The meaning of life and other ill sh!t

[Banzai]

29 minutes ago, HeloDude said:

By the way, would your parents and in-laws be “WTF, you have up your baby for adoption instead of just having an abortion?”

You don’t have to tell your parents, in-laws, or anyone else about an abortion. Adoption, not so much.

[ClearedHot]

7 minutes ago, HeloDude said:

Are you full up supportive of the Libertarian Party and it’s platform now?  If so, jump in, the water is definitely warm.  If not, then your argument based on personal freedom is quite selective.

 

Funny thing, our Constitution (maybe you've heard of it), is supposed to allow me to believe whatever I choose, even if my beliefs straddle political parties and NOT be constrained by or become a prisoner of a single party. 

[Stoker]

1 hour ago, ClearedHot said:

 an example the abortion rate for African American women is FIVE times that of white women.  

If there's one thing I learned from reading Ibrahim Kendi's book on antiracism, it's that anything that has a disparate impact on minorities regardless of intent or cause is inherently racist. 

[ViperMan]

1 hour ago, ClearedHot said:

So in a country based on freedom we are going to regulate based on YOUR morals and beliefs, not mine, YOURS.  It is just too convenient for a woman to control her own body, YOUR morals get to dictate her body and moral choices.  Line up everyone and get your mandatory vaccine, I believe it is the morally right thing for YOU to do.

Next it will be against your morals to kill animals and eat meat - everyone gets to be a vegan. 

Nice dodge, but as I said, it's a difficult position to stake out morally that someone should be allowed to abort a life because they find it convenient. I invite you to make that case as opposed to avoiding the subject.

And to your point about it being "my" morals or "your" morals being used to regulate society, guess what, you were born into a society and culture that is riddled with rules and laws that came from someone else's moral code. So I find this argument disingenuous on its face. I know you don't agree with every law that is written - neither do I. That's not an argument either for or against abortion.

[ClearedHot]

4 minutes ago, ViperMan said:

Nice dodge, but as I said, it's a difficult position to stake out morally that someone should be allowed to abort a life because they find it convenient. I invite you to make that case as opposed to avoiding the subject.

Not a dodge at all and brother and thanks, you just proved my point.  When life begins has NOT been settled, certainly not in the court, but you automatically default to it is life and it is aborted out of convenience because that is YOUR moral belief.  The only court settled opinion (Stare Decisis), on Abortion was Roe V Wade.

[Guardian]

Funny thing, our Constitution (maybe you've heard of it), is supposed to allow me to believe whatever I choose, even if my beliefs straddle political parties and NOT be constrained by or become a prisoner of a single party. 

CH. the my body my choice is a false argument. The baby isn’t a part of her body, just inside of her.

So if your beliefs are that you can murder, rape, steal, do heavy drugs, drink and drive, etc then we should all bow down because they are your beliefs? Not how our constitution works.

How it does work however is that every individual is important and has rights. This argument is about whether the unborn babies have rights. Not if a woman has a right to kill something inside her that is alive.

[Guardian]

Not a dodge at all and brother and thanks, you just proved my point.  When life begins has NOT been settled, certainly not in the court, but you automatically default to it is life and it is aborted out of convenience because that is YOUR moral belief.  The only court settled opinion (Stare Decisis), on Abortion was Roe V Wade.

Not true. Science says that at conception it is a unique life form. Life doesn’t begin by passing through the female reproductive organ.

[Guardian]

Freakanomics has been debunked since it came out. Interesting read and well written. But not factually accurate. Just think if there hadn’t been 40 million abortions in the US how many tax payers you would have now.

[Guardian]

Funny thing, our Constitution (maybe you've heard of it), is supposed to allow me to believe whatever I choose, even if my beliefs straddle political parties and NOT be constrained by or become a prisoner of a single party. 

completely incorrect.

[HeloDude]

35 minutes ago, Banzai said:

You don’t have to tell your parents, in-laws, or anyone else about an abortion. Adoption, not so much.

Kind of hard if you’re 7 months pregnant and wanting an abortion (that’s what the left wants btw)…usually women show quite a bit by then.

