The bullshit of the abortion debate
Congressman Todd Akin’s asinine comments about “legitimate rape,” pregnancy and abortion have knocked medicare and the economy off center stage in the political debate, at least temporarily.
Akin has apologized. Yet his comments are unforgivable because he is clueless to the hurt and damage he has caused and continues to cause. He is clueless to how hurtful his comments are to women, particularly rape survivors. His apology is empty because he doesn’t realize what he did.
Akin is clueless to the political damage he is causing as evidenced by the fact that he refused to resign his candidacy for U.S. Senate. He thinks he can win. He says his campaign is not about him, but about his message, as if he is a messiah with a unique message that no one else can deliver. Akin is a candidate for a straight jacket and the U.S. Senate.
Republicans are losing women over the Akin gaffe because 1) they failed to get him out of the Missouri U.S. Senate race and 2) their response is too male. Empathy is missing. The Republican response, which failed, is strategic and politically expedient. The strategy is sound, but empathy is missing and women feel that.
Much of the empathy coming from the left is false. It is strategic. But at least they are trying. Thus the gender gap will expand until Republican males get empathy for women, or at least fake it as well as Democratic males do.
The sin of it all is that on a political level the abortion debate is bullshit.
Regardless of who wins the presidential election and which party controls the next Congress, abortion is not going to become illegal in the United States in the next four years. Not in the next eight years either. Barring a transformational shift in the American culture, abortion will probably never be illegal throughout the United States.
Under our Constitution, there are only two ways for Roe v Wade to be overturned. One way would be through a constitutional amendment, as the Republican National Platform as called for since 1980 when Ronald Reagan was nominated and elected president. The other way Roe v Wade could be overturned is via a U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Neither of those two things is likely to happen during the lifetimes on anyone reading this in 2012.
In order the the U.S. Constitution to be amended, the proposed legislation would have to pass in both the House of Representative and the U. S. Senate by a two-thirds majority. An amendment would need 290 of 435 votes in the House and 67 of 100 in the Senate. In the last 32 years since the Human Life Amendment was first included in the GOP platform, through three Republican presidential administrations including a brief period during Bush II’s presidency when the GOP controlled both houses of Congress, no such amendment has come close to passing.
Even if a Human Life Amendment passed Congress, it would still have to be ratified by 38 states before the Constitution was amended. Without the occurrence of a transformational shift in the American culture, that is not going to happen.
The same is true for the U. S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade. It is not likely to happen, no matter how much prayer is involved. Even if there were 6 devout Catholics sitting on the Court, which will never happen, Roe v Wade might not be overturned. Even if it was overturned, abortion would very likely become a state issue. There would be 50 sets of laws governing the procedure. Some states might ban it outright. Not all fifty states would. Abortion would still be legally available in the United States, somewhere.
Of course those responsible for crafting the Republican platform every four years know this. If they don’t, they either can’t count or they are as clueless as Akin.
So why does the Republican Party adopt a platform every four years that includes a Human Life Amendment? In order to appease clueless yahoos like Akin, to keep the votes of the cultural conservatives and to keep their campaign donations coming.
An argument could be made that the Republican platform that includes support of a Human Life Amendment is immoral. It is a politically expedient lie designed to give uninformed voters false hope and to manipulate them. But it is also politically inexpedient, stupid and immoral because to gives the Democrats cover for eroding personal and economic freedom in the name of “choice.” To ignore the political realities and go forward anyway knowing that taking a “moral” position will give your less moral opponent an opportunity to do severe damage is immoral.
Those people of good will who are committed to saving lives by ending abortion politically and legally are failing precisely because they are attempting to do so politically and legally. Until our culture shifts, there is no chance that they will succeed. Their political efforts are counter productive. They need to take a longer view and shift their focus to impacting the culture.
They need to convert hearts and minds and give up attempting to force their moral views on others.
