Right to Life or Right to Choose?

[vtwahoo]

Besides, if they want an abortion, they will get it one way or another.

Quoted for truth.

[Sortep]

honestly i believe america needs more abortions... but then again what do i know

[Quest]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/05/15/news/phils.php

being stuck between a rock and a hard place: living in poverty in a heavily catholic society and seeking a cheap way to get abortion = ugly conclusion.

[psi29a]

http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/03/1809859.php

here ya go...

"To me, it is now a question of sovereignty." President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, says "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."

South Dakota's abortion law
Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji) 3/20/2006
© 2006 Native American Journalists Foundation, Inc.

Now that is what I call plan b.

[raziel]

If it were allowed, it would be more common, and more efficient. sounds cold and calculating to me. While coat hangers and such are pretty grotesque, it won't be as many.

[Quest]

http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/03/1809859.php

here ya go...

"To me, it is now a question of sovereignty." President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, says "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."

South Dakota's abortion law
Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji) 3/20/2006
© 2006 Native American Journalists Foundation, Inc.

Now that is what I call plan b.

thats a cool last name! i digress.

yeah, if the bureaucracy will not heed the masses then who can blame them if they disregard the rule of law?

[Ellen]

Okay, since we can't rid ourselves of rapists and pedophiles as of yet. I am of the firm belief that the child/baby/fetus/embryo is under the full care of the mother until such time that the child/baby/fetus/embryo can take care of itself. I don't believe it is in our right to judge what the mother does, because it is her decision, her conscience, her body. If her decision is wrong, she will face retribution in her own life, may it be her own guilty conscience or some divine wrath. I believe this all based on the fact that the fetus is the mother's responsibility. And if the mother is not of sound mind, then it is the responsibility of the legal caretaker.

[psi29a]

http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/03/1809859.php

here ya go...

"To me, it is now a question of sovereignty." President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, says "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."

South Dakota's abortion law
Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji) 3/20/2006
© 2006 Native American Journalists Foundation, Inc.

Now that is what I call plan b.

thats a cool last name! i digress.

yeah, if the bureaucracy will not heed the masses then who can blame them if they disregard the rule of law?

How do you mean?, Pine Ridge Reservation is a it's own sovereign land. The Federal Government nor the State Government can do anything about it. It isn't crossing state lines, so the FBI can't get involved and Police can't ride onto the Reservation without permission.

[Quest]

you gotta pardon my ignorance.
i am not from around here.
=)

[psi29a]

you gotta pardon my ignorance.
i am not from around here.
=)

No worries, however that was the slap in the face to the federal government (USA), because they can't regulate what goes on in a Reservation.

Of course, if Bush or Congress tries to fuck around with the Reservation (s), I'm marching my 1/8th Native American ass to prevent it. I might land myself at Gitmo.

[Quest]

it must be damn good to have your own land and regulations in america.
thats like the best of all the worlds.

[psi29a]

It came at a price since American expansionism during the 18-19th Centrury killed off a majority of the original inhabitants of the now USA. Guilt is a very powerful thing.

[Quest]

i digress.
yea its powerful but not powerful enough.
if the native american could coin their own money, i think they could be real wealthy in no time.

[Gaiseric]

i digress.
yea its powerful but not powerful enough.
if the native american could coin their own money, i think they could be real wealthy in no time.

They have casinos on the reservations.

[Quest]

i digress.
yea its powerful but not powerful enough.
if the native american could coin their own money, i think they could be real wealthy in no time.

They have casinos on the reservations.

i realise that.
as a sovereign people, they should have the ability to coin their own currency. by doing that they would have multipled their worth. this is a potential that has been limited by the government.

[psi29a]

In the United States, an Indian reservation is land which is managed by a Native American tribe under the United States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs. Because the land is federal territory and Native Americans have limited national sovereignty, there are often legal casinos on reservations.


In Canada, an Indian reserve is a similar institution, although its history is markedly different from that of the reservation in the U.S.

There are about 300 Indian reservations in the United States, meaning not all of the country's 500-plus recognized tribes have a reservation--indeed, some tribes have more than one reservation, others have none. In addition, because of past land sales and allotments, discussed below, some reservations are severely fragmented. Each piece of tribal, trust, and privately held land is a separate enclave. This random mixing of private and public real estate can create significant administrative difficulties.

There are 12 Indian reservations that are larger than the state of Rhode Island (776,960 acres; 3,144 km²) and nine reservations larger than Delaware (1,316,480 acres; 5,327 km²). Reservations are unevenly distributed throughout the country with some states having none.

