Miers, Roe, SCOTUS, and a world without abortion ...

[A_Wanderer]

Funny you say that, considering that supply-side economics is nothing but "social Darwinism."

Melon

I think that social darwinism is more of a pseudoscientific rationale for the existence of poverty and a social system established to keep people at their station than an economic theory.

 

[Irvine511]

Not everyone has a conscience.
I'll rephrase that---
Not everyone is able to allow themselves to have a consience/feelings for whatever reasons, be it disconnection, abuse, lack of support, etc.
You have to "turn yourself off" to undergo an abortion, to face what you are doing, which is ending the life process of a human. 'Born' humans are just further along in that development.
And I don't think you have to be religious to acknowledge that.

this really bothers me.

i respect your passion, but unless you have actually walked in the shoes of a woman who has agonized over whether or not she can keep her pregnancy, you are in absolutley no position to judge and lable her decision-making process.

just how would you know, unless you have been one of those women?

 

[BorderGirl]

this really bothers me.

i respect your passion, but unless you have actually walked in the shoes of a woman who has agonized over whether or not she can keep her pregnancy, you are in absolutley no position to judge and lable her decision-making process.

just how would you know, unless you have been one of those women?

Just between you and me,
I went way beyond Agony, looked over the edge and then realized I was getting ready to jump and take my child with me.

 

[Irvine511]

Just between you and me,
I went way beyond Agony, looked over the edge and then realized I was getting ready to jump and take my child with me.

i'm glad you think you made the right decision.

again, i respect your passion, but i don't think you can extrapolate to such judgements based upon your experience. your truth is not everyone's truth.

 

[VertigoGal]

your truth is not everyone's truth.

while I generally agree with you Irvine, if you thought a certain act was murder- and nothing less- would you honestly be content with letting other people go along with it. just because they personally didn't feel it was wrong? I honestly have no clue how I feel about abortion....as it is I kind of think first-trimesters are fine but it gets iffy after that. But I can completely understand why people who are against it tend to be so strongly against it.

In a purely broad social sense I think it would be a step backwards to overturn Roe V Wade, but morally it's not such an "easy" issue as I would (personally ) consider something like gay marriage to be...

 

[melon]

The one thing I wish more than anything in this world is that people would unbundle gay marriage and abortion.

I am personally ambiguous on the issue of abortion. I will never have to deal with that issue in my life, so I am generally not hard-pressed to make a decision one way or another. And frankly, I can see both moral and secular humanist reasons as to why abortion is wrong, just as much as I can see reasons as to keep it legal. I can see why people would object to it, if they honestly believe that a fetus is a human being that deserves protection from murder.

However, gay marriage is something that is completely harmless, despite the 19th century apocalyptic melodrama that religion spouts lately. It's legal in Canada and the sky hasn't fallen. Canada is just the same as it has always been...just that a certain percentage of the population is now allowed to get married. I, frankly, look forward to the day that gay marriage is legal and just as mundane as your average heterosexual marriage. There are many good and bad heterosexual marriages, but, frankly, it's a non-event that doesn't attract media attention and banal clerical snipes from the pulpit.

I think it is perfectly viable to be pro-gay marriage and anti-abortion, and, as such, I wish that the general public and politicians and the media would treat them as the separate issues as they are.

Melon

 

[VertigoGal]

I agree with you completely melon, I didn't mean to suggest otherwise by mentioning gay marriage. I was really making the same point. that they're two issues that are often clumped together as "moral" issues, but while gay marriage seems pretty obvious to me, abortion isn't quite as clear.

 

[BorderGirl]

i don't think you can extrapolate to such judgements based upon your experience. your truth is not everyone's truth.

I'm not fit to judge anyone. All I can do is speak from my 'truths' and hopefully with humility.

‘The truth will set you free but first it will make you miserable’.

The truth really does hurt, but when the truth is spoken in love rather than in judgement, there is amazing healing that can take place.

May each of us be able to say like Martin Luther King: ‘Free at last, free at last, Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.’
***
"outside of society, they're waitin' for me. outside of society, that's where I want to be."

 

[yolland]

Just between you and me,
I went way beyond Agony, looked over the edge and then realized I was getting ready to jump and take my child with me.

Sounds like you made the right decision for you, and doubtless learned some things about moral responsibility you wouldn't have, had that decision been made for you by the state. Doesn't follow that you thus have cause to project your own decision process onto other women's, though.

