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Forums - General Discussion - Live in Indiana? Give the gift of Abortion!

Comrade Tovya said:

 

According to Roe v Wade, a woman is guaranteed the right to an abortion because the fetus is considered by that ruling to be property of the woman.

As for your assertion that the "state has a compelling interest to give precedence to the woman's right to privacy (which guarantees abortion) until the fetus is viable", there is no prior precedence that provides that right.  Never in the history of the courts prior to RvW was there ever a precedent that even remotely implied that a fetus was property of the woman nor has any prior ruling ever stated that the right to privacy and the right to an abortion were in anyway connected.

The RvW ruling stated that the definition of "viable" was the date at which a fetus has the ability to survive outside of the womb... in Miami back in Feb. 2007, a 19-week old baby was delivered and SURVIVED, which is far younger than Roe v Wade had originally stipulated as the earliest ability for a fetus to survive outside of the womb (they estimated it to be 28-weeks).

 

Now as for your comment that "A fetus does not violate a man's constitutional right"... what exactly does that mean?

If a woman chooses to keep the kid, and the father doesn't want to keep it... can he make the choice to abort the baby?  No.

But when it comes time to take financial responsibility for the child, is he forced under threat of jail time and/or wage garnishment to pay for the child he didn't want?

Yes.

If a woman chooses to abort the child, and the father wants to keep it... can he make the choice to raise the child himself?

No.

The woman can throw him the finger and drive down to the Planned Parenthood and have an abortion, no questions asked.

Therefore, a man's constitutional rights ARE violated, beacause although he by law is considered 50/50 in the raising of the child, he gets absolutely no say in whether or not the child lives or dies.

So here is how the Roe v Wade interpretation of "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness":

A woman can choose what makes her happy, but a father and his child's fate are up to the mother to decide...?  And don't start that crap about a baby not being baby until it is born, because science has already disproven this long ago.  Liberals only care about science when it's convenient for their beliefs... but if it disproves them, screw you, they don't care.

So surviving because a machine keeps you alive counts as viable these days?  I think viable is better standard when we look at it as when a baby can survive outside the womb without any kind of medical intervention.

And as for your precedent argument, there are thousands of decisions that the Supreme Court and other courts make for which there are no true precedents.  Does that mean the courts should just say, "Aww hell, we give up, there is no precedent for that one." No!  That is the job of the courts, to solve tough legal problems.

And even if there are precedents, it doesn't mean they are GOOD precedents.  Plessy v. Fergusson which created the separate but equal doctrine was a precedent.  You still support that one?  Dred Scott v. Sandford says that the law recognizes that black people are property and not actual people.  You still support that one?

 



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson

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akuma587 said:
Why do pro-life people act like pro-choice people are pro-abortion? And why do they act like forcing everyone else to adopt the same behavior as you is the morally superior choice?

I think abortion is terrible. But that doesn't mean I think it should be illegal. People should make the decision for themselves, just like whether or not they decide to have sex in the first place.

Some people find interracial marriages to be immoral, and find smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol to be immoral. The government is not a moral referee, and it is ironic that many people who think the government should be a moral referee are against government intervention in any other context.

We'll take halogamer for instance. He is against government sponsored healthcare and against "socialism," but he is for the government telling women how to control their bodies.


Why should the government get involved? Shouldn't we let "the market" or social education programs fix the problem? Its just unnecessary regulation on private behavior that the government should have no interest in whatsoever.

Why should the government give tax exemptions to churches? I find that morally offensive.

This is a misrepresentation of the anti-abortionist's view.  We are not telling a woman how to control her body, we're claiming another body is involved; therefore, for us, abortion is an violation of the rights of another person.  Just as we think the government should prevent murders, so do we (in the supposition of fetus=full-rights human being) think abortion should be prevented.  The goverment is the moral referee in quite a few cases; if a fetus is indeed fully human, then the government certainly is obligated to intervene, just as it would do in "regular" instances of murder.

The crux of the argument is whether or not a fetus has the full rights as the rest of us, not over what control a woman has over her body.

