Ayn Rand, Abortion, and Planned Parenthood.
Kevin Williamson of National Review did a follow-up to his piece which I posted here yesterday.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/...
In this current piece, again on the Planned Parenthood atrocity (my word), he takes a shot at Planned Parenthhood apologists by referencing Rand
"Why not have a Fast Freddy’s Fetal Livers Emporium and Bait Shop in every town large enough to merit a Dairy Queen? If you are having some difficulty answering that question, perhaps you should, as some famous abortion-rights advocate once put it, check your premises."
Some people have taken this line to also be an implication of Rand.
Me, I'm not sure, there's a few things I disagree with Rand on, abortion being one of them.
But, what is Rand's view on abortion?
Here is a link the entry in the Ayn Rand Lexicon.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/abo...
I think the most relevant portion is this.
"A piece of protoplasm has no rights—and no life in the human sense of the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months."
In Rand's day, that's what abortion was.
Now, I'm no doctor, but I doubt very much that organ tissue can be harvested from a first trimester embryo.
I speculate that Planned Parenthood was harvesting exclusively from late term and even partial-birth abortions.
What Rand would say about this is also speculative, although we can infer from her words "One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy..."
So, Objectivists, what say you?
Disclosure, my personal opinions on abortion - the human animal is a biological machine, as such it has core programming (instinctual drives). Maternal instincts are some of the most powerful any animal possesses, even stronger than Self-preservation or Species-reproduction. As such, I believe that when a woman has an abortion, regardless of the trimester, her maternal instinct kicks in at some level - automatic, unstoppable, irrevocable, unaffected by popular opinion of what abortion is supposed to be. As such, I believe that when a woman gets an abortion, she is doing deep and permanent psychological damage to herself. The existence of groups such as Silent No More lead me to suspect that my opinion is correct. What is the percentage of women who are psychologically damaged by an abortion? Who knows, and with today's Lysenko "scientists" I doubt there will be any unbiased research done. Regardless, until women who are considering an abortion first get counselling on the (what I believe) strong probability of psychological damage from the procedure, I can not be anything but against it.
This disclosure is also open for debate on this thread.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/...
In this current piece, again on the Planned Parenthood atrocity (my word), he takes a shot at Planned Parenthhood apologists by referencing Rand
"Why not have a Fast Freddy’s Fetal Livers Emporium and Bait Shop in every town large enough to merit a Dairy Queen? If you are having some difficulty answering that question, perhaps you should, as some famous abortion-rights advocate once put it, check your premises."
Some people have taken this line to also be an implication of Rand.
Me, I'm not sure, there's a few things I disagree with Rand on, abortion being one of them.
But, what is Rand's view on abortion?
Here is a link the entry in the Ayn Rand Lexicon.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/abo...
I think the most relevant portion is this.
"A piece of protoplasm has no rights—and no life in the human sense of the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months."
In Rand's day, that's what abortion was.
Now, I'm no doctor, but I doubt very much that organ tissue can be harvested from a first trimester embryo.
I speculate that Planned Parenthood was harvesting exclusively from late term and even partial-birth abortions.
What Rand would say about this is also speculative, although we can infer from her words "One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy..."
So, Objectivists, what say you?
Disclosure, my personal opinions on abortion - the human animal is a biological machine, as such it has core programming (instinctual drives). Maternal instincts are some of the most powerful any animal possesses, even stronger than Self-preservation or Species-reproduction. As such, I believe that when a woman has an abortion, regardless of the trimester, her maternal instinct kicks in at some level - automatic, unstoppable, irrevocable, unaffected by popular opinion of what abortion is supposed to be. As such, I believe that when a woman gets an abortion, she is doing deep and permanent psychological damage to herself. The existence of groups such as Silent No More lead me to suspect that my opinion is correct. What is the percentage of women who are psychologically damaged by an abortion? Who knows, and with today's Lysenko "scientists" I doubt there will be any unbiased research done. Regardless, until women who are considering an abortion first get counselling on the (what I believe) strong probability of psychological damage from the procedure, I can not be anything but against it.
This disclosure is also open for debate on this thread.
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The religionists don't care. They have no understanding of why we have rights and what the requirements are. They have a mystical notion of the source of rights and misuse the concept as a floating abstraction, contradicting the rights that human beings do have.
Religionists do in fact denounce the "morning after pill".
It was a great morning...
and its host may eliminate it at will, according to current law,
"until birth." . if I were a female, I could not do it. -- j
.
But as our country is now, neither can ever be satisfied, and the reality is that the conservatives want the government to coercively deny that procedure. That is statism, and we all lose.
From a purely Objectivist standpoint, one should live with one's choices. In the case of rape or incest, the sexual act did not involve consent. Are you really going to argue on behalf of telling someone to live with the consequences of a decision that was made for them against their will?
individuals that will stand up for
themselves ....."
Maybe they were aborted.
It's not that your 'inconsistency' in law touched a nerve in me, it's that an avowed conservative on this site advocating for greater control by government over our lives and larger growth is abhorrent to me and only serves to drive me further away from involvement with this society of fools and panderers.
Where are the men of the mind, the individuals that will stand up for themselves and their rights, those with the moral certainty to stand in the face of socialism, collectivism, and statism and say NO, I am a free man.
I actually think it would be sadder to pull the plug on a truly self-aware machine than to abort an unaware fetus. One of these two can recognize its own end. The self-aware machine can probably even pass the Turing Test. The fetus cannot even respond.
If your hope comes true, I add the hope that we also have the wisdom to do this ONLY when there is a nurturing, willing, interested party that will responsibly care for the eventual child, and that the procedure is paid for by this party. Otherwise, you just multiplied a problem we already have.
Either we are talking about the destruction of a human life that we should protect, or it's no one's business but the mothers. We can't accept murder only if it's not her 'fault' -- if we believe it to be murder.
If it makes you feel any better, I thought Robbie was a girl.almost up until the time he faded away.
Why?
I was very fond of a female Robbie a good long time ago.
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