Maybe there won’t just be blind following of a candidate this year…folks will think first!

McCain was right and I presume following his heart when he called Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell “agents of intolerance.” Since then he’s shown he’ll do anything to be president including kiss those guys’ rears.
But I take him at his word that he’d nominate Supreme Court justices who would end the federally mandated right to abortion, so I fail to see how any woman or any man who loves a woman, be she wife or daughter or friend, could vote for McCain.
Then there’s his economic ineptness (summer gas tax pause that would save consumers little and leave us owing China more and put more money into the hands of the Saudis, etc.) and economic flip-flops (he hated the tax cuts till he loved them). And the fact his foreign policy experience consists of being held prisoner of war.
Oh, and there’s his temper. It’s famous, though I’m sure he’s trying to keep it hidden till after the election. Senators have said he should not be President.
“The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine,” Republican senator Thad Cochran told one paper. “He is erratic. He is hot-headed. He loses his temper and he worries me.”

This article gives me the creeps! We blame everything on Bush, and Admin., but these people who voted him in, these blamless conservatives voted for him because he agreed with their moral beliefs on abortion and GLBT, and because of this we’ve seen our youth and older fly off to Iraq for a misbegotten war, to die. Our economy is bad, our health for the middle and low class is bad, we see parking lots of SUV’s sitting unsold, houses sitting unsold, forclosures on Homes, the rich getting richer as I read today of a CA buyer of a Trailer Park raising low-income, and retired people’s rents $45.00 in one month! Enough!! If these ultra-conservatives can’t see we need a complete overhaul in our govenment they need glasses and new brains and hearts.

Well, it seems as the though Evangelical are about to loose their stranglehold on our great nation.
Praise the Lord and Amen Brother!
It is kinda interesting to watch those that were attacking Sen McCain….now pretend to embrace him.
Peace!

I’m a conservative Christian (former evangelical) and a Republican, and I hate McCain as a politician, but I’ll be hoping he beats Obama for no other reason than that Obama and a Democratic Congress have the potential to set back any possibility of overturning Roe v. Wade by several years. I can’t see how children, or anyone who loves children, could want Obama as President; McCain’s no good, but at least he might move us close to ending the American Holocaust.

NateW-
I love children.
I think abortion is very unfortunate.
I also believe that individuals have a right to make their own choices.
I do work to insure that there are options available besides abortion and look forward to a day when abortions are the choice only in a med emergency.
I can not support Sen McCain. IMO, he will set back the movement towards equality, bankrupt out nation by dragging out the war that Pres Bush started, and do little to repair our great nation’s relationships with other nations around the world.
Peace!

If McCain selects a right winger to be is VP, then he will increase Obama’s chances to win. It will be easy for the Dems to show that it was the Right Wingers that brought us the War in Iraq and a failed economy. With a Christian Fundy as VP, the Bush III label will have a basis.
If McCain selects a centerist, then that will tell all the middle of the roaders both Dems and Repubs that McCain is not Bush III. Actions speak louder than words, and if McCain bucks the Fundies now, he will get tons more votes in November.
The most the True Believers will do is stay home, but the centrist swing voters can vote for Obama. People, who say they will stay home, have one-half the clout of people who vote. Alienate 10 True Believers to the point that they stay home, and McCain has lost 10 votes, but if McCain alienates 10 centerists, then the gap is 20 votes — the 10 McCain did not get and the 10 Obama did get.
If McCain believes that it is still time to shore up his bigoted Right Wing by kowtowing by appointing one of them as VP, then he does not deserve to win. The reality McCain has to face is that in his case, most people will believe that they are voting for two Presidents — McCain and whoever takes his place when he kicks the bucket. People are smart enough to hedge their bets, and people who like McCain do not want to find that they’ve put McCain into office for 3 years, and then we’ll have 5 years of a religious nut. We’ve had that already!
Thus, a Hickabee will cost McCain the election. Jindal is a religious, closeted-Gay nut case (Don’t tell Jindal; he doesn’t know yet); there’s something wrong with Romney (negative charisma), Lieberman (too old), Guiliani (too much corruption), Crisp (probably Gay but knows it — best choice so far).

Nate W.
One reason (of several) that will have me voting for Obama and not McCain, less chance that Roe V. Wade will be overturned. The U.S. Government has no business in telling any woman that she can’t safely terminate a pregnancy if it is necessary. The government isn’t the one to decide what is a necessary termination, only the woman involved.
So do I advocate abortion as a regular birth control method? Of course not, as there are many choices. Sex ED. plus easy access to birth control is preferable, but there should always be access to termination…not an easy decision but sometimes a necessary one.

“I can’t see how children, or anyone who loves children, could want Obama as President”
Nate, the thing you don’t get about abortion is that anyone who could think about it is already way, way past having to worry about it. As is anyone who could worry about it.
As far as loving children, I love children. I love children who ride bikes, who play ball, who play with dolls, who lie in their parents’ arms and pee. I love all those children and not a one of them could ever be aborted.
Like a lot of sensible people I don’t extend my love to other people’s zygotes, blastocists, embryos or fetuses. Some will be naturally aborted (by God, as it were), some will be aborted for reasons that are none of my business but that I’d often consider good if they were.
So please, Nate, try to keep it real.