 



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akuma587 said:
Why do pro-life people act like pro-choice people are pro-abortion? And why do they act like forcing everyone else to adopt the same behavior as you is the morally superior choice?

I think abortion is terrible. But that doesn't mean I think it should be illegal. People should make the decision for themselves, just like whether or not they decide to have sex in the first place.

Some people find interracial marriages to be immoral, and find smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol to be immoral. The government is not a moral referee, and it is ironic that many people who think the government should be a moral referee are against government intervention in any other context.

We'll take halogamer for instance. He is against government sponsored healthcare and against "socialism," but he is for the government telling women how to control their bodies.

Why should the government get involved? Shouldn't we let "the market" or social education programs fix the problem? Its just unnecessary regulation on private behavior that the government should have no interest in whatsoever.

Why should the government give tax exemptions to churches? I find that morally offensive.

 

im sure he probably thinks that the military and police are good services though.  ones that (should) protect a countries citizens...even those who cant defend themselves... like the unborn.



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Hi I would also like to mention that both the condom and the pill are not 100% effective. Unwanted pregnancies frequently happen because of failed birth control methods yeah?



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Comrade Tovya said:

I don't give two craps about whether churches get tax exemptions, I'm not "religious" per se... so that's irrelevant.  Give them tax breaks, don't give them tax breaks, I don't care... no one dies either way.

Smoke, don't smoke, I don't care so long as people don't do it around me, because I find it unhealthy and I think cigarette smoke stinks... as long as they give themself lung cancer and not me, I really could care less.  It's none of my business.

Interracial marriage?  I don't care either way, once again, whether you are white and marry white, or decide to marry black or hispanic instead, I don't care... it affects no one on this earth either than the two people who got married.

I have never asked the government to be a "moral referee" as you imply. 

I only ask the government to do what the constitution requires it to do, and that is to provide for the safety and welfare of all individuals who live within its borders.  And children within the womb have zero rights, and that is just outrageous. 

It also has nothing to do with, "a womans body" like you are saying.  If a woman wants to cut off her hand, tattoo "666" on her forehead, mutilate her body, or any other thing in this world, I could care less.. it's her business.  But a woman does not have the right to decide whether or not another being live or dies.  That has nothing to do with "a womans body".  If a woman doesn't want to get pregnant, she should either close her legs, or use the proper protection... that is her right.  And for Christ's sake, it's not that damn hard to do! Use a condom or birth control... it's not rocket science!  No one is forcing the woman to get pregnant, that's why Trojan make condoms in multiple sizes... just to make sure there is one for every size... or hell, use the pill!  There are so many ways to avoid this issue it's not even funny.

Not to take the proper precautions is just lazy... just like avoiding your responsibility to your child when you couldn't keep your legs shut.

 

So essentially your argument is that the government should do what you think the Constitution requires it to do.

Where does it say in the Constitution that the government has to do what a citizen thinks the Constitution says it has to do?  Last time I checked, the Supreme Court has final say on what the Constitution means, not you, not me, not anyone else.

See a lot of people have the misunderstanding that the "Constitution" as we know it today is the slip of paper it once was.  That is blatantly untrue.  The Constitution as we know it is both the Constitution itself and the thousands upon thousands of cases that have interpreted the Constitution.  The judicial system in this country was founded on a common law system, which means that court decisions that interpret a statute or interpret the Constitution can have as much importance or more importance than the original thing that the case interpreted.

Guess what?  If we magically pushed a button and all those cases that have interpreted the Constitution disappeared, the Constitution would be almost a meaningless piece of paper. 

Have you read every single one of those decisions that interpreted the Constitution?  Are you well versed in the in's and out's of constitutional law?  Or do you just think because you have cursorily glanced at a few words on a page that you are an expert on the Constitution. 

The Founding Fathers grew up in a common law system, and they wrote the Constitution with common law in mind.  They knew that what they were writing at that time wouldn't in essence be the same thing from then even if the words on the page never changed (which they actually did because the Constitution had been amended several times since then). 

