Ha! I got you to briefly talk about abortion. Point taken about wanting fewer abortions, and the hard right not actually being prolife (I definitely agree with that one). I’m prolife in every other stage of life, up to and including the death penalty. So maybe in this environment where it is legal, Democratic policies lead to fewer abortions (again, maybe). However, there have been nearly 55mil abortions in the US since 1973 – in NYC black women have more abortions than live births #blacklivesmatter. I think that the environment shouldn’t be taken as a given; it should and can be changed.

As for no one is pro-abortion, maybe not in the past. And I do believe that you guys and the vast majority of Democrats actually want fewer abortions. But there is a movement on the far left that are trying to change this tone; they are pushing people to actually celebrate their abortions – disgusting.

If it were up to me, I would trade every political issue for this one issue. You can have as many social programs as you want, introduce stricter gun control, whatever, just make abortion illegal again. You could probably make a case that if Republicans actually were to overturn Roe v Wade, that their party would collapse for a generation. I’m starting to think that they know that too, and they are just playing lip service to the pro-life with no real intention of taking the steps to make abortion illegal again. The pro-life are being used as pawns by Republicans.

I mean: “Also it would [not] hurt to have a alternative voting system:”

Alternate voting would only go partly to solve America’s issues, the other part of the issue is that the president plays both a legislative role as well as a representative role. We would be well served if we disconnected those two functions.

Matt Yglesias sums it up quite well here:

The point here is that it seems inevitable in any country for some individual to end up serving the functional role of the king. Humans are hierarchical primates by nature and have a kind of fascination with power and dignity. This is somewhat inevitable, but it also cuts against the grain of a democracy. And under constitutional monarchy, you can mitigate the harm posed by displacing the mystique of power onto the powerless monarch. We follow the royal family with fascination, they participate in weird ceremonies, they have dignity, they symbolize the nation, we all talk about them respectfully, etc. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister gets to be just another politician. Admittedly the one who’s most important at this given moment in time. But that’s no reason not to jeer at him during Question Time. He’s not the symbol of the nation who’s owed deference. He’s a servant of the people and people who feel he’s serving them poorly should say so.
— http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2010/11/16/199098/royal-wedding-and-the-case-for-monarchy/

this podcast was a good one

I have to take up and speak to Lanes comment that there is a movement within the far left to “celebrate” ones abortion. This isn’t true. What there is a movement to no longer shame the women who choose to have abortions and to talk about them openly, rather than hiding in the shadows for the legal choice they have made.

I have to take up and speak to Lanes comment that there is a movement within the far left to “celebrate” ones abortion. This isn’t true. What there is a movement to no longer shame the women who choose to have abortions and to talk about them openly, rather than hiding in the shadows for the legal choice they have made.

+1. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Right. The rallying cry use to be: “safe legal and rare.” The “rare” part is now problematic.

Some stats….
• The overall U.S. unintended pregnancy rate increased slightly between 1994 and 2008, but unintended pregnancy increased 55% among poor women, while decreasing 24% among higher-income women.[1,6]
• Overall, the abortion rate decreased 8% between 2000 and 2008, but abortion increased 18% among poor women, while decreasing 28% among higher-income women.[3]
• Nine in 10 abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.[5]

— https://www.guttmacher.org/media/presskits/abortion-US/statsandfacts.html

By any measure, that’s pretty rare.

Greg,

As usual, the problem with America isn’t really between the educated and the uneducated or religious vs non-religious but rather between the rich and poor.

I agree.

Michelle Bachmann would like us all to know that the rapture and judgment are coming from the Lord because that evil Kenyan Mooslim in the White House isn’t bombing Iran.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/20/michele-bachmann-obama-rapture_n_7104136.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=Politics

On the subject of police/authority abusing their power. Have you seen this story? Sickening.

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/fbi-admits-it-fudged-forensic-hair-matches-in-nearly-all-criminal-trials-for-decades

The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.

Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favoured prosecutors in more than 95 per cent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.

The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions.

You wonder why people can’t seem to trust the system set up to “protect” them.

I’ve already hashed this out with Kenneth, but first you would have to convince the majority of people that a zygote is a full and complete human being and should possess all of the rights of a human being, and I don’t see that happening anytime soon. People disagree about that point of when a fetus attains those rights and becomes human.

Hell, even parts of the bible (Exodus 21:22 and Numbers 5:11-31) can reasonably and arguably be read as seeing a fetus as not quite human yet and not worthy of the punishment that would come from killing a man. Numbers 5:11-31 is also arguably about a ritual designed to deliberately cause an abortion in a woman accused of infidelity.