Infanticide and selling young kids into slavery or prostitution aren’t always easy decisions either, but in some parts of the world they’re often far more necessary than most abortions performed in modern West. Being a difficult decision doesn’t make it some kind of inalienable right, neither does the perception of necessity. The same goes for abortion. It’s either the killing of a human person, or it isn’t, and the difficulty or the necessity of the decision doesn’t change that.
It is very much the government’s job to decide who is a human person and who is not, because only after such a decision is made can the government decide who merits protection and who doesn’t. Women, children, racial and religious minorities have all been in some times and some places seen as less than a full human person and thus not entitled to basic protections; governments and cultures gradually became enlightened to the full humanity of such groups and decided to interfere with the property rights of patriarchs to defend the dignity of those formerly denied it. You, as a woman, have your rights only at the expense of past decisions to deprive fathers and husbands of the rights they once claimed. I doubt I’d see you standing up for patriarchy because men ought to be able to what they want with their wives, their property, because you assume that women are full human persons–an assumption that clearly hasn’t been shared by everyone. Yet you assume that the unborn aren’t human persons, because it’s convenient for you, because it allows women to claim the same kind of self-mastery, the same kind of autonomy that men have so long claimed for themselves, a “patriarchal” and anti-feminist autonomy. Women, like abusive men of old, hide behind the claim to property rights to justify their actions and squash all serious debate.
For those of us who love the unborn, though, and who embrace them along with women, children, and minorities, the claim that government has no business making decisions about abortion is absurd. Our government has already made a decision–the decision to exclude certain people from the legal community and from very humanity–and there’s nothing wrong, illiberal or undemocratic about challenging the assumptions of that decision.

I dont’ know where to start, Nate…all the rubbish I just read in your post.
I find it hard to believe that you actually think the U.S.government has the RIGHT to decide who is a human being and who isn’t….to decide if a woman can have a safe termination. I find that amazing. You want the government to control your (or a womans’s) body?
China does that. Some in the Supreme Court would like to do that, control a woman’s body.
As to the sperm donor…he has rights, in some cases, (depending on the situation in which the pregnancy occurs…rape, accident,state of the relationship at the time pregnancy is discovered etc. The ultimate decision to continue a pregnancy is the womans…it is HER body…no one elses. And from those who I have known who had to make that decision…it wasn’t for “convience”. That is demeaning to all women who have had to make that difficult decision. You seem to think that it is an easy, not thought about decision.. a lot you know.
As to the selling of children into slavery or prostitution etc. those children are here in this world. Are they better off born if their future is to be sold? Think about it. The other examples of determining who are Human… children, minorities, women… were already born. Hitler made such decisions…deciding who was “human’ and who wasn’t. They too were, already born…just happened to be people Hitler decided weren’t human. He at that time, was “government.” You want the government of the U. S. A. deciding such things?
“It’s either the killing of a human person or it isn’t, and the difficulty or the necessity of the decision doesn’t change that.” Nate W.
I so disagree with you. It isn’t a human being. It is a clump of cells, so small you can’t even see them. On it’s own outside the womb, in the eary months, it wouldn’t survive.

“It’s either the killing of a human person, or it isn’t”
It isn’t. It’s that simple. And, as ps has pointed out, even if it were that wouldn’t give it priority. The US has been in the business of killing human persons for about as long as it existed, whether in war or in executions.
I repeat my statement that no woman, and no one who loves a woman, should vote for McCain.

Pagansister, if the government is in the business of defending the human persons within the community it governs, then the question of who is a person within that community–and who is a person at all–is a fundamental one. It’s inescapable. It would be impossible for our government NOT to answer that question, because if we don’t know who is and isn’t a person, the government has absolutely no idea who its meant to serve. I find it funny that you worry about the U.S. government becoming like Hitler when you are the one working from the more exclusive definition of human personhood, denying any and all rights to one group of possible persons for the sake of defending a few (very male) rights for women. You appeal to this “already born” descriptor as if it’s somehow self-evidently true that that’s either a necessary or a sufficient condition for being human; but it clearly isn’t, since many of the “already born” have been systematically denied personhood for thousands of years. “Already born” is no more stable and no more evident a condition for personhood as “has male genitalia,” “has white skin,” “has come of age,” “is not a Jew,” or any of the other conditions that have been used to exclude certain groups in other times and places. You seriously need to make sure that you have excellent proofs to back up the legitimacy of your form of exclusion when you, as a woman, enjoy the freedoms you enjoy today only because some men in not-too-distant past began questioning the forms of exclusion they used against those of your sex.
This isn’t an issue of women’s rights, and making it into one only impedes our ability to ask and answer the real question: what makes a human person a human person? The moral failure of women who defend abortion rights is that they selfishly fight to maintain their “rights,” their “control over their own bodies” to such an extent that they far too often fail to ever seriously address the question of human identity and to extend the charity of suspending their own immediate goals to ask about what might be for the good of others. If the question of identity is seriously asked and thoroughly answered, there may be room for disagreement about the conclusions. I don’t see much evidence that many of those whose primary concern is “women’s rights” are too interested in the deeper question of identity. They’re too concerned with defending the masculinized, Englightenment understanding of identity that our culture uncritically assumes simply must be true.
And as I said, I’m not interested in the difficulty of the decision. That doesn’t change the question of identity. A Jew was no less a human person just because a Nazi guard might have had a hard decision to make before turning on the gas chambers for the good of the Fatherland.