More from my site
My fellow Republicans: Abortion takes an innocent life – same sex marriage does not
Kyrillos jumps into the Rape and Abortion fray
Why the Christain Peter story matters…
Roe v Wade and the Rights of the Father
A new trend in gender equality
Chris Smith’s “No Federal Funding For Abortion” Bill Passes The House
Did Booker Lie About His “Extreme” Stand On Abortion?
Is UMDNJ The New Planned Parenthood?
CHRIS SMITH: Stopping abortion on demand in Obamacare
Hispanics/Latinos Are New Jersey’s Largest Minority Group
This guy might have just saved Obama’s presidency single-handed .
[…] Cross Posted at More Monmouth Musings as “The Bullshit of the Abortion Debate” by Art Gallagher […]
Art,
I am going to disagree with you a bit. It is possible if we have 8 years of a Republican administration that we could get enough conservative justices to overule Roe v. Wade. The most likely way I think that would happen would be by the court saying we now have enough scientific evidence to conclude that life begins at conception. If you recall in Roe v. Wade the court said we can not decide the issue of when life begins at this time. Were that to happen, the unborn would then have a constitutional right to life and the states would not be able to allow abortion except in cases where it was a choice between the mothers life and the baby. It is a possible scenario.
Thanks Mike.
Certainly it is possible, but not likely.
In the next eight years Scalia, Bader Ginsberg, Kennedy and Breyer are likely to retire. Of those four, only Scalia is a likely anti Roe v Wade vote.
Of the remaining 5 Justices, only Thomas and Alito are likely anti Roe v Wade votes, so it is possible that a President Romney would nominate and the Senate would confirm that 3 of 4 Justices who would go along with a legal argument that scientifically it has been proven that life begins at conception and that zygotes have constitutional rights.
But as Chief Justice Roberts demonstrated in June with the ObamaCare decision, what they do once they get there is really unpredictable, unless they are nominated by a Democratic president.
As Roberts also demonstrated, politics and public opinion matter.
Even if there is scientific evidence, scientists (assuming doctors are scientists) on the left are now developing a “medical ethics” argument that newborns and fetuses are “morally equivalent;” that both the fetus and the newborn are “potential persons” and that “after birth abortion” is ethical even if the newborn is not disabled or impaired.
http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/03/01/medethics-2011-100411.full
(thanks to Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll for that link)
Depending on the culture, the Court could just as predictably go along with that argument.
Zygotes, embryos and fetuses could be legally declared “guests” or “tresspassers.”
I don’t see the Court overturning Roe V Wade unless there is a cultural shift.
Bet you that no one on the left wants to go into the origins of Planned Parenthood and their heroine, Margaret Sanger.
Here you go:
http://www.infowars.com/pastor-exposes-how-abortion-industry-was-founded-by-nazi-eugenicist-now-lauded-by-liberals/
Pastor Exposes How Abortion Industry Was Founded By Nazi Eugenicist Now Lauded By Liberals
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
December 1, 2010
Pastor Exposes How Abortion Industry Was Founded By Nazi Eugenicist Now Lauded By Liberals childress1
In this exclusive new unseen video interview for Prison Planet.tv subscribers, New Jersey Pastor Clenard Childress of BlackGenocide.org discusses how The Negro Project was the foundation of today’s industrialized abortion industry and how its pioneer, Margaret Sanger, who is still lauded by liberals as a human rights crusader, deliberately set out to sterilize blacks and encourage abortion of black babies in pursuit of a eugenicist drive to create a racially superior master race, a goal she shared with her close friend Adolf Hitler, and one that continues to reverberate through the generations as over 1,700 black babies are killed in the United States every day.
Childress explains how the public school system’s encouragement of adolescents to have sex by handing out condoms is circumventing the authority of parents, which has led to an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies and promiscuity. Childress leads the fight against the normalization of abortion, noting that after just a few weeks it’s now established that babies in the womb have heart beats and brain waves. Childress highlights how the Negro Project, Margaret Sanger’s eugenics plan for black Americans, targeted the systematic genocide of blacks through the promotion of abortion.