But…the point remains—I want to know who actually would think an abortion is better than having a baby and giving it up for adoption.  I know there are those on the far left who love sharing their abortion stories, but personally I wouldn’t want to be even be acquaintances with someone whose moral compass told them that an abortion is better than adoption.

Note—I am arguing this from a moral point of view.  As I’ve said many times before, if you’re a Libertarian and you believe that an abortion should be available up until the moment of delivery then I’ll respect you for your consistency.  If not, well then you’re not really for personal freedom, rather you just are pro-abortion.

[HeloDude]

41 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:

Funny thing, our Constitution (maybe you've heard of it), is supposed to allow me to believe whatever I choose, even if my beliefs straddle political parties and NOT be constrained by or become a prisoner of a single party. 

Ok…so then you’re not really for personal freedom.  Just say you’re for a woman being able to have an abortion and that’s that.  Don’t use the personal freedom argument because it’s disingenuous. 

[ClearedHot]

1 minute ago, HeloDude said:

Ok…so then you’re not really for personal freedom.  Just say you’re for a woman being able to have an abortion and that’s that.  Don’t use the personal freedom argument because it’s disingenuous. 

Disingenuous?  I have to be wed to your all in or all out argument?  GTFO.

[ViperMan]

12 hours ago, Demonrat said:

"Assault on the Constitution and the American ideas of freedom and liberty?" Since when did forcing conservative Christian values on the populace as a whole in a nation with freedom of religion count as "the American ideas of freedom of liberty?" If anything, forcing religious ethical and moral opinions on the entire nation is an assault on the Constitution and the American ideas of freedom and liberty. 

Christians then take the Bible and basically any passage and warp it with twisted logic to support their claims that the Bible sees life as starting in the womb. You can basically interpret anything in the Bible exactly the way you want to support whatever argument you are making. This leads to a lifestyle where Christian women go get an abortion, then turn around and scream about others who do the same. You see it all the time, and it's quite pathetic.

I always laugh when I see somebody say "we murdered X amount of babies." I truly think nobody really believes that having an abortion is equivalent to killing a 1-month old baby. Show a video of a woman having an abortion, and then show a video of somebody murdering a 1-month old baby. Which is going to garner a stronger reaction across the vast majority of people? You don't truly believe that aborting a fetus is equivalent to murdering a baby who is out of the womb.

If you really believe that a person is made at conception, then put your money where your mouth is. Start supporting research that helps stop miscarraige, because there are nearly 1 million of those every year where "people" end up dying. If you regard abortion as murder, then you would support first degree murder sentences for 1 in 4 American women who end up getting abortions by the age of 45. I hope that's not your wife, your daughter, your grand daughter, or anybody you hold close. 

I hope I can start taking out life insurance policies on my newly conceived "person." If you kill a pregnant woman, it better be a double homicide. If you skip out on a woman while she is pregnant? Better start to pay child support while their "person" is in their first trimester. The list goes on and on with the implications of calling a fetus a "person" at conception. If you want all that, then more power to you I guess. That's not the type of society I want to live in.

Dude, forget the Christian argument. Did your life not start in the womb? If not, then where did it start? Outside the womb? Are you Schrodinger's baby? You didn't exist until you passed through the birth canal? And if you passed back through in reverse, would you immediately un-exist again? What about a C-section, at exactly what point during the incision does the baby pop into existence? Or does it ever? The "secular" argument is every bit as ridiculous as the so-called religious argument. At some point prior to the event called birth, there is a human in there. That's irrefutable and scientific.

You equating death from a natural cause (miscarriage) to one requiring intervention (abortion) is gross. I'm not sure where it falls on the moral continuum, but it's gross. And to your point about a pregnant woman being murdered, you better believe that there is precedent for that person to be charged with double murder, which makes our legal system all the more ridiculous.

We all know it's a messy issue. People come down on different ends of what the other party considers extreme. I guess I just admit that aside from all the religious arguments against it and all the "secular" arguments for it, I found the defense of "abortion" by the governor of VA to be outrageous. Yeah, let's go with an abortion when a woman is dilating because it might impair her "mental" health. Yeah, let's allow a child to die that happened to be born because I was performing an abortion, so that makes it ok if that's what the parents originally wanted. The morning after pill doesn't bother me, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9-month abortions do. We all have freedom, none of us - including women - has absolute freedom.

