Cartoon of the week
The drawing says it all. A Viable candidate for life is depicted but denied rights that something as common as an auto accident or not having it's brains sliced and diced as the head emerges depicts. Harking back to my Vietnam years it drum rolls in the background "Now who are the real baby killers?"
Happily the Courts agreed some years ago and stopped such barbaric acts limiting, which i agree fully with, abortion to the pre viability stage and turned their back on how to fit a prom dress as a reason to commit murder.
Fetus stage is roughly 2 trimesters or six months...Viable citizen with the right to be protected is somewhere in the third trimester. It's a medical decision and a human and civil rights decision in most cases.
Execution at that point requires lawyers, juries and the other trappings of a civilized society.
Her support of that alone should be Hillary 'Waddles' Clintonite's last gasp. What about the babies right to choose? What about the husband's right to choose?
Assuming Obama doesn't declare babies the subject of his 'suspicion of' version of our now defunct Bill of Rights.
Happily the Courts agreed some years ago and stopped such barbaric acts limiting, which i agree fully with, abortion to the pre viability stage and turned their back on how to fit a prom dress as a reason to commit murder.
Fetus stage is roughly 2 trimesters or six months...Viable citizen with the right to be protected is somewhere in the third trimester. It's a medical decision and a human and civil rights decision in most cases.
Execution at that point requires lawyers, juries and the other trappings of a civilized society.
Her support of that alone should be Hillary 'Waddles' Clintonite's last gasp. What about the babies right to choose? What about the husband's right to choose?
Assuming Obama doesn't declare babies the subject of his 'suspicion of' version of our now defunct Bill of Rights.
That said, it's abhorrent to require those who oppose abortion to support it with their tax money.
By conceding such fictional premises you only lend undeserved credence to irrational demands to interfere with the woman exercising the right to her own body -- the false premise is already being cashed in on right here on this same page https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post.... The law cannot "reasonably require" a woman to do anything with her own body regardless of what else might be "viable".
The prospect of religionists paying taxes to support abortion, which is not legal, is no worse than anyone being forced to pay taxes to support anything he opposes, which is currently happening all the time -- including the mountains of propaganda for the viros and all kinds of statist re-destributionism and government control over schools.
Frenzied mysticism by religionists goes not give them any special rights or consideration above the rest of us, whether in their opposition to the right of abortion or special exemption from use of their taxes the rest of us don't get.
Is a newborn baby a person with rights? If so, why didn't it have rights ten minutes before birth; what changed? If not, when does it acquire rights, and why?
For the nature and source of rights see Ayn Rand's "Man's Rights" and "The Objectivist Ethics" in The Virtue of Selfishness. The concept of rights does not pertain to a fetus. For cells at conception there is nothing to even discuss about it.
When do other people as adults achieve the status you seek to bestow on an embryo?
They don't know what rights are and why we have them; rights to them are floating abstractions subjectively attributed to cells as a mystical, intrinsic property of entitlement while denying the rights of the woman.
When it comes to abortion, there is very little of that.
However, in the end I can not support this take on things except in situations where the mother was given no choice as to have the initial sex. Freedom never comes without responsibility. They are always two sides of the same coin. If you want the freedom to have sex, you can not separate that from the responsibility that comes with the consequences. The mother did have a right not to have another person live in her body, but she decided to accept the possibility of that happening when she agreed to have sex.
Recognizing the possibility of unwanted pregnancy does not dictate what must not be done about it if it occurs. Responsibility in this context means the responsibility to acknowledge what is happening, recognizing what must be done to terminate it, and choosing what to do about it in accordance with rational self-interest, not religious sacrifice banning "selfish concerns".
Women should not be manipulated into "admitting" fictions about cells and fetuses being "baby persons" as a means to morally intimidate them into abandoning their own "selfish concerns".
It is really disappointing that so many objectivist want to shun responsibility. That is what liberals always want to do...with all types of responsibility.