Childress explains how Sanger, a devout racist who wrote letters to and received praise from Hitler, was an advocate of social Darwinism and believed that a master race should be bred while ethnic groups deemed inferior, including African-Americans, needed to either be exterminated or their numbers reduced greatly. Sanger’s sterilization and abortion programs targeting the African-American community were set up in such a way so that the victims did not become suspicious of her true intentions. Sanger knew that to offset any distrust of her motives she would have to hire black religious leaders to deliver her programs and message, which is exactly what transpired as Childress highlights.
Pastor Exposes How Abortion Industry Was Founded By Nazi Eugenicist Now Lauded By Liberals childress2 Pastor Exposes How Abortion Industry Was Founded By Nazi Eugenicist Now Lauded By Liberals childress3 Pastor Exposes How Abortion Industry Was Founded By Nazi Eugenicist Now Lauded By Liberals childress4
The eugenics drive to cull the black population was also achieved by withholding benefits from blacks who refused to be sterilized or have their baby aborted, thereby using coercion to force compliance with Sanger’s eugenics programs. After the end of the odious Tuskeegee experiments, wherein which African-American sharecroppers were deliberately infected by the U.S. Public Health Service against their will with syphilis and not treated, eugenics went underground and re-emerged through organizations like Planned Parenthood.
Sanger worked closely with members of the Third Reich and yet she is still celebrated and honored today by liberals as a pioneer of women’s rights. Childress labels Sanger’s origins and her background as “the best kept secret in America” but notes that people are gradually becoming aware of her providence and her deep connections to today’s neo-eugenics movement and its adjutant abortion industry.
Sanger’s legacy lingers on in the modern era now that the African-American birth rate has dipped below the replacement rate thanks to industrialized abortion. Childress labels this process “genocide” and points out that Sanger’s program has been successful – around 52 per cent of all African-American pregnancies now end in abortion.
Whatever your view on abortion, the fact that its industrial growth was created by a woman whose stated goal was to eliminate the black population as part of a eugenics drive to eliminate undesirables is part of the historical record. Read these shocking Margaret Sanger quotes below.
The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.
“Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.”
Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. Page 12.
“We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
Margaret Sanger’s December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255 Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts. Original source: Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon’s Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.
“Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need … We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock.”
Margaret Sanger, April 1933 Birth Control Review.
“Eugenics is … the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.
Margaret Sanger. “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda.” Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5.
As an advocate of birth control I wish … to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘fit,’ admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation….
On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.
Margaret Sanger. “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda.” Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5.
“The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics.”
Margaret Sanger. “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda.” Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5.
“Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying … demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism … [Philanthropists] encourage the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant … We are paying for, and even submitting to, the dictates of an ever-increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all.”
Margaret Sanger. The Pivot of Civilization, 1922. Chapter on “The Cruelty of Charity,” pages 116, 122, and 189. Swarthmore College Library edition.
“The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind.”
Margaret Sanger, quoted in Charles Valenza. “Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?” Family Planning Perspectives, January-February 1985, page 44.
“The third group [of society] are those irresponsible and reckless ones having little regard for the consequences of their acts, or whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers. Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper element dependent upon the normal and fit members of society for their support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped.”
Margaret Sanger. Speech quoted in Birth Control: What It Is, How It Works, What It Will Do. The Proceedings of the First American Birth Control Conference. Held at the Hotel Plaza, New York City, November 11-12, 1921. Published by the Birth Control Review, Gothic Press, pages 172 and 174.
“The marriage bed is the most degenerative influence in the social order…”
Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.
“[Our objective is] unlimited sexual gratification without the burden of unwanted children…”
Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.
“Give dysgenic groups [people with ‘bad genes’] in our population their choice of segregation or [compulsory] sterilization.”
