2008 White House "Power Rankings" - Republican Candidates

[jterrell]

Originally Posted by Danny White

I really don't see much of a difference between killing that one minute old "baby" and aborting a 20 week old "fetus" ... so that is my answer to you.

This to me is the crux of this issue.

While we can debate all day as to what constitutes murder or the beginning of life I can point out a significant difference here.

A 20 week old fetus is not surviving on its own and in fact is surviving based on a host.
A week old baby is surviving on its own or using some medical equipment.

Every political position offers some contradictions. All any of us can do is try to weigh things as best possible in forming our judgments.

I am pro-choice but not in favor of late-term abortions unless the woman's health is at risk. I also except whatever policy we institute we need to accept the consequences of. If our non-Hispanic community began to disavow abortion as readily as the bulk of our Hispanic citizenry does then are we prepared for that population explosion? Are we prepared to fund the young, oft-times unmarried, uneducated(at this point)mothers and their children? Most of the most staunch pro-life folks are not ready at all to accept any responsibility there. We have to think positions through to their logical conclusions. No point is a single point with no effect ever. Everything is causal in some sense.

[Danny White]

Originally Posted by jterrell

This to me is the crux of this issue.

While we can debate all day as to what constitutes murder or the beginning of life I can point out a significant difference here.

A 20 week old fetus is not surviving on its own and in fact is surviving based on a host.
A week old baby is surviving on its own or using some medical equipment.

Excellent! I'm glad you raised this.

OK, now how about a 21 week old fetus? There are a few of those who have survived.

And since 24 weeks is generally considered medically viable... is it too much to ask a woman in her 20th week to wait another month or rather than terminating that child's life?

The dangerous thing about drawing the line here is that a 20 week old is well on his/her way to becoming a fully-viable life.

[burmafrd]

I totally agree that many of the anti abortion types do not make the proper connection or do anything about the unwanted children. However I must also point out the virtual total disregard of the pro abortion types of possibilities of adoption and the like. As far as I am concerned no abortion should take place unless there is SERIOUS (not just inconvienence) consequences for the health of the mother. Frankly all too many abortions are strictly that- that the baby is not convienent at that time. Look at the examples of girls who happen to have Midol or the like with them and are worked over because of the moronic "zero tolerance on drug use" crap. yet the same people who vote for that garbage see no problem with that same girl having an abortion. How bizarre is that? Not to mention that as has been mentioned it takes TWO people to start the process, yet one of them supposedly has no rights at all.
Abortion should never have been a federal matter- it should have been left up to the states. Frankly, I think abortion has no business in courts at all.
But it has been and will be in our society.

[silverbear]

Originally Posted by Danny White

I really don't see much of a difference between killing that one minute old "baby" and aborting a 20 week old "fetus" ... so that is my answer to you.

IOW, make 'em have their babies, damn the consequences... but as others have noted, once they're born, you right to lifers seem to disappear on 'em...

If that's the way you feel, you should be down there adopting one or two of those unwanted children that you've forced to be born...

This has been a highly reasonable discussion between two differing viewpoints, and I'm afraid that what I have to say next will come off as offensive, but I'd like you to know I'm not flaming you, I just can't think of any milder way to say it:

Most of the anti-abortion crowd are utter hypocrites... they strenuously object to fetuses being aborted, but they are most assuredly not anywhere in sight once that fetus joins us on this planet... in order for your stance to be morally consistent, it is morally imperative that you do something about the CONSEQUENCES of your hard-line drawn in the sand...

Understand I mean the generic "you" and "your" here, rather than a personal attack... for all I know, you might have adopted an unwanted child, in which case I'd cede you the moral high ground...

I also have the urge to ask you about your stance on the death penalty, it seems many of you on the right have a rather inconsistent stance on the two issues-- you don't want fetuses aborted, but have no problems at all with putting a convicted felon to death...

Which is ironic since once again, many of your worst sociopaths, your worst offenders against humanity, got that way as a result of being unloved and unwanted as babies...

[silverbear]

Originally Posted by Mavs Man

Both participants who had sex knew what the consequences could be.

Yes, the need for abortion would all but disappear if only people would start acting responsibly in their sex lives...

And how many million years have we been trying to get THAT to happen?? Have YOU never done anything irresponsible in your sex life??