The Constitution isn't just what you see on the piece of paper (and frankly the Founding Fathers knew that would be the case).  It is much, much, more complicated than that.

 



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson

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Comrade Tovya said:According to Roe v Wade, a woman is guaranteed the right to an abortion because the fetus is considered by that ruling to be property of the woman.

As for your assertion that the "state has a compelling interest to give precedence to the woman's right to privacy (which guarantees abortion) until the fetus is viable", there is no prior precedence that provides that right.  Never in the history of the courts prior to RvW was there ever a precedent that even remotely implied that a fetus was property of the woman nor has any prior ruling ever stated that the right to privacy and the right to an abortion were in anyway connected.

The RvW ruling stated that the definition of "viable" was the date at which a fetus has the ability to survive outside of the womb... in Miami back in Feb. 2007, a 19-week old baby was delivered and SURVIVED, which is far younger than Roe v Wade had originally stipulated as the earliest ability for a fetus to survive outside of the womb (they estimated it to be 28-weeks).

as for your comment that "A fetus does not violate a man's constitutional right"... what exactly does that mean?

If a woman chooses to keep the kid, and the father doesn't want to keep it... can he make the choice to abort the baby?  No.

I see Akuma has provided some quality answers, so I will keep it concise. 

A woman is not guaranteed that right because a fetus is property. She is guaranteed that right because her right to privacy, which the court decided guaranteed a right to an abortion, supercedes a fetus' right to life up until a certain point. Also, simply because a fetus is viable does not mean it has an automatic right to life. It only means the state can restrict a woman's right to an abortion so long as her health is not threatened.  

That was poorly worded. What I meant is that the court ruled that a restriction on abortion violates a woman's right to privacy and, therefore, she has a right to terminate the pregnancy. A man's right to privacy is not violated by a restriction on abortion. Which right is violated? I cannot think of one. 

Science has disproven what? A baby is a baby? That makes no sense. I know science postulates that a fetus cannot feel pain until it is born. From what I can gather, the jolt that birth provides to a fetus is what truly marks its inclusion into the human species. 



appolose said:

This is a misrepresentation of the anti-abortionist's view.  We are not telling a woman how to control her body, we're claiming another body is involved; therefore, for us, abortion is an violation of the rights of another person.  Just as we think the government should prevent murders, so do we (in the supposition of fetus=full-rights human being) think abortion should be prevented.  The goverment is the moral referee in quite a few cases; if a fetus is indeed fully human, then the government certainly is obligated to intervene, just as it would do in "regular" instances of murder.

The crux of the argument is whether or not a fetus has the full rights as the rest of us, not over what control a woman has over her body.

 

Absolutely, you have pointed out the crux of the argument.  But you can't answer that question unless you answer the question of what rights a woman has over her body. 

Should a woman be prosecuted if she drinks alcohol while she is pregnant?  That injures the baby, but telling her she can't drink alchohol would violate one of her rights.  What if we found out carrots make babies much smarter if women eats them?  She is potentially injuring the baby by not eating carrots, so should she be prosecuted for that?  What if we found out that eating McDonald's all the time injures a baby?  Should we force pregnant women to not eat at McDonald's?

What if we find out that living in a polluted area injures an unborn child?  Should we prosecute a woman if she has a miscarriage because she lived in a polluted area? 

What if she knew that living in a polluted area would cause her to have a miscarriage but she never took any affirmative steps besides living in the same city she had always lived in that was already polluted?  Is that a crime?  How is that any different from voluntarily getting an abortion?  What if she moved to a polluted city because she knew it would cause a miscarriage?

What if we found out that grape juice causes spontaneous abortions?  What if a woman really likes grape juice and drank it on accident?  What if she drank the grape juice on purpose?  Is she a criminal?

The abortion issue can't be viewed in isolation of what are the child's rights, because it matters just as much what the woman's rights are in determining what the law recognizes

 



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson

Jackson50 said:
Comrade Tovya said:According to Roe v Wade, a woman is guaranteed the right to an abortion because the fetus is considered by that ruling to be property of the woman.