Every time you take an action you enter into a contract of sorts because every significant action comes with consequences and your responsibility for the consequences you created. If you pull the trigger of a gun and shoot someone you caused that persons death and have agreed to take the consequences that come. You can not scream. I Did Not Kill Him, I Just Pulled The Trigger But He Died on His Own. You also can not decide you change your mind. It is to late, he is dead and you now have to face up to your responsibilities.
You make up a dogma claiming a "responsibility" to bear children in a complex process nine months after sex, invent a non-existent "contract" and fantasy "agreement", denounce people for "shunning" your religious dogmatic duties, and invoke the meaningless conservative slogan of "freedom" requiring whatever "responsibilities", i.e., duties, you want to impose.
You assume a religious conclusion in a circular argument. You have no understanding of what a contract is, which you have rationalized into a floating abstraction on behalf of an arbitrary anti-abortion rights dogma. Then you pompously "assure" us it is all "logical". It isn't, it's a transparent rationalization for religious dogma.
This is a forum for the ideas of Ayn Rand's philosophy. Please learn what it is instead of substituting crude rationalizations for religious conservative duties preposterously in the name of "logic".
Your asserted logical thinking is questionable at best and is at least biased by your belief systems, not facts or cause and effect.
Apparently mdant is gone, and good riddance. It is worse when a mentality like that proclaims himself to be "Objectivist", zealously misrepresenting it without knowing the difference, then after some period of time blowing off in another direction blaming Ayn Rand for being what she never was.
I agree with this. If I were running an abortion clinic, I'd go to Operation Rescue (or whoever was the primary anti-abortion force locally) and make them this offer:
"I will give you a private office in my clinic. Every woman who comes for an abortion will be required to spend 15 minutes in that office talking with you. You may use any means short of force or threat of force to try to convince her to carry her pregnancy to term.
"In return for this, you must agree that no anti-abortion protesters will physically attack or interfere with our staff, patients or facilities. Use your influence with other protest groups as needed to do this."
This is a forum for Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason and egoism. You should learn what that is.
I am trying to help you understand that choices you make have consequences and everyone is responsible for the consequences they create.
Where do you think I am trying to create guilt for selfish reasons? What is my selfish reason? Though I would say guilt is an indispensable quality of a good person. Without it people tend to be sociopaths.
As an Objectivist, I have absolutely no interest or concern over what you feel or believe and your decision to feel and live with guilt or attempt to avoid it, but I totally reject any attempt by you to impose such thinking on others.
You're preaching nonsense.
We are not here to "learn" from religious dogmatists condescendingly claiming to "help us understand" through straw man appeals to "responsibility for consequences" rationalizing imposed duties in the name of responsibility. We have no "responsibility" to your dogma and our right to our freedom does not depend on acceptance of any such duties.
You did not say you are trying to create guilt for your own selfish reasons. You are much worse, trying to instill guilt in us for our own selfish values, You stated that "once faced with the choice of ending their child's life due to their own selfish concerns, I think many more would change their minds". You are trying to inculcate a false sense of guilt over a fetus or a cell, misrepresented as a "child", to morally intimidate people into abandoning "selfish concerns".
"Guilt" is not an "indispensable quality of a good person". That is stock religious manipulation through unearned guilt over allegedly "sinful" concern for one's self. Moral pride or guilt are earned through one's actions in accordance with one's own standards of judgment. Rational egoism and moral pride do not lead to "sociopaths". Refusal to sacrifice to religious duties is not socio-pathological. "Good" does not mean religious. The orgy of religious sacrifice of people denounced as inherent "Sinners" is socio-pathological.
However, in the end I can not support this take on things except in situations where the mother was given no choice as to have the initial sex. Freedom never comes without responsibility. They are always two sides of the same coin. If you want the freedom to have sex, you can not separate that from the responsibility that comes with the consequences. The mother did have a right not to have another person live in her body, but she decided to accept the possibility of that happening when she agreed to have sex.