We hear the case that if it saves but one life, enacting [fill in the blank] safety precaution is worth it. Yet we do not allow these kids a chance at life, even if but one can rise above it and make a life for themselves. Whose decision is that to make? The survival rate of premature births has been pushed back earlier and earlier with more advanced medical techniques and research - where do we draw the line? Does that line change as babies are able to survive earlier and earlier births?

Yup, for me it would... but for some curious reason, I don't recall reading too much about the minimum gestation time necessary to survive outside the womb becoming significantly less...

As to what that minimum gestation time would be, I frankly don't know, never having felt the need to research the subject... I seriously doubt that abortion will ever be a personal issue in my life, having gotten through the first 55 years of it without having to avail myself (obviously, I mean some lady friend of mine) of those services...

[silverbear]

Originally Posted by jterrell

I am pro-choice but not in favor of late-term abortions unless the woman's health is at risk.

That's my position as well...

I also except whatever policy we institute we need to accept the consequences of.

I'd suggest it be a law that a woman cannot seek a second abortion unless she consents to mandatory sterilization... if she doesn't want kids, but wants to continue having unprotected sex, she should not be allowed to use abortion as an alternative form of birth control... one "mistake", OK; two mistakes, snip the ol' tubes...

Are we prepared to fund the young, oft-times unmarried, uneducated(at this point)mothers and their children? Most of the most staunch pro-life folks are not ready at all to accept any responsibility there.

This is true, most of the staunch pro-life folks tend to gather toward the right end of the political spectrum, and that crowd purely hates funding social programs... it would seem to me that if they really love those unborn children they're claiming to "protect", then they should be liberals, in favor of providing a societal safety net for those unloved and unwanted children...

We have to think positions through to their logical conclusions.

Well, to be fair, virtually everybody in the pro-life crowd seems to think that human life starts at the moment of conception, so any abortion is murder... it's hard to think things through if that's your starting point, murder is pretty black and white... if I believed as they do on this one, if I thought life starts at the moment 1 cell becomes 2, then I'd probably be on their side...

But I'm sorry, 2 cells is not a human life... neither is 4, or 8, or 16, or 32... neither is the proverbial "tadpole"... to me, it's only at that instant that a fetus is theoretically viable independent of the mother that it becomes a human life...

[silverbear]

Originally Posted by Danny White

Excellent! I'm glad you raised this.

OK, now how about a 21 week old fetus? There are a few of those who have survived.

And since 24 weeks is generally considered medically viable... is it too much to ask a woman in her 20th week to wait another month or rather than terminating that child's life?

A woman should certainly have made up her mind on this question by then...

The dangerous thing about drawing the line here is that a 20 week old is well on his/her way to becoming a fully-viable life.

"Well on his/her way" isn't good enough... but I would say that a woman certainly ought to be able to make up her mind about whether or not to have an abortion by the end of her first trimester... I wouldn't have a problem with a law dictating that, so long as the proper exceptions existed (the health of the mother, or the discovery later in the pregnancy that the fetus is badly deformed, unlikely to ever have any kind of reasonable quality of life)...

But what we're getting to here is now a discussion of what limits to place on abortions... I am not opposed to a reasonable set of restrictions on that... if a woman decides she wants an abortion, she should have the right to have one, but she should make that decision early in the pregnancy...

Which I believe is the way the vast majority of women who avail themselves of that service do it... somehow, I don't see women who don't want the baby in the first place choosing to carry it for five or six months first, going through all the hormone-driven changes a woman suffers through in the early pregnancy for no reason...

[silverbear]

Originally Posted by burmafrd

I totally agree that many of the anti abortion types do not make the proper connection or do anything about the unwanted children.

However I must also point out the virtual total disregard of the pro abortion types of possibilities of adoption and the like.

I know there are already more unwanted children in orphanages than there are would-be parents to adopt them... is there anything else I need to know??

As far as I am concerned no abortion should take place unless there is SERIOUS (not just inconvienence) consequences for the health of the mother.

And as far as I'm concerned, neither you nor my government has any business dictating that to any woman... especially not my government...

Abortion should never have been a federal matter- it should have been left up to the states. Frankly, I think abortion has no business in courts at all.
But it has been and will be in our society.

I agree with this... too bad you'll never see me say it, LOL...

[Mavs Man]

Originally Posted by silverbear

Yes, the need for abortion would all but disappear if only people would start acting responsibly in their sex lives...