Nate as I’ve pointed out in other discussions like this, and would again if I thought it was still being read by any but about three diehards, abortions are very distinctly different from killing people. So your use of “killing” and comparison with “children” is an attempt to use our natural impulse to protect children for a very different, somewhat chilling, purpose.
Also you are attempting to minimize the impact of carrying an unwanted fetus, which neither you nor I will ever experience, so the group of all blastocysts, zygotes, embryos and fetuses you’ve somehow chosen to try to represent gains moral weight. Well in the natural scheme of things they are often generated and in many cases naturally discarded without ever having been noticed by anyone. Later it’s usual for some to be naturally discarded. These things, in nature, fail more often than they thrive and become people. You are living in a fictional world, which is ok till you try to impose your fiction on other people.
And the disregard you show in your writing for the rights of women suggests to me you have real problems with women. I believe you intend to go into the clergy. I suggest a monastic order, and definitely not one where you counsel women or couples or even married men. Think about it, please.

“American Holocaust”?
Oh, pulllllleeeeeeeasssssssssssssssse!
And besides, if this is someone’s sole criterion to vote or not to vote for someone, you really, really need to get your head out of your…. I mean, get your head out of the sand and realize we have many, many more much bigger issues going on.

NateW:
2 words you used..”possible persons”. That is what the group of cells is. Therefore continuing to let that group of cells grow inside her body is, yes, the woman’s decision. Not the sperm donor, not the government, but the womans. It is an issue of women’s rights…what else is it????
“The moral failure of women to defend abortion rights is that they selfishly fight to maintain their “rights” “their control over their own bodies”….blah, blah, blah….fail to ever seriously address the question of human identy etc.” NateW.
Ah, NO. Group of cells? not human. Defend our rights, Darn right! Moral failure…who’s morals?
It is so obvious that you’re not interested in how hard the decidion is…you’re a MAN, who seems to think women should be grateful to MEN for “allowing us” the rights we had to fight very hard for. Birthcontrol methods, the vote, not being a man’s property after marriage, entitled to work outside the home, and make and keep our oun money etc. and yes, the right NOT to have a child if we don’t want to. Sorry Nate, am not bowing to any man for the rights women fought for and forced the male dominated society to “grant’ us. Much of those right we were denied came from that book you find a guide.

Nate,
Assuming that one will not use abortion for birth control in the same way that one might use a condom, diaprhagm or “Today” sponge…
Some people have religious grounds on which to base a decision that abortion is acceptable.
Others have ethical and moral grounds on which to base a decision that abortion is acceptable.
The thing that matters here is your apparent confusion between your opinion and scientific fact, as well as the difference between your opinion and others’ opinions.
There’s no reason your opinion should trump mine, no matter how justified you think yours is, because I feel mine is equally justified.
Trying to draw the Constitution into this is just meaningless, because you are mired in your delusion of what defines a “person”.
You may as well draw other tangentially related or tertiary arguments, such as that of euthanasia (I suspect your opinion is “not under any circumstances”), whereas others might see it as the kind, humane thing to do.
What you need to do is to stop judging, stop shrieking, and stop putting in your scary straw men (“infanticide”) because the botttom line is that someone else’s family planning decisions are none of your business.
Since I know at least two people who have made decisions to abort and both of them struggled mightily with the decision, let me repeat: none of your business.

ecl:
The women I knew who had an abortion, did so after much agonizing and I agree, it is not anyone elses business. Some feel, however, that they have the “moral” right to make it their business. Some are men and some are women, who feel they have to butt in on a very personal decision. Also the women I know who did have an abortion, have never regreted it. It was the right decision at the time.
As a “routine” birth control method? Not something I would encourage…too many other methods, but if necessary, should always be available.

Once again, most of you have shown that you have little capacity for thinking about the issue beyond the categories of “women’s rights,” or even the capacity to simply comprehend what I’m saying, really. The only thing any of you ever do is fall back on the tired old “It’s not a person, it’s my body, so nobody else can tell me what to do” line; but, as I’ve made clear over and over again, THAT is PRECISELY the point of debate. But none of you are interested in debate, because you’ve already decided that the unborn simply cannot be human persons, because calling them persons might interfere with the supposed (but hardly self-evident) “right” of women (and men) to divorce their sexuality from its procreative function.
There’s no science that says the unborn are not human persons meriting legal protection. It’s not even a scientific question, and it doesn’t have some “objective” answer that puts you on somehow firmer ground than my position based on my mere “opinion.” That kind of rhetoric is nothing more than the pitiful attempt to avoid debate and avoid facing the reality that every pro-choice position is based no less on opinion and “values” than pro-life positions are.
Never mind the fact that women themselves would be nothing more than disposable property had men in the past not been willing to set aside some of their “rights” and opened anew the question of what constitutes personhood. Modern Western women, having gained the freedom once enjoyed only by men, have realized that that view of freedom absolutely demands the right to abortion, the right to be free from bodily commitment to other human beings, the right to be “unencumbered selves.” This impoverished, masculinized, anti-feminine, anti-human view of freedom has duped gullible men and women all through our society into thinking that questioning the definition of human person–and charitably suspending our self-centered struggle for our own individual “rights” in the meantime–is meaningless, even someone “anti-woman” thing to do. Discussion is hopeless, really, because none of you has the moral sensibility to look beyond “women’s rights” and seriously consider whether or not the dignity of other groups of people might also be at stake in this debate.