If the right to decide which decisions are morally responsible ones is delegated to the state, then no one can meaningfully claim to have made the right choice in light of their own conscience and beliefs. There are some situations where this is an acceptable tradeoff: the criminalization of murder (as presently defined) is generally justified on the grounds that rapid social breakdown in the face of epidemic violence and wanton disregard for human rights would otherwise ensue--not on the grounds that every individual murderer's reasoning process can be shown to be morally flawed. That would be an unacceptably difficult criterion to apply on a case-by-case basis.

Perhaps you do, in fact, see the consequences of legalized abortion as being precisely analogous to those of legalized murder. Your own appeal to personal experience as justification for your position, however, suggests otherwise.

~ Peace

 

[yolland]

I think it is perfectly viable to be pro-gay marriage and anti-abortion, and, as such, I wish that the general public and politicians and the media would treat them as the separate issues as they are.

I agree, but think it important to note that a similar moral pseudorationale often underlies opposition to both. It has to do with the idea that those who would avail themselves of the (legalized) benefits are thus being handed a golden ticket to "hedonism," because surely their "lifestyles" do not support the kind of (not-always-welcome) self-sacrifice--to the needs of children, for example--that marriage and childbearing entail for "the rest of us." In short, a kind of subtle jealousy that belies their claims to a purely ethical position on the matter.

 

[Irvine511]

while I generally agree with you Irvine, if you thought a certain act was murder- and nothing less- would you honestly be content with letting other people go along with it. just because they personally didn't feel it was wrong? I honestly have no clue how I feel about abortion....as it is I kind of think first-trimesters are fine but it gets iffy after that. But I can completely understand why people who are against it tend to be so strongly against it.

In a purely broad social sense I think it would be a step backwards to overturn Roe V Wade, but morally it's not such an "easy" issue as I would (personally ) consider something like gay marriage to be...

point taken, but i was more objecting less to the morality of abortion and to the post that implied that women must dehumanize themselves in order to make the decision to have an abortion.

the one thing i really wanted to do in this thread was to avoide the whole "abortion ... murder?" arguments.

 

[BorderGirl]

Sounds like you made the right decision for you, and doubtless learned some things about moral responsibility you wouldn't have, had that decision been made for you by the state. Doesn't follow that you thus have cause to project your own decision process onto other women's, though.

My point is that abortion involves taking an innocent persons life.
Why should a child have to pay, with their life, for the sins?? mistakes??? or whatevehhh your view is, of their parents? Why should they have to die?
What are we all so afraid of?

 

[financeguy]

I agree, but think it important to note that a similar moral pseudorationale often underlies opposition to both. It has to do with the idea that those who would avail themselves of the (legalized) benefits are thus being handed a golden ticket to "hedonism," because surely their "lifestyles" do not support the kind of (not-always-welcome) self-sacrifice--to the needs of children, for example--that marriage and childbearing entail for "the rest of us." In short, a kind of subtle jealousy that belies their claims to a purely ethical position on the matter.

Ah I see. I guess those of us who would somehow seek to protect the unborn had better get back in our boxes, admit we're either under-educated trogolytes or pleasure-hating Bible bashers and just give the floor over to the far-thinking enlightened liberals.

No offense Yolland, it's precisely the kinds of attitudes evident in your post that allow the right wing to turn the debate into 'the librul elite are out to get us' kind of crap that we are so accustomed to hearing from the right wing.

And I'm an agnostic that doesn't agree with legalised abortion on demand. Sorry if I don't fit into the preconceptions.

 

[BorderGirl]

The one thing I wish more than anything in this world is that people would unbundle gay marriage and abortion.

Melon

Yes too much ADD out there people.....

 

[XHendrix24]

The one thing I wish more than anything in this world is that people would unbundle gay marriage and abortion.

I think it is perfectly viable to be pro-gay marriage and anti-abortion, and, as such, I wish that the general public and politicians and the media would treat them as the separate issues as they are.

Could not agree more.

 

[BorderGirl]

[/Q]
what are the consequences -- good or bad -- of making abortion illegal? what would this world look like? what would be different, what would be the same, and what would women do with unwanted pregnancies? how would they respond? if you are a woman, imagine yourself pregnant in a country where you cannot have an abortion. what would you do? would you have made different decisions, either before getting pregnant or aftewards?
[/B]

I just reread your original post and thought I'd add these quotes as they may be more online with your original questions.

"What happens to the mind of a person, and the moral fabric of a nation, that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience? What kind of a person and what kind of a society will we have 20 years hence if life can be taken so casually? It is that question, the question of our attitude, our value system, and our mind-set with regard to the nature and worth of life itself that is the central question confronting mankind.
Failure to answer that question affirmatively may leave us with a hell right here on earth."
Rev. Jesse Jackson, U.S. civil rights activist, now in favor of legal abortion, in National Right to Life News, 1/1977

 

[Irvine511]

Re: Re: Miers, Roe, SCOTUS, and a world without abortion ...