And naturally, 1 in 5 pregnancies miscarry often before the woman is aware she is pregnant. Are all of those really possessed of souls? How exactly does that work? I know Catholics used to believe in limbo on the outskirts of hell where the unbaptized infants and children would go when they died, but do they also see that as a repository where deceased fetus’ go too?

Nice to see we’re hitting Godwin’s Law early this week. As comraderead partially points out, what proof is there that all these pregnancies would come to term? And since we know that the economically disadvantaged (as pretty much all these minorities we’re talking about are), we know that these kids will be born behind the eight ball. Their mothers will pretty much lack decent (or any) pre-natal care. And once all these millions of kids come out, their parents, if they’re around, will not be able to provide for them economically. It’s very easy to sit here and talk about how these Godless heathens should not commit “murder” and carry the child to term when you don’t have to take care of them.

Sometimes I preach a so-so sermon and usually I forgive myself. Just sayin’.

The border crossing video…pretty sure it’s Pastor Steven Anderson. If you haven’t seen him, you’ve GOT to look at this. Watch it all. Unbelievably hilarious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNCoevpt5TE

Greg and Comrade,

1. I think we would all agree that every human being, or every human person, has a right to life. I think we might also agree that this right is based on the dignity of the human person and not on skin color, gender, talent, etc.

2. I don’t think that any of you would deny that a zygote is a living member of the human species. Only days after conception there is a beating heart. The DNA is fully formed and everything from the babies eye color, height, weight, gender, etc is written in stone. The DNA is unique, the heart is beating, and another member of the human species has arrived. Are we all on the same page so far?

The only question left is “are these zygotes to be considered *persons* with a right to life?”. If you agreed with point 1 it’s hard for me to see how you would deny that a zygote has a right to life.

The philosopher Stephen Schwartz has argued that there are only four differences between born and unborn humans, and none of the differences justifies depriving unborn humans of the right to life. Schwartz uses the acronym SLED to summarize these differences:

Size
Level of development
Environment
Degree of dependency

Question: Why do SLED differences make someone less valuable—or not a someone at all? I would like one of you to defend your view of personhood and show why it is superior to the pro-life view based on universal human equality.

The problem with SLED for the prochoice advocate is that if you agree that these factors make someone *not* a person you would seem to be affirming that person hood can come in degrees. If a man is large, intelligent, rich, and independent, does this make him *more valuable as a person* than an illegal mexican immigrant mother with no job? What if someone only has three of the four? What if only two? I think the prolife position of universal human equality makes for a much more consistent view.

Comrade,

Yes I do agree that one has the right to protect themselves from criminal intent.

it would be nice though if you gave some kind of response to my above comment before taking the conversation in a different direction…

Comrade,

If the mother must be treated for some desease or illness and the child dies indirectly from the procedure that would be permissible. Ectopic pregnancy for example. In this situation, the baby would have died anyways and is only indirectly killed to save the mothers life. However, if the baby must be killed directly just to save the mither that would be immoral.

For example, it would be wrong for a mother to kill her born child (even if that child were going to die anyway) because the mother needed a heart transplant, and her child had the only compatible donor match. In this case, the child’s death is direct and serves as a means to save the mother and so is immoral; whereas, in the case of ectopic pregnancy, a doctor treats the damaged fallopian tube and the child dies indirectly, which is not immoral. The child’s death is not used as a means to save his mother but is a side effect of removing some of his mother’s damaged tissue.

This is similar to the cases of two pilots: One bombs a missile silo and indirectly kills children who live nearby, while the other bombs an elementary school in order to harm enemy morale. The former action is moral, because the children’s deaths are unintended, and bombing a missile silo in war is not wrong. (If it were always wrong to indirectly kill human beings, then any army that used human shields could never be defeated in a moral way, which seems absurd.) The pilot who kills the children in the school does something directly immoral, because he uses the children’s deaths as a means to discourage his enemies, and human beings should always be treated as ends and not means. Since the unborn are human beings, they cannot be killed to save the life of the mother, but the mother may also not be killed in order to save the life of the child. Instead, doctors must do what they can to save both. This includes treating any disease affecting the mother (such as removing a cancerous uterus), even if it kills the child indirectly. Finally, remember that the vast majority of abortions are not performed to save the mother’s life but to end the child’s life….

Satisfied?

Comrade,

I did not say that it was OK to kill someone who threatened your health. I said it was OK to protect yourself from criminal intent or aggression. I do not think it is OK to kill someone who is incident threatening your life.

For example, let’s say I am crossing the street and a school bus is driving down the road. Unknown to both the driver and myself, there is an ice patch on the street. The driver sees me, pumps the breaks accordingly, but skids on the ice. If I possessed a grenade launching tank destroyer, would I have the right to pull it out and blast the bus to pieces just to save myself? All parties are innocent, and no one wants to die. I would say that it would be immoral for me to pull out the tank destroyer, but that’s just me.