Margaret Sanger, April 1932 Birth Control Review.
“As we celebrate the 100th birthday of Margaret Sanger, our outrageous and our courageous leader, we will probably find a number of areas in which we may find more about Margaret Sanger than we thought we wanted to know…”
Faye Wattleton, Past-president of Planned Parenthood
Thanks Tom
Yesterday the Federal 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned an earlier court ruling that the state of Texas could not move ahead with legislation to cut funding to Planned Parenthood until after the full trail in a suit brought by Planned Parenthood had been heard. That suit is expected to start arguments in October.
There are more ways to skin a cat or a poor woman than a constitutional amendment or a packed court.
The issue of the Republican platform in regards a woman’s right to choose and other gender issues is more than the absurd statements of the son of a preacher man and a product of a christian fundamental education system. An education system aided by federal funds and support from Republican office holders.
The question of what position women hold in the current Republican view on the right way to organize and administer public policies has been bleeding through the abundance of spin being thrown around during this election campaign.
Akin is just the head of the pimple that burst in public. Two years ago he and Paul Ryan co-sponsored legislation to block the spending of any federal money for abortions except in the case of “forcible rape”.
I didn’t know there was any other kind of rape but I imagine that somewhere in their political and legal thinking and advice the concept came up that it had to be “forcible rape”.
To try and temper the valid disgust and universal reaction to Akin’s idiocy is more of the same pay attention to what we say and show you rather than what we do or intend to do political tactics of the Republican campaign.
Akin has been asked to resign, called personally by Paul Ryan and told it was his best choice in the situation.
The public has heard the chorus of what a dumb thing to say, that isn’t how we all think,distancing but no direct and meaningful action. If the Party is as upset as the majority of the electorate then honorable action would be more than a series of statements that the man is an idiot.
But as of right now he stays put and I expect if and when he walks into the Senate building he will be counted as a vote within the converted all pledged to the same set of centrally dictated legislation which will turn off the light switches in any facility that receives a dime of government money and also performs abortion . No constitutional amendment or packed court needed thank you very much.
If the question is simply that legal abortion is the law of the land, our land, upheld by our court, packed or not packed, what the hell does the personal or public beliefs of the founder of planned parenthood have to do with anything?
You sure you want to go down that path, you are asking for heap big trouble if you do, does the name Ayn Rand ring a funky little bell next to your ears?
I am sure her ideas on sex and morality will turn more than a few ears red among the woman who might still decide to vote Republican.
Or should we simply ask Laura Bush why she chose to set up a separate residence when she and her husband left the White House. I keep hoping that we can get to some discussion of questions of substance before the closing bell rings in November this is some more than routine dangerous times we are living in.
We have one of the two major parties avidly proselytizing to undue he past 70+ years of social legislation that brought us out of the battle lines that had been drawn in the quest for worker’s rights and the majority of American’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Before we retreat back to the picket lines, this time not in pursuit of a fair wage for a days work, but for the crumbs off the red carpet tables to be able to feed our children, I would hope that we can get away from these apologies for what is part and parcel of the rights agenda and get to some important bits.
While Akin takes the space we have Romney spending the majority of his time telling whoever is within earshot or watching a channel on which Karl Rove’s juggernaut or Grover Norquist’s paid acolytes have put the latest and greatest paid programming on that “welfare reform has been gutted by the Obama administration over the last three years.” That the requirement that recipients of what is still called welfare be engaged in a job in order to collect has been removed and money just flows out Washington into their scheming hands has been removed by the Demoncrat, black demoncrat in the White House. An allegation, statement supposedly of fact by Mr. Romney, is not and never was and will never be true. Despite this being pointed out by more than one fact checking source does not matter. Those statements and ads keep rolling along just as Mr. Akin and his so called brain do.
Joe,
As I have said before, the right to an abortion if not that same as the right to a free or taxpayer funded abortion.