Once again, most of you have shown that you have little capacity for thinking about the issue
Insulting, arrogant, and inaccurate.
divorce their sexuality from its procreative function.
Very, very narrow minded. Some of us think our sexuality is one of G-d’s gifts to us and does not have to be associated solely with a “procreative function”. My husband and I don’t need to make a baby because we want to have sex, which is indeed a gift from G-d. G-d has given us many gifts of pleasure and it’s not sinful to partake.
That kind of rhetoric is nothing more than the pitiful attempt to avoid debate and avoid facing the reality that every pro-choice position is based no less on opinion and “values” than pro-life positions are.
No one is arguing this; in fact, I agree. “PRECISELY” the reason to agree that your opinion is no more valuable than mine and that therefore, your opinion should not have the weight of law subjugating mine.
Discussion is hopeless, really, because none of you has the moral sensibility to look beyond “women’s rights” and seriously consider whether or not the dignity of other groups of people might also be at stake in this debate.
Extraordinarily misguided, conceited, arrogant. Your dignity is not affected because I might choose to have an abortion. Those who are pro-choice have every bit as much moral fiber as you like to delude yourself into believing you have, and believing that one has a right to choose to terminate a pregnancy, a right admittedly abused by an extremely small majority, does not make us any less “moral” than you. Choice to end the pregnancy should be our right.
Perhaps you should examine your own inability to think beyond your judgmental mind-set, already made up, as you accuse those of us who are pro-choice, and realize the decision to abort a pregnancy comes from many sources – it could be financial (an imporvershed couple should perhaps not have sex because a pregnancy might result?); a fetus could be severely disformed and a family believes it’s kinder to end the pregnancy rather than subject a child to a life of pain, suffering, or other disadvantage with which they are not prepared to deal; a woman’s life could be endangered because the pregnancy brings on unforeseen medical complications for the mother.
Get out of your own hole entrenched in the thought that women only have abortions due to selfishness. In many cases, it’s actually selflessness that drives the decision. You have to “think outside the box” to understand that.

ecl…..WELL SAID!
I can’t improve on what your post pointed out. My first response was how arrogant and the continous idea that we “women” should be kissing the butt of MEN because they “gave us our rights!!” The business about us having been disposible property, and MEN having set aside some of their rights on what constituted Personhood. Wasn’t that big of them?? There are still women in some countries who have no rights, but that’s another story for another time.
Nate doesn’t want to listen to reasons for an abortion…there is no reason to his way of thinking. He already said that. Women are supposed to be “barefoot and pregnant” and give birth continuously…I guess. He is of the “life starts the minute the sperm and egg hit each other” thus it is a person immediately with all the rights the country has for those who are born. Makes no sense to me.
NateW: “There is no scientific evidence that says the unborn are not human persons meriting legal protection.” Exactly. And there is no evidence that says a group of cells ARE human persons meriting legal protection. IMO, the cells are potential humans. Key word…potential. You disagree, and feel that that group of cells should ALWAYS be allowed to mature…no matter what the circumstances may be. And to repeat a point several others besides me have made…it is so none of your business nor is it the governments.
And as pointed out by ecl, sex is a gift and for more reasons than just procreating. Thus…birth control methods…however, those sometimes get forgotten or don’t work…and if the resulting pregnancy can’t be continued for many, many reasons…the option of safe termination should be there. Not advocating it as a total birth control method…just if it has to be done. I can hear you saying that there is no reason…but there are lots of reason. You’re never going to have to make that decision…you’re a male.

How can an inalienable human right be “abused” by anyone, small minority or otherwise? If abortion is nothing other than a matter of a woman’s choice, then how exactly can she abuse it? She could get pregnant and have an abortion every chance her body was physically able, but that certainly isn’t a form of abuse. She’s simply exercising her “right.”
I concede–and I always have conceded–that there may be cases where an abortion can be the “lesser of two evils.” The problem is that pro-choice rhetoric typically lacks any compelling way, or even any desire, to make it an evil at all. Sure, there may be extreme cases where an abortion is a justifiable moral choice. But the rhetoric here seems to be that it needn’t necessarily be a moral choice at all. It’s a womans “right” as an autonomous, unencumbered (masculine) individual to control “her body” (the fetus); how is her deliberation any more a kind of moral deliberation than choosing which stock to invest in or which pair of shoes to buy? You’ve clearly wanted to strip the decision of its really moral character, because you want to push the public out of the judging process, making it impossible for society as a whole to judge one choice as morally superior to the other. If you really do have the moral sensibility to have a serious abortion discussion, then you need to show that by allowing the discussion to be a moral one to begin with. All you seem to want to do is make it a matter of women’s rights, so that it isn’t a moral matter and cannot allow other people to get involved in thinking about the matter, so that in the end there cannot ever actually be any moral discussion about when exactly the unborn gain their dignity, what situations might allow abortion as a lesser of two evils, and so on. Every time you say that what a woman does with her onw body is none of my business, you’re saying that abortion is an issue of consumer choice, not an issue of morality which demands debate among all members the broader human moral public.
We have an entire culture of selfishness. Modern political philosophy is founded on a reification and naturalization of the Christian doctrine of original sin: the isolated individual is the human being of the “state of nature,” the bearer of “rights.” When I say that women perform abortions out of selfishness, I’m not intending to say that selfishness is at the center of most women’s minds (although it’s foolish to deny that many use abortion as means of avoiding responsibility for their actions). The fact is that modern political philosophy is by and large a philosophy of selfish individualism, and the unencumbered individual is the ideal definition of the human being. A fetus can’t be a person because it depends bodily on its mother; a mother can’t be as fully personal as a man if she’s bound bodily to her procreative nature; no one can be ideally human if their sexual self-expression can’t be freed from its inherent biological connection to procreation (God is an Idiot greater than which none can be conceived if he really meant to give human beings the gift of sex without openness to new life but didn’t realize that he made that same act the one by which we procreate)–all that kind of logic flows from modern culture’s philosophical roots, roots that gave both to the errors of both liberal and conservative American political thought, both of which are founded on anthropologies of primordial self-centered individualism, and the competition between which does nothing but create an unsustainable culture.