As for your assertion that the "state has a compelling interest to give precedence to the woman's right to privacy (which guarantees abortion) until the fetus is viable", there is no prior precedence that provides that right.  Never in the history of the courts prior to RvW was there ever a precedent that even remotely implied that a fetus was property of the woman nor has any prior ruling ever stated that the right to privacy and the right to an abortion were in anyway connected.

The RvW ruling stated that the definition of "viable" was the date at which a fetus has the ability to survive outside of the womb... in Miami back in Feb. 2007, a 19-week old baby was delivered and SURVIVED, which is far younger than Roe v Wade had originally stipulated as the earliest ability for a fetus to survive outside of the womb (they estimated it to be 28-weeks).

as for your comment that "A fetus does not violate a man's constitutional right"... what exactly does that mean?

If a woman chooses to keep the kid, and the father doesn't want to keep it... can he make the choice to abort the baby?  No.

I see Akuma has provided some quality answers, so I will keep it concise. 

A woman is not guaranteed that right because a fetus is property. She is guaranteed that right because her right to privacy, which the court decided guaranteed a right to an abortion, supercedes a fetus' right to life up until a certain point. Also, simply because a fetus is viable does not mean it has an automatic right to life. It only means the state can restrict a woman's right to an abortion so long as her health is not threatened.  

That was poorly worded. What I meant is that the court ruled that a restriction on abortion violates a woman's right to privacy and, therefore, she has a right to terminate the pregnancy. A man's right to privacy is not violated by a restriction on abortion. Which right is violated? I cannot think of one. 

Science has disproven what? A baby is a baby? That makes no sense. I know science postulates that a fetus cannot feel pain until it is born. From what I can gather, the jolt that birth provides to a fetus is what truly marks its inclusion into the human species. 

 

no it doesnt...



"I like my steaks how i like my women.  Bloody and all over my face"

"Its like sex, but with a winner!"

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akuma587 said:
Comrade Tovya said:

 

According to Roe v Wade, a woman is guaranteed the right to an abortion because the fetus is considered by that ruling to be property of the woman.

As for your assertion that the "state has a compelling interest to give precedence to the woman's right to privacy (which guarantees abortion) until the fetus is viable", there is no prior precedence that provides that right.  Never in the history of the courts prior to RvW was there ever a precedent that even remotely implied that a fetus was property of the woman nor has any prior ruling ever stated that the right to privacy and the right to an abortion were in anyway connected.

The RvW ruling stated that the definition of "viable" was the date at which a fetus has the ability to survive outside of the womb... in Miami back in Feb. 2007, a 19-week old baby was delivered and SURVIVED, which is far younger than Roe v Wade had originally stipulated as the earliest ability for a fetus to survive outside of the womb (they estimated it to be 28-weeks).

 

Now as for your comment that "A fetus does not violate a man's constitutional right"... what exactly does that mean?

If a woman chooses to keep the kid, and the father doesn't want to keep it... can he make the choice to abort the baby?  No.

But when it comes time to take financial responsibility for the child, is he forced under threat of jail time and/or wage garnishment to pay for the child he didn't want?

Yes.

If a woman chooses to abort the child, and the father wants to keep it... can he make the choice to raise the child himself?

No.

The woman can throw him the finger and drive down to the Planned Parenthood and have an abortion, no questions asked.

Therefore, a man's constitutional rights ARE violated, beacause although he by law is considered 50/50 in the raising of the child, he gets absolutely no say in whether or not the child lives or dies.

So here is how the Roe v Wade interpretation of "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness":

A woman can choose what makes her happy, but a father and his child's fate are up to the mother to decide...?  And don't start that crap about a baby not being baby until it is born, because science has already disproven this long ago.  Liberals only care about science when it's convenient for their beliefs... but if it disproves them, screw you, they don't care.