The government unit with jurisdiction over Indian reservations is the tribal council, rather than federal, state or county governments. Indian reservations often have their own systems of government, which may or may not replicate the forms of government found outside the reservation. That said, some Indian reservations were laid out by the federal government, others were outlined by the states.

At the present time, a slight majority of Native Americans and Native Alaskans live somewhere other than the reservations, often in big western cities like Phoenix, Arizona and Los Angeles, California.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_reservation

[42ndEndOfTheWorld]

First of fall I want to point out that 3 day human embryo i a cluster that consists of 150 cells. Brain of the fly has 100000 cells. So this whole life begins at the moment of conception thing is baloney. Cluster of 150 cells is not a human being, it is merely a potential.
And about those "personal responsibility" folks out there. When someone breaks a leg do you say: "Well since this is your fault just sit there and die, be more responsible next time ". No, even in case a person broke his or her leg by doing something stupid, we help that person.

I want to replay using one text that I found somewhere (it is not copyrighted). Trust me, it is worth reading:

N A never ending effor to educate the ignorant paternalistic pew-lemmings... and even those who are pro-Choice, but are not familiar with the absolutely solid ethical foundation upon which it rests, i offer the following "tome":


WHY all Americans should be concerned about the radical religious right-wing's assault on women, and their fundamental right to choose whether to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. Standing up for abortion rights means you are not only "pro-choice", but vigorously defend equal rights, privacy rights, our bodily integrity and personal autonomy, and vehemetly oppose unwarranted government intrusion into personal reproductive issues. Those who oppose abortion, by necessity, oppose all of the above rights and freedoms, and futher, utterly fail in the most basic test of morality, "The Golden Rule". Instead of dictating to others what you would have them do... if you oppose abortion, then simply don't have one.

It should be obvious that the government, The State, should not be intervening in the most private area of reproductive function. Neither a married couple nor "single female" should be coerced by the "Heavy Hand of The State", in any manner, but should be free to follow the dictates of their conscience. Freedom of Conscience is the ethical foundation of personal morality.



LET'S begin with the absurd proposition that is driving this blind train of false "christian" ideology and is seeking to derail not only the basic rights of women but "leaves reason standing at the station" as well. The pew-lemmings, despite no specific references to abortion in their error-riddled bible, are obssessed with equating the legal and moral status of a fertilized egg (or embryo/fetus) with an adult U.S. citizen! This bald assertion is "prima facie" absurd, yet we hear them parrot the oxymoron, "unborn child" ad nauseum.

HERE is why "it" is neither remotely a "child"... nor an "innocent angel":

1. In the real-world, of course, there are no devils nor supernatural evil and no angels nor supernatural innocence... no evidence of "holy ghosts", lesser gods nor a omnipotent tribal jewish sky-god of the bible. The term "innocent" applied to a non-sentient entity is a complete abstraction, having absolutely no meaning pre-birth and pre-personhood.

2. A fertilized egg has only a 70% chance of survival as 30% of these "unborn children" are "murdered" (to use the bizarre lexicon of the evangelicals) in the basic act of human reproduction, 1/2 of which are recognized clinically as "miscarriages" or spontaneous abortions. Perhaps this is not a good example of their bible-god's "intelligent design"... or perhaps we just have to assume that this sort of "life" is just not valuable to their sky-god. I'm sure the 3rd option is even less palatable to bible-believers: that the tyranical god of the old-testament, is engaging in some bizarre bloodsport.

3. An embryo and early fetus does not even have the possibility for sentience, even on the most primitive level, since synapses in the brain are not even in place until the 13th week of gestation. Of course, 90% of abortions have been performed by that time... and an even higher percentage would be "early terminations", if unfettered access to medically safe and compassionate care were available!

4. A fetus is wholly dependent on the pregnant woman and a intact uterine-placental circulation, and cannot be viable in any legitimate sense, before 22-23 weeks gestation, and only then, with high-tech sustained artificial life-support. The result may be death or survival, and the surviving neonate will likely have serious impairments, not to mention hundreds of thousands of dollars spent utilizing scarce health care resources. There is not even a possiblity of the strawman of "fetal pain" until a minimum of 28 weeks gestation, and then it is still most likely reflexive in nature, and clearly not psychological, which of course, would be the only "pain" that matters.