Comrade,

If we had a way to safely remove an unborn baby at any stage of development and artificially bring her to term, would abortion still be ethical in your view?

Grabbing popcorn…

LOL. You’re horrible Christian.

Since I was also one of the people that the question was addressed to previously, I guess I will step in and provide my two cents. To be honest, I have far less patience than comraderead and the rest of you fine gents to come up with these tortuous arguments about self defense, etc etc. Innocent people die every single day for no more good reason than God woke up on the wrong side of the bed in the morning. I will always be for the right of a woman to choose what to do with her body. Full stop. Call me immoral or uncaring of innocent lives but I care about the person who is living much more than a hypothetical person who will show up in nine months. But beyond that, it is frankly not my place to dictate to another human being what to do with their body.

Greg,

“Innocent people die every single day for no more good reason than God woke up on the wrong side of the bed in the morning.”

Well, I don’t get to murder innocent people just because innocent people die. Let’s have no morals at all then.

“I will always be for the right of a woman to choose what to do with her body. Full stop.”

Yes, do what you want with your body until it affects another body – especially if it kills another body. It’s not just her body at stake. Full stop.

“Call me immoral or uncaring of innocent lives but I care about the person who is living much more than a hypothetical person who will show up in nine months.”

I care about BOTH of the living people. There is no hypothetical person, I was once one of those unborn people living in my mother’s womb waiting to meet my mother face-to-face. And quite frankly I would not have wanted my body to be ripped limb from limb and thrown away like some piece of garbage. The “mother’s womb”, used to be an analogy of a warm safe loving place – no longer!

The more I think about how democrats think of themselves as the compassionate ones, the ones who speak up for the downtrodden, the voiceless of society, who care about the injustices others ignore; the more I’m shocked that democrats aren’t the pro-life side. Seriously, who would you expect to label a group as “not people”? Who would you expect to be completely uncompassionate about the lives of the weakest among us? Who would you expect to advocate for the right to kill for convenience sake? Democrates? SMH.

With that, I’m off to bed #eastcoast.

Well, I did say we’ll get around to it. But I was hoping to start from a place of common ground between us and reach a point of divergence. But alright, I will preface this by stating simply that I believe the Christian ethic is, barring any life threatening or special circumstances, to do unto the fetus as you would wish would be done to you.

However, we do not live in a Christian nation, and we do live under a secular law and constitution.

I don’t think that any of you would deny that a zygote is a living member of the human species.

That is the question we are trying to answer. You cannot assume the premise is true.

What are the necessary conditions for personhood?

Is it simply DNA? Well, no. My arm is full of cells that contain human DNA, and yet they are not individually accorded the status of personhood. I will never be accused of murder if I must amputate my arm.

Is it a soul? We have no scientific evidence for the existence of a soul, so we would have to prove that humans possess such a thing first. And then there is the question of which religious tradition we should adhere to when discussing the concept of the soul, because there is divergence between Christianity, Judaism, and Eastern Religions. (As I’ve previously mentioned, the Mosaic Law (and some rabbinic traditions) arguably do treat fetuses as distinct from children that have been born. And though I do not find the morality of the Mosaic law to be a reliable source, others do. I digress…)

Is it self-awareness or sentience? Perhaps. But then we face the difficult questions of those with severe mental disabilities. Are they still persons worthy of rights? If yes, then it would be difficult to deny a fetus the same rights.
If no, then we open the quandary of putting people with severe mental disabilities to death. If the answer is ‘it depends’ then we must define what level of mental capacity qualifies one as possessing sentience.

Is it viability? I think this would be a contributing factor. We allow life support to be withdrawn from a person whose body is no longer able to sustain itself without aid and we do not qualify that as unethical or immoral (or perhaps I should not assume that.) Of course, then we must resolve whether withdrawing artificial means of life support would be comparable to withdrawing natural means of life support in utero. I suspect that will be an interesting discussion.

Is it birth? Most likely not. There are studies that show that a late term fetus does possess awareness of its environment, recognizes its parents’ voices, and can experience and comprehend pain. So the transition, if it exists, is earlier than this point. (Which is also, incidentally why most aborton laws in the United States prohibit aborton after a point in the second trimester barring extreme circumstances.)

And then there is the question of ownership of one’s body and whether one can be ethically compelled to give up self-ownership to another and, if so, to what degree. I think this libertarian view is probably one of the least defensible positions, but I think it too merits discussion.

It would be ethical to use the minimum amount of force necessary to stop him. Let’s say in response to your hypothetical situation, the officer decided to not disarm or tase, but to mutilate and dismember the young man limb from limb, or crack open his skull and vacuum out his brain.