2. Even if the mother actively consented to--even desired--the pregnancy when it happened, doesn't she have the right to withdraw that consent?
In regards to the birth control argument, the mother absolutely did consent to take the risk. She knows it can fail in very unusual cases and she judged the risks small enough to take the chance. Unfortunately she ended up losing that gamble but it does not change the fact she accepted the responsibility when she accepted the gamble.
In regards to the lock on the front door, the homeowner never agreed to even the possibility of being robbed. The lock was simply an extra measure of protection against evil doers that are outside of all arguments regarding choice, freedom, and responsibility. To change the lock proposition into consent the situation would need to include some form of agreement like...I agree to give you $1,000,000 but in return you agree to give me the $1,000,000 back along with all your other possessions if I am able to pick the lock. Women essentially do this when they agree to sex. They accept the possibility of one in exchange for the other. But the man does the same thing...in return for sex they are accepting the gamble that they may have to financially support a child. Whether you are a man or woman, you can only argue your rights over that of the child if your own actions did not create the responsibility of the child in the first place.
Your easy out is that you proclaim it is not a person. I do not believe that to be true and have addressed that elsewhere, but I think you are kidding yourself so you do not have to face hard reality.
Sex is not a "consent", "contract", or "agreement" to bear a child nine months later after a complex process. No person has been created unit birth. Before that, from primitive cells to fetus, it is a potential human person. Cells and fetuses are not what is meant by the concept 'person'.
The mystical notion of a soul with an entitlement to be born after "conception" is a 19th century Catholic doctrine that flagrantly violates the rights of the individual woman. Appeals to denouncing "selfish reasons" is also thoroughly religious mysticism. None of it is "hard reality".
She must have had a hard day at school. She was in a Christian Montessori school. She was five. In car on the way home she said, "I wish I was dead."
Why, I asked.
"Because then I could be in heaven with Jesus."
We pulled her from the school.
Where do anti-choice Christians imagine that dead babies go? Heaven? Hell? Someplace else? Nowhere? Does Jesus Christ gather them up from Limbo before (or after?) He liberates the souls from Hell who died before His First Coming?
Terminating a pregnancy is a terrible choice. But only one person can make it. You cannot make it for her.
He turned out t be a wonderful man. That experience is what set me against abortion, at least for my wife and I. As I have often stated, however, I am against imposing my way on anyone else through the power of the government.
For some people killing is not difficult. For most people, it is.
There are many reasons for abortion, most of them valid, but for us it wasn't an option. But the "for us" cannot be substituted as a "for you."
It can be misconstrued as implying that if there is no clear and agreed point of change along a development path then there is no development.
We have a word, fetus, to define something living, a conglomeration of living cells, but not a human. It eventually develops into a human.
I am dead set against any abortion with the exception of a medical condition that calls for one or the other when the baby is viable. That means has a better than 50 50 chance of surviving a preemie and becoming a functioning human being. I am especially abhorrent with the later term and the partial birth procedures.
Flip the switch I have zero problem and support the choice for abortion from Morning After Pill when the fetus is not a viable candidate for a successfull pre-natal or pre natural birth.
At that point IF there is a father floating around I would hope there is some discussion. If not something is seriously wrong with the relationship.
Since the amount of, to me, objectionable, procedures is quite low I sided with the courts who made much the same distinction and did not speak against the Congress who introduced the concept officially of a viable premature birth demanded protection of the unborn child.
I am also against baby factories that see pregnancy as a way of increasing their personal income. and believe strongly in tubal ligation and when it can be found vasectomy in exchange for mooching.
At the other end is the partial birth slice and dice method which is sickenly barbaric and thankfully is barred.
Do I get a vote? i pay taxes don't I? Of course I'm involved.
Clinton made her choice for the Baby Killer Vote. She deserves no support for that one reason alone. Along with those who accosted us as returnees and now claim it never happened.