5. A fertized egg... an embryo or previable fetus do not even remotely satisfy the criteria for personhood, which include, at a minimun for society to embue an entity with legal and moral status:

a. sentience or consciousness
b. capacity to interact with one's environment
c. capacity for communication
d. capacity for rational thought
e. capacity for purposeful behavior
f. capacity to distinguish self from others... or self-idenity
g. and perhaps the context of time, or experience, in order for a real "life" to emerge.

As we can clearly see, an embryo or fetus is not an entity with a "life" in any meaningful sense of the word. It has much more in common with the embryo of any other mammal, for example a pig's appears almost identical to a human's... not to mention that human embryos have vestigial tails (adults have a useless "coccyx") and branchial (gill) slits and paryngeal pouches, since all mammals evolved from fish. If we assign legal personhood status to embryos and fetuses, then The State had better immediately declare that all animals have at least equivalent rights. Chimps, for example, can easily outperform most human toddlers by just about any measure and they, along with dolphins, clearly meet the criteria for personhood, including self-identity and altruism. However, we don't see these embryo-obssessive "pro-lifers" demonstrating for humane treatment of these wonderful, clearly sentient animal-persons!

IT is instructive to contrast the reasoned position of the real biblical authorities, the jews, with the uninformed dogma and the inflammatory rhetoric of the evangelicals. The jews do not accept personhood status of the fetus until birth, which of course makes perfect sense, and is also completely constent with biblical text. Halacha (Jewish law) does define when a fetus becomes a nefesh (person): "...a baby...becomes a full-fledged human being when the head emerges from the womb. Before then, the fetus is considered a 'partial life.' " They recognize the obvious, that the fetus is utterly dependent upon the pregnant woman and compare it's status to any other part of her body. Rashi, the great 12th century commentator on the Bible and Talmud, states clearly of the fetus 'lav nefesh hu--it is not a person.' The Talmud contains the expression 'ubar yerech imo--the fetus is as the thigh of its mother,' i.e., the fetus is deemed to be part and parcel of the pregnant woman's body." This is grounded in Exodus: 21-22, which outlines the Mosaic law in a case where a man is responsible for causing a woman's miscarriage, which kills the fetus. If the woman survives, then only a fine must be paid. However, if the pregnant woman dies, the man pays with his life. Thus "holy scripture" indicates that while the fetus has some modest value, it clearly does not have the status of a person.

ANOTHER ruse used by fundamentalist christians in trying to abridge the rights of adult women, on the altar of their religious dogma, is to claim that fertilize eggs have equal status based on imagined "potential". Again, this is absurd to most rational, fair-minded people, but let's examine it. Clearly, just by arguing an embryo has the potential to become a person, is an obvious admission that the embryo or fetus is, in fact, not a real person. Putting aside the fact that 30% of conceptions are literally flushed down the "celestial toilet" during the process of human reproduction... and that these artificially conceived "micro-persons" are unceremoniously disposed of daily, from fertility clinics around the world... society has never made moral and legal pronouncements based on vague notions of potential, especially when such judgements would restrict the rights of others.

It is also clear that all sperm and eggs have the "potential" to become persons, but no sane person argues for harvesting all eggs from a woman's body or regular "milking" of men's semen, eh? And the mere fact that two teens get drunk and copulate like canines at the Motel 6, does not grant some mysterious super-moral status to the resulting conceptus... nor would any sane person think some celestial sleight-of-hand was at work when the "condom broke" and Bobbie Sue got "knocked-up"!

The potential of the developing embryo has value, but only to the woman or couple involved. The State has no interest in your pregnancies, no matter how unwholesome the circumstances orinept the prospective parents. However, the State should be concerned if it's citizens actually have the means to economically provide for and nuture their genetic offspring (Hint: "planned parenthood"); otherwise, it must assume the burden. This "potential life" may well have had the misfortune of being born, only to suffer daily from abject poverty, malnutrition, and neglect or significant medical illness due to genetic disease or anatomic malformations. Our prisons are literally overflowing with those former-fetuses who now repetatively engage in predatory criminal, maladaptive and violent behaviors. The abusive foster-care system is stretched beyond the braking point, attempting to raise these unwanted troubled children, who were once touted, while in-utero, to have "potential". Our cities have a permenant underclass of these former-embryos and our society has become numb to the plight of the erstwhile institutionalized mentally ill, many of which roam our streets, practically unseen, as non-persons or "homeless people". There are areas of rural America that are like third-world countries, where unplanned pregnancies and the cyle of ignorance, joblessness, hopelessness and poverty seems unending.