[ClearedHot]

2 minutes ago, ViperMan said:

Dude, forget the Christian argument. Did your life not start in the womb? If not, then where did it start? Outside the womb? Are you Schrodinger's baby? You didn't exist until you passed through the birth canal? And if you passed back through in reverse, would you immediately un-exist again? What about a C-section, at exactly what point during the incision does the baby pop into existence? Or does it ever? The "secular" argument is every bit as ridiculous as the so-called religious argument. At some point prior to the event called birth, there is a human in there. That's irrefutable and scientific.

You equating death from a natural cause (miscarriage) to one requiring intervention (abortion) is gross. I'm not sure where it falls on the moral continuum, but it's gross. And to your point about a pregnant woman being murdered, you better believe that there is precedent for that person to be charged with double murder, which makes our legal system all the more ridiculous.

We all know it's a messy issue. People come down on different ends of what the other party considers extreme. I guess I just admit that aside from all the religious arguments against it and all the "secular" arguments for it, I found the defense of "abortion" by the governor of VA to be outrageous. Yeah, let's go with an abortion when a woman is dilating because it might impair her "mental" health. Yeah, let's allow a child to die that happened to be born because I was performing an abortion, so that makes it ok if that's what the parents originally wanted. The morning after pill doesn't bother me, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9-month abortions do. We all have freedom, none of us - including women - has absolute freedom.

Dude, I was making a point.  Smarter people than me still have to decide the legality which as well all know often differs from the science.  I've heard arguments all over the place from conception to viability to birth.  As I mentioned I am only 51% in favor of abortion, I think it is abhorrent, truly HORRIBLE, but I can't make the mental leap to telling a woman what to do with her body.  I am religious...I have TWO aunts that are nuns, but I certainly don't agree with everything under the banner and I remove myself from secular arguments. 

I 100% agree that at some point there is a human there...100%.  I do not support late-term abortion or what the wackos believe like up until birth. 

When did I compare miscarriage or a pregnant woman being murdered?  I think you have crossed streams/posts (standing by apology.)

It is a messy issue and the Va governor belief is again, absurd. 

Again, I 100% agree with you on the timeline and plan B pill.  My belief is not perfect or without confliction, but somewhere early on, there is room for a woman to decide what she does with her own body.

[Banzai]

19 minutes ago, HeloDude said:

Kind of hard if you’re 7 months pregnant and wanting an abortion (that’s what the left wants btw)…usually women show quite a bit by then.

Nah, don’t think this is a widely held opinion (72% of Dems don’t support third trimester abortion)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/06/25/majority-of-americans-support-abortion-poll-finds---but-not-later-in-the-pregnancy/amp/

20 minutes ago, HeloDude said:

But…the point remains—I want to know who actually would think an abortion is better than having a baby and giving it up for adoption.  I know there are those on the far left who love sharing their abortion stories, but personally I wouldn’t want to be even be acquaintances with someone whose moral compass told them that an abortion is better than adoption.

I think the majority of women don’t want to go through pregnancy for a baby they don’t want to care for.

[ViperMan]

14 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:

Not a dodge at all and brother and thanks, you just proved my point.  When life begins has NOT been settled, certainly not in the court, but you automatically default to it is life and it is aborted out of convenience because that is YOUR moral belief.  The only court settled opinion (Stare Decisis), on Abortion was Roe V Wade.

It's a dodge because the left side of this argument paints any pro-lifer as a religious fanatic or zealot (which you did) precisely so they can dismiss religion (which is easy / justified) without having to deal with hard science that shows that there is an independent life inside a pregnant woman. That was the structure of your argument from a couple posts ago. You painted the other side as religious and then you closed the book without ever having to grapple with something scientific. Go re-read your post.

And it is absolutely settled scientifically. It's not settled by our courts because we live in a messy and self-interested society. I agree that it is a messy issue and that there is probably wiggle room on the early side for things like abortion to take place. That said, there is clearly a human at 7, 8, and 9 months of pregnancy. I'm trying to find time to read the whole draft decision, but the first 6-7 pages make some pretty good arguments. And you can't talk about abortion without implicitly talking about life. Here's some words for you:

Abortion (noun) - "the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, most often performed during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy."