Have you ever been to a Planned Parenthood clinic? Know anyone who has been to one? Know anyone who has worked at one? I’ve interviewed an employee of a local Planned Parenthood. They push abortions there.
On another note, Christian fundamentalist schools should not get federal funding, or state funding, unless it is in the form of a voucher that a parent has control over. Such schools should not accept direct government grants if offered.
Regarding HR-3, the bill that Ryan and Akin co-sponsored and that my friend Chris Smith was the primary sponsor of….like you said, let’s judge them by their actions. Their action was to remove the word “forcible” from the bill. That’s what happened. The Republican House of Representative passed bill without the term “forcible rape” in it.
It means nothing that the term was in the bill when first proposed. The term was removed from the bill on its first mark up.
I don’t see or hear Women making an issue of it until a Male Politician tries to run an election on it. Leave it alone.
Hey how ’bout Let the men run on whether or not they should get a vasectomy.
Hey how ‘ bout making it law they must get the vasectomy if they impregnate and do not care for the child.
There’s something to talk about, men!
Hey how ‘ bout making it law they must get the vasectomy if they impregnate and do not care for the child.
I like it.
AKin- two years later made and then took back his statement as well. Does that or that someone redlined the word forcible from the sponsored bill make it less of an important issue to those who want to be the arbiters of issues?
Because it’s a man’s world, I couldn’t agree with you more. It was the trying to put Akin, Abortion, Republican “issues” and bullshit in the same head that got me going on this one.
No, it DOES matter that the word “forcible” was originally in HR-3. It was only after massive publicity and pushback that it was taken out.
Like the Akin comment, it reveals a mindset. An unfathomable one to most women, but a mindset nontheless. If you think people can’t understand Planned Parenthood unless they have visited a clinic, then you can certainly understand that a male cannot understand the issue of a women’s right to choose if he has never been pregnant or been in danger of getting pregnant.
That widely circulated photo of male clergyman and male politicians sitting at the table during those Congressional hearings tells the whole story. Akin’s comment is just the latest insult to women.
Chris Smith is no Todd Akin.
No, it DOES matter that the word “forcible” was originally in HR-3
No it doesn’t. Not has far as the right to abortion is concerned. HR-3 is not about the right to abortion. HR-3 is about federal funding of abortion.
It was only after massive publicity and pushback that it was taken out.
So what? That’s a good thing. That’s how the system is supposed to work.
It would have been nice to know what was in the Affordable Care Act before it was voted on.
I agree with most of the rest of what you said, ASPT. Much of this post is about what you are saying.
Gotta love the latest Republican strategy ..judge them by their actions and not their words. Heard this from Christie today and now here. What’s the script? Oh no one listens to the party platform!
Well, if you fellows don’t believe your own words, why should we? Are you saying Chris Smith only put the words “forcible rape” into that obscene piece of legislation because of the oodles of cash he gets from anti-abortion lobby?
Oodles of cash? Smith has $307K
And what does the anti-abortion lobby get? Where does their money come from?
Shall we look at where Frank Pallone’s oodles of cash comes from? What the lobbies that donate to him get for their money? Shall we look at Menendez’s oodles of cash from the too big to fail lobby>
Yes. Nobody should be off limits that is why elections matter. Whoever wins in November their feet should be held to a people’s fire and made to stop the either/or, top down thinking. This is a people’s democracy not a pathway to an oligarchy through cash.
The clarity that enters this campaign as it reaches its conclusion is that the numbers say the dictated, step by step, pledged bound, strategy of the Republican’s is not working and the core dysfunction in the party of exclusions and forced moral platitudes is eating its own.
All of this comes down to two words, “personal responsibility”.
Actions do have consequences; it is usually the woman who must bear the consequences. Males should understand that and I strongly urge them to control their hormonal driven urges.
As a fiscal conservative, I do not think the taxpayers should foot the bill for those consequences.
As for everyone discussing abortion, I suggest you take a moment to thank your mom for not having an abortion.
Tom- I understand your reasoning and I respect your thoughts on the subject, but I thank my mother for many things, but in private 99.9% of the time and I don’t think it a matter for those who want to represent me in the political world. I would prefer that instead of them echoing or championing my personal moral beliefs, that they be thoughtful, sincere and honestly present their positions, not the party directed line, on the issues of the day.
Art- to get back to your question, “Shall we look……” The below chart, although lifted from that biased and Republican excluded from public funds, Bill Moyers, actually comes from a “free” market web site that offers financial advice. It clearly shows that regardless of their party we are allowing ourselves to be led by an entire crop of politicians who are progressively losing touch with the average American.
http://billmoyers.com/2012/08/21/how-much-is-washington-worth/
The abortion issue can be debated till everyone is blue in the face! This is not the issue. RAPE is RAPE no matter how you want to spin it! Now the true issue. This morron Akin is a destroyer. His campaign was deliberately funded by the dems. The libs were afraid of Sarah Steelman so McCaskel came out saying Akin was the most conservative candidate…on purpose…to get him elected! Now look at the polls in Missouri. Today’s Gallop has McCaskel ahead 48 to 38. This is exactly what they planned on! Akin says “Let the people decide.” Well, polls show they have already decided! The nation is telling to get out, but he won’t. The fix is in!
I agree with Susan. Akin is a Manchurian candidate programmed to be a horse’s ass.
He was forced to utter those words about rape in the same way Chris Smith was programmed to to put the words “forcible rape” in HR-3, the bill he sponsored.
Where’s Frank Sinatra when you need him?
Art, someone needs to teach you how to count.
There are five Justices in favor of upholding Roe v. Wade — Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan. There are four Justices that would, tomorrow, vote to overturn Roe — Chief Justice Roberts as well as Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito.
Justice Ginsburg is 79 years-old. Her health is horrible. If “President Romney” nominates Justice Ginsburg’s successor, and assuming that new justice is in the mold of Roberts and Alito (i.e., members of the Federalist Society), then all we need is a single abortion case to come along and its good-bye Roe.
Every day I participate on this site my respect and admiration for Obama increases. The man has had every shot possible sent across his bow, members of congress disrespect him and the office he holds in public, the entire world is privy to the most detailed inspection of his mother and father, grandmother and wife, he is touted as the Manchurian candidate of the left, socialist, Muslim Brotherhood and the Blank Panthers, as well as courting and playing too every single recipient of government support in the land.
He brings all kinds of good music to the White House, can dance even, play basketball and gets attacked by his own supporters for being too nice and compromising with the Republicans.
And he still gets up in the morning puts on his pants like the rest of us and is now so feared and detested that he is part of the cabal that born and bred the moron Akin, 60 or more years ago. And all this and he is only 1/2 a white man. Yup, I got it now. Does anyone else need to have this made more understandable or less birther sounding?
Five2Four,
I’m not convinced Roberts can be counted on. Scalia in 76 years old.
A case has to be brought and heard before Roe v Wade could be overturned.
The real issue that Killeen avoids and which abortion advocates always ignore is when does life begin.
It is not a question of “personal moral beliefs” any more then making theft or assault or murder crimes is a question of personal moral beliefs.
It is quite simple if an unborn child or a fetus is a life then abortion is murder if it is not a life then it is a matter of personal choice as to whether or not to have an abortion.
This question is avoided by abortion advocates. They skip over that and go right to yelling about personal rights. They do this because they know they can not win the real debate.
Susan…note that up to a few days ago the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee and Karl Roves PAC were both ready to give Aiken five million dollars each for a total of 10 million dollars. I would not blame the dems for funding his campaign since his positions on bills on which he has voted are mainstream Republican.
MLaffey-
On a personal level I would be more inclined to offer long term and long lasting support of what ever type I could to a young woman in my family or sphere of contact in daily life, who is faced with the prospect of raising a child before she is ready to commit to that consciously.