NOW, what does our common-sense tell us about reproductive choice. Our basic sense of fairness and emphathy for others dictates that we should all have control over our own bodies: bodily integrity and autonomy. What could be more fundamental than the "right to be left alone" from unwarranted intrusion by The State. Who among us would willingly yield these rights to the capriciousness of Government? Who would argue that the Government has the right to coerce women, against their wills, to become essentially "Incubators for The State"? Exactly where in the U.S. Constitution, a document clearly written with the primary purpose of limiting the reach of the government, does it grant The State this awesome power?

It is absolutely clear that we agree that we should all have these "inalienable" rights, and they are wholly consonant with the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, as stated in the Preamble of the Declaration. It is likewise clear, as the record of jurisprudence indicates, the Right to Privacy and Personal Autonomy are well grounded in the language and intent of the Constitution, and clearly present in the 4th (right to be... "secure in their persons..."), 5th (no person... be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process...") and 14th ("nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.") Amendments, as well as the Penumbra of the Bill of Rights. The revered supreme court Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1916- 39) called the Right of Privacy "the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men".

THE LAW on privacy has a long tradition, extending back to 1891 in the "Union Pacific Railway v. Botsford" case, which defined the obvious right to bodily integrity and personal privacy:"no right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded, by the common law, than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others...".
Later court rulings prefaced on the right to privacy disallowed Government's intrusion into family matters and prohibited coercion of medical treatments. A landmark decsion came in 1965 when the Suprem Court decided the "Griswold v. Connecticut" appeal, involving the dispensing of information and prescriptions for contraception to married couples! The seven justice majority proclaimed: "The present case, then, concerns a relationship lying within the zone of privacy created by several fundamental constitutional guarantees...We deal [in this case] with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights..."
Another watermark was set in the "Eisenstadt v. Baird", decided just before "Roe" and involved a statute restricting contraceptives to unmarried couples only. Again, another common-sense majority opinion held: "If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child."
However, it was "Roe v. Wade" that specifically extended privacy rights to specifically include medical abortion: "This view of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." Of course" Roe" also set the common-sense standard that The State could claim a compelling interest only after fetal viability in limiting abortion.

WHAT about the Canadians, who seem to be able to look at what is happening here, and act to prevent following our worst impulses. The abortion issue there was resolved in 1988, when their Supreme Court unambiguously ruled that section 287 of the Criminal Code (adopted in '69 and restricted abortion) was in direct violation of section 7 of the Charter of Right s and Freedoms (adopted in '82 and guaranteed "life, liberty and the security of persons"), and thus the restrictive section of the Criminal Code was eviscerated and declared to be of "no force or effect". Apparently, Canadians embrace the novel idea that abortion is a private matter of conscience and best decided by the woman involved.

Chief Justice Brian Dickson wrote, in stating what any clear-thinking person already knows: "Forcing a woman, by threat of criminal sanction, to carry a foetus to term unless she meets certain criteria unrelated to her own priorities and aspirations, is a profound interference with a woman's body and this a violation of her security of the person."

APART from the Constitutional guarantees, can we really abide a Government forcing women to carry unwanted pregnacies, in any circumstance, but especially when the pregnancy threatens the woman's very health and well-being... or the fetus is genetically afflicted or malformed... or the result of failed contraception... or in the context of poverty and drug addiction... or prior child abuse... or as the result of incest... or rape!
WHO except the woman involved with the pregnancy, is going to be responsible for the 24 hours a day responsibility of caring for this unwanted newborn and providing economically for it until the age of maturity? Certainly not the pretend christians casting stones: heaping coals on these unfortunate women faced with a true moral dilemma and pouring salt in their wounds. Certainly not The State!

WHAT happened to the guiding principle of our Founding Fathers that we should all be able to follow the dictates of our conscience? Do those of use who are pro-equal-rights, pro-privacy, pro-personal-autonomy and anti-government-intrusion attempt to force people who have absolutely no business becoming pregnant, or insist on carrying a severely malformed genetically diseased fetus to term only to suffer and receive futile and wasteful medical care, utter a word against such obvious, misguided foolishness? NO! We afford those who differ with us the "freedom of conscience" that they seek to deny others.

WHEN the rights of women are under such a blantant assault as the law recently enacted in South Dakota, not only banning all abortions, including those involving rape and incest, but also criminalizing a legitimate medical procedure, one would do well to remember the not too recent past, when desparate women were the victims of botched back-alley hack jobs and others tried with coathangars. These poor women often found their way to emergency departments, hemorrhaging and in bacterial sepsis... often in shock and often succumbing. Are these the dark days in America, like slavery, any sane person with a even a modicum of compassion would wish to revisit?