Pregnant (adjective) - "(of a woman or female animal) having a child or young developing in the uterus."

Finally, to your point about Roe, I don't think you really care what the courts say as far as your argument is concerned, and neither does anyone else on the left. It's an appeal to authority - nothing more. How do I know this? Because they're not all of a sudden going to go away when/if the court comes down with this decision...

[ClearedHot]

4 minutes ago, ViperMan said:

Go re-read your post.

Pointless, you are confusing not only arguments but posters.

[ViperMan]

6 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:

Dude, I was making a point.  Smarter people than me still have to decide the legality which as well all know often differs from the science.  I've heard arguments all over the place from conception to viability to birth.  As I mentioned I am only 51% in favor of abortion, I think it is abhorrent, truly HORRIBLE, but I can't make the mental leap to telling a woman what to do with her body.  I am religious...I have TWO aunts that are nuns, but I certainly don't agree with everything under the banner and I remove myself from secular arguments. 

I 100% agree that at some point there is a human there...100%.  I do not support late-term abortion or what the wackos believe like up until birth. 

When did I compare miscarriage or a pregnant woman being murdered?  I think you have crossed streams/posts (standing by apology.)

It is a messy issue and the Va governor belief is again, absurd. 

Again, I 100% agree with you on the timeline and plan B pill.  My belief is not perfect or without confliction, but somewhere early on, there is room for a woman to decide what she does with her own body.

Ok, fair enough. Please disregard much of my most recent post then.

Yeah, I'm not very religious, but I see the pro-choice side of this argument paint the other side as religious fanatics and it confines the argument to a place where it frankly doesn't belong.

And yeah, I do respond to multiple posts at once. I was responding to @Demonrat in there somewhere. Anyway

[HeloDude]

5 minutes ago, Banzai said:

Nah, don’t think this is a widely held opinion (72% of Dems don’t support third trimester abortion)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/06/25/majority-of-americans-support-abortion-poll-finds---but-not-later-in-the-pregnancy/amp/

I think the majority of women don’t want to go through pregnancy for a baby they don’t want to care for.

The Democrats in charge (at the state and federal level) are literally advocating for no restrictions on abortion, regardless of what their party members want.

As for women not wanting to go through a pregnancy if not wanting a baby they don’t want to care for…aren’t we then lucky that there are some righteous women who aren’t that way?  

Again, if you’re for a woman wanting to be able to kill her unborn child, that’s not an uncommon position…and you’ll stilL be able to do so even when Roe is overturned.  But let’s not use the “personal freedom” rationale as its BS for 90% of Americans.

[Prozac]

13 minutes ago, HeloDude said:

The Democrats in charge (at the state and federal level) are literally advocating for no restrictions on abortion, regardless of what their party members want.

Which ones? Honestly curious. I know there are some on the left who will argue for late term abortions but I don’t recall many leaders or people in charge making that argument. As others have argued, most Americans have seemed pretty content with the status quo which generally prohibits late term abortions. Somewhere north of 90 percent of abortions occur before the end of the first term, a fact which tends to support the idea that the whole idea of late term abortions and fully developed babies being ripped out of the womb is more of a bogeyman for the anti-abortion crowd than it is an actual issue. 

[ClearedHot]

3 hours ago, HeloDude said:

 But let’s not use the “personal freedom” rationale as its BS for 90% of Americans.

Actually your statement is BS.

 

3 hours ago, ViperMan said:

And yeah, I do respond to multiple posts at once. I was responding to @Demonrat in there somewhere. Anyway

Copy Gadget Bent, Screw it...Fox Three anyway!

[Banzai]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut
 

I didn’t realize it, but you can go down this rabbit hole of trying to control reproductive rights pretty far. Did you guys know that in the 60s we actually had a Supreme Court case to stop the government from criminalizing the use of contraceptives.

I’m looking forward to this getting overturned next, wonder what the fine for a vasectomy will be??

[bfargin]

Justice Alito's draft opinion on abortion is a courageous gift to American children

Ashley McGuire

Tue, May 3, 2022, 3:38 PM

 

Are we really shocked that the draft opinion in the most significant Supreme Court case in 50 years was leaked? We certainly should be, as the leak is, to quote legal scholar Carter Snead, a “shocking act of betrayal and a breathtaking breach of ethics.”