Along with the NOW group who conveniently forget their sisters when a cute butt is handy to admire.
So there is a place for choice and it doesn't have to be that difficult nor extreme but the court also decided to leave it up to the States.
One of the few sensible uses of the 9th and 10th from that group of nine.
I looked at the cartoon and was reminded of a current song I'm just a little kid stuck in the middle....No when you capable of surviving you deserve protection same as any other citizen.
You won't find it with political monsters like Hillary Rodham Clinton or I suspect with either of the other two left wing front runners.
I also wished to pour gas on the fire and see what could be smoked out or burned out. The obvious answer other than that which has been done if use the freaking Constitution and the 50 choice rule.instead of this idiotic lock step crap such as we saw last year.
In addition more foresight (condom use, abstinence or birth control ) would certainly avoid many unwanted pregnancies.
I agree with you that the NOW and Planned Parenthood leaders have revealed themselves to be ghouls, if not zombies. The deeper issue is with the original choice (or lack thereof) by the mother. If it were an exception that arose, it would not be a national issue. Apparently, the epidemic (no other word for it) reflects a failure in the epistemology of life skills.
Looks as if you and the other Mike have riled up the pro abortion lobby in the Gulch. Based on my actual experience, here's how my wife and I decided to face the problem. For us personally, there is no question of abortion. The baby lives if we can help it. However, we will support no law prohibiting abortion. The choice is personal and let each woman, and man if there is one with her, decide for themselves. This is not the province of government, but the conscience of the people involved.
If you are willing to allow abortion (and I am), then to be consistent, you must allow infanticide (and I do). As I asked rhetorically, when does your mother lose her right to take your life? When you say so? But not before? Maybe...
You have a deep and integrated understanding of Objectivism as it was given to you, but you are only repeating a rationalism.
Rationalize <= Rational Lies.
Your own rationalistic equivocations do not make Objectivism something that is "given to us" as a "rationalism" without understanding. You either understand it or you don't.
Quit Enabling
Take Control
Make Changes_
_starting with those indicated by common agreement and perhaps easier ones such as recall for all states. listing Senators and Representatives as employees of the states and subject to recall (state delegate to) dropping the education department as not an item of constitutional concern, dumping income tax and going to end user consumption system, repealing the draft. etc.
hard ones such as abortion will have their turn but not until the three man rules are followed. those who want their cake and eating it too will have to be cast aside and shunned. no one gets the whole loaf on such issues except as a state level issue.
to sustain it -- or not -- until birth. . facts. -- j
.
Thank A Teacher." . mine would say, "If You Can Read
This, Thank Your Mother And A Teacher." -- j
.
.
.
.
Second sentence however
It's about how easy it is to destroy - any support (by) any unapproved supporters of (any) non socialist fascist left wing candidates - (that) can be destroyed.
Wow I must have been operating on zero caffiene with that one.
"It's about how easy it is to destroy any unapproved candidates and their supporters" Meaning any one who isn't in the left wing coalition of Rino or establishment Republicans, Democrats, Socialists and secular progressives.
The 46% -50% who are disenfranchised by the single party system of government and the rigged elections system.
Supporters of Cruz comes to mind as well as any other candidates - except Trump, Kasich, Clinton and Beaver Bernie. the latter three being the only approved candidates from the left. .
Should be clear enough ..my apologies.
The whole point however had to do with how easy it is to marginalize any efforts for any but approved candidates with subject matter that completely overshadows the primary goal of a. dumping the leftists, b. getting a Constitutionalist in office, and then making changes. The same subject matter that will get no hearing without dumping the left.
But look how much interest it caused? 87 comments in a day on something that has nothing to with getting the ability to do something.
Getting that ability is being ignored and worse support for getting that ability is being even more than before shredded and marginalized.
All because of one word that when looked at objectively has been 95% changed as to it's most objectionable portions
Of I can cause that with one post with a supposedly educated audience how easy to shear away support for Mr. Cruz or similar with a full blown propaganda machine.
