The Irony of Obama

[cce1302]

If the debate is on a womens right to control what happens to her body, why not argue prostitution? It seems that arguement would not invoke the same emotion as the abortion issue.

I think it becuase the abortion issue has become just another a reason to argue. Just another talking point for dems, and repubs. Granted a few are VERY passionate about this issue either way.

The only difference in the arguments is who the baby's body belongs to. anti-abortionists believe the child is its own. THe pro-abortionists believe the baby belongs to the mother, not itself.

 

[Gatlin]

Does the 2d Amendment apply here? Arm the unborn so they may protect themselves.

 

[ATF Consumer]

The only difference in the arguments is who the baby's body belongs to. anti-abortionists believe the child is its own. THe pro-abortionists believe the baby belongs to the mother, not itself.

I prefer pro-life and anti-life...makes more sense as we are speaking about the life, not the process.

 

[cce1302]

Does the 2d Amendment apply here? Arm the unborn so they may protect themselves.

here's an off-topic reply to your off-topic post.

 

[Bill of Rights]

My sis was pregnant with a baby who's nerve endings were growing outside the body....

Sad to hear of her experience. My prayers are with her, as the decision could not have been at all easy. I hope that any troubles she had as a result are behind her, as much as is possible.

...
Point #2, however seems loaded. Nobody forced them to bring a child into this world(excepting rape.) They made that choice themselves getting pregnant. Not allowing an abortion is not the same as forcing someone to bear children.
The only other choice left was death... so yes, uncared and burdensome would probably be their choice.

The decision would still be theirs - there would just be a penalty associated with the choice.

I know you weren't addressing me, just my thoughts.

Let's also not forget that some women have not the mental capacity to understand the result of the sex act. This would probably qualify as rape, if only because she had not the mental capacity to give consent, but the difference is still there as it was not an issue of force.

If the debate is on a womens right to control what happens to her body, why not argue prostitution? It seems that arguement would not invoke the same emotion as the abortion issue.

I think it becuase the abortion issue has become just another a reason to argue. Just another talking point for dems, and repubs. Granted a few are VERY passionate about this issue either way.

Much like the drug issue. What you do with your own body should not be anyone's concern but your own.

I prefer pro-life and anti-life...makes more sense as we are speaking about the life, not the process.

Or conversely, pro-choice and anti-choice. One recognizes the right of the individual, the other discounts it to the point of effective nonexistence.

I have seen no one here who agrees with abortion being used as birth control or with Obama's stance on PBA or termination of life after birth.

This is not anti-life. IMHO, it is pro-self-determination.

Please also note that though I did not mention it before, I do not believe that two cents of taxpayer funds should be put toward the provision of a pregnancy-terminating procedure or medication.

I will, however, add those as my here.

Blessings,
Bill

 

[antsi]

And on the whole anti-abortion facts; I challenge all of you to spend one afternoon escourting young girls past protestors at a clinic before you believe a thing that those hate mongers say.

I challenge you to pick through the "products of conception" after an abortion and not recognize that there is a significant moral dimension to this procedure that the pro-choicers would rather not acknowledge.

Been there, done that.

 

[homeless]

I never said that there was not a moral dimension to it. In fact those that have been through that process know that all to well. Those feelings hang with a person. With both parties, and in some cases the father does not know of the situation until afterwords. And that will screw a guy up for a long time.

And as far as my previous comments go; I was hoping to show the vile filth and hate that spews from the mouths of those who "Believe in the sanctity of human life and dignity". Because calling a young girl who is trying to make the hardest choice of her whole life a baby killer is really compasionate.

 

[cce1302]

Or conversely, pro-choice and anti-choice. One recognizes the right of the individual, the other discounts it to the point of effective nonexistence.

The disagreement isn't about choice or no choice, it's about the identity of the individual that gets to choose. Some put 100% of the choice of the baby's life with the "mother." others put 100% of the choice of the baby's life with the baby.

 

[Fletch]

The disagreement isn't about choice or no choice, it's about the identity of the individual that gets to choose. Some put 100% of the choice of the baby's life with the "mother." others put 100% of the choice of the baby's life with the baby.

And some of us look for a third way.