On a political level this is not a choice for politicians to dictate what is right and what is wrong. For a variety of reasons the question of LEGALIZED abortion came front and center, was answered and re-answered in the courts time and time again.
To continue to try and use the issue as a definer of who is the right and who is wrong and immoral is religious and violates the constitution that so many claim to hold as sacrosanct as their bible. Time to end the effort and stop trying to couch it in an extra-legal context. Doesn’t belong there.
And he still avoids the real question.
Point proven
Mlaffey- If the answer were known to the “real question” the entire issue would be discussed in a different context.
I like children and dogs much more so than I like most A Dolts, does that make me pro-life?
I don’t think it up for debate that when a child is walking around on the same sidewalk as you that their life has begun.
Yet the party that wraps itself in a pro-life banner is the same party that says we can’t afford them anymore.
That because we can’t afford the cost we should cut the existing spending in those areas but maintain the lesser tax on those of us who make, individually, 100’s of times more than entire neighborhoods where these non debatable life forms live.
I did not answer your when does life begin question because I honestly haven’t the answer and I don’t believe I am alone in that position and “avoiding” the answer.
I am as equally confused on the question of when does life reach the point of being an actuarial consideration and a financial concern and becomes secondary to those numbers and loses it’s status as a social and moral concern?
We should be pro-life up until what age?
I don’t think it up for debate that when a child is walking around on the same sidewalk as you that their life has begun.
The question, Joe, is not that it has begun, but when did it begin. Pro-death thinkers are now wanting to move that beginning of personhood beyond birth.
http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/03/01/medethics-2011-100411.full
My two and 1/2 year old nephew was born via emergency c-section six months early because a continued pregnancy would have endangered my sister-in-laws life.
Was Jamie not a person when he was born? He wasn’t walking down the side walk then. He does now.
Yet the party that wraps itself in a pro-life banner is the same party that says we can’t afford them anymore.
You’ve got it exactly backwards, Joe. It is the Democratic party that wants to end life when “we” can’t afford it. End it for infants and for the elderly.
The Republican party doesn’t say we cannot afford the young and the elderly. They say, accurately, that the way we are doing it now isn’t working and spending more on what is not working is not the answer.
Those who benefit from the current system that isn’t working are the people who are defending it and calling for more of the same kinds of spending.
I did not answer your when does life begin question because I honestly haven’t the answer and I don’t believe I am alone in that position and “avoiding” the answer
It really isn’t a difficult question.
Is a zygote a life? There really is not question about that. If it were not a life, there would never be a reason to abort it.
Is it human? What else could it be?
Failing to keep satisfactory answers to the human life question, the pro-death lobby now wants to create a new distinction, “personhood.”
Personhood is a dangerous and slippery slope. Was my nephew Jamie less of a person during his ICU incubation than his grandmother was during a lifesaving ICU treatment 35 years prior?
Even if there is a question of when life begins, or when personhood begins. Why is it that our society had chosen to lean to the side of death until there is a satisfactory answer?
Answer me that, Joe.
Raising taxes on the rich won’t make life better for the young or old, rich or poor. Raising taxes on the rich still won’t pay for the social programs that the Democrats want to expand without a way to pay for the expansion and that the Republicans want to restructure to make sustantial.
I don’t know the legal arguments cited that made abortion legal. As to the question of “Why is it that our society had chosen to lean to the side of death….” is not the question that was asked or answered in Roe vs. Wade. The question was should abortion be legal within our existing legal framework? Answer was and has been repeatedly stated by the courts as yes it should be legal.
The morality of the practice is a different debate and has been going on and will continue to go on for the foreseeable future and is a legitimate question for each individual to answer.
But putting the question up on a political forum and attempting to state it is not a relevant question, politically, actually Bullshit question, is disingenuous and an attempt to squash the importance of having a fundamental plank in a political parties platform. A fundamental political point that crosses the line between individual choice and morality and governmental administration.