No one caught on....yet the time for debating such issues is over and the time for electing 'someone' is at hand.
No one's eye is on the ball.
After three of these comments you will get at least three more days of missing the point.
candidates like Cruz and DT are side-tracked by a single word
like abortion. . dumping them and -- somehow -- getting a real
constitutionalist into office isn't easy, though. . it will take a large
cultural change in the u.s. -- j
.
Short of the Republican establishment caving and getting behind Cruz there is no hope in that direction (so far they have caved to the left with regularity) .which brings me back to my prediction of a 95% of total vote going left wing socialist to one degree or another again meaning there is zero interest in a return to a Constitutional Republic government.
The only hope now is the 46% - 50% of eligible voters currently listed as disenfranchised with no representation will four years later grow to 60% plus and that is a weak hollow reed since there is no guarantee of any way of getting on the ballot IF There is indeed such a system left. I see no move in the military in upholding their oath of office. Something unthinkable 20 years ago.
Can't happen here. What an idiotic statement that would be It has and is happening here.
I'm thinking one day of being interviewed as the last remaining citizen of the USA in fifteen years or so. We could all chip ten bucks a square to see who it will be.
Given the probable choices with no real support for Cruz from our rather large group in evidence it's a toss up between Comrade Waddle and Comrade Tromp.
upholding their oath of office
to defend the constitution from
enemies foreign
or domestic.
Who decides and how and
when to act.
Like sitting on hands.
To support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies foreign and domestic; to obey the orders of the President and the officers appointed over me. I take this oath with no purposes of evasion.
A President if he or she turns against the Constitution is disregarded, officers means uniformed officers and that means comissioned, non-commissioned or warrant officers, and without evasion leaves no 'out' as does the Presidential version with it's ' best of my ability '
Useful only if the military remains loyal and if the military having been treated despicably by the nation has not learned to despise the county and it's population. Which might well apply these days.
The intent is preserve and defend and turn the reins of government back over to a duly elected civilian government and implicit or implied action.
Which is why all dictatorships including our present government install a counter measure known as the protective echelon and in Obama's case state he wishes to build that element to be equal or greater in power than the military..
Protective Echelon in Germam os Schutz Staffel. the Department of Internal State Security or in the current USA the Department of Homeland Security or Internal Security DHS or DIS the pun there is it's purpose is to DIS-respect the citizens and the Constitution and defend specific leaders.
The way around that is to get the military to take action against the citizens one way or another and thus divert or suborn their primary loyalty.
During the Carter years military takeover was openly discussed in the military the end thought was as long as their is a Constitution we do not act but after the events of Dec 31st last I suspect the military has decided the country isn't worth the effort the provocation is certainly present.
One never knows nor should one ever know if such is boing to go into effect or at one point but at this point in time it would be a legal counter-revolution. To my mind a legal and required action by the military in upholding that oath.
I certainly would not shirk my duty should such come to pass. For those not in nor never have been in the military stand aside and don't get in the way. You time had come and gone it's no longer your concern.
Your knowledge
And I revere the constitution
All belief systems have to be open to disagreement or else progress is halted.
And by the way...I am certain you will disagree but from the time I have spent on this website it has become very clear to me that Objectivism is a set of faith-based beliefs...just not the same ideas as what is typically considered faith based. It is very clear objectivism thinks it has answers that could only be had for certain if you knew things none of us know. None of us understand the universe and how we exist. I do agree with most of the objectivist points of view but I disagree with others. If I can not be allowed to try and convince objectivist that the standard view they have is wrong on some things is wrong, from a logical point of view, then that would mean objectivism is dead and can never grow.