Nate, apparently you are talking about the “dignity” of blastocysts, zygotes, embryos, and fetuses (bzef’s).
“Never mind the fact that women themselves would be nothing more than disposable property had men in the past not been willing to set aside some of their “rights” and opened anew the question of what constitutes personhood.”
Actually women had a lot to do with that. They realized what they were missing, they campaigned for changes. And it was obvious they were as human as men: they thought the same (well, pretty much), they participated in commerce and daily life, they sacrificed for their families, countries, etc. Bzef’s don’t do any of those things. If they were declared to be human it would not be because they wanted or demanded or campaigned for it, it would not be because they impressed anyone with their thinking or their participation in daily life and certainly not because they sacrificed for anything. It would only be because some impressionable people had been hoodwinked to do so by other people who want power (especially, apparently, over women.)

“God is an Idiot greater than which none can be conceived if he really meant to give human beings the gift of sex without openness to new life but didn’t realize that he made that same act the one by which we procreate.”
It’s your god. Call it an idiot if you choose. But if I believed in a god that did what you think yours does, it would be obvious to me that’s exactly what it had done. And I’d thank it.

Pagansister,
You’re misunderstanding me. I’ve never said that women should kiss the butt of men for giving women their rights. Quite the opposite; I’ve encouraged women not to commit the same crimes men have committed just to secure the distorted kind of freedom and mastery that men have erroneously upheld as the standard of ideal humanity. You owe nothing to men but everything to those other groups of marginaized and oppressed people out there. All I’m calling women to do is to NOT follow the example of most men in history but instead to be open to hearing the voices of those that our society might currently define out of personhood. As a group that was itself once defined out of personhood, it seems that the least you could do with your freedom is to be especially attentive to the concerns of other groups, even those that may not fit the dominant present understanding of human personhood.
As for the rest of your rant against me, that’s all based on wild speculation with no bearing in reality. I have no interest in holding women back. Some of my best teachers and mentors have been feminist theologians, and one of things that I learned from interacting with feminists is that feminism and abortion don’t necessarily have to go hand in hand. One can very well be pro-woman and feel that the pro-woman cause extends beyond women to include marginalized groups like the unborn.

“As a group that was itself once defined out of personhood, it seems that the least you could do with your freedom is to be especially attentive to the concerns of other groups, even those that may not fit the dominant present understanding of human personhood.”
Golly Nate, you keep not getting it. Women were aware of their lack of rights. Bzefs aren’t. Women fought for their rights. Bzefs aren’t fighting for any rights (why don’t we wait till they do and rethink this then). Women had legitimate concerns, bzefs have no concerns.
Bzefs which survive the growth process toward being human are awarded by Roe v. Wade increasing protections as befit their increasing capabilities. Roe v. Wade was a remarkably wise decision. If you could get a clear grasp of the situation you’d be celebrating it.

So Nate, you’re saying that any woman who chooses to have an abortion…who agonizes over it (and I have NEVER met a woman who didn’t) has no morals? It isn’t a Moral choice, but if you want to use that word, morals, then you could call the debate a woman goes through in her mind (and perhaps with a loved one) dealing with morality. Let me tell you, not many women would want to use an abortion as her only choice for birth control. It hurts physically. It is surgery. It is not done for a lark…It is serious. So when a woman has one, it is because it HAS to be done. Yes, she could have an abortion everytime she got pregnant, because, yes, she would be exercising her “right.” I’m not sure I’ve ever met a woman who would do that. She could have her tubes tied and not worry about pregnancy at all.
The list of rationalizations make sense to me. Like the one about God being an idiot…with his procreation design.
Yes, Nate, abortion really is consumer choice, not a moral issue thus relieving you of having to worry about it, in other words, not your business.

NateW:
The way I read what you said about men and rights, I interpreted as you thinking women should be grateful to the men for “giving” us our hard earned rights. Read that way to me. It seems I read it wrong.
However,I don’t consider a group of cells as a marginalized person.
As to your respect for women…good to hear that you have that…was a little hard to decipher. And I don’t think I ever said that all women feel that abortion is justified. There are obviously women who feel as you do, and they have the right of choice…that is all that I’m saying. I’m not advocating abortion, just the right for a woman to have a safe one if she wants to. NO one is forcing her to have one.

Nate, I think the discussion would go a lot better without your hyperbole. You are taking things I said and blowing them up into vast generalizations, taking things out of context.
Abortion should always be a tough decision to make, but it should be available.
Don’t talk to me about Christian thought, either, modern or otherwise. Not interested.
And it’s not selfish to enjoy sex. It makes my husband and me feel closer and I have no desire to share it with anyone else. Nor do I have a desire to have more children – the ones I have suit me just fine.
I sure as hell don’t want anyone in the public telling me the “moral” thing to do for myself regarding family planning or otherwise. Where does the invasion of my privacy end? I don’t approve of many of the “public’s” morals. Some things really are private.

nnmns-
“Golly Nate, you keep not getting it. Women were aware of their lack of rights. Bzefs aren’t.”
No, I get it, I just don’t agree that it’s a self-evidently relevant distinction. By your logic, it seems that if I were able to successfully brainwash an entire class of people and get them to willingly enslave themselves to me, then you’d have no grounds for stepping in and claiming that what I’m doing is wrong. Because the people I’ve enslaved aren’t aware of their own captivity, nor are they fighting for their rights any more than a fetus can.
I really don’t think that requiring a group to stand up and fight for their dignity before we are willing to recognize it is the most humane way to approach things.