"What happens to the mind of a person, and the moral fabric of a nation, that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience? What kind of a person and what kind of a society will we have 20 years hence if life can be taken so casually? It is that question, the question of our attitude, our value system, and our mind-set with regard to the nature and worth of life itself that is the central question confronting mankind.
Failure to answer that question affirmatively may leave us with a hell right here on earth."
Rev. Jesse Jackson, U.S. civil rights activist, now in favor of legal abortion, in National Right to Life News, 1/1977

my response, both to you and to the rev, is that i couldn't disagree more with how the two of you have framed the situation. i don't think any woman anywhere views an abortion as akin to getting a wart removed.

 

[BorderGirl]

Re: Re: Re: Miers, Roe, SCOTUS, and a world without abortion ...

my response, both to you and to the rev, is that i couldn't disagree more with how the two of you have framed the situation. i don't think any woman anywhere views an abortion as akin to getting a wart removed.

Wow.
After all that's been discussed this is what you walk away with?
That you believe I or any person who is anti-abortion think that women who have had abortions haven't given it much thought? Pleeease.
In fact there is so much thought that goes with the decision to have an abortion that it haunts you the rest of your life.

"We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life—the unborn—without diminishing the value of all human life."

 

[yolland]

Ah I see. I guess those of us who would somehow seek to protect the unborn had better get back in our boxes, admit we're either under-educated trogolytes or pleasure-hating Bible bashers and just give the floor over to the far-thinking enlightened liberals.

No offense Yolland, it's precisely the kinds of attitudes evident in your post that allow the right wing to turn the debate into 'the librul elite are out to get us' kind of crap that we are so accustomed to hearing from the right wing.

And I'm an agnostic that doesn't agree with legalised abortion on demand. Sorry if I don't fit into the preconceptions.

You misunderstood my post big-time if you took it as a blanket characterization of the entire spectrum of EITHER pro-life or anti-gay-marriage thinking. I was specifically commenting on a gut-level emotional link between the two that is apparent, indeed explicitly stated, in some (to use your term) "pleasure-hating Bible basher" moral rhetoric. Hence my use of the phrase, "often underlies opposition to both"--i.e., among people who are opposed to both, this line of thinking is often manifest. Perhaps the link is not a familiar one on your side of the pond.

Your own presumptuouness aside, the nasty belitting tone was both unwarranted and unnecessary. My previous posts in the thread ought to make it perfectly clear that I don't consider this debate to be between "far-thinking enlightened" people on the one hand, and "under-educated troglodytes" on the other.

 

[yolland]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Miers, Roe, SCOTUS, and a world without abortion ...

That you believe I or any person who is anti-abortion think that women who have had abortions haven't given it much thought? Pleeease.
In fact there is so much thought that goes with the decision to have an abortion that it haunts you the rest of your life.

So do you or don't you agree with Jackson's "without a pang of conscience" characterization? If you don't, then perhaps you should explain why you chose to quote it.

Personally, I've known too many responsible and self-aware women who weren't haunted for the rest of their lives by having had abortions to accept that consequence as universal. A few of them were made very uncomfortable by the secrecy they'd had to maintain due to fear of public exposure and humiliation (a stigma which I realize women who resolve to have the baby often contend with, too)--but clearly, that particular trauma comes from an entirely different source.

~ Peace

 

[yolland]

My point is that abortion involves taking an innocent persons life.
Why should a child have to pay, with their life, for the sins?? mistakes??? or whatevehhh your view is, of their parents? Why should they have to die?
What are we all so afraid of?

You could answer the last question better than me. But I don't recognize it as my right, nor the state's, to decide what is and isn't acceptable to "fear" in these situations.

The previous questions return to the portrayal of carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term as a deserved "punishment" to be meted out by the state. I already explained in my first post in this thread why I think that approach would only undermine compassion, family, and reverence for the gift of creating life.

Like most religious Jews, I believe that while abortion kills a living being, it is not the moral equivalent of murder and should not be treated as such. (If you're interested, the basis in Jewish law for this is Exodus 21:22; the fact that only minor monetary penalty is suggested for an assault-induced miscarriage--the closest Torah comes to mentioning abortion--is taken to mean that killing a fetus is not murder in the eyes of the Torah.)

Of course this does not mean that I see the decision of whether or not to abort as having no moral significance. Clearly it does.

 

[Irvine511]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Miers, Roe, SCOTUS, and a world without abortion ...

So do you or don't you agree with Jackson's "without a pang of conscience" characterization? If you don't, then perhaps you should explain why you chose to quote it.