So surviving because a machine keeps you alive counts as viable these days?  I think viable is better standard when we look at it as when a baby can survive outside the womb without any kind of medical intervention.

And as for your precedent argument, there are thousands of decisions that the Supreme Court and other courts make for which there are no true precedents.  Does that mean the courts should just say, "Aww hell, we give up, there is no precedent for that one." No!  That is the job of the courts, to solve tough legal problems.

And even if there are precedents, it doesn't mean they are GOOD precedents.  Plessy v. Fergusson which created the separate but equal doctrine was a precedent.  You still support that one?  Dred Scott v. Sandford says that the law recognizes that black people are property and not actual people.  You still support that one?

 

 

Okay, I know you didn't think before you stated that, but what the hell, I'll entertain your statement...

When I was 6 years old, I came down with Reye's Syndrome... to say the least, it's a really nasty disease that to this day, doctors still don't know what causes it or how to heal someone who comes down with it.  It's pretty much the roll of a dice as to whether you live or die.

Anyway, here I am in 1984, dying in Cooks Children's Hospital.  No cure for the disease, and they honestly don't know what the hell to do with me.  Unfortunately for me, Reye's quickly progresses and before I know it, I am diagnosed with stage 5 Reye's Syndrome.  I slip into a comma, and my head gets the size of a watermelon (because my brain has swelled severly) and my liver has stopped funcitioning.

Long story short, the docs tell my parents that I'm as good as dead... they have me hooked up to all these breathing machines, etc etc, to keep me alive.

By medical definition, I'm only barely hanging onto life because of the machines I am hooked up to, and it's only a matter of time before my brain collapses.  Yeah, ugly picture.

Therefore, by your definition, since I was only "being kept alive by machines", I wasn't actually a living being?   I mean, that is what you said after all.

I can tell you right now, the entire time these machines were keeping me alive, I felt the pain of the pressure on my brain as it tried to expand beyond the limits of my skull... the pains in my midsection because my liver was not functioning properly were quite real.  The pain from every organ in my body trying to die didn't go away simply because I was connected to machines to live...

To this very day, my kidneys and liver don't work as well as I would like, but I am quite, uh, "VIABLE" as you would say.  Alive and kicking, and certainly a living being.

And let's not even dive into "do black people have rights?"  If you've even read half of what I've written thus far, I've made it quite clear that I am an equal right activist, even if it requires my fist to ensure those rights.  Besides, I'm 1/4 Native American, so you can be damn sure I'm all about civil rights.

The constitution does guarantee my rights as a native American, the rights of my African immigrant neighbors, my Mexican neighbors, and just as importantly, the 20 week unborn child that sits in my wife's womb as we speak.  That's what the consitution guarantees.. not the right for a woman to have sex, get pregnant and then abandon her responsibility to her child because it's inconvenient for her.



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MrBubbles said:
Jackson50 said:

I see Akuma has provided some quality answers, so I will keep it concise. 

A woman is not guaranteed that right because a fetus is property. She is guaranteed that right because her right to privacy, which the court decided guaranteed a right to an abortion, supercedes a fetus' right to life up until a certain point. Also, simply because a fetus is viable does not mean it has an automatic right to life. It only means the state can restrict a woman's right to an abortion so long as her health is not threatened.  

That was poorly worded. What I meant is that the court ruled that a restriction on abortion violates a woman's right to privacy and, therefore, she has a right to terminate the pregnancy. A man's right to privacy is not violated by a restriction on abortion. Which right is violated? I cannot think of one. 

Science has disproven what? A baby is a baby? That makes no sense. I know science postulates that a fetus cannot feel pain until it is born. From what I can gather, the jolt that birth provides to a fetus is what truly marks its inclusion into the human species. 

 

no it doesnt...

MrBubbles, the expert neurophysiologist of VGChartz!

Hey MrBubbles, my uncle still has tactile perception on the left half of his body but he can't feel any sensation of warmth or cold on the left side of his body.  What is wrong with him?  What part of his nervous system has suffered an occlusion which has caused this loss of sensation?

 



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson