Republicans block bill to shield people who travel out of state for abortions

No doubt. It is not in the bible. In fact, as far as I can tell, the debate was primarily a philosophical debate in Greek circles that was carried on in Europe by monks. Churches didn't decide on a position until the 19th or 20th century.

 

Christian churches did have a position on it, life begins at the first breath. It wasn't until the 1970s that some Christian churches started to push for life begins at conception, and they did so because of political pressure rather than any new scriptural interpretation. There was new scriptural interpretation, but it was arrived at after the new position, to provide support for it.

[edit: clarified that I was speaking of Christian churches, other religions, and many of the nonreligious, have believed life begins at conception for much longer, but that belief didn't appear in Christianity until recently]

 

The frustration with pro lifers such as yourself from pro choicers like me is you will talk about “human life” and automatically assume it is equivalent to all other forms of human life. A few things to ponder:

1. Developmentally a fetus less than around 13 weeks old has no cognition, doesn’t feel pain and maybe the size of a peanut. Yes it has a heart beat but billions of creatures on the planet have a heartbeat. But whatever the case, a 12 week old fetus is nothing like a post viable fetus

2. As societies we don’t have universal right to life. We legally choose to take some lives and intentionally don’t save others. The right to life is essentially what we choose the right to be

3 The fact is most people don’t view an early miscarriage the same as the death of a child. They just don’t. We don’t have funerals for 10 week miscarriages. Taking account this combined with #2 and #1 above makes a fetus different than a child, and the balance of a woman’s right to privacy reasonably supercedes the rights of a 10’week old fetus, but not an 8 month old fetus.

Nobody wants to talk about it but having a million more unwanted babies a year would have an impact. There aren’t enough people to adopt 1 million babies every year. Government expenditures would increase and crime and poverty would likely increase decades into the future.

World wide there are 40’million abortions every year. Contemplate the disaster it would be to have them all come to term.

Personally I think 15 week abortion bans are reasonable as long as there are reasonable exceptions for certain circumstances. That is essentially what most of Europe has. But as long as people such yourself form opinions based upon either religious views or fairly esoteric notions of the rights of olive size fetuses, with near zero regard for the rights and circumstances of the mother and her family, people like me are at some level going to resent people like you. Having a young adult bipolar daughter has really amplified my feelings on this issue. While I love my daughter I wouldn’t wish some of the stuff we have been through on anybody. An scenario of her having a child would be an utter disaster. She isn’t capable of raising one, she is on strong psych meds that would likely affect the fetus, to go off those drugs would make her violent and suicidal, and now there are illegal drug addiction issues too. Now Republicans are saying I can’t take her to another state for her to get an abortion without being sued or charged with a crime. The situation is untenable and if it were easy to do I’d take her an move, but my wife has a job and there are other local area connections.

Im a person that once was a Republican and would likely again support a Mitt Romney style Republican, but that will never happen with illegal abortion. Their stance on this, and their more and more extreme stance on this (no exceptions, criminalizing helping family members) I view as Taliban like behaviors and causes me to literally HATE the Republican Party right now.

 

Catholic Church established conception in the 19th Century, I believe (obviously, Catholic monks were highly involved in the debate for centuries and many did not take that position).

But yes, in the US, it was largely driven by the notion that women free to have sex was the root of moral decay rather than any sort of direct biblical evidence.

 

I can see why views like mine would be frustrating to you, although I probably haven’t elucidated them enough for you to fully understand them.

Sometimes I agree with your posts and sometimes I disagree. There was a recent thread a week or so ago were your posts were absolutely brilliant. On this topic, it seems to me that perhaps you’re reacting more emotionally than normal. And from how you’ve described your family situation, I can see why that might be so. I don’t fault you for that.

Regarding your points, it is true that a developing fetus is not exactly the same as a post-birth human. But in the same way, a newborn is not the same as a fully functioning adult.

While many people might not suffer from a miscarriage the way they suffer from the death of a child, at the same time they don’t treat a miscarriage like it is nothing more than a lost tooth.

I have pushed back on some pro-life people who want to focus on how many consumers we’ve lost through abortion. I do not think that should be the basis of the arguments. At the same time, the thought of using abortion for population control scares me. It’s not so great a leap from that idea to eliminating post-birth people because they are undesirable or unuseful to society. Please do not think that I am accusing you of having those same kinds of ideas. I am not. But it’s not so great a step for someone to take that idea of population control and extrapolate it to the next level.

My heart goes out to you very sincerely for what you have to deal with for your children. I can hardly even comprehend it. Being a good parent under those circumstances makes you a hero in my eyes and regardless of our differences on topics and threads, I respect and encourage you in your role as a father to these children, whom Jesus referred to as the least of these. Caring for them is a righteous act.

By the way, I think you said in another thread that you live in the Dallas area. I spent the first part of my childhood in Richardson before we moved to Florida.

 

If you are pro-life, do you ever consider the impact on the woman who is pregnant and doesn't want to be? Why does her life forced to take the backseat to the life of the fetus? The answer is, it shouldn't, and even if the law says it should, it has never stopped women from getting "back alley" abortions. From a pragmatic view, we shouldn't be going back to a time where major hospitals had full septic wards, filled with women returning from the "back alley."

This is why compromise is necessary. With no compromise, not only do you get back alleys, but also situations like the one in C. America where female teenage suicide is the highest. Why? Because abortion is illegal, and pregnant teens feel they have no other recourse.

This is also why pro-choice see the issue as one as control over women. They are humans with full rights, and their rights should take precedence. If not, you are forcing a woman to carry to term regardless of her wishes. Even if your motive is pure and just want to save the babies, the reality is the pro-life stance removes the autonomy of women with an unwanted pregnancy.

