Attack at Planned Parenthood Clinic

[Wyrd of Gawd]

You may have a point, Wyrd.

The Klown Kar has been noticeably silent until today.

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/ted-cruz...-shooting/

Ted Cruz first GOP candidate to condemn Friday’s Planned Parenthood shooting

I'm sure that's only because a cop got killed.  If it was a doctor Cruz would be leading the cheers.

Cruz was whining about the cop getting killed. If any of the other dummies open their yaps expect the same.  They give a rat's ass about the other two who got killed and the wounded.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I agree that a person can do what they want with his or her own body. That is why I'm not against the legality of prostitution, drug use, and suicide. But an unborn being is not a body part. She/he is their own self with their own body and their own set of DNA.

[Emphasis added -- Thump]

Not so, until thinking starts. What is a self without a mind to conceive of self? You're equivocating a potential person with an actual person.

You eat animals that are self-aware (assuming that you, like any right person, loves you a good pork chop.) Do you have qualms about that?

[robvalue]

How would the government protect the "rights" of a fetus? The only ways I can think of are to punish people who have been found to have had an abortion, or to imprison pregnant women so that they can't seek an abortion.

I would hope no one would suggest the latter, so what would be a suitable punishment in the eyes of someone who wants abortion to be illegal?

Or... would it be the person who carried out the abortion who got punished? Or both?

I'm repeating this as no one against abortion appears to have answered

Also, on the issue of rights, I would say nothing and no one inherently has "rights". It's an abstract value judgement. They only have whatever legal protection society deems appropriate. So to just say a fetus has rights is a meaningless phrase, if those "rights" can be completely legally ignored. You could say it should have rights, of course.

[Aractus]

It is not yet known if this shooting at Planned Parenthood was motivated by anti abortion sentiments, or if it was just a random attack. It resulted in the death of 3 people, 1 of them a cop. Being against abortion myself I just want to reiterate that pro life does not end after birth. The point of being pro life is to believe that ALL life is sacred. What this man did was heinous, and if he is anti abortion, hypocritical on top of that. Robert Lewis Dear, you are not on my side.

Condolences to the families.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2...do-springs

What is it with yanks and wanting to label people as either "pro choice" or "pro life"? It's like they believe that only extremes exist.

What gets me though is the way that yanks somehow think that the rest of world shares their narrow-minded world-views. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean you specifically, I just mean this whole debate about having labels and expecting people to side either with "pro choice" or with "pro life".

What's really pathetic is the way that both sides tend to daemonize unplanned pregnancies, but especially-so for the pro-choice movement. There's nothing wrong with unplanned pregnancies being carried to full term, many many people do it. I know one lady who had four kids - they're all adults now and she told me they were all unplanned. So when they talk about reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies what they really mean is unplanned pregnancies in people who are not ready (and won't be ready) for a baby, but for everyone else it isn't a problem.

[robvalue]

I would hope that those against abortion would agree that rape is an exception. That poses a problem, though. A genuine rape victim, who is too scared to press charges because they fear retribution, would now be forced to present her genitals for examination in order to not go to prison for aborting the child she never asked for. And as we all know, rape is a hard thing to prove. If held at knife point, and forced to not fight back, I imagine the results wouldn't look too different from not-particularly-good but consensual sex.

A quick bit of research suggests possible 14 year sentences in Ireland. Jeez. It seems like it's very easy to come up with lose/lose scenarios if abortion is illegal, with generally much higher stakes than if it is.

Things would be different if we weren't already ridiculously overpopulated to the point where people are starving to death.

[Joods]

I have some questions for you on this point then. Please take all the time you need to marinate on the value of the human life that is capable of thought. 

I hope you don't mind if I answer a few of these:

Where do you stand on the issue of pregnancy resulting in a rape? Sexual intercourse in this case is NOT wanted. It is a violation of another's personal space. Not to mention, it's illegal. 

As with all these issues, the fact that you will always run into is that there are two people involved in any of these situations, two humans, and both have rights. The rights of one of the humans might conflict with the rights of the other. For instance, the right to life of the fetus might conflict with the right of the woman to do what she wants with her own body, if she wants to abort it. In these conflicts, I side with the right which is more important, and in this case, the right to life pretty much trumps all other rights, because without it, all other rights are easily taken away.

So, you actually expect a rape victim to carry a product of rape to full term, to give birth to it and then what? Larger issues could result. Let's say she knew her attacker, pressed charges and he was found guilty. HIS parents now decide that because THEY have a grandchild, they want some sort of rights. They sue the mother. Remember she's been the victim in all of this because her attacker forced himself on her. You have a woman who has a rape child, a child who will forever serve as a reminder of what happened to her. Could she give the baby up for adoption? Sure she could, but that baby is half of herself. To go that route could just be as easily as painful because she's giving up a part of herself. However, in the extreme early stages of such a pregnancy, where she hasn't heard a heart beat or felt movement, knowing such a thing was a product of rape, would be easier to let go of so as not to serve as a reminder or cause resentment or more pain. 

Where do you stand on a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body? 

 I'm for it, of course, however if you think these rights don't have limits, you are mistaken. I, for instance, do not have a right to use my fist to punch someone. Neither, I believe, does a mother have the right to terminate her own child's life.

You are comparing apples to oranges here. Punching someone isn't a lifetime commitment. If I had cancer and found out that I was pregnant and the only way to save myself would be to go through chemo and/or radiation, but in the process, I would have to terminate my pregnancy, you're damn right I would choose to terminate. Especially if I have other children, who are already living, that need their mother (me). This goes back to that line of thinking about the lives that are already living vs a zygote who can't talk or process any sort of rational thought because it hasn't the mouth or the brains yet to do so. 