Pagansister-
“So Nate, you’re saying that any woman who chooses to have an abortion…who agonizes over it (and I have NEVER met a woman who didn’t) has no morals?”
I didn’t say anything of the sort. For one, I’ve conceded that their are cases where abortion may be the lesser of two evils. My charge isn’t that a woman who chooses an abortion necessarily has no morals, but that, as you yourself said, many people on the pro-choice side want to insist that it isn’t a moral decision process at all, that it’s morally no different from deciding which pair of shoes to buy. So when I say that you have no moral sensibility when thinking about this issue, I’m simply stating what you yourself admit: you don’t think abortion is a matter of morality, and there shouldn’t be any moral debate on the matter. The woman’s use of the fetus is no different from the use of any other bit of her property (and no different the man’s amoral use of his women in many parts of the world).
“So when a woman has one, it is because it HAS to be done.”
What “has to be done” is usually based on the values, goals, and beliefs one the one making the decisions. Objectively, no abortion ever has to be done. In a culture where it seems that so many abortions HAVE to be performed, I think something is seriously messed up. I think the culture has been built on a misguided anthropology (one based on the disordered fantasies of MALE philosophers, not female) that pits women against their unborn children and creates a sense of necessity that needn’t be there.
“I’m not advocating abortion, just the right for a woman to have a safe one if she wants to. NO one is forcing her to have one.”
But you have to understand that isn’t the issue for us pro-lifers. When we believe that human persons are being murdered by the millions, it’s little consolation to us to think that no one’s forcing us to join in the killing. When people respond in the way you do, it really makes me wonder whether many people on the pro-choice side actually understand what it is that concerns us pro-life folk.

Eastcoastlady,
“Abortion should always be a tough decision to make, but it should be available.”
Why and in what sense should it be a hard decision? Are you saying that it should be a hard moral decision, or some other kind of decision?
“Don’t talk to me about Christian thought, either, modern or otherwise. Not interested.”
It’s simply impossible to discuss the roots of modern culture without discussing Christian thought, since the Enlightenment was born within a Christian intellectual climate. Much of the modern culture that informs both sides of things like the abortion debate has its origins in secularized versions of Christian thought; this is pretty thoroughly established. Refusing to allow this historical fact to come up in a discussion is nothing but silly bigotry.
“And it’s not selfish to enjoy sex.”
I never said it was. I will say, however, that it’s selfish to think that we such an inalienable right to sexual enjoyment that we can totally divorce it from its procreative function. God clearly designed pleasure, intimacy, and the creation of new life in such a way that they are linked. The first two are no less important than the third, but when we think we have a right to the first two that becomes the basis refusing to even allow abortion to be a moral issue, then I think you’ve clearly selfishly severed the God-created link between the three. Not all sex has to produce children, but we don’t have some kind of inalienable right to have sex without procreating, either.
“I sure as hell don’t want anyone in the public telling me the “moral” thing to do for myself regarding family planning or otherwise.”
Or otherwise? Like you don’t want anyone else telling you that it would immoral to toss your kids off a cliff? Or run someone out of town just because they have a different skin color? You don’t want anyone else telling you what’s moral regarding all that “or otherwise” stuff? Because, you see, for those of us who are pro-life, you’re killing a human person, and what you’re doing isn’t much different from any other kind of systematic denial of the rights of certain groups of people. You’re a woman, so I’m sure you want women to be protected from controlling and abusive husbands, even while the husband cries, “Where does the invasion of my privacy end!” And the slaveowner cries, “Who are you to tell me how I can use my property!”
This isn’t hyperbole. If I believe that the unborn are human persons, then I cannot help but believe you are trying to justify the same kind of crimes that the world has committed against women, children, blacks, Jews, gays, and all other oppressed groups in history. Your justifications, while understandable, could easily have been used in anotehr time and place to justify atrocities I know you would protest against. But you are so absolutely certain that you have your “rights”–just as certain as the patriarchs and the slaveowners that they had theirs–that you simply cannot fathom that someday it might be demonstrated that you’re really just trying to justify a system of exclusion. I don’t think you’re evil, just like I don’t think patriarchs and slaveowners in other cultures are all evil. I just think that you, like they, have bought into a certain philosophical anthropology and the culture it spawned and that you are unwilling to call into question the fundamental assumptions of that culture to investigate whether or not it’s really as just and inclusive as it aspires to be.

“By your logic, it seems that if I were able to successfully brainwash an entire class of people and get them to willingly enslave themselves to me, then you’d have no grounds for stepping in and claiming that what I’m doing is wrong.”
Mostly we don’t “step in” in those cases, we consider it’s those peoples’ right to be stupid. Sometimes we get shocked later at what they’ve done to themselves but I don’t observe that causing people to try to find legal barriers to other people letting themselves be brainwashed.
And it’s an American tradition to brainwash children at least once a week. It’s called church.
“we don’t have some kind of inalienable right to have sex without procreating”
Yes, we do. If you choose to abrogate that right for yourself, go ahead and avoid most sex. If you can brainwash other people to avoid most sex, go ahead. But it would be highly irresponsible of you to expect government to pay for the raising of all the children you produce because you don’t care to use effective birth control. And don’t try to impose your whims on the rest of us!
“If I believe that the unborn are human persons, then I cannot help but believe you are trying to justify the same kind of crimes that the world has committed against women, children, blacks, Jews, gays, and all other oppressed groups in history.”
Yes, you can. Women, children, blacks, Jews, gays and in fact all those oppressed groups knew they were oppressed because they have minds and they interacted with their oppressors and they observed that they were treated differently. So crimes against them are acts which cause people to suffer over long periods of time. Bzefs don’t suffer, certainly not for any length of time, when they are aborted.
So you, as a thinking person, should be able to distinguish between the various terrible kinds of things that have been done to oppressed peoples and what’s occasionally done to a bzef.
All those groups are groups of people with perfectly good (for the most part) brains and memories and emotions. Bzefs aren’t. Bzefs are becoming people and when one survives and is born it is a person but then it’s not a bzef, it’s a baby.

but we don’t have some kind of inalienable right to have sex without procreating, either.
Of course we do. That’s what birth control is about, unless you’re part of the RCC and believe its doctrine against birth control.
And what’s with the constant “inalienable” BS about everything? Every amendment in the Constitution, every law and tenet that forms its base, doesn’t have to be tied to your inapplicable “inalienable” discussion which turns everything into black and white.
And because we disagree with your arguments (“arguments”, as in legal arguments; tenets on which to form a position) by no means points to our lack of understanding, as you continually accuse. We just think your positions don’t hold water, or more simply, we just disagree.

By your logic, it seems that if I were able to successfully brainwash an entire class of people and get them to willingly enslave themselves to me, then you’d have no grounds for stepping in and claiming that what I’m doing is wrong. Because the people I’ve enslaved aren’t aware of their own captivity, nor are they fighting for their rights any more than a fetus can.
Apples and oranges. or, apples and flank steaks. Absolutely not a relevant analogy.

Or otherwise? Like you don’t want anyone else telling you that it would immoral to toss your kids off a cliff? Or run someone out of town just because they have a different skin color? You don’t want anyone else telling you what’s moral regarding all that “or otherwise” stuff?
Once again, such a fundamentally flawed argument and so irrelevant that it’s pointless to discuss, but not for the reasons you stated. It’s because you want to make hysterical, broad brush irrelevant comparisons that a person can’t even hold a reasonable discussion.
You can’t accuse others of having their minds made up and “not understanding” when it’s so clear you have exactly the same faults of which you accuse others.

Refusing to allow this historical fact to come up in a discussion is nothing but silly bigotry.
Maybe my “silly bigotry” (my, my, insults again) comes from not being, nor wanting to be, part of “the club” that feels it has some innate – oops, no – “inalienable” right to force its view of the world on me and on everyone else around them.
Must be that “extreme charity” thing where Christians have to “save” us from our otherwise unthinkable fate.

that we can totally divorce it from its procreative function
The function of sex is to create intimacy and deepen the bond between the couple.
A possible result of sex may be pregnancy.
I see an important difference.

If I believe that the unborn are human persons,
You are welcome to this belief.
Maybe I do and maybe I don’t. Maybe I think it’s a potential human being with a soul but is not one yet.
I don’t think a fetus in utero has the same rights as the woman carrying her. Don’t ask me at what point I feel this changes; I don’t care to dissect my POV any further.
then I cannot help but believe you are trying to justify the same kind of crimes that the world has committed against women, children, blacks, Jews, gays, and all other oppressed groups in history.
This is misguided and irrelevant, but predictable.
Your justifications, while understandable, could easily have been used in anotehr time and place to justify atrocities I know you would protest against.
“Justifiable” atrocities? Like the ones committed against Jews during WWII? I don’t think so. Once more, bad analogy.

you are unwilling to call into question the fundamental assumptions of that culture to investigate whether or not it’s really as just and inclusive as it aspires to be.
Ummmmmmmmmm………. NO.
There are probably many things in our culture that are sadly far from being as just and inclusive as they asire to be.
I question assumptions all the time. I always want to learn and see different points of view.
However, nothing anyone has told me so far has convinced me that I should feel differently than I do now.
You ask me to question my assumptions. Yet, you have your own assumptions and make associations and connections that I see as so far-flung and irrelevant that I think you should spend some time seriously questioning your own assumptions.
You’re working very hard to tell me why I should change my mind and see things your way. On the other hand, I see an effort on the part of “others” to involve themselves in what is perhaps the truly most personal decision a woman or a family can make, whether it’s to get pregnant at all, or, should they decide to want to get pregnant and something goes terribly wrong, whether or not to keep the baby, or should the pregnancy result in medical complications and potential dangers for the mother, to just deal with whatever happens. I see that as crueler than a woman having an abortion should she decide it’s best for her situation.
Do you also believe it’s the job of “moral” others to involve themselves in Terry Shaivo type decisions?
When does people’s so-called sense of “Christian morality”, since, per your post, we have to consider it or be taken as “silly bigots”, stop making others live their lives as the “judgers” see fit?
Please don’t talk to me about the few that abuse anything in life, like abortion. I’m clearly talking about the day-to-day situation of a “regular” woman faced with a decision she never expected and probably tried to prepare for, but something went wrong.
Her “right”, as it must be called, since it’s blessfully suported by the Supreme Court as being supported by the Constitution, must be protected.