 

Well yes, it is an emotional subject. But it is a very real scenario. I’ve always been pro choice but prior to kids it wasn’t a hot button issue for me. Now it is real life.

I’m not minimizing the trauma of a miscarriage for some, but it clearly isn’t the same thing. Yes a fetus is different than a baby which is different from an adult, but an adult and a child have common traits-they are viable, and we typically view them as human lives that we greatly grieve. Nobody has said early abortion is a pleasant thing, it is just that you are dealing with a real mother with real rights and real health issues vs a theoretical concept of this olive size fetus with no consciousness or feeling has rights that supersede the mothers rights. It is all about the trade off.

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Population control is not an argument. We don’t advocate killing babies to “save the planet”. Nonetheless, it would be illogical not to evaluate the impact of a change in laws. Putting your head in the sand doesn’t make the impacts go away. Ultimately we end up forcing unwanted fetuses to be brought to term which will ultimately cause more suffering and even deaths among the living. That’s an unavoidable fact. Also there is a strong statistical argument that the US crime drop post 80s was partially due to Roe V Wade. These arguments are not primary arguments for or against, but given the already ambiguous tradeoff that we are already balancing, they could/should tip the scale.

While I appreciate the thoughts and well wishes, they do nothing to address our real life issues and impacts that your values force upon us.

This is one of those issues where you have people who just don’t comprehend what some people have to go through, yet in their comfortable ignorance still feel they can sit on their perch and dictate how we should proceed. Forgive me if that makes me less than charitable towards such people.

 

Do you believe there should be any time after which an abortion cannot legally be done?

What responsibilities does this autonomous woman have? What obligations? This rarely gets talked about. Every time a woman has consensual sex she knows there is a chance of becoming pregnant. Do you believe there is no responsibility in choosing to have sex?

By the way, don't interpret this to be that I don't think the man has responsibilities and obligations. I despise men who casually have sex then shirk all responsibilities if the woman becomes pregnant.

 

What exactly does this have to do with the issue - the issue is the right of the fetus vs woman’s right to manage her body and health. Anytime I hear the above argument trotted out it makes me think these are religious types who oppose sinful sex and view having a baby as punishment for and a deterrent to sinful sex.

 

Viability is a good marker. That happens around 20 weeks. Again, it's 15 weeks in most Euro countries, and that works too.

And let's be honest, it's not just every time a woman who can get pregnant who has sex consensually, she can get pregnant. It's every time she has sex, regardless of consent. Only accounts for a small number of reported abortions, but then how many rapes go unreported? More than anyone wants to admit.

A woman should be in control of her own body. Her obligations should be to herself first and foremost. We wouldn't force anyone to undergo surgery for an organ transplant even though it might be the only way to save a life. In that same vein, we shouldn't force a woman to carry to term if it's against her wishes.

What we should do is concentrate better on education so that less women find themselves in a situation where they are pregnant and do not want to be. Comprehensive sex education cut down teen pregnancies by a significant amount. No unwanted pregnancies, and no abortions for convenience. Still wouldn't be 100% effective, but that's where our energy should be focused. And not on abstinence only education, which fails to reach its goals, but comprehensive sex ed that covers birth control, STDs, etc.

History shows, where there is demand, regardless of legality, someone will fill it with supply. See illicit drugs, alcohol during Prohibition, or back alleys before Roe. If you really want to address the problem, lower the demand.

 

The article about Colorado's success leaves out that the Colorado GOP got the program shut down then pregnancies, and abortions, went back up in their state. You would think that if reducing abortions was the actual goal, they wouldn't work so hard against things proven to reduce abortions. Leading one to think that maybe the goal isn't really to reduce abortions but something else.

 

Did I say anything about sin? Not a single person in my circle of Christian friends believes that a woman should be forced to carry a baby to term to punish her for having sex. If you think that then you were calling up a prejudicial stereotype.

I think pro-choice people come up with these stereotypes because they just cannot grasp the idea that someone might really and truly care about the life of the unborn child. Because they do not see the unborn child as a human being, they have to ascribe other reasons to pro-life people. And when they imagine other reasons, they always choose the most nefarious reasons that they can think of. It must be because they want to dominate women. It must be because they want to punish sinful sex. It must be because they want to create a theocracy. It must be because … fill in the next prejudicial stereotype. People are pro life for one reason — to protect the lives of unborn children.

 

Aren’t you contradicting yourself? You say it’s up to the woman and she should not be forced to carry the baby to full term. But you are also good with time limits after which a woman cannot abort, thereby forcing the woman to carry the baby to full term.

 

I imagine his response would be that until viability is enough time to make a decision. After that, it should be up to the states, as long as they have an exception for the health of the woman.

 

It would be easier for pro-choice people to believe in the altruistic motives of pro-life people if they were all like Tilly. In other words, the vast majority of them didn't stop seeing those lives as worth protecting once it's a "born child" instead of an "unborn child."

 

Please direct me to one single post of mine that indicates that I do not care about children after they’re born.

 

I didn't accuse you of anything. Although, if you support the Republican Party, you're indeed supporting the people who seek to gut the social safety nets that protect "born children" (and oppose the expansion of them to better and more expansively protect "born children").

 

Do you support the expansion of Medicaid in Florida? If you don't live in Florida would you support it if you did?

 

Yes

 

I am contradicting myself. But I see room for compromise and empathize with the pro-life position. 15 weeks with government aid to pay for the procedure is enough time for a woman to make the decision. After, while I think it should be the woman's decision, it's harder to argue the fetus isn't a life. Especially if it's viable.