You can agree or disagree with anything you want to, it doesn't make you an Objectivist who happens to be "non-standard". This a forum for Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason and egoism, not your "non-standard" religious "version" that is fundamentally incompatible. This is not the place for you to promote your religious anti-abortion rights and anti "selfish concerns" dogma or your stubborn ignorance of Ayn Rand, let alone in the name of "logic" and "growth".
However...closed minded is all I hear from the buldk of your answer. I hope you can open up your mind past what Rand taught. You have not even figured out that I am not a religious person (though there is no one can authoritatively say there is or is not a God so we can not judge harshly on that topic).
Religion and denial of rights of the individual for cells and fetuses are fundamentally incompatible with reason and with Ayn Rand's philosophy. You are not a "smart person" correcting anything, you don't know what Ayn Rand's philosophy is and are trying to replace it with its opposite of age-old fallacies of religious thinking while dishonestly stealing her name for it. You don't even understand how your own beliefs are profoundly influenced by conventional religious thinking.
Understanding Ayn Rand's philosophy, which you do not, is not "closed minded" and does not mean not learning and discovering knowledge Ayn Rand did not have, let alone new knowledge. We have active minds, not minds "open" to swallowing whatever conventional falsehoods anyone ignorantly peddles in any variation in the name of "corrections".
Wrong.
Objectivism accepts reality, studies it, and derives rules for human behavior based on evidence and the importance of life.
I will not claim to be an expert on Objectivism but based upon the comments on this forum it appears to me that Objectivist followers of this site base there philosophy more on faith than do conservatives or liberals. I will give you two examples:
The majority on this site are adamant that there is no God. There is absolutely no solid proof of this one way or the other that anyone has ever been able to produce in the history of the world.. Yet the objectivist on this site take what knowledge they do have and extrapolate that there is no God. That is fine, I tend to draw a similar conclusion. However, I am aware that I really do not know and can not say for sure. In general conservatives and liberals are the same way. Most conservatives believ ether is a God, liberals are more split...but neither philosophy lays claim to an absolute one way or the other. Both welcome people regardless of whether or not they believe in God. People on this forum tend to have so much faith in their unproven ideas that they are less accepting that either the conservatives or liberals.
Point two...I have never seen the conservative or liberals have so much faith in one person that they treat them like a God like I have seen people talk about Ayn Rand on this forum. Come on, she is just a person that had both good and bad ideas just like the rest of us.
Your misrepresentations of atheism and what you claim other here believe are particularly ignorant and speculatively insulting. It is not "faith" to reject arbitrary belief in the supernatural and no "proof" is required to reject assertions containing contradictions and cognitively meaningless utterances. If you want to understand this then search for where it has been discussed at length on this forum and elsewhere. Your swaggering, ignorant pronouncements are not rational discussion and do not belong on this forum.
As for the work she did accomplish, you are free to re-examine any of it. If you are going to make a case for "God" - or for that matter anti-trust laws - you had better do more than repeat the worn-out phrases of a previous century.
Objectivists do not assert that there is no God. We only point out that no clear definition of it exists, and no tests have been offered. It ends there. Because it ends there, claims that this action or that action are good or bad because "God" said so (in the Bible or the Quran or just personally to the claimant) must fail.
Anyway, like I said you are right that I do not need to be on this site. I have found this site to be predominately religious zelouts in the House of Objectivism and the Prophet of Rand. I see very little true logical analysis occurring because no one will disagree with the religious tenants. I have to think you have turned away countless good people because you are unwilling to take a look at your unshakable faith in Rand and her religion. Objectivisim has some very good ideas that could be worked with but people here are to closed minded to question ther unproven faith.
Good Luck in improving the Country this way!
If you found something in Atlas Shrugged to be appealing to you then learn what her philosophy is that made it possible instead of insulting people with your crude ignorance and outrageous accusations and misrepresentations, screaming "faith" and "religious zealots in the House of Objectivism and the Prophet of Rand". Your posts do not meet the minimal standards of civilized discussion.
Should you choose belief and faith, go right ahead. But do so expecting that any comments or posts you make on this site based on such will be met negatively or at least contested.