Three days ago my post was pulled out for examination, and today it appears where nobody will ever read it, June 10, it was to the Rep. Conservative posters here. So Nate W. I’d like you to back up and read it. Thanks. It was before you came into the discussion.

Good post, Henrietta. And ecl and ps, good posts. And Nate, E for effort.

Eastcoastlady, you seriously lack basic reading comprehension skills. Nowhere did I ever suggest that you have to consider Christian morality in order to not be a bigot. I already made it clear that when I used the word “Christian” in passing, I was simply talking about history. It’s impossible to comment much on Western intellectual history without mentioning the word “Christian.” If you can’t handle the mentioning of the word, then you have no business being part of a discussion about Western culture.
And what’s this talk about the Holocaust being a “justifiable atrocity”? I never called it that. No atrocity is justifiable, but most systematic crimes like the Holocaust do come with their own claims to justification. People commit atrocities thinking that what they’re doing is for the good. What I’m asking you and others to do is to have the humility to consider that perhaps you, like a Nazi, might have your own justifications for things that may prove to be objectively unjustifiable.
Please brush up on your skills at understanding a line of argument.
More importantly, though, you seem to fail to understanding my overall pro-life concern: if I believe that abortion kills unborn human persons, then naturally I’m going to want to see abortions minimized. Resisting abortion is for me no different from resisting slavery, domestic violence against women, or the Holocaust, because all of them are characterized by the systematic denial of the dignity of what I take to be a group of human persons. Even while I’ve kept conceding that abortion may sometimes be the lesser of two evils, and that I understand that the decision can be a very difficult one, you are unwilling to grant any moral legitimacy to my desire to protect those I believe to be human persons. Please, though, I beg you, don’t be a hypocrite–I expect you not to interfere when someone wants to deny the dignity of women, blacks, Jews, gays, or other minority groups, because that’s exactly what you want me to do: not interfere. “You can believe what you want,” you say, but I really can’t, because I’m automatically disqualified from acting on my beliefs. I’m not allowed to interfere to help those I believe need to be helped. Okay, fine, I won’t support legislation to defend the dignity of women, blacks, Jews, and gays either. I wouldn’t want to interfere. I wouldn’t want to force my opinion on others.
I know you’re going to dismiss all that as irrelevant, but it shows that you don’t understand my perspective in the slightest. You have to realize that what you’re asking me to do is to not concern myself with what I consider to be a terrible violation of the most basic form of human dignity, the gift of life itself.
I’m done with this discussion. I’m done being demonized by rabid pro-choicers unwilling to recognize the moral impulse that informs my pro-life position.

Nate, over and over you fail to understand the difference between the crimes committed against women, blacks, Jews, Palestinians, homosexuals and other groups of actual people denied equal rights, and abortion of a blastocyst, zygote, embryo or fetus (bzef). The people can be enslaved, can suffer for years on end, can have their hopes dashed over and over and can be made to watch their families split from them or put to death. Can you begin to imagine the horror of that?
None of those things can happen to a bzef. Not one of those things can happen to a bzef. So for you to compare the two seems to reveal an immense lack of basic comprehension.
Though you’ve avoided using religious reasons I’m confident your motivation is religious and you consider all these crimes not crimes against people or embryos but crimes against “god”. That your religion allows or requires you to equate the one kind of crime to the other kind of act speaks volumes about how dangerous to public civility your religion can be.

NateW.
You argue mighty hard for your pro-life stance. We argue equally hard for our pro-choice stance.( or our rights as women). Believe it or not I see your thinking that a group of cells is already a person…and I see that group of cells as a “potential person.” You bring up the atrocities against women, Jews, Blacks, gays, etc. Those are not potential lives, they ARE lives… thinking, breathing, living, hungary,crying, hurting, loving, hating, happy, sad etc. human beings. A group of cells doesn’t do that. Do they have the potential to do that? Yes. The key word potential. Not actually happening yet.
What you fail to comprehend is that even though you seem to think that it is your right to interfer with a woman’s decision, it really isn’t. What’s the statement? “Your rights stop where mine begin.” It is always the woman’s decision…she makes it, and deals with it alone.
BTW: Sex is for fun first, procreation only if that is the intent.

Nate, as polite as you think you tried to be, I truly hope you are indeed done with the discussion, as you state above. For you, “comprehension” of your POV means conceding that our own is wrong. Try as you might to make analogies, the ones you choose are not analogous. Those of us who are pro-choice don’t see your holocaust, your enslavement, your bigotry, etc, etc. We “understand” perfectly well that you have a POV and what it is. We simply do not agree. In your mind, that makes us idiots, immoral, and lacking in basic skills.
Those of us who are pro-choice would also like to see the number of abortions minimized, but not by an artibrary measure that would suit an “anti-choice” person’s POV. To you, that makes us immoral, as you state it’s a “moral impulse” that drives your thinking and your actions. From our POV, our moral impulse does the same.
Insults are not necessary and are usually the last (or sometimes first) resort of someone who can’t browbeat someone else into supporting their belief. However,that’s the method of discussion you choose.
We’re far from rabid here. You just don’t like us not accepting your POV and being as vehemently convinced of our own position as you are of yours. Too bad for you. Life’s all about differing points of view.
So, have a nice life. I hope you find a nice anti-choice march somewhere so you can be among people who think like you.