We’re not discussing the method of killing the threat, but we can assume in our hypotheticals that it is you and person threatening your life. No need to bring other persons into the scenario. All other means of diffusing the situation have been tried. The person is still holding and waving a potentially loaded gun at you even if he doesn’t realize the seriousness of the situation. You are armed. Is it ethical to shoot first if you fear for your life?

Even if you can dream up some tough cases, these would only excuse a very tiny number of abortions. If I agree to join you in advocating for the legalization of extremely tough cases (you know, the ones where a 7 year old is raped by her father and then has to abort to save her own life) will you then join me in advocating for the illegalization of all other abortions?

I’m not trying to probe fringe cases, I’m trying to start from a place of common ground and see how far we can get from point A to point B before we diverge and reach an impasse. I thought the self-defense scenario would be the most likely point of commonality between us. But we’ve already reached divergence and I’m trying to explore the reasons why with you.

Thus far what I’m getting is that you think it’s okay to kill someone if you believe they will kill you and you are certain that they know that their actions are wrong, but it is ethically wrong to kill someone who you believe will kill you but you are certain they do not know their actions are wrong.

Comrade,

I’m not sure if we have reached a point of divergence or if you are just playing devils advocate? Your last comment was a giant laundry list of speculations, but you didn’t really answer the question.

1. When does a human being become a “person”?

2. defend your view of personhood and show why it is superior to the pro-life view based on universal human equality.

3. Explain whether or not you would take out the tank destroyer and kill the proverbial truck driver who would otherwise crash into you.

Until you and greg supply some kind of opinion on these it’s hard to understand where we are at in the convo.

When does a human being become a “person”?

This was sort of the point of my musings in my previous post. What does it mean to be a person?

At some point in the distant past, our ancestors were animals, then the next generation through mutation or through an ‘uplifting of God’ became persons.

And your scenario really isn’t comparable to mine. Both because the solution demands a deliberate escalation which will definitely cause collateral damage, and because it involves a rational individual with the capacity for self-preservation and the knowledge of what is happening to him.

Comrade,

OK, I was just hoping you would be willing to put out an answer. It’s a difficult question. Consider this possibility as explained by a philosopher who follows in the tradition of Aquinas

When does the rational soul’s presence in the body begin? At conception. For a soul is just the form –the essence, nature, structure, organizational pattern –of a living thing, an organism. And the human organism, as we know from modern biology, begins at conception. Now Aquinas did not know this; given the flawed biological information available to him in his day, he thought that the human organism came into existence some time after conception, though long before birth. Despite the fact that he still thought abortion was immoral at any point after conception, some “pro-choice”advocates have tried to make hay out of this, but their efforts are in vain. Once you add Aquinas’s metaphysics to modern biology, there can be no doubt that the soul is present from conception, and thus that a human being exists from conception. Of course, the features essential to human beings as rational animals –being able to take in nutrients, to sense the world around them, to think, and so forth –are not fully developed until well after conception. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. Remember Aristotle’s distinction between actuality and potentiality. Rationality, locomotion, nutrition, and the like are present even at conception “in potency”or as inherent potentialities. And as you’ll recall, this doesn’t mean “potential”in the loose and far-fetched sense in which a rubber ball might “potentially”roll by itself or spontaneously combust, due to some bizarre quantum fluctuation. It doesn’t even mean “potential”in the sense in which a rubber ball might potentially be melted down and made into something else, e.g. an eraser. It means “potential”in the sense of a capacity that an entity already has within it by virtue of its nature or essence, as a rubber ball qua rubber ball has the potential to roll down a hill even when it is locked in a cabinet somewhere. And in this sense a zygote has within it the potentiality for or “directedness toward”the actual exercise of reasoning, willing, and all the rest that a rubber ball doesn’t have, that a sperm or egg considered by themselves don’t have, and that even a skin cell, despite having the full complement of human DNA within it, doesn’t have unless it is re-directed away from its natural end (i.e. functioning as part of the skin) by a scientist attempting to clone someone. To allude to another distinction made earlier, the zygote, given its nature or form, has rationality as a “primary actuality”even if not yet as a “secondary actuality,”and these other things don’t; they have at best only the capacity to be turned into something that has this primary actuality. Hence Harris’s sarcastic claim that “every time you scratch your nose, you have committed a Holocaust of potential human beings”demonstrates, not any fault with the pro-life position, but only his own inability to make precise conceptual distinctions. 3 The skin cells on your nose might well be “potential human beings,”in the loose sense in which a rubber ball is a “potential eraser.”But a zygote is not a “potential human being”or a “potentially rational animal.”Rather, it is an actual human being and thus an actual rational animal, just one that hasn’t yet fully realized its inherent potentials