Personally, I've known too many responsible and self-aware women who weren't haunted for the rest of their lives by having had abortions to accept that consequence as universal. A few of them were made very uncomfortable by the secrecy they'd had to maintain due to fear of public exposure and humiliation (a stigma which I realize women who resolve to have the baby often contend with, too)--but clearly, that particular trauma comes from an entirely different source.

~ Peace

yes, this was essentially my reaction to the same post.

thanks for articulating it so well (as usual).

 

[BorderGirl]

Like most religious Jews, I believe that while abortion kills a living being, it is not the moral equivalent of murder and should not be treated as such.

"How is the person who considers abortion to be murder any different from the Pole who knew what was going to happen at Auschwitz? If the Pole was morally obligated to attempt to save lives, isn’t the person who opposes abortion under the same obligation?"

 

[BorderGirl]

(If you're interested, the basis in Jewish law for this is Exodus 21:22; the fact that only minor monetary penalty is suggested for an assault-induced miscarriage--the closest Torah comes to mentioning abortion--is taken to mean that killing a fetus is not murder in the eyes of the Torah.)

"If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life."
Exodus 21:22

 

[Irvine511]

"How is the person who considers abortion to be murder any different from the Pole who knew what was going to happen at Auschwitz? If the Pole was morally obligated to attempt to save lives, isn’t the person who opposes abortion under the same obligation?"

 

[nbcrusader]

Like most religious Jews, I believe that while abortion kills a living being, it is not the moral equivalent of murder and should not be treated as such. (If you're interested, the basis in Jewish law for this is Exodus 21:22; the fact that only minor monetary penalty is suggested for an assault-induced miscarriage--the closest Torah comes to mentioning abortion--is taken to mean that killing a fetus is not murder in the eyes of the Torah.)

You address two different legal standards - both recognized in the Torah. An assult-induced miscarriage is manslaughter - no premeditation to kill. Murder involves a premeditation to end a life. That would be closer to abortion.

 

[yolland]

You address two different legal standards - both recognized in the Torah. An assult-induced miscarriage is manslaughter - no premeditation to kill. Murder involves a premeditation to end a life. That would be closer to abortion.

Originally posted by BorderGirl
"If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life."
Exodus 21:22

Hi guys,

I really want to respond to both of these points, but I absolutely cannot take the time right now as I am up to my ears in grading midterms (it didn't help any that I wasted a lot of time in FYM and elsewhere last weekend when I should have been grading ). The second point is a translation issue (is that from the NIV?), the first is--well, I don't know what to call it, but that's not how the Talmudic commentaries frame the issue where fetal status is concerned. Anyway, I probably can't get back here for a couple days, but if you want, I would be glad to pick this back up when I return. If you think that is worthwhile, let me know; if not, just say nothing and I'll assume we've all moved on to whatever next topic.

Thanks for helping keep an intense discussion civil.

~Peace

 

[BorderGirl]

The second point is a translation issue (is that from the NIV?),

I believe it is.

There is one passage in the Bible that seems to touch specifically on the issue of abortion. In Exodus 21:22-25 we read:

'If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.' (NIV).

The interesting point here is that it is only if the woman dies from her injuries that murder is deemed to have taken place. The premature birth (abortion) of the baby is not condemned by the maxim 'Do not murder' given a few moments earlier.
But one could argue that the phrase, 'she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury' means the baby survived.

"By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have any responsibility for the child he has brought into the world......So abortion leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want."
Mother Teresa, National Prayer Breakfast (February 3, 1994)

 

[BorderGirl]

Thanks for helping keep an intense discussion civil.

Ditto---thanks!

I thought this was cool: enjoy.

"It is right and proper that marks of honour should be paid to worth of any kind, if there be no special reason to the contrary, and we are obliged to honour those who stand in any relation of superiority to ourselves. First and foremost, we must honour God by worshipping Him as our first beginning and last end, the infinite source of all that we have and are. We honour the angels and saints on account of the gifts and graces bestowed on them by God. We honour our parents, from whom we received our earthly being, and to whom we owe our bringing-up and preparation for the battle of life. Our rulers, spiritual and temporal, have a just claim on our honour by reason of the authority over us which they have received from God. We honour the aged for their presumed wisdom, virtue, and experience. We should always honour moral worth wherever we find it, and we may honour the highly talented, those who have been endowed with great beauty, strength, and dexterity, the well-born, and even the rich and powerful for riches and power may, and should, be made the instruments of virtue and well-being."

 

[BorderGirl]

That's how they get their followers to do whatever they say and desire.
Melon

sounds more like an evil cult you found?