To those who don’t follow Supreme Court politicking closely, the leak matters because it is an act of corruption of the highest order, one that appears to have been done to exert political pressure on the justices to change their opinions.

The justices represent the one branch of government that was designed to be independent of political pressure. The leaker strikes at the heart of the American system of government and its design.

Yet, the leak feels more like the death rattle of a movement that has fought to keep decisions about how to regulate abortion out of the American people's hands for generations.

Alito demonstrates legal courage

The leak also is a misfire. If anything, the leak has given the American people a preview of the kind of constitutionalism that voters crave and a glimpse of the legal courage we have yearned for.

The draft opinion’s greatest gift is its clarity. “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” writes Justice Samuel Alito. “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.”

 

The fight over abortion has raged precisely because the court, both in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, hijacked the issue from the American voters and left the lower courts and legislatures with an illegible road map for implementation.

Perhaps the greatest thing to be feared from a ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was another muddled opinion full of lofty language and lacking legal clarity that would have dragged out the years of legalized abortion for many decades more.

Supreme Court opinion drafts do not leak: Abortion may be at risk but so is court's sanctity.

The fight over abortion has raged precisely because the court, both in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, hijacked the issue from the American voters and left the lower courts and legislatures with an illegible road map for implementation. That legacy has gnawed away at the fabric of our culture and has wormed its way into nearly every issue in politics.

We need a clean break from Roe, and the leaked opinion gives us the way to make that break.

Draft opinion dismantles legal arguments for abortion

The opinion dismantles with great precision the many sagging lies that have upheld Roe for nearly half a century. It obliterates the viability standard, for example, as an arcane one founded on rusty science and on weak moral reasoning.

It soundly rejects the notion that stare decisis protects bad law forever and quotes from countless scholars on the left to make the case. And it rebukes the assertion that societal reliance on a bad law is grounds for permanence, pointing out that the same reasoning is what the court first used when it "blessed racial segregation."

But perhaps most notable is the courage that undergirds the writing. Justice Alito writes: “We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision overruling Roe and Casey. And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would have no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision.”

If the leakers think that a man who writes like this and the justices who stand boldly behind his words will be kowtowed by the wails of the elite, by the theatrics of red capes and by angry hashtags, then they betray their own blind desperation.

Nonetheless, the leak has given Americans the gift of seeing the truth come tearing out of the halls of justice. It’s truth we are ready for.

And it's truth we desperately need if we are to begin the work of building up a culture where women can truly flourish without curtailing the civil rights of an entire class of people.

[El Duderino]

5 hours ago, ClearedHot said:

Not a dodge at all and brother and thanks, you just proved my point.  When life begins has NOT been settled, certainly not in the court, but you automatically default to it is life and it is aborted out of convenience because that is YOUR moral belief.  The only court settled opinion (Stare Decisis), on Abortion was Roe V Wade.

If living, single-celled organisms are found on the moon, Mars, an asteroid or anywhere other than planet earth are the scientific journal headlines going to be “Life found on Xxxx” or “Organism that’s not quite life found on Xxxx”?

Once the egg is fertilized and the cellular functions are functioning and the cell begins dividing I don’t understand how it’s not alive. It’s human DNA in the cell so saying it’s not human life also doesn’t make sense to me. I am not the smartest person though and am open to a scientific explanation of how it’s otherwise.
 

After conception isn’t the nature versus nurture part of the equation that determines what a human is going to be like settled?

[jazzdude]

CH. the my body my choice is a false argument. The baby isn’t a part of her body, just inside of her.

So if your beliefs are that you can murder, rape, steal, do heavy drugs, drink and drive, etc then we should all bow down because they are your beliefs? Not how our constitution works.

How it does work however is that every individual is important and has rights. This argument is about whether the unborn babies have rights. Not if a woman has a right to kill something inside her that is alive.

That unborn baby also infringes in the rights of the mother, and physically drains the mother for resources in order to grow, and can cause adverse health impacts on the mother.

If you were faced with the decision to save either her or the unborn baby, which would you choose?

It's a choice with no good or right answer.