I'm of the opinion that both the mother and the baby own their own bodies. If the mother chooses to look at it this way, the baby is trespassing. It's my opinion therefore that it's within the mother's rights to remove the baby, but not to harm it. Of course, some will argue that removal is harm, but then again premature infant survival is becoming more amazing almost by the day. My sister-in-law is a critical care pediatrician; she's seen some incredible survival stories.

I believe that those of us who are pro-life should be seeking new technologies that will allow the smallest clusters of cells to be transplanted or survive outside the body. (This in addition to clearing the obstacles to adoption by willing couples.) I also believe that those of us who are pro-choice need to be seeking ways to develop and encourage the use of nondestructive abortions -- terminating the pregnancy rather than the baby.

Of course, some will say this is just a pipe dream, but then again so was the internet, at one time or another.

 

[dross]

I am willing to allow those exceptions, IMHO no woman should be forced to carry the child of a rapist or family member.

You didn't address my point. If it's a child, you're saying it's okay to kill it just because of the nature of its conception.

If you truly believe, as you say, that abortion is murder, and an aborted child is a murdered child, then you must also believe that aborting the produce of rape or incest is murder, therefore you must be saying that murdering an already born child of rape or incest.

To me, this is a more morally repugnant position than those who don't think any abortion is murder.

 

[dross]

I guess you're right, it's much easier to sink into apathy than it is to make your voice heard, even if you feel it is to no effect. But why post here? We all know the outcome of an argument on the internet.

A poll is a statistic, and an email is something very concrete. In the end politicians are yes-men and they're going to say yes to what has the biggest involvement or occupies the most of their mind. You can be sure that a rep will not read your email, but they all have an intern or secretary telling them they received X number of emails in favor of issue Y. We're still the ones that vote, and no amount of lobbying can get around that.

It's pretty easy to sit back and say "we have no control" and not even make a modicum of effort to exercise control. This discussion has gotten nowhere, no one was suddenly persuaded. The time used by even reading this discussion could have been better spent on a few well directed emails. Even if you lose, at least you went down swinging.

You're knocking down a straw man. I didn't say we should be apathetic, I said we should pool our money in the form of lobbies and organizations that agree with us. I said I thought emailing was ineffective. You may disagree, but don't characterize my position as doing nothing.

As to internet arguments, I disagree they do no good. I've modified my positions based on convincing arguments, and I haved convinced others to modify theirs. Also, internet arguments sharpen our rhetorical wit, which also helps when discussing issues with people we need to convince.

 

[antsi]

And some of us look for a third way.

I'm of the opinion that both the mother and the baby own their own bodies. If the mother chooses to look at it this way, the baby is trespassing. It's my opinion therefore that it's within the mother's rights to remove the baby, but not to harm it. Of course, some will argue that removal is harm, but then again premature infant survival is becoming more amazing almost by the day. My sister-in-law is a critical care pediatrician; she's seen some incredible survival stories.

I believe that those of us who are pro-life should be seeking new technologies that will allow the smallest clusters of cells to be transplanted or survive outside the body. (This in addition to clearing the obstacles to adoption by willing couples.) I also believe that those of us who are pro-choice need to be seeking ways to develop and encourage the use of nondestructive abortions -- terminating the pregnancy rather than the baby.

Of course, some will say this is just a pipe dream, but then again so was the internet, at one time or another.

Neonatal intensive care costs $3-4,000 per day. A general rule of thumb is that very preemie babies will likely stay in the hospital until about the time that would have been their due date.

In the most recent year for which I have data, there were 19.4 million abortions. The vast majority of these were done in the first trimester. On average, then, you are talking about a 9 week pregnancy. Even if the technology could be developed to incubate a 9 week embryo to the point of viable extrauterine life (huge assumption, requiring massive leaps in technology), and even if sustaining these even-earlier-than-preemie babies could somehow be done at the same cost as current NICU care (another huge assumption - new, more intensive care technologies are always far more expensive than existing technologies), the numbers would run as follows:

Average 9 week pregnancy maintained artificially until ready for discharge at 40 weeks gestational age = 31 weeks in care = 217 days in care x $3,500 per day = $759,000 per baby x 19.4 million babies = $14,734,300,000,000 per year.

