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njlauren -> RE: If there was any question whether Rand Paul was an extreme republican....it`s gone now..... (3/17/2013 7:56:52 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: muhly22222
As a person who is opposed to abortion, but not opposed to it remaining legal (instead, I support measures that are designed to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, such as education and access to contraceptives), allow me to play devil's advocate for at least part of the viewpoint here.
I think we can all agree that there's some point at which life begins...the disagreement is over when that happens. Either that, or all of us are born zombies.
Logically, there are three points in time that it is reasonable for life to be considered to have begun: conception, viability, and birth.
Viability is the current rule (basically) for when life is begun. Once a fetus is viable, states are allowed to place a variety of restrictions on the abortion of that fetus. However, this is somewhat unsatisfactory to a number of people. Viability is a fluid concept; it doesn't have a set time at which it occurs for all individuals, but is instead dependent on the individual fetus. Additionally, the point of viability has been pushed to an ever earlier date as medical technology advances in its sophistication. To those who view abortion as a moral issue, that fluidity is objectionable. It's a human-created rule that was effectively designed to split the difference between conception and birth, and is a relatively artificial construct.
Making birth the date on which life begins is objectionable to many, many people. I don't think there are too many people out there who are comfortable with the idea of aborting a fetus that is 24 hours (for instance) away from being called a baby.
There's another factor that has to be considered: what is the definition of life? You might say the ability of an organism to survive on its own power or something similarly scientific. Fine. For some, however, life is the existence of a divinely-created soul. When does that soul begin to exist? Again, viability is an artificial human construct, not a divine milestone. Birth is a rather poor time for the soul to begin existing as well, given the variability in types and times of birth.
I concede that the existence of a soul cannot be proven. Nor can it be disproved. If you don't believe in it, that's fine...but respect those who have chosen that belief.
Muhly-
The problem with your last argument is that those who believe that somehow through whatever mechanism a fertilized egg happens, that it has a soull and is human, is that they don't respect the beliefs of others when it comes to those things. Leaving out full scale abortion, the believers you talk about fought against RU 486 and the morning after pill being legal. The Catholic Church believes all artificial contraception is illegal, and there were places in this country (Connecticut was a famous example) where it was illegal to buy condoms, thanks to the power of the Catholic Church in that state, which meant that people who were happy using condoms, couldn't buy them because of the beliefs of others (look up the Griswold decision, c1960, not that long ago).
I can respect their beliefs, but what about where their belief conflicts with mine? When they feel they have the right to try and make the law that conflicts with my own beliefs? For the record, I think abortion is a horrible way of doing birth control, I think people who routinely have abortions time and again because they get pregnant are basically lazy, that there are enough ways now not to get pregnant (and this is both men and women, I am tired of women bearing the burden), enough places to get it, that it shouldn't be happening that often.
There is another side to this, too, and that is that many of the pro life people, the ones who believe that fertilized egg is a human being with a soul, also are the same type that is anti sex, and that is a self fulfilling prophesy. Not all, but a majority of pro life types also are the same people who are anti sex education, arguing it promotes promiscuity, who promote 'abstinence only' sex education, who are against programs to distribute condoms or who want to cut off planned parenthood entirely, because in their eyes they are promoting immorality, and they are helping to create a self fulfilling prophesy, and that I cannot respect. Want to know a dirty little secret about abstinence only sex ed, the 'promise' movement to stay a virgin until marriage? About all they do is delay first sex, by about 18 months, and what is worse, those who end up having sex from these backgrounds are hugely less likely to use protection of any kind..which leads to, guess what, pregnancy (take a look sometime at the rate of teen pregnancy in the bible belt, it is staggering).
Rand Paul and his father claim to be libertarian, but they aren't. A libertarian would recognize the fact that their beliefs are their beliefs, and that without some sort of proof that what they believe is fact, would argue the law cannot take away liberty. If you cannot determine when a fertilized ovum becomes human, belief is not enough. Both he and his father oppose same sex marriage as well, they both say that religious belief is a form of liberty, which is quite frankly idiotic, because forcing your religious beliefs on others is not libertarian.
Even faith on this is difficult, there is nothing about abortion in the bible, not one word, either testament. To prove their case, they make claims like 'the entire bible makes that clear", when it doesn't, most of what they are calling 'truth' is based on teachings of a particular faith group. They point to psalms, that claim God knows you before you are born as proof, they go through a lot of gyrations, but it isn't there. Jews believe a fetus becomes human when it can survive outside the mother (and yeah, that has changed, but mostly that is due to modern medicine), and they wrote the OT; and the NT says nothing about it.
By the way, there is another measure of being human that you leave out, that doesn't require a soul. One of the things that defines being human is self awareness, our ability to know ourselves, to recognize who we are, that as far as I know, they have not been able to prove for any other species (maybe they are, but proof isn't that; not intelligence, but true self awareness, to be able to define yourself as "I"). The center of that is our brain, when the higher brain functions shut down, that is lost. We know enough about fetal gestation to know when things develop, and the higher brain functions happen at a specific time, so that could be used as a cutoff, and it would probably be more valid then other measures, since if I recall from one of my classes in college, that happens within a narrow window of time, so it is pretty easy to mark when that happens.
Personally I would rather not see abortions happening, I think it is better to make sure that unwanted pregnancies don't happen, and I don't mean waving a bible in people's faces and telling them not to have sex, that is idiotic and ineffective (I think only about 10% of people are virgins when they marry these days, face realities, folks).
There is another side to this that makes him even more troubling, and that is what if parents are faced with a god aweful decision, if they find out that the embryo has serious problems, like tay sachs disease, some sort of major abnormality with the brain, you name it......that has to be the hardest decision a parent has to make and I don't feel like it is my right to play God on that, it has to be up to the parents, all I can do is support parents whatever decisions they make. A story I'll never forget comes from the early 70's, when NY State legalized abortion (it was just before Roe V Wade). One of the deciding votes in the Senate, that was GOP majority, was a state senator from the Bronx, family of mine knew him peripherally. He voted to legalize it, and was castigated, the Catholic Church denounced him as practically being Satan, his offices were vandalized, and I heard there was an attempt by the local Bishop or the idiot who was cardinal in NYC at the time to try and excommunicate any lawmaker who had voted for it who was Catholic (didn't go over well, even many pro life Catholics were pissed off at that, and the church backed down). The guy was a pretty quiet, humble guy, from what my family told me, and he explained why he had voted the way he did. His daughter was married, had a couple of kids, but the last one had major birth defects, had all kinds of problems, and it put a major strain on the family, and it ended up breaking up her marriage, the husband walked away. He said his daughter could never have an abortion, she believed too strongly that that would be killing a child, but what he said was he couldn't, having seen what happened to his daughter, take that decision away from others, that it needed to be their choice. He was anti abortion, but he was a human being who saw the consequences of taking that choice away from others, and he couldn't do it. That is the problem with many of the pro life people, to them it is theoretical, and to people like Rand Paul and his father, they cannot see in their religious views how banning abortion is hurting others, not to mention proves they aren't libertarian.
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