And how many million years have we been trying to get THAT to happen?? Have YOU never done anything irresponsible in your sex life??

I was a virgin when I married; we've used birth control regularly the last two years. I would prefer to wait a few more years before growing our family, but I am not naive enough to see this method as 100% foolproof. But that's one of the many benefits of marriage - being married covers the "oops" moment when it happens. We'll be just fine.

I have a different perspective on this subject than most people. I'm sure many if not most of you grew up in a home with a mom and a dad and brothers and sisters. My parents dated for about a month and then I 'happened'. My mom didn't want to marry, so my dad moved on and less than a year later did the same thing with someone else, married her and had three kids. My mom only had a high school diploma when I was born, but she went back to college and got a degree. Still, I spent most of my childhood in a trailer home. I left high school for college when I turned 16, got two degrees, and married young. One of my half-sisters from my dad's other marriage, who grew up in a two parent home, ended up having a kid at 19 (she was kind of a wildchild until then - that helped her grow up fast; she's doing well now). Of the cousins I grew up with and my half-siblings, only myself and a cousin of mine went to a 4 year college and graduated. I don't say this as a pat of the back, only to say that my family is not one where all the kids are expected to go to an Ivy league program and graduate with honors.

Point being, I could have made a lot of excuses growing up, but I always knew I had a choice in my life, so I stayed out a trouble and made good grades in school, in the attempt to make something of myself, not limited to where I had come from, knowing that in the end only I could hold myself back. I'm sure my mom was presented with a difficult decision when she found out about me, and I could have easily been another statistic, but luckily that was not the case.

So when someone makes the case of an unwanted child being better off aborted, I won't deny that it strikes a nerve.

Originally Posted by silverbear

Yup, for me it would... but for some curious reason, I don't recall reading too much about the minimum gestation time necessary to survive outside the womb becoming significantly less...

As to what that minimum gestation time would be, I frankly don't know, never having felt the need to research the subject... I seriously doubt that abortion will ever be a personal issue in my life, having gotten through the first 55 years of it without having to avail myself (obviously, I mean some lady friend of mine) of those services...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/me...es/3256615.stm

[Mavs Man]

Originally Posted by silverbear

I know there are already more unwanted children in orphanages than there are would-be parents to adopt them... is there anything else I need to know??

Adoption services are something I have no expertise on, but if it is truly a case of orphaned children >>> would-be-adoptee parents then why are so many children adopted from places like China and Russa? Wouldn't it be easier to adopt a child in the states, unless perhaps it was red tape getting in the way of the process, not demand?

[Danny White]

Originally Posted by silverbear

IOW, make 'em have their babies, damn the consequences... but as others have noted, once they're born, you right to lifers seem to disappear on 'em...

If that's the way you feel, you should be down there adopting one or two of those unwanted children that you've forced to be born...

This has been a highly reasonable discussion between two differing viewpoints, and I'm afraid that what I have to say next will come off as offensive, but I'd like you to know I'm not flaming you, I just can't think of any milder way to say it:

Most of the anti-abortion crowd are utter hypocrites... they strenuously object to fetuses being aborted, but they are most assuredly not anywhere in sight once that fetus joins us on this planet... in order for your stance to be morally consistent, it is morally imperative that you do something about the CONSEQUENCES of your hard-line drawn in the sand...

[View Full Quote]Understand I mean the generic "you" and "your" here, rather than a personal attack... for all I know, you might have adopted an unwanted child, in which case I'd cede you the moral high ground...

I also have the urge to ask you about your stance on the death penalty, it seems many of you on the right have a rather inconsistent stance on the two issues-- you don't want fetuses aborted, but have no problems at all with putting a convicted felon to death...

Which is ironic since once again, many of your worst sociopaths, your worst offenders against humanity, got that way as a result of being unloved and unwanted as babies...

Bear, in reading your position on the issue, I think if most pro-choice politicians were of your mindset, we'd be able to make some progress on the issue.

Unfortunately, due to the influence of the abortion lobby, there is a powerful bloc in Congress that is unwilling to have even the most modest of restrictions.

To answer your challenge, however, I think you're taking the right's skepticism towards the welfare state, and projecting that to say that we don't care about kids who are born into poverty to to unwed mothers, etc.