How comfortable would you be with having your government tell you what you can and cannot do with your private parts?

Very comfortable, if done for the right reasons. In fact, the government already does tell me what I cannot do with my private parts: it's illegal to piss in public. I'm fine with that; I understand why it's illegal.

Again, this is like comparing an apple to an orange. I realize that you are not of the female variety so I can sort of understand why you would think this, however, you choosing to piss in public is a far stretch from a woman choosing to terminate a pregnancy. For one, I wouldn't want my small children seeing your wanker being displayed in public for all to see. Second, from a common sense standpoint, they do make toilets to pee in. If there isn't one around, hold it in or pee before you leave the house. If you're camping - trees! : Of course the government has laws set in place for certain things that people can and can't do with their body parts. Those are common sense laws because apparently, somewhere down the line someone forgot to use their common sense. But said government does not have the right to force a woman to enter into an 18 year commitment. Especially if the government is not willing to step up and put in the financial responsibility to raise said commitment. Nor should my taxes go to raise that commitment, one that I did not ask for. In addition, the government isn't going to have to deal with stretch marks, labor pains, nausea or any of the other things that come with being pregnant. 

What if it was a 13 year old female who got impregnated by a relative via sexual abuse?

Again, as unfortunate as that scenario is, if the fetus is viable and wouldn't harm the mother, it still has a right to life.

Not in this case it doesn't. If a father rapes his daughter and the end result is pregnancy, that baby is a result of inbreeding, which raises all sorts of health issues right there. The abuse is traumatic enough. Putting a young teenager through a pregnancy which not only serves as a reminder of the abuse but forcing that child to undergo all of the stresses a pregnancy carries is just wrong. The day I gave birth to my oldest, who is now 20, I found out there was a TEN year old in the next room also giving birth. Ten. She was still a baby herself. Ten. My heart broke for her. If her parents didn't have her adopt the baby out, guess who gets stuck raising that baby? HER parents do. How is that fair to anyone, including the baby? 

What if you were on birth control and it failed? Would you still demand that the woman have the baby? A baby that wasn't planned or that she couldn't financially afford to care for, hence the reason for the birth control.

Yes, because couples should be aware that birth control is not 100% effective. If you absolutely don't want to get pregnant, don't have sex. There will always be a risk otherwise. I'm supportive of adoption, of state support for poor families.

While I agree that birth control is not 100% effective and the best alternative is not to have sex in the first place, this all comes down to the fact that there are so many factors that are not being taken into consideration in each of these scenarios. We can argue all day until the sun comes up about this issue, but at the end of the day, the woman still has the right to choose. Since a man is not capable of carrying a baby let alone going through and giving birth, I can clearly see how there would be a strong differing of opinion in each of these situations. However, forcing women who are victims of abuse, to have to go through 9 months of carrying a child, giving birth to it is traumatic enough without the risk of having further trauma placed on them once the child is born. They now have to choose between raising the unwanted result or adoption and those two things aren't as easy to decide on as one might think. It's not a fair situation to either mother or child. It's not fair to ask the mother to live with guilt and shame for the rest of her life either, or to ask her to die (if that's the situation) so that her unborn child can live.  


I put my responses in red because my tablet was acting a fool and I was too tired to try and fix it all.

[Edwardo Piet]

@ Tibs...

How old does a fetus have to be before you consider it a "human"? Do you consider a bunch of cells human?

And what has "human" got to do with it? Isn't that speciesism? Doesn't the same equally apply to animal fetuses? Surely it can only be when the fetus is able to experience as much or more pain and suffering than the mother would if she didn't abort? I think I'm against super late abortions whereby the fetus is almost being born... because by that stage it is less of a fetus and more of a "baby", surely the question has nothing to do with whether the fetus is "human" or not (let's not succumb to speciesism) but instead has everything to do with whether the fetus is a baby yet, or alive yet, or conscious yet, or capable of suffering yet, and not just a bunch of cells.

Are you against stem cell research? When the sperm meets the egg do you consider that a human? Why do you care about it being a "human" rather than being a conscious creature as opposed to a bunch of cells? To only care if it is "human" is surely speciesism?

[robvalue]

Wait, Tibs thinks a rape victim has no right to termination? In that case, does she get a lesser punishment for abortion, or the same?

Regarding science, it has nothing to say about morality. Science helps you achieve goals, it cannot tell you what those goals should be.

[Edwardo Piet]

Oh and @ Tibs... what are your thoughts on fetuses with conditions that they cannot survive outside the womb? Would you rather they were born anyway, left to be stillborn, or would you rather they were aborted earlier before the baby was fully developed? Would you allow them to be fully grown and stillborn causing needless suffering to both because every "human" deserves to be born?

Should this really be about the "right" of "humans" to be born or should is be about the ethical issue of mitigating suffering, which applies to all conscious creatures not just humans? (But it certainly doesn't apply to a bunch of cells).

[Joods]

Then we also have the whole "morning after pill" debate. What about rape victims who go to the ER and are not only subjected to a rape kit, but who are also given shots to guard against possible STDs as well as a morning after pill to prevent pregnancy.

Mind you, those are given out in those cases, however, here in the US, the morning after pill is now available in most pharmacies and you don't need a script for them. But I would honestly like to hear what the opinions are, about the pill, from those who are dead set against abortion in any situation.