That is 14.7 trillion dollars per year. For comparison, the entire United States GDP is about 13 trillion per year.

There are some very significant costs left out of this calculation. Probably the largest is the fact that extremely premature babies have extremely high rates of severe disabilities. You're talking about extending that extreme prematurity by another order of magnitude. The costs of caring for an additional 19.4 million highly intensive special needs kids each year - who are going to grow up to be highly intensive special needs adolescents and adults - will easily surpass the intensive care costs estimated above.

Sorry, nice try, but what you're proposing is in no way analagous to the creation of the internet. It's more along the lines of a perpetual motion machine.

Furthermore, for most hard core abortion rights activists, your solution doesn't even solve the problem. The hard line feminist position is not just that a woman has a right not to be pregnant, but that she has a right for the baby not to exist. From the feminist point of view, the hypothetical women who had your hypothetical baby extraction procedure would be forever tortured by the existence of a baby not under their control. A feminist would say that your proposal is simply forcing women into adopting their babies out instead of aborting them; a solution they have already rejected as unacceptable. Indeed, the right of a woman for her baby not to exist was the core of the controversial Illinios law that Obama supported as a state legislator there.

 

[dross]

What this all comes down to is belief.

"I believe life begins at conception." vs. "I believe life begins at birth." vs. some middle ground.

"I believe" does not make fact. Things believed may also be facts, but this is corellative, not causative.

When the choice of abortion exists, some women will choose to abort and some will choose to carry their pregnancies to term. This is fact and indisputable. When the choice of abortion does not exist within the law, some women will choose to carry their pregnancies to term and some will choose to become criminals. This also is fact and indisputable.

Speaking for myself, I would say that the prospective mother and prospective father are in a much better place to make the decision than some bureaucrat in an office or some politician making a grandiose speech. We permit our politicians to deal with such minor things as time and money, but we do not see them do so in a responsible fashion. I cannot in good conscience entrust a decision this important to those I do not trust.



Blessings,
Bill

You and I agree most of the time, I think, but I believe you're ignoring at least one important point. I agree that believing a child is a human with rights at the point of conception must be based on a belief rather than a fact. When we're talking about viable infants, however, say six months and older, I don't see how anyone can say that is a personal choice. It is a human, with the ability to feel pain, and the potential to live outside the mother immediately. Aborting a child that far along can only be called murder, and society in the forme of government has a resposibility to protect the interests of that child, just as they do for a child seconds after birth.

The hard part is saying at what point between conception and certain viability should be the cut off point. My suggestion would be to err on the side of not murder.

 

[dross]

If the debate is on a womens right to control what happens to her body, why not argue prostitution? It seems that arguement would not invoke the same emotion as the abortion issue.

I think it becuase the abortion issue has become just another a reason to argue. Just another talking point for dems, and repubs. Granted a few are VERY passionate about this issue either way.

Now that you mention it, of course prostitution should be legal. All free exchanges between consenting adults should be legal.

 

[antsi]

I was hoping to show the vile filth and hate that spews from the mouths of those who "Believe in the sanctity of human life and dignity". Because calling a young girl who is trying to make the hardest choice of her whole life a baby killer is really compasionate.

Yes, there are some extreme and rude people on the anti-abortion side. However I don't think that fairly characterizes the entire movement, any more than the abortion rights side can be fairly characterized by Valerie Solanas or the overt racism of Margaret Sanger. In my professional career I have been involved with large numbers of people on both sides of this debate. The vast majority on both sides are basically decent people who are trying to advocate what they think is best.

It is of course completely reasonable to disagree on this topic, but the practice of characterizing the other side as wicked and malevolent is one of the ugliest aspects of this debate and it happens equally on both sides. Pro-lifers are not fairly charactrized as vicious misogynists whose primary motivation is to punish women for having sex and to enslave them using their uteri as chains. Neither are most pro-choicers bloodthirsty maniacs who delight in the wanton destruction of babies. Neither side does any service to the goals they purport to serve by wallowing in these kind of caricatures.

 

[Fletch]

Average 9 week pregnancy maintained artificially until ready for discharge at 40 weeks gestational age = 31 weeks in care = 217 days in care x $3,500 per day = $759,000 per baby x 19.4 million babies = $14,734,300,000,000 per year.