I'd disagree with you there (although I do agree that we could always do more and should strive to do so).

But just because we don't want to rely on government to take care of the problem, doesn't mean that we're doing nothing about it.

Among the Catholic church alone, there are hundreds of adoption services and crisis pregnancy centers to aid young mothers in crisis. Their help most certainly does not end at birth. There are also hundreds of non-denominational charities out there that do similar work such as Care Net. Care Net has over 1000 centers across the U.S. and they help over 350,000 women every year! These are all organizations that operate thanks to the voluntary donations of concerned Americans.

And those are just the organizations.

Privately, hundreds of thousands of Americans (pro-life and pro-choice alike, I suspect) act as foster and adoptive parents every year. Once again, I'm sure we could all do more, but to say that pro-lifers don't do anything once the child is born is absolutely false. Family members of mine have acted as foster parents. I know among my church, there are scores of people who take in children in need... and no, it's not just "perfect little white babies" that they're adopting... it's children with disabilities, children from economically impoverished areas, children from third-world countries.

Again, more needs to be done, especially if all the children that would have been killed through abortion were to suddenly be available for adoption... but to say that pro-lifers are hypocrites and are doing nothing after the birth is simply not accurate IMO.

As for me on the issue of the death penalty.

First, I'll say that I don't think it's hypocritical to argue that an innocent child should be protected while a violent criminal who has killed should himself be put to death. That seems like a pretty stark distinction to me.

That said, I'm personally inclined against the death penalty.

I hesitate to give the government the power to take the life of its citizens. And I believe it's perhaps an even more effective punishment to incarcerate someone for the rest of their life. Although I would make sure that such people aren't given cushy accommodations and that they are put to hard work to make up their debt to society.

But I'm not going to condemn someone who's pro-life on abortion but pro-death penalty. I see them as completely separate issues with a separate set of arguments for each.

[Danny White]

Originally Posted by Mavs Man

Point being, I could have made a lot of excuses growing up, but I always knew I had a choice in my life, so I stayed out a trouble and made good grades in school, in the attempt to make something of myself, not limited to where I had come from, knowing that in the end only I could hold myself back. I'm sure my mom was presented with a difficult decision when she found out about me, and I could have easily been another statistic, but luckily that was not the case.

So when someone makes the case of an unwanted child being better off aborted, I won't deny that it strikes a nerve.

Great story! I'm glad your mom made the right decision as well!

The world is full of "unwanted" babies who went on to do great things.

Sure, environment and upbringing makes a difference, but we ultimately make our own choices in life and can accomplish much, even with meager beginnings. That's what makes life so great and so precious.

[Sasquatch]

Originally Posted by Danny White

Unfortunately, due to the influence of the abortion lobby, there is a powerful bloc in Congress that is unwilling to have even the most modest of restrictions.

Partial-birth Abortion ban in 2003?

[jterrell]

Originally Posted by Danny White

Excellent! I'm glad you raised this.

OK, now how about a 21 week old fetus? There are a few of those who have survived.

And since 24 weeks is generally considered medically viable... is it too much to ask a woman in her 20th week to wait another month or rather than terminating that child's life?

The dangerous thing about drawing the line here is that a 20 week old is well on his/her way to becoming a fully-viable life.

I do understand you here. And you really outline the point well.
For me that line has to be 24 weeks if it is the medically accepted number. Whatever is considered medically viable.

Until a fetus is medically viable then it isn't. We simply have to have some distinction else I will be arrested next time I send some kids down the drain in the shower.... my apologies for vulgarity but that is perhaps the best ever monty python song(all sperm are sacred...)

[Danny White]

Originally Posted by jterrell

I do understand you here. And you really outline the point well.
For me that line has to be 24 weeks if it is the medically accepted number. Whatever is considered medically viable.

Until a fetus is medically viable then it isn't. We simply have to have some distinction else I will be arrested next time I send some kids down the drain in the shower.... my apologies for vulgarity but that is perhaps the best ever monty python song(all sperm are sacred...)

OK... we're starting to find some common ground to come together on. I certainly don't want you arrested for spanking the old monkey.

Since we agree we need some distinction, what's wrong with using conception as the starting line? I'd even be willing to go with: once the fertilized egg has implanted on uterus, which would still allow for almost every kind of contraception, including the morning after pill I believe (but not RU-486).