As to the “answer” to our economic, income and cost, debacle, my main and constant point is that I find it dubious and questionable that the Republican Party has decided that the answer moving ahead is to cut money, “privatize” public benefits, and create a simpleton’s version of business 101.
Rather than give a nickel of thought to balancing and/or closing off loop holes that allow a minority of our fellow citizens to maintain the existing gap between what percentage of their income they pay and what percentage of income the majority pays to support all programs of the government.
When the Republicans talk about the past years of no change under Obama and three years of stagnation why can they not see the effect of “trickle down” since the 1980’s and the effect of less government “interference” in the “free” market financial industry.
That is my point, my delusions as the opposition thinkers like to frame it, it is simple and from my humble position a legitimate point of contention.
The Paul Ryan budget begins the privatization and unbridled operation of existing public programs, using numbers that as recently as last month caused NJ politics to become a choice between negative nabobs of negativity and more of the same political stump speeches with a folksy back beat. I am not buying it. Been there done that.
What I am amazed at is that so many obviously informed and involved people are.
Where is the beef? Where is the practical common sense difference between we have all seen this before and what it has wrought to what is on the table and will be repeatedly put on the table between now and November?
Call me crazy but why the hell should I follow the thinking that says everything that the Demoncrats have brought into existence has caused the current problems.
To only offer another series of new “financial” products, new “debt security” vehicles, with the promise of just trust us we will give you a Christmas club option and a lay away plan for your health and old age.
Forget the last 17 years of no real growth on your street. We grew the shit out of the global economy, the one that made you and your children forced to take the lower paying scraps that we let trickle down from the table.
What has happened to our country, didn’t happen in a vacuum,( except for the past three years), when every pledged impaired Republican held their collective breath until the rest of us turned red.
I’ll take my shot with the devil I know and leave the avenging angels to their own internal civil war.
“Call me crazy but why the hell should I follow the thinking that says everything that the Demoncrats have brought into existence has caused the current problems.”
Pick a problem and I will demonstrate how it was caused by liberal policies that Democrats adopt. It was not lack of regulation that caused the housing market to collapse and the current economic crisis it was government inserting itself into the housing market that caused our current financial crisis.
“The question was should abortion be legal within our existing legal framework? Answer was and has been repeatedly stated by the courts as yes it should be legal.”
Yes and the Supreme Court also stated a slave was property not a person. Should we have just accepted that proposition or were abolitionists right to oppose that on moral grounds.
“The morality of the practice is a different debate and has been going on and will continue to go on for the foreseeable future and is a legitimate question for each individual to answer.
But putting the question up on a political forum and attempting to state it is not a relevant question…”
Morality is not merely a question for the individual. Society must have laws and every law is based on a moral proposition. Saying it is a moral question for the individual is just a dodge of the real issue. Perhaps you should give some consideration to the question of when life begins instead of ignoring.
What’s is it Bob you hate being placed in the mix of democrats that are absolutely CLUELISS!!! Well if the shoe fits…wear it!!!I don’t blame the dems…I blame the liberal, biases..and you are among them!
This back and forth began with the issue that what Akin said, what the meaning of an anti-abortion plank in the Republican Party platform means, and the attempt to side step the issue by attaching the word bullshit to its importance.
The fact that the back and forth ends with references to the Dred Scott Decision and the reaction to that which led to a civil war 4 years after the legal decision was handed down seems to me a good place to end the trail with point, set and match over.
Morality did not bring laws protecting property and personal rights into existence, the need for order and rules to govern did.
One legal precedent offshoot, established by the Dred Scott decision and still in place today is the rights of corporation to protect and defend their property.
The call of morality to anyone, individual or group, is the boiling point the constitutional safeguard of separation of church and state was meant to avoid.
Is it just me or did he just defend the Dred Scott decision?