Snesboy said:
akuma587 said:
Snesboy said:
You guys speak of health care as a right and not a privilege. What about Roe v. Wade? What about abortion?
You expect me to believe health care is a right when many children don't even get a shot at life? Pathetic. |
You raise a valid point. But, setting aside the issue of whether or not abortion is murder, why should society be able to tell a woman how to manage her own life? Many people who are pro-life are also against the government getting involved in telling people how to raise their children.
The same constitutional right that the Supreme Court recognizes as protecting a woman's right to have an aborition (Due Process in the 14th and the 9th) has other rights tied to it.
Where do we draw the line when limiting those rights? Should we limit people's choices whether or not to use contraception (protected by this right)? Should we limit people's ability to choose where to send their children to public or private school? Should we limit people's ability to teach their children whatever religion they want? When you start talking about taking away those rights, those provisions in the Constitution don't sound so bad after all.
The problem is that when you start taking away rights, the constitutional basis for those rights is less broad. And then you risk losing even more rights. You can't look at the rights just as individual rights. They are all connected.
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I see your point. The problem with abortion being murder or not, is a point of view; there isn't really anything concrete.
Overturning Roe v. Wade would be like saying "All American children must attend public schools."
Akuma, ever so wise.
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I mean I agree with pro-life people that abortion is a terrible thing. I would never tell my wife to get one (well, unless I knew that our child would have horrible deformities/severe mental problems the rest of his life, but that is a different issue). Pro-choice people don't really like abortion either. Its just kind of a necessary evil.
I mean I don't think people should smoke cigarettes. It costs the healthcare system a ton of money and ends up costing me more money. But that doesn't mean the government should ban smoking cigarettes.
And outside the merits of the abortion issue, there are actually a lot of advantages to allowing abortion.
1) Less people who end up on welfare (the poor are the most likely to have large amounts of children)
2) Around 17 years after abortion was legalized, we saw a drop in crime rates. A woman knows whether or not she can handle raising a child better than anyone, including society. She knows if the baby will or will not be provided for better than anyone else. And it places a burden on society, and poses a danger to society, when she is forced to raise a child which she does not have the resources to raise.
3) It avoids a black market on abortion. There really would be back alley abortions and all kinds of horrific things if it wasn't legal. If people really want something (like drugs for instance), they will get it one way or another. The question is whether or not we should channel those needs through normal social intermediaries where people are protected by our laws rather than the law of the street.
The war on drugs is a great example. Drug cartels shoot at each other and at police because there are no legal means to resolve disputes. They can't go to a courtroom to resolve their dispute or sign a contract with someone to protect their interests. They have to protect their interests by force because society has created an artificial black market.
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
