Endure this consequence, with the blessings of the Lord
the egg has commited no crime against the mother...the mother got in the situation, the egg had no say so in the matter. So it is not the eggs responsibility to prevent unwanted pregnancys.
What, now it's an
egg? Let's stick with the point, it's a fertilized egg, a zygote, a human being as the pro-life argument goes. Whether or not it has committed any "crime" is beside the point. As a person endowed with rights, it has certain responsibilities. It is not a punishment to remove it from a womb, despite the predictable result. It is, rather, endowing that person to survive. As long as that zygote/fetus depends on the mother, it is the executive "property" of the mother and is legally regarded as such. This is just like it being a living child independent in the world: it is still subject to the will of the parent.
Where we draw the line is at the feasibility of overriding a human being's right to self-determination. If that mother does not want the growing fetus, fine. If we can preserve it, fine. We cannot then return it to the parent after its maturation and "birth", for its stewardship will have been awarded to someone else. This, however, is probably for the best. At present, however, we cannot preserve and incubate most of these fetuses.
Nations of Natives were killed because they were deamed sub-human and in possesion of a land that white man felt was his God given destiny. They were considered savages, as Tony likes to remind us. What rights did such an unevolved form of our species have to any of our so called HUMAN rights?
What right to rights? Well, they're humans and they exist. When Christians did kill those tribes, they killed the unborn just like they did any other unborn. I would ask what leaves them
a priori without rights, if we must establish what right to rights they have. If it is mere assumption, mere cultural arrogance, then it's balderdash.
People have been intentionally undermining their pregnancys for generations. It, like the many other wrongs we all commit, we will live with and in some way more than likely pay for. No, we can not regulate and investigate all miscarriages...BUT that isn't my problem with the situation.
Quite frankly, it will be your problem with the situation if we establish life according the pro-life, Christian standard. Because as you have pointed out, no we cannot regulate and investigate all the miscarriages, and that once again leaves us with a huge problem: someone recognized as having full rights of being human and self-determining has been made less important. The effect of unwanted pregnancies will be worse, their outcomes more drastic. People will still find ways to miscarry, though hopefully we've got something better than a Dav-Bar.
My stand is that legalizing drive thru abortions and makeing it a socially "acceptable" practice will further propogate the devaluing of human life.
And
my stand is that the American economy has the effect of devaluing human life. And
my stand is that Christianity has the effect of devaluing human life. As we see, there is much about what we do in society that devalues human life. We could probably spend weeks on the merits of pro-choice and pro-life in terms of "devaluing" or "valuing" human life. But there still exists the small matter of the notion that it matters not; if this is your primary objection, take a number and stand in line.
Government funded tubals and vasectomys are a great idea....insurance should pay for them, as well as birth controll
I'm with you there. All the way. Part of the problem, though, is that there are people who won't accept tubals and vasectomies because they reject God's blessings of life: one is forfeiting the potential of life invested in them according to God's will. I'm aware that this most likely isn't
your stance,
Taken, but since we're talking about accommodating a religious standard as law, we might as well give consideration to religious standards. But, yes, the availability of birth control options is a necessity toward the goal of reducing abortions.
We need to reinstill a little innocence in our children.
(
A note to Bambi: See? You've told them, Spooner's told them. I've said it ....)
Make it NOT OK to get pregnant unless you are ready to accept the consequences as opposed to makeing it "no big deal...You can just abort".
Taken, to follow the prior excerpt into this one for context ... yes, I hear what you mean about "innocence". But consider how many abortions are obtained by people of faith. And they're forgiven; they need merely recommit themselves to Jesus and all will be okay, and all of that was the will of God.
You know, of the people I've known to have abortions,
none of them behave in the manner so cruelly applied by the pro-life crowd. Your venom blinds you in some things. I find it just a little foreign, this idea that,
It's not a big deal ... you can just abort.
Open your heart: it
is a big deal. They know it. Sure, it makes the issue more clear if people really are as thick and stupid and cruel as you'd like to paint them. But they're not. I invite you to consider that even people who believe in Jesus do it; to consider that it
is a serious and difficult decision; to consider that people
will terminate pregnancies regardless of what the law says.
By makeing it acceptable to practice abortion we are actually makeing the problem of irresponsibility worse as opposed to better. If there are no consequences...then what is the motivation to be responsible?
I'm not sure what bugs me more: the assumption that there
are no consequences to abortion, or the assumption that parenthood and children are
consequences in such a negative sense. Perhaps we should ask ourselves:
If your child is a negative consequence, should you really be raising children?
Again on the question of prepubesent children: where do you draw the line?
A two week old baby is EVERY bit as dependant on the mother as a pregestational child. He can not even roll over? The only thing he has aquired beyond his womb skills is breathing with his lungs. Which in fact he could do even before he left the womb but is programmed not to due to the amniotic fluid.
How about a three month old? Still has no ability to find food.
A two week-old baby has made it outside. Welcome to the world. That is the primary indicator. You do, of course, realize, that abortion is a step
forward in history. Judging by various, subjective criteria, if a child of Sparta was deemed somehow unfit, it was left on a hillside to die.
When is it a REAL person? When is it a valuable, unique individual? When are we supposed to CARE
The idea of
when to care is a matter of conscience. It is, essentially, 'twixt you and God. The most common criterion for when it is a real person is when it is outside of the mother, on its own, whether or not it can survive. And here I don't mean finding food and so forth, but rather refer to the admirable and tremendous efforts devoted to preventing the deaths of premature births.
In that sense, if the woman for some reason has waited until the second trimester of so, we might be able to harvest at five months, with insurance money, and the insurance company can make its money back selling the parental rights of the harvested individual to the highest bidder. After all, someone has to pay for the hundred thousand dollars worth of respiratory work.
It's a matter of conscience when to care.
The whole of abortion is a tragedy. It's why I call on the religious to remove the fetters that restrict responsibility. We must educate and empower people, not keep them ignorant of what we choose to call sin.
Responsibility is not merely adhering to a bunch of essentially arbitrary rules. Responsibility is
knowing why something is right or wrong. It's kind of like a math test: sure, you can get the answers and fill them in, but if you do that, you never learn
why x=4. It's well enough to go to a cheat-sheet like the Bible and pretend that it describes right and wrong and all we have to do is believe it true, but it doesn't actually do anything for the elevation of humanity. In order for people to be responsible, they have to understand the way their bodies and minds work, and that even means they have to work for money less. They need time to understand their chemical and physical selves, they're psychospiritual self, and so forth. Sure, they can blindly repress their sexuality, but we see in Victorianism and Puritanism what that brings. Believe it or not, a little bit of carnality is
good for people; a proper shag will do the trick more often than not, and, frankly, I prefer people when they're in a better mood and are kinder to one another. To make abstinence = responsibility and leave it at that is to invite wars. Seriously: the tighter we are about sex, the nastier society gets; take a look through history sometime--it's quite ... tragic.
But people are going to shag. And people are going to misfire. And people are going to do what they choose to do regardless of what the law says. Seriously, if you force the issue, a whole generation will start to reject childbearing, the hard way.
Realism helps a great deal when attempting to quantify problems and develop solutions of such magnitude.
You know, maybe it is a matter of conscience and greed: these unwanted children are going to get shit on one way or another. Maybe I just think it's a kinder cut to do it quickly.
Seriously: when we can "save" the abortion and incubate it to maturity, what are you going to do with it? Send it back to the rejecting parents? You're merely trading one human tragedy for another.
Solutions to the abortion problem will present themselves, if any are to be had, at such time that such solutions are possible. As long as we have people so obsessed with economy, for instance, that they are incapable of learning about their myriad selves, it will be a while before the abortion problem abates. We need to educate people toward happiness, so that when life presents an unplanned pregnancy, it is viewed as an
opportunity and
not a
consequence.
thanx,
Tiassa
