullies”. WTF?

Summer, my opinion on that is a bit complicated, full of caveats, etc. But basically along the same lines.

And I consider myself a minarchist, since there are so many branches of libertarianism. Not quite full-retard anarcho-capitalist.

>> I would vote if a strong libertarian candidate was actually a real possibility or if the republican party would disavow their nutty extremists and go more libertarian. Until then I’m not wasting my time standing in a long line to throw away my vote on someone who can’t win, nor am I voting the “lesser evil”.

You will never get the former if you don’t do the latter. It might feel like “wasting your time”, but doing so still sends a message. One vote at a time is how we chip away at the two-party dominance system in this country; there’s no other way.

More importantly, do that in primaries also. If you lean libertarian, do that in the Republican party primaries, since they’re closer to the state where they’ll be forced to go libertarian or bust.

Further, the ability for the child to survive absent the mother is highly dependent on medical technology. Suppose today, a child can safely be removed from the mother without killing it at X weeks. At some point in the future, with medical advances, we may reduce that to X-2 weeks. So currently, by the “surviving independently” definition, a child at X-1 weeks is NOT a human, but at some point in the future it suddenly is! What has fundamentally changed about the child to justify this change in human status? I suggest, then, that this is an arbitrary definition of humanity which fails utterly.

@ Paul G – the difference is a human on life support is not attached to another human being. Also there is no objective difference in a human dieing prematurely one decade but living indefinitely in a different decade because medical science has advanced, then there is in a fetus doing the same.

@ JJ48 – That is precisely my point. Any legislation must be based on the quantifiable, regardless of how distasteful that may be presently, or it shouldn’t be passed/enforced. One day medical science will absolutely be able to separate a fetus from the mother, earlier and earlier, and in doing so it will be untangling the knot of rights in question. Till that time, and as long as the fetus is biologically bound and dependent on the mother, the mothers rights will trump the fetus’.

Mind at the end of the day, this IS the case for making contraception ubiquitously available, and the moral and socially responsible thing to do. It is the only way to avoid unwanted pregnancy and yet so many socially conservative people fight tooth and nail in opposition of the one thing that is empirically shown to reduce the need for abortion.

The human being that that unborn human life is attached to made a personal decision that caused such an attachment. Fortunately, it is temporary and self-correcting, typically the problem rectifies itself in about 3/4 of a year.

Considering most people have a “living will” and powers of attorney for kin, among other things, this argument is invalid.

Not at all, you have just proven the validity of the point. It is the individual that can appoint someone to make decisions for them, that is not a power that someone can just assume that they have over you.

So your implication is that parents have no legal control over their children either?

All beyond the point, anyway. The fetus is part of the woman’s body, thus it is her body.

The fetus is certainly not part of the woman’s body. It has different DNA. Not possible if it were part of her body.

Paul, you think rape victims made a choice?

And if you really think it’s “baby murder” why would you think it’s appropriate to let a rape victim “murder an innocent baby?”

And if you are so extremist you think there should be no exceptions even for rape… then how can you sleep at night thinking about some woman feeling raped for a full nine months that she has to keep this horrifying thing inside her that her rapist left?

We covered that, along with the ridiculous nature of the idea that “because of the possibility of rape I need to be able to murder the unborn for convenience.”

Actually Paul, no we did NOT cover that.

You never said clearly and specifically that you SUPPORT a woman who is raped getting an abortion.

I suspect it’s because you know your ‘innocent babies’ bullshit falls apart if you think murdering an innocent is somehow okay because of something bad that happened to SOMEONE ELSE.

Or it’s because you are against abortion in all cases and know what a monster you will sound like to admit it.

Either way, you clearly understand that a fetus is nothing like any other “innocent” and that you are definitely trying to force a woman to be in pain and discomfort and host to an entity she doesn’t want in her body for 9 months. How is that not rape? If I don’t want a dick inside me, why is it okay to force me to keep a fetus there?

Actually, yes it was covered. I am seeing how mentally deficient and vulgar you are. I made the case for allowing for cases of rape, and documented using pro-abortion group statistics that 1 percent or less of abortions are due to rape or incest. I think your IQ is hitting the single digits now.

So if the fetus is not part of the woman’s body, then what’s the problem with the woman removing what’s not part of her body out of her body? Your non-logic does not work.

Additionally, there are thousands of other ways for DNA inside a body to be different, but that does not mean we do not control over our body.

And you are telling me to learn biology? So which body parts have DNA that is 50 percent different from the rest of the body? Trying to play up mutations as the same as a discrete human is quite a stretch.

There’s no way for Paul to win the argument on those grounds. Like you say, if the fetus is not part of her body, she should not be compelled to keep it inside her body against her will. If the fetus IS part of her body, well… it’s HER body, so again, what’s the problem?

Paul would do better to go back to implying women are sluts who should be punished with childbirth and unwanted babies for consenting to sex.

She put it there. She gave it life of its own. The least she can do is care for it until it can be removed and still have a life of its own. Actions have consequences. Responsibility, it isn’t just a good idea.

No Paul, SHE did not put it there. The MAN put it there with his stupid sperm.

It takes TWO people to make a baby. And women are only fertile for a day or two out of a cycle (but determining when that is is the part that is the problem, as well as sperm can live for several days inside a woman.)

Men are fertile 24/7.

And yet somehow it is always the “woman’s fault.”

Keep talking, Paul. Little by little you’re exposing your true motivations. And it’s not “saving innocent babies”.

Also, actions do not always have consequences. If they did, you would not ever have sex with a woman after having opened your mouth to say the types of things you’ve said.

Paul, you didn’t make a case for allowing for cases of rape. You were very very vague and squirmy on it. You wouldn’t say flat out “Yes, I support women who are raped getting abortions.”

So… since you support women who are raped getting abortions… this comes down to whether or not the woman consented to sex.

So you don’t really believe it’s “baby murder” because why should an “innocent baby” be murdered just because his mother was raped?

If it’s REALLY murder and not you just wanting to punish the sluts for slutting, then explain how it’s morally consistent to allow a raped woman to “murder her baby”. Is the baby somehow guilty of the rape also?

I’ll be explicit for you, Summer: the only exception I believe in is the case in which there is a specific, documented risk of life to the mother.

I believe that a distinct, human life exists at conception, and that such distinct, human life has all natural rights attendant to every other human. Therefore, I do not believe in abortion exceptions for rape or incest. In both cases, the unborn human life is innocent of the heinous acts that led to its creation, and it would be morally wrong to murder that unborn human for the crimes of another.

I won’t comment further, because you completely derailed the discussion with your completely unwarranted invective and emotional appeal, and you have demonstrated yourself unwilling and/or unable to discuss this issue in good faith. Your use of ad hominem, projection, false dilemma, ex hoc ergo propter hoc, false assumptions, false conclusions, hyperbole, reductio ad absurdum, and myriad other logical fallacies is quite impressive; but it renders any reasonable discussion moot.

Also, Paul, let me just say that I’m completely FASCINATED by your debate tactic of ignoring points and being as vague and noncommittal on things as humanly possible until someone has to wrestle you to the ground to get a clear statement from you. Then when you make it, you pretend you’d said it from the beginning and that the person arguing with you is mentally deficient.

This debating strategy is only going to work with genuinely stupid people who cannot retain things they’ve read past five minutes. Everybody else can read all the comments here and know that NO you did NOT say you supported abortion in the case of rape. You were as vague as you could possibly be. I suspect this is because you knew if you admitted to it, that the next point I went right straight into would be: “well it can’t be about baby murder if you think murdering innocent babies is okay if the woman was raped”.

Which of course I did. If “baby murder” hinges on whether or not a woman consented to sex, it’s just about punishing women for actually consenting to sex.

This would confuse me about how this could benefit you except you’ve stated your wife is post-menopausal, so her consenting to sex can’t in any way inconvenience you at this point.

I ignored very few points. One or two irrelevant to the discussion, perhaps. Maybe you forgot that I choose what to reply regarding. I haven’t even had chance to read many, I have a life besides the net. Funny that. You seem to feel that in having entered into this discussion willingly, I have a responsibility to answer every statement made, as if a life hung in the balance?
Wow, you feel I have a responsibility to reply to every point of every post, that this is important….but your responsibility to give a chance to a life that you had an intimate part of creating, not so much. I am not aware that I have such a responsibility regarding internet posts, and even if I did, no lives lie in the balance. It is not like I am making babies.
A fitting end to my posts here. Your delusion fittingly exposed.

Chip,

I don’t care what you “believe”. If I were ever pregnant I would get an abortion and I would die before I would submit to this gross and ongoing violation of my person.

Just like… you wouldn’t suddenly hand in your guns if the law changed. I won’t hand in my bodily autonomy.

You can believe whatever dumbass think you want to believe about nonsentient life. Your “belief” on this thankfully (so far) has not taken away my legal right to terminate a pregnancy.

Gee, I can’t imagine why it’s hard for me to have “reasonable discussion” with people who think I should be forced to give birth if I got pregnant. I can’t imagine you would be too reasonable if the government started rounding up your guns and putting gun owners in camps, either.

But yes, from your high precipice of moral virtue and “this can never affect me directly no matter what” privilege… hey… go ahead and make judgments about me.

Also, I find it BIZARRE how often this blog about GUNS devolves into discussions about abortion. And how many of you “Take em from my cold dead hands” people can’t even COMPREHEND that a woman might fight as strongly for her own freedom and autonomy.

Summer, you proved my point quite spectacularly. Thank you.

I don’t think you have a responsibility to anything, actually. And frankly if you’d just shut the hell up with your stupid bullshit, I could stop feeling so goddamned compelled to reply to you. Go the fvck away, stop commenting. Then I’ll stop commenting. I’ve wasted two full days on you.

I got stubborn and committed to the discussion and let you emotionally manipulate me into continuing this stupidity with you. And THAT is my fault in this exchange.

And it’s not just that you don’t reply to “every point of every post”. You consistently don’t reply to any MAIN points of posts until the conversation has gone on and on, then you PRETEND you made points you didn’t make to make the other party look crazy. You bait the other person until they’re arguing at full emotion while you sit back and laugh (which is what trolls do by the way), and then you come back in and are like “see what a crazy person I’m dealing with?” As if there is no reasonable way someone who is as horrified by pregnancy and childbirth as me could ever get even remotely emotional about a bunch of men (who can never get pregnant) debating whether or not I have a right to NOT go through that horror show.

The unfortunate reality is… if I don’t let you just keep saying stupid nonsense without replying to it, then I end up looking like the “crazy” one, particularly to anyone who agrees with your viewpoint, even if they don’t agree with your debating tactics. It doesn’t matter, because me “getting emotional” (gee, can’t imagine why I would find this topic emotional), somehow destroys my virtue and makes me undeserving of any consideration at all.

I don’t think it’s a good idea for conversations on this blog to continue to get into topics like abortion. They are devisive invective that only serves to divide the gun owning community. I can’t imagine how it’s productive to have us frothing at the mouth at each other over things not even related to gun ownership.

I sincerely HOPE this is the end to your posts here. It is definitely the end of mine.

Glad to hear it. Your points never made any sense anyways, unless you were comparing yourself to an STD.

If destroying a fertilized egg is a murder because it could have eventually grown into a human if not destroyed, then wiping out any species of animals is genocide because they could have eventually evolved into sentient beings.

It seems you are confusing the natural growth cycle with evolution. Huge stretch.

It seems that you’re confusing an egg with a person, the stretch is about the same…

You must be the missing link in that case. To not understand the difference between evolution and the growth of a fertilized egg into the being it is genetically destined to be are light years apart.
Did you learn science from the back of a cereal box?

At least I don’t think Roe v Wade is a law. Now anybody that would think that makes a moron look like a genius. Right?

Grind, on this issue you are either lying or living in a cave. Not going to use ad hominem 3rd possibility.

Paul, you really do have your head in the sand if you can’t recall the very recent case of a high school girl requesting a picture of Jesus to be removed from a public school and to be met with everything from political hate, to rape and death threats.

There’s also the Bhuddist kid in a small town in a Gulf state that was told by the public school teachers that his religion was false and to become Christian or move.

And the rest is too obvious (same-sex marriage) that you MUST be trolling.

Not only do I not recall any of that, I don’t see what it has to do with the subject at hand. Are you trying to falsely inject some religious facet into this discussion?

Paul, there are exactly two reasons for ANY man who be this obsessed and fetishistic with what a woman does with the contents of her uterus.

1. Religious bullshit

2. Misogyny

Pick one. (Or a combination if you like.)

So not only do you not know basic biology, but you are also completely ignorant of current events. Also this sub-discussion is extremely relevant. Paul, I know it’s hard, but try to keep up. You’re holding the class back.

How very idiotic of you. You mention 2 events, to events that may have been covered where you live but not elsewhere, to insignificant events, and call me ignorant for not being aware of them.
I am certain I could raise several, or several hundred, events that are current and of which you have no knowledge. Yet I do not see that as a measure of your intelligence.
Also, as I have answered elsewhere, my knowledge of biology is not professional, but certainly much better than your own.
But thanks for trying.

Guess I can get all the abortions I want then, since pregnancies can be life-threatening for mothers and you really don’t know which ones will be really terrible sometimes until the very end when an abortion wouldn’t save you. So better to defend your life and get that abortion early.

Yes, you can, if you (as the pregnant woman) believe that it is the correct decision based on what you know about yourself, your circumstances, etc. Just like someone with a gun can make the decision to kill another person based on what he/she knows about himself, his circumstances, etc. But abortion is the murder of innocents! So, too, is a self defense shooting depending on who you are. Who doesn’t remember Trayvon Martin?

People who claim that all life is sacred and then construct excuses that allow them to kill in the belief that their lives are threatened are like people who think eating a gallon of ice cream is part of an anti-diabetes diet. You can believe anything you want, but it doesn’t make it true.

Scorpion, you saying “yes you can” in reference to abortion is really all I need to know. You don’t seem like you would try to hold me down and make me give birth. Or that you want to take away my rights to bodily autonomy. You have the right to believe whatever you want to believe about the sacredness/soul/personhood of a fetus, so long as you don’t try to force your beliefs onto my body.

“You get to decide when life is or isn’t sacred?”

I’m thinking “sacred” is a nonsense word anyway? WTF does it mean? Life is “important”, it is always important, but other things are important as well. Someone else pretending he or she can decide for me what is important or not is silly, yet several people here are attempting to do just that. Won’t work, guys!

Still no. The innocent would-be victim is not making the life-or-death decision. The attacker is making that decision.

To claim that one must allow oneself to be killed when presented with an attacker’s kill-or-be-killed ultimatum merely in order to profess a belief in the sanctity of human life is utterly absurd.

Just because you’re uncomfortable with the conclusion doesn’t make it absurd. If you are the arbiter of when it is ok to take a life, although you believe all life to be sacred, then why wouldn’t you extend that power to a pregnant woman? You are fallible. And you allow yourself to be fallible when making the decision to take a life. Maybe you’re 99.99% sure of your decision. But you are not God. Why can’t a fallible woman be trusted to make that decision about the life in her body?

Numbers don’t matter. It doesn’t matter how likely something is. It is either 100% or 0% in any given case of pregnancy. And there is no way to know up front that everything will be peachy.

But I wouldn’t even want a “perfect pregnancy”. The whole idea is utterly repellant and repulsive to me. I would rather be dead.

So you have no statistics to support your allegations. Figures. At least your true self is coming out. Mentally deficient, militantly abortion.

Because PAUL, statistics have NOTHING to do with whether or not a woman has the right to control what goes on inside her own goddamn body.

I have no idea why that is so difficult for you to comprehend. Pregnancy is not a trouble-free walk in the park. It is not a mere inconvenience. It’s a horrible experience for women who don’t want it. Much like sex that wasn’t consented to is horrible.

The fact that in 2015 we can even be debating whether or not it’s okay for a woman’s body to be violated against her will for 9 months and then however many hours she suffers through labor is insane.

You say I keep defaulting to worst case scenarios. But you keep defaulting to perfect scenarios. You won’t even admit that for some women just “being pregnant” and not being allowed to get rid of it would be psychologically traumatic independent of any other trauma she may or may not suffer. Just the act of dehumanizing a woman to the point that you consider her an incubator without rights over what happens to her body during a nine-month period is so heinous I can’t believe you aren’t a time traveler from the middle ages.

It’s hilarious that you think I’m the morally deficient one in this conversation.

I don’t think it. I know it.
If you had statistics you would be parading them. You have none. You have no personal experience. You have nothing. Just a loud immoral mouth.
Looking at my email, there are likely 50 more posts by you on this subject. Certainly all just as inane. I guess I can just stop now. Maybe you can type my name on the heading, inject more of what you have decided I have said, and then rebut your own arguments more effectively. They still reflect your small mindedness..
Have a nice day. Or, as my sister used to say to some of her pain in the ass customers……C.U.N.extT.ime.

Somewhere there is an architect who Paul has harassed into keeping every blueprint he’s ever come in contact with. Because these are DIFFERENT DESIGNS OMG!

Your DNA is not the same as my DNA. The DNA of a baby inside of you is different from your DNA. Maybe they never taught that in the schools you attended. Trying to justify abortion by bringing up rare scenarios like the twins he mentioned only underscores the absurdity of his argument. You’ll notice that the scenario actually is not about abortion at all, but about natural processes. Abortion is not a natural process.
You are quite confused about quite a lot of things.

Paul,

Using antibiotics to treat infection is not a natural process.

Surgery is not a natural process.

Using toilet paper to wipe your considerable ass is not a natural process.

Natural is not equivalent with “good”.

Unnatural is not equivalent with “bad”.

Hey, Paul! I’m not confused about YOU!

Actually, abortion IS a natural process. They’re called “miscarriages”. Again, basic biology Paul. You’re in over your head.

Not exactly. Abortion, without further qualifying adjectives, does not refer to a miscarriage. The term, used singularly, typically refers to pharmaceutically or medically induced abortion, as opposed to natural or incidental manners of abortion.
Hope the clarification helps.

If you do not even understand the definitions you are tossing about, no use trying to explain things to you.
Skin off of your elbow is not a life. It may indeed be living tissue, It is living tissue that is yours. It will never have the capability to live on separate from you. Granted, that is not exactly correct. Perhaps they can someday use that skin to clone you, and that skin could be turned into a genetic replica of you. Also, with organ donations (skin is an organ, by the way), one can donate organs to help others to live. However, as has been stated, those organs can never have a life of their own. If you wish to kill off your own body parts, go ahead. If you wish to kill yourself, go ahead.
If you cannot see the difference, you are willfully blind.

Paul,

It really grates your cheese that some of us consider elbow skin and a fetus morally equivalent doesn’t it? And that some of us would exfoliate either thing.

” Ancient Christians banned attempts to “avert the pregnancy” after god had made the pregnancy known to the town”

Can someone post a link to that video, please? And while you’re at it, explain why god no longer makes pregnancies known to the town?

Good grief, the stupid is strong here.

Um this is EXACTLY what you’ve been saying. I just said it more entertaining.

Learn to read, perhaps?

What fantasy Paul?

Youve done a pretty good job sticking your steel toe boot clad foot in your mouth

So then, Paul you DON’T think women who have abortions are murdering babies?

You DON’T think it’s her fault she’s pregnant because she chose to have sex?

You DO think that inside marital relationships all women have the easy ability to say “no intercourse for me, thanks, I don’t want pregnancy under any circumstances” and most men would be cool with that and suggest alternate forms of sexual activity?

Answer these questions clearly and succinctly, and then we can determine if I’m illiterate or you’re just a liar.

You are illiterate. I never disavowed that abortion is murder. I never disavowed that a woman should take responsibility for the result of having consensual sex. So should the man. I said that no means no, even in marriage.

I never said a woman should be a baby factory. I never said a potential life is the same as a conceived life.
I never said most of the words you put in my mouth. Most of the oddball and vulgar comments you have made bear no association to any thoughts or words of my own.
You are really arguing with yourself. You make statements for me, then ridicule the statements you decide that I would have made.

If you think women having abortions are murdering babies, obviously you must want to STOP this, which would entail FORCING women to remain pregnant and give birth OR punishing them with life in prison (the standard punishment for murder.)

If you don’t actually think these things should happen, then you don’t REALLY believe abortions are “murdering babies.” Not really. You can SAY that’s what you believe. You can even maybe kind of think it’s what you believe. But it all falls apart when you don’t want to physically detain and force women to maintain pregnancy or imprison those who manage abortion anyway.

No may mean no even in marriage but what you are not getting is that a woman’s ability to say no to sex inside her marriage is only temporary. She can say “not tonight honey”, she can even put it off for a week or in extreme circumstances maybe a few months before he starts cheating or divorces her. There is a “consequence” to women who don’t want to have (and don’t have) intercourse within marriage.

You seem to think there is no consequence for this and she can easily just say no so therefore it’s her fault if she gets pregnant. Nice dodge of male perpetual entitlement to intercourse.

Also re: me being illiterate… I think part of our problem here is that you simply don’t know what words mean.

In the course of this discussion you’ve proven you don’t know the actual literal meaning of:

murder
sentient
illiterate
troll

I’m sure there are other examples I’m forgetting.

Buy a dictionary.

“I never said a woman should be a baby factory.”

If you feel that a woman should not be allowed to get an abortion, then that’s exactly what you’re saying. Women are not incubators.

“I never said a potential life is the same as a conceived life.”

Then why are you so obsessed with a non-sentient proto-human having the “chance at life”? At that point, it’s “life” is about as theoretical as any sexual encounter’s potentiality to create a life.

You’ve stated you think abortion is murder. You think women who consent to sex should not be allowed to “murder babies”.

I’m taking your points to their logical conclusions. If you don’t understand the logical conclusions of your own points/values/views/beliefs, how is that my problem?

You can’t pretend that you don’t realize that outlawing abortion would result in barbaric circumstances for desperate women. When I outline how it all logically works and some of the consequences, you act like I’m crazy. But it’s the natural result of following the logic train all the to the next station. But you want to get off the train before it arrives, because you don’t want to confront these realities.

If you haven’t thought out your own point of view well enough to understand the consequences of where it leads, again, that’s your issue, not mine.

Wow, you really do not understand logic. Being pro-life means a woman should should be a baby factory.
You really are very low information. Replying to you lowers my IQ.

I’m clearly not the one who needs a dictionary.

Ps-s-s-t. Paul! Lean over here, I’ll tell you a secret! You’re a moron.

FLAME DELETED

The baby’s body belongs to the baby. You consented to the act which placed it there. Leave it alone and it will come out when the time comes, just like you were taught years ago. Or are you too selfish to allow another human a chance to live.

The “baby” can go fvck itself.

Also, if you’re so obsessed with giving the “baby” a chance at life, what about all the “chances at life” that were missed by people using birth control? What about all the times the woman could have been fvcking and giving someone not here yet a chance to be here, when she’s not.

I mean really… by your logic women should be perpetually having sex and perpetually pregnant lest some child that otherwise would have been here isn’t given a “chance at life.”

There you go again, deciding what people think, contrary to anything that has been said or alluded to in any postings.
A potential life is different from a conceived life. Hugely. Some religious may disagree with birth control, of course. Strange how you allude some religious nature and demeanor to my words, despite no such bent to my posts. I guess when you cannot counter arguments, you redefine the person to suit the argument s you have to offer.
I am aware of one person here who made quite a good argument for some types of birth control, which actually prevent conception, not dispose of the conceived child. Granted, these methods are not foolproof, and one should always be prepared for the possibilities that exist resultant on one’s actions.
Men should not go around screwing indiscriminately, and neither should women.
I guess these do not fit your rhetoric. The only person here who suggested women in perpetual pregnancy as baby factories, is Summer. She is getting desperate. Of course she proposes it as someone else’s logic, though only she has made such a statement. I think her brain is seriously overworked.

Summer, you say your body is yours, for you to manage. I agree. But I challenge you to do exactly that, manage your body. There are many reasonable, effective contraceptive methods out there. Rather than kill a human being to maintain control of your body – have a tubal ligation, use a diaphragm and spermicide or have your partner wear a condom. Notice I didn’t mention IUD’S or the morning after pill as both allow conception then either prevent implantation of embryo or the termination of it. An embryo IS a human life and has as much right to life as you, me or any other human being. Morality – right opposed to wrong exists and exists outside of our individual ideas or persuasions. Once life is created it’s sanctity is beyond argument. You do have rights, the right to your body and what you choose to do with it, BUT if you have set and create life – your rights transform into a responsibility for that life you created – one that is is both innocent and unable to protect itself!!!

Dane,

Believe me when I tell you, I am using the MOST effective method available and it would pretty much take rape to get me personally pregnant. But in some alternate reality in which I got pregnant anyway (or got raped and got pregnant), I would have an abortion.

Nothing, not even a tubal is 100% effective.

I don’t disagree that an embryo is a life. I disagree that it has the right to bring me physical and emotional trauma and ruin my life in general. I disagree it has a right to disfigure my body and set up house in it.

No, life’s sanctity is not beyond argument. But nice attempt to shut down argument. I appreciate your civil tone and that you aren’t being an asshat like Paul. And I respect that YOU believe these things. However YOUR belief in these things does not make it okay for you to force me to give birth or imprison me for aborting.

Also with regards to morality… morality is cultural and usually translates into “what is good for humans” or “what is bad for humans”. I don’t believe in any gods. Many different times and places have had vastly different moral codes.

I believe it’s immoral to force a woman to give birth against her will. The reality is that there is a conflict between the fetus and the woman. I side with the woman. You may side with the fetus, but… don’t tread on me. It’s a right I’m willing to die for.

If you believe in god, rest assured the soul of any fetus I would abort would go straight to heaven if such a place existed. So it’s really not something to get that worked up about. However me being forced to incubate and give birth when I find it utterly repulsive and horrifying based on YOUR beliefs in god/soul/morality/whatever is definitely something worth getting worked up about. And it’s not moral by any definition or standard.

That is pretty convoluted reasoning. You would die for the right to abort a baby, but would not risk pain, discomfort, or disfigurement to save the life of a child that you created.
At least we know where you stand.

Paul, you don’t get it. I would die for my FREEDOM. i.e. the right not to be enslaved.

Forcing me to endure 9 months of a foreign being growing inside me and then childbirth bringing a child I did not want in the first place but being FORCED to go through that process is SLAVERY.

I would DIE to remain free.

It’s not fear of death. I don’t fear death. It’s refusal to be controlled and enslaved and harmed for your stupid “thought experiment.” Because at the end of the day all you have is platitudes. None of this can EVER directly affect you, which is why you have no right to stick your nose into it.

You are either stupid or cruel. You either don’t “get” how sadistic and barbaric it is in practice to force women to have babies they don’t want or imprison them for aborting them. Or you don’t care.

There is no reality in which the kinds of pro-life laws being pushed will not be insanely cruel to women. But because you think those women are “evil” you don’t care about their suffering. I wish the punishment for YOU was never getting to have sex with a woman. i can’t believe anyone would consent to this activity with you.

Paul, the fact that most of your comments seem to start out in moderation and then only appear a long time later, makes it difficult to keep up with a conversation with you… nevertheless…

Being THIS worked up about abortion as a man… means you MUST believe in some religious thing like a soul. It makes literally NO sense to be upset about someone ending a non-sentient life growing inside their own body against their will, otherwise.

UNLESS you’re just sexist and want to control women’s reproduction.

There is no reality in which it’s “more okay” for you to reproductively enslave women than it is for her to have a medical procedure that ends her pregnancy.

As for “getting desperate”, over what? I’m just mad as shit that you actually think you, as a man, have the right to weigh in on this and seek to restrict MY freedom.

In the same way you would be mad as shit about anti-gun people trying to take your guns.

Same song, different verse.

But as for being “desperate”, why would I be? No matter what you say, I don’t feel the slightest “guilt” over the idea of abortion and would do it in a heartbeat if I were ever in the situation to need it.

Also, it doesn’t matter how “discriminate” or “indiscriminate” your sex life is. This has nothing to do with “sleeping around” (something I don’t do, thank you.) Monogamous intercourse produces babies as well.

The scary part is… if they had their way that’s exactly what would happen. There was some woman in El Salvadore who was serving a 30 year prison sentence for having a miscarriage.

THIS is the road we are headed down if these dick hats get their way. There is nothing virtuous about it.

There was a woman (1), since freed. That is a perfect argument. In a country that strictly outlaws abortion, one woman wrongly accused, and imprisoned. Absolutely there are better ways of handling these things. We are not El Salvador.
But since Summer brought it up, let’s expand. She is also big on using the word rape. So in keeping with her themes, we find that dozens of men have since been released from prison, falsely charged with rape, exonerated by DNA evidence. Because everyone has unique DNA. I guess what needs done is really to make rape legal? Solves the problem, right? It follows summer’s logic. It is a false morality to think that rape is bad, right? Religious idiots making silly rules!
Not my opinion, but I am trying to use her logic.

“THIS is the road we are headed down if these dick hats get their way.”

A certain canadian author wrote a little book called, “the handmaids tale” which everybody intially balked at because the idea of christian dominionists taking over was seen as too farfetched.

Ha, no so far fetched now. Just look at the post-reagan republican party. Truly a sight to behold.

Barry Goldwater, hardly “liberal”, was a prophet (no pun intended at all *eye roll*), “Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them”

It isn’t “enemies foreign domestic” or “patriot dawn” that should be the primary reason to arm yourself and train, but rather, “the war after armageddon” (ralph peters) and “the handmaids tale”.

Scorpion is right.

Never underestimate the kind of legislation fanatics will put into law.

LC,

I love that book (The Handmaid’s Tale) but it is terrifying. And also eerie foreshadowing for the world we are moving toward at an increasing clip.

Dominionists are not even that different from Muslim fundamentalists. They just have different fashion sense for their women. As if that really makes a marked difference in how harmful and barbaric their philosophy is.

The republicans already have tried a 20 week abortion ban in this session except in the case of life of the mother or rape. (But they wanted the rape to be DOCUMENTED with police reports and such before hand, which is really only going to make rape prosecution even less likely to happen in this country because people will say: “The slut just lied to be able to get an abortion.”)

The bill right now is dead in the water because of the female republican legislators who balked at it and thought it was going too far. When the cowed and obedient WOMEN on your side of the aisle are repulsed… you know you’re doing something truly heinous. I mean, these are the women who have fallen for the “oh think of the poor babies” line of reasoning while being shown pictures of bloody still births instead of actual aborted fetuses (which most often look just like a heavy period and not like anything remotely person-like in there at all.)

Actually Paul,

It isn’t just “one woman” who has been imprisoned with harsh sentences for a miscarriage. And she was “pardoned” which means, they still think she’s guilty of “baby murder” but they are choosing to have mercy on her. How magnanimous of them.

You also left out the part where she actually SERVED 7 YEARS of the sentence. So she was actually IN prison for 7 YEARS for having a miscarriage. The point is, there should never even BE a situation in which someone’s miscarriage can be “investigated”. That’s batshit insane.

You are already advocating for making rape legal since the forced violation and degradation of a woman’s body for 9 months is morally equivalent to rape.

Rape is bad.

So is forced birth.

Both are violations of women’s bodies, rights, dignity, and humanity.

You’re failing at using ANY logic, not just mine.

Actually, I was using your logic. I wasn’t deciding for you what you would say or think, I was making a logical progression based on what you actually have said.
Big difference.
You decided how I felt about the consequences of a woman seeking an illegal abortion, a discussion not even being had here. You keep putting words in people’s mouths.
I never advocated for rape.
I also do not advocate for a woman to kill a child she and a man created through a willful act.
I believe in personal responsibility.
You do not.
If a child is conceived as a result of a willful act (which is by design for the creation of children), be an adult, take responsibility. Murdering the result is not very responsible. Your body was not violated in that conception., You invited it, remember. Actions have consequences. In the case of STD’s, the consequence could be getting treatment, or maybe a lifetime affliction. Nobody ever insinuated “live with it” except you. You have such a shallow mind. In the case of a pregnancy, it is easily remedied in 9 months. I forgot, you are a “me” person, everything is all about you. You never take any responsibility for your actions.

Having an abortion is no more ‘irresponsible’ than curing syphilis is. Sometimes sex causes bad things to happen. It doesn’t mean you have to just “live with” those bad things if there is a cure.

Paul… do you believe a woman should be FORCED to maintain a pregnancy and give birth against her will no matter how emotionally traumatic it would be or what health consequences (not just life or death) it might entail?

Do you believe a woman who has an abortion should be put in prison for it?

If you do NOT believe these two things, then you do NOT believe it is “baby murder” because if you really felt it was “murder” you would approve of STOPPING it before it happened by any means necessary or imprisoning the woman after the fact (ideally for life since that’s the actual punishment for real murder. Anything less makes your convictions shaky at best.)

Now you say I was “putting words into your mouth”. The LOGICAL CONCLUSION if you feel rape is murder is that you would support forcing women to carry pregnancies and give birth against their will. And that you would also support imprisoning a woman for life if she got an abortion.

If you don’t actually think those things, then you don’t really believe what you say you believe because you’re being inconsistent.

If you think intercourse is designed for the creation of children… then you should let all the men know that is its purpose and encourage them to seek alternate sexual activities instead of demanding the one activity which is “designed for the creation of children” when a woman has made clear she doesn’t want one. I certainly didn’t set up the world in such a way where intercourse was the default for “real sex”.

In the case of pregnancy it’s easily remedied in 9 months? OMFG you are FLAME DELETED. I would die before I would be willing to endure 9 months of being an incubator. What the fvck is wrong with you? You are FLAME DELETED. Thank GOD you’re on the internet and not in my living room.

The unspoken rule of anti-gun people is “never say ban guns!”. The unspoken rule of anti-abortion people is “never say put the woman in prison!”. They know those things are politically toxic, but the arguments each side makes support each of those conclusions.

bwahahahahahahahahahaha! OMG that was hilarious. And sadly true. I had a male relative tell me the other day with a straight face that we should just nuke the Muslim countries (even knowing all the innocent civilians who would die.) But let a woman abort a barely-formed fetus? Evil murdering slut harlot!

It was completely lost on him that killing innocent civilians by the thousands is murder. I guess it’s not “convenient” to make any effort not to kill these people. Isn’t that the same BS argument being used about the slutty baby murdering harlots?

Far and away the largest ethnicity of babies aborted are African-American. Seems you attempting to make it a racial issue stumbled and fell.

Have you seen that photo meme that shows a picture of a fetus in vitro on the left and says something like: “Sacred life. Must be nurtured and protected at all costs.” On the right is a picture of a hungry kid and it says something like: “Your mother shouldn’t have had you if she couldn’t afford to feed you.”

Paul, he didn’t actually. You are the one who conveniently uses race to pretend something called “compassionate conservatism” is a thing.

And actually, couldn’t we turn this right back around on you? I would say, trying to force black women to be pregnant and give birth to babies they don’t want and can’t afford and either living in abject poverty for it or having to hand their baby over to someone else (not like black babies are in high demand by privileged white couples who want to adopt, but hey whatever. Why should we use logic?)… anyway I would say that’s pretty racist and hateful since it’s disproportionately hurting black women.

And when you then turn around and complain about “welfare queens” which I’m betting you do… you are basically saying women must be forced to have babies they can’t afford but no one should have to feed those babies but the woman who CAN’T afford it!

So keep trying to “save those poor black babies” that you aren’t going to adopt or want to give more of your tax dollars to support. You just showed us how great and compassionate you are to the african americans!

What difference does it make how many people I reply to? I didn’t know there was some upper limit on the number of people you’re allowed to interact with in a thread. Is this a special rule YOU made?

You were the one who pointed out you had more in common with this person and that person than me. Well? So what? Who cares? I never expected you and I to be besties. Not even sure why that needed stated, but okay.

Also, there are a lot of people who have made a LOT of comments in this thread. You aren’t labeling any of them trolls. The only person really in this thread who is behaving genuinely like a troll is Paul G. And it’s not because of frequency of posts or how many people he interacts with. It’s because he won’t address things people actually say in their posts.

re: needing to comment the first day of a post so some of you might notice… ummm I don’t live here. I have other things I do, too. Sometimes I do spend a LOT of time on a site, but I’m unlikely to be the first commenter out of the gate most days and I’m fine with that. I’m sure in time you can find a way to make peace with it, too.

I have addressed the points brought up. That I have ignored your vulgarity is inconsequential.

No you haven’t addressed my points, Paul.

You hand wave and REFUSE to answer with a straight answer whether or not you SUPPORT raped women getting abortions.

You also haven’t explained to me how on earth women can be blamed for consenting to sex when that’s not exactly an optional activity for the vast majority of married adult women who wish to keep their marriages in tact. I don’t even care that most men “expect intercourse”. I only care when those same men turn around and demand a woman never get an abortion because she “consented to sex”. It’s hardly “consent” when it’s coerced at the price of being cheated on or dumped. I’m happy to look the other way on that when all you “compassionate conservative” men decide it’s not your business what a woman does with the contents of her uterus. But you’re not going to do that. You’re going to ramble on and whine about how “well women chose to have sex!”

Apparently you think women all should be alone if they aren’t willing to be baby factories. That’s the only logical conclusion we can come to.

As to my vulgarity, YOU are vulgar just by definition. I’ve said some “naughty words”, you want to control the private bodily choices of women you don’t even know. Which of us is more vulgar?