Wrong.
This forum celebrates life as a heroic endeavor. Objections are made when some want to force their prejudices into the bodies of others.
I ascribe to Dennis Miller's adage 'One penis, no vote' as to other people's pregnancies. I have never been in the position of becoming a father, but I would like to think I would be able to also agree with that statement, but fear I will have a hard time with accepting my future offspring's mother's decision to abort them, but would accept it none the less.
How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World ...
https://books.google.com.mx/books?isb...
Ann Coulter - 2004 - Political Science
\Ve don't want a ''ban'' on partial-birth abortions; \ve just don't want there to be ... to raise taxes, ban guns, and allow abortions ifa girl can't fit into her prom dress.
Abortion Bill Would Sacrifice Women's Health . - Google News
news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1346&d......
Senators led by Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum have refused to allow an ... but a loophole for women who would abort a pregnancy to fit into a prom dress.
Conservatives taking women out of the abortion debate ...
dcourier.com/news/.../conservatives-t......
Apr 25, 2007 - ... women as amoral ‹ women who choose abortion to fit into a prom dress. ... Wade while allowing states to regulate abortion as long as they ...
One Procedure, Two Procedures, Three Procedures - More ...
articles.sun-sentinel.com/.../9705290......
May 24, 1997 - Just how much can the government force a woman to sacrifice for a fetus? ... have refused to allow an exception even to protect the woman from serious harm ... for women who would abort a pregnancy to fit into a prom dress.
Your blanket nobody didn't bother to do fact checks before trying to speak for everyone.
Never the less you are still missing the point. I should have bet money on this one .
Pro-Choice versus Pro-Birth, too.
Yeah, you're really going to get agreement or even consensus on this one...
Good luck!
Thanks.
Recognizing the need to more accurately define the terms as I stated earlier this columnist has done the job for the pro-life side while taking a big step toward common ground with the opposition. If I find something of equal value I'll add it or someone else can do so.
"Donald Trump Is Clueless on Abortion – But So Are Many Americans
Kristan Hawkins | Apr 10, 2016
Kristan Hawkins
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Because the “pro-life” and “pro-choice” labels have become so subjective, Americans are increasingly identifying with a particular label when, in reality, they don’t fall under that camp at all.
Donald Trump has stated he is pro-life with exceptions (rape, incest and life of the mother). He has also stated seriously radical positions that hardly anyone in the pro-life movement would agree with, like women who seek illegal abortions should be punished. He also said that the “laws are set" on abortion and that the legality of it should go back to the states.
Last May, Gallup released a poll that touted the headline “Americans Choose ‘Pro-Choice’ for First Time in Seven Years.” The poll said that half of Americans say they pro-choice, while only 44 percent self-identify as pro-life.
While on the surface, it looks like more Americans are self-identifying as pro-choice than pro-life, when a closer look is taken at exactly what they favor, those numbers tell a different story.
Nineteen percent of respondents said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances and 36 percent said it should be legal in only a few circumstances. Those two groups of respondents equal a pro-life majority at 55 percent total, while people that said abortion should be legal in all and most circumstances amount to 42 percent.
So Donald Trump isn’t the only person confused on abortion, although he is probably in a camp of his own when it comes to stating his position.
Americans may be misidentifying themselves when it comes to the matter of abortion since a majority clearly support significant restrictions on abortion. For millennials in particular, as a group that works with over 930 student pro-life groups, we see students misidentifying themselves all the time on campuses across the country, which is why we no longer ask them if they are pro-life or pro-choice. They don’t know, nor do they care, what the labels mean. Instead, when we are on campus, we plainly ask students whether or not they support legal abortion or how long into a pregnancy they tolerate abortion.
There is a huge disconnect in national conversation about abortion. Many people think they may be labeled as one thing and, in actuality, identify more with something else.
Part of this disconnect has been the political left's attempt