ALSO consider, if the religious zealots force their perverse agenda through Republican controlled legislatures, can the criminalization of "negligent mothers" be far behind? There are myriad behaviors that may adversely affect the developing fetus (smoking, drugs, and alcohol... obesity and poor diet, etc.). Surely these obssessive bible-believers would push for harsh penalties if any "deliberate" actions by the mother were deemed harmful (by The State), to the "unborn child".


FINALLY, let us also remember the sentiments echoed in these wonderful American proclaimations of freedom: "Don't tread on me"... "Live free or die"... "Give me liberty, or give me death". Hold those phrases in you mind and think of The State dictating... mandating... forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term and criminally prosecuting those physicians dedicated to compassionate reproductive healthcare.

[Albator]

First of fall I want to point out that 3 day human embryo i a cluster that consists of 150 cells. Brain of the fly has 100000 cells. So this whole life begins at the moment of conception thing is baloney. Cluster of 150 cells is not a human being, it is merely a potential.

It is highly alienating to state things like that.

What you are saying imply that you know when life starts. I could easily dismiss this fly brain shit with thousands of examples, I won't bother. Don't get me wrong, I believe we have the same opinion on the matter, you just don't go out saying stuffs like that, it looks bad, and it illustrate why people can not keep their head cool while debating such a delicate subject.

[Ellen]

[quote="42ndEndOfTheWorld"][/quote]
Your entire post offends me.
The article you quoted merely degraded into personal attacks against christians. One of the biggest things that stick out in my mind is the comment that the supposed 30% of naturally occuring abortions becomes some attack on the idea of being created is absurd. The entire religion is based on the fact that ever since the first human pair, we have been inflicted with sin and therefore death. This is NOT to say that we, as imperfect humans, are allowed to choose who lives or dies.
There are persons out there who use the phrase "innocent" for the child. But anyone who has actually read and studied the bible can tell you that this is a misnomer, since it was stated that through Adam's sin, sin was passed to all mankind.

If you are against abortion and the thought of it makes you feel morally wrong and gives you a guilty conscience, you would want to do what you could to show others why it's wrong and have them understand that. Equating the oppostiion of abortion to an impingment of freedom is a fine line. On the one hand, you are saying that the woman has a choice to do whatever she wills, that is freedom. On a similar wavelength, then, choosing to abuse your spouse, harm a child, sell pedophilic images, these are all their right to do if they so choose.

Dependency does not equate to non-human or non-life either. If this were the case, then all those dependent on life-support, biomedical devices and the like would be also considered as such.
By 20 days, the fetus will have developed neural connections and by 24 days will have the basis of the spinal cord which continues to grow. Organogensis begins here and a 52-day embryo will in fact have every organ seen in the human body. At which point would you consider the fetus to start feeling pain? (Yes, I have taken anatomy and this is from my textbook).

Definitions of personhood vary from society to society and from person to person. My main thought against his argument is that the author semms to know exactly what the fetus feels and thinks!

Regardless of whether the fetus is a person, does the author truly believe that we have a right to simply create and destroy life as we please? To be honest, I believe the debate shouldn't be about abortion, but about the people that would get themselves into a situation where they wouldn't want to carry the fetus to full term. I can understand if it would adversely and with certainty harm the mother. Since if the gangrene in our hand can cause our death, we would certainly cut it off. But would you randomly cut off your hand just because "I didn't want it anymore"? Moreover, if your friend decided to do it, wouldn't you try to persuade them out of it?

I kind of got sick of reading his writing style. So I'm just going to stop. And I'm never writing a post this long ever again.

[psi29a]

And about those "personal responsibility" folks out there. When someone breaks a leg do you say: "Well since this is your fault just sit there and die, be more responsible next time ". No, even in case a person broke his or her leg by doing something stupid, we help that person.

When does Personal Responsiblity involve other people? 'Personal' is there for a reason, so, having another personal say "Well since this is your fault just sit there and die, be more responsible next time. " is completely irrelevant.

Personal Responsibility means that YOU have take responsiblity for your actions, which isn't mutually exclusive from other people helping you. You can have help, think welfare and social programs. However, Personal Responsiblity is about how you treat yourself, what you do to yourself, and your actions that put you in that situation. You did something stupid, and broke you leg. No one is going to point and laugh at you, more than likely they are going to help you. The fact remains, you did something stupid... thus broke your leg, that is your responsiblity to yourself.

[42ndEndOfTheWorld]

Hello, psi29a,

I think that we actually agree, then. It is definitely stupid and unhealthy to have sex without contraceptives, but that does not mean that 16 year old girl should be sentenced to carry unwanted pregnancy full term, the same way someone who broke leg while doing something stupid should not be sentenced to walk with one leg. There is a medical procedure and we refer to it as "abortion" that can hep. Why double standard?
No one should laugh at her, but the fact remains, she did something stupid...

[Albator]

First of fall I want to point out that 3 day human embryo i a cluster that consists of 150 cells. Brain of the fly has 100000 cells. So this whole life begins at the moment of conception thing is baloney. Cluster of 150 cells is not a human being, it is merely a potential.
And about those "personal responsibility" folks out there. When someone breaks a leg do you say: "Well since this is your fault just sit there and die, be more responsible next time ". No, even in case a person broke his or her leg by doing something stupid, we help that person.

Hello, psi29a,

I think that we actually agree, then. It is definitely stupid and unhealthy to have sex without contraceptives, but that does not mean that 16 year old girl should be sentenced to carry unwanted baby full term. There is a medical procedure and we refer to it as "abortion" that can hep.

I'm sorry but considering your 2 posts I'm not following your line of reasonning, especially when you alienate posts that adress your arguments (that, I might add, are not yours since you just quoted some text you thought would pwn everybody). And call me blind but I really don't see how a decent comparison can be made between a freakin broken leg and an abortion, even less between a fly brain and an embryo. It is shaky at best.
Edit: now you edited your post talking about double standart and all, I have no idea what you are talking about any more. Somebody alienate me plz.

[psi29a]

Hello, psi29a,

I think that we actually agree, then. It is definitely stupid and unhealthy to have sex without contraceptives, but that does not mean that 16 year old girl should be sentenced to carry unwanted pregnancy full term, the same way someone who broke leg while doing something stupid should not be sentenced to walk with one leg. There is a medical procedure and we refer to it as "abortion" that can hep. Why double standard?
No one should laugh at her, but the fact remains, she did something stupid...

The double standard is there because some people believe it is wrong. We have a system now that is trying to address the two opposing sides, do we ban abortions because is wrong in some people eyes, or do we legalize it because it is a necessary thing to do.

You can't exactly argue with 'true believers', and there are a lot of those out there.

[Devil_Dante]

Hello, psi29a,

I think that we actually agree, then. It is definitely stupid and unhealthy to have sex without contraceptives, but that does not mean that 16 year old girl should be sentenced to carry unwanted pregnancy full term, the same way someone who broke leg while doing something stupid should not be sentenced to walk with one leg. There is a medical procedure and we refer to it as "abortion" that can hep. Why double standard?
No one should laugh at her, but the fact remains, she did something stupid...

I totally agree with u man. Word.
btw, what is this "double standard", en what is "alienate"?!?

[Killfile]

Now that things have quieted down I'm going to toss in my two cents and see if we can't get this going again.

A lot of buzz words get tossed around in the abortion debate and I don't get the impression that those using them really understand what they're saying.

When you say that a woman has the "right to choose" what that means is that you hold a woman's sovereign right over her body to be superior to the rights of her fetus (if such rights exist) to life.

When you say that a fetus has the right to life, you're saying that 18+ years of a real, sentient, living human beings life can and must be scarified in order to preserve the continued existence of a clump of rapidly dividing cells.

The fundamental question in the abortion debate always comes back to one central point - "Is a fetus a human being?"

But we live in a country of laws, not theocratic ideals (at least not yet). As such, we have to obey those laws and shape our society through them. If you want the law to consider a fetus a human being it may take a constitutional amendment to do it. Centuries of common law, a few hundred years of codified law, and the code of all fifty states and I'm not aware of a single instance wherein a fetus is treated as a human being.

A fetus can't inherit property, it can't sue or be sued, it can't pay taxes, can't enter into contracts, and can't even be counted in the census.

When we talk about the right to an abortion we are talking about the right of a person to be sovereign in the decisions they make about their own body. If this is a right we are going to take away from them it should not be taken lightly.

Until a fetus is treated by our government with identical reverence and respect as an independent person our governmental system can not possibly condone the elimination of abortion by law. As a matter of faith, you are welcome to view and judge abortion and wrong or evil just as you might judge taking the Lord's name in vain as wrong or breaking Kosher as a sin. To translate your particular religious views into legislation requires something more compelling than a theocratic ideal - it requires evidence and the ability to prove that the fetus whose rights are so fiercely championed really is a human being.