...

Sorry, nice try, but what you're proposing is in no way analagous to the creation of the internet. It's more along the lines of a perpetual motion machine.

And a single computer used to cost the modern equivalent of billions of dollars. If you had been discussing the internet at that time, I suppose you would've argued that it too was simply impossible on the basis of cost alone. I don't think you have as much of a point as you think you do.

Cost is but a trifling nuisance. If there's a way to do something, there's a way to do it cheaper. That's part of the foundation of free enterprise.

Furthermore, for most hard core abortion rights activists, your solution doesn't even solve the problem. The hard line feminist position is not just that a woman has a right not to be pregnant, but that she has a right for the baby not to exist. From the feminist point of view, the hypothetical women who had your hypothetical baby extraction procedure would be forever tortured by the existence of a baby not under their control. A feminist would say that your proposal is simply forcing women into adopting their babies out instead of aborting them; a solution they have already rejected as unacceptable.

And there are those on the other side who would force a woman to carry a brain-absent baby to term despite the fact that they know it will die within days of being born, just to avoid inconsistency in the whole "abortion=murder" equation. The problem with both sides of the argument is that there are a lot of people listening to, and "mostly" agreeing with, the nutjobs, rather than trying to find ways to reconcile the debate.

 

[antsi]

And a single computer used to cost the modern equivalent of billions of dollars. If you had been discussing the internet at that time, I suppose you would've argued that it too was simply impossible on the basis of cost alone. I don't think you have as much of a point as you think you do.

Cost is but a trifling nuisance. If there's a way to do something, there's a way to do it cheaper. That's part of the foundation of free enterprise.

Computers getting cheaper is a totally predictable phenomenon. To an extent it's still happening. Your hypothetical me in the 1980s could have looked at a whole range of technologies that had gotten cheaper since their introduction.

Health care is a much more complex phenomenon. There is no history of health care getting cheaper. The cost of health care has been expanding consistently even with the introduction of new technologies.

You're also vastly underestimating the challenges of extending neonatal survivability earlier than the current 23-24 weeks limitaitons. Throughout the 80s and 90s, we did knock about 4 weeks of the 50% survivability mark - from 27-28 weeks to 23-24 weeks. That number has been relatively stable since then, with advances leading to marginal improvements in morbidity but no real change in survivability.

And at no time in any of this process has NICU care gotten cheaper - quite the opposite in fact. Cost is not just a trifling nuisance - it is a direct reflection of practicability. Things that are done at the margins of practicability are generally very expensive. That's not just an artefact of old-fashioned thinking, it is a direct reflection of the challenges involved. Maybe we can have this talk again when the cost of caring for a 24 week fetus to hospital discharge has been halved. Don't hold your breath, though: that cost has been rising exponentially - we haven't even been able to decrease the rate of growth in the cost, let alone actually lower the cost.

Perhaps a perpetual motion machine is not the best analogy on my part because what you're advocating does not violate the laws of physics. However your analogy of the internet is hardly applicable, either. The internet was basically an application and refinement of existing technologies, with marginal improvements in cost in a technolgical area where there were already trends of increasing performance and decreasing costs. What you are proposing is several orders of magnitude more ambitious - perhaps a closer analogy would be interstellar space travel. It's theoretically possible, but far, far beyond technical and practical feasibility at any time in the forseeable future.

And there are those on the other side who would force a woman to carry a brain-absent baby to term despite the fact that they know it will die within days of being born

I have personally cared for women and families who chose to continue pregnancies with anencephalic fetuses and other lethal anomalies. There is a tremendous difference in the bereavement responses for these women versus those who abort, and I would certainly advocate that anyone who was diagnosed with a lethal fetal condition should be counseled about the option of perinatal hospice instead of aborting. I would not advocate legally mandating this choice, but I do believe it should be offered more consistently than it is and there is emerging evidence that women and families may be better off in the long run when they make this choice.

 

[Fletch]

Computers getting cheaper is a totally predictable phenomenon. To an extent it's still happening. Your hypothetical me in the 1980s could have looked at a whole range of technologies that had gotten cheaper since their introduction.

Health care is a much more complex phenomenon. There is no history of health care getting cheaper. The cost of health care has been expanding consistently even with the introduction of new technologies.

And this is a purely political problem. Government interference in the health care market causes prices to rise. In a free market, prices tend to fall. It's more noticeable with certain types of technology than with others, usually related to the iterative properties of the technology's refinement curve, but it does happen to all technologies where the free market is allowed to work. It can and will happen to health care, if health care is ever returned to the free market.

I have personally cared for women and families who chose to continue pregnancies with anencephalic fetuses and other lethal anomalies. There is a tremendous difference in the bereavement responses for these women versus those who abort, and I would certainly advocate that anyone who was diagnosed with a lethal fetal condition should be counseled about the option of perinatal hospice instead of aborting. I would not advocate legally mandating this choice, but I do believe it should be offered more consistently than it is and there is emerging evidence that women and families may be better off in the long run when they make this choice.

I can certainly respect this. Repped.

 

[Field King]

One: Actions to save another.
Two: Treatment of a prisoner in your custody.
Three: The ending of a "life" that is not yet a "person" and endable due to the absolute bodily property rights of the mother.

While I may, or may not agree, I do not find it too inconsistent either.

Thanx for the help, one: he made the right call as an innocent person was being held and threatened by criminals! two: the treatment the prisoner recieved got him to give up information that saved many many innocent lives! three: your quote "the ending of a life" that is not yet a person? then what the HELL is the left calling a "life now a days? Obama is very torn and conflicted and he will do whatever he believes will make him more powerful and rich!

 

[Bill of Rights]

You and I agree most of the time, I think, but I believe you're ignoring at least one important point. I agree that believing a child is a human with rights at the point of conception must be based on a belief rather than a fact. When we're talking about viable infants, however, say six months and older, I don't see how anyone can say that is a personal choice. It is a human, with the ability to feel pain, and the potential to live outside the mother immediately. Aborting a child that far along can only be called murder, and society in the forme of government has a resposibility to protect the interests of that child, just as they do for a child seconds after birth.

The hard part is saying at what point between conception and certain viability should be the cut off point. My suggestion would be to err on the side of not murder.

We still agree, re: the cutoff point, but not the societal and especially not the governmental responsibility, the latter term being an oxymoron. I can't define a point of viability better than to say "23 weeks (of 40 normal gestation)". Why? Because at 23 weeks, the lungs are barely able to function to perform air exchange necessary for life (and that only with extensive medical support.) I've seen this personally; before that time, to my knowledge, (and no, I've not researched it, this is strictly anecdotal info), a prematurely delivered infant simply is not viable.

This does not mean that they cannot be, just that they are not, at this point in time. I don't know what technologies might be developed to change that threshold.

A point was made upthread from this post to which I'm replying, by Fletch, IIRC, to the concept of the lives in question each being owned by the respective individuals; that is, the prospective mother owns her life and the fetus owns (for convenience' sake) "his". I would agree with this. The issue comes, however, from the fact that in our world, until the age of majority, the parents make all decisions required by a responsible adult for their child, and as such, she still makes the decision for him.

Another point addressed above related to the idea of terminating the pregnancy but not the fetus' developing life. The reply (yours?) was that to maintain that fetus in an extrauterine environment was not financially or technologically feasible for the ~31 weeks or so remaining in the pregnancy.

I would suggest that, much as there have been women willing to serve as wet nurses and much as there are women willing to serve as surrogate mothers, perhaps energy needs to be spent developing a method to transplant a fetus, complete with amniotic sac and placenta, into a willing recipient- a "host mother", if you will. If this could be accomplished, perhaps with compensation to the host mother, the abortion debate might be resolved. One receptive uterus is exactly the same as another, kind of like houses in a subdivision, all built on the same plans. I would not care if I lived at 123 Bacon St. or 125 Bacon St, given that both are identical- I don't think the fetus would care, either. Note that I do not mean to reduce women to the status of "life support system for a fetus" or to demean them in any way. I am merely saying that the inside of one uterus is probably not any different from the inside of any other. (I've only been inside one. It was kinda dark, and I don't remember it very well. )

Thoughts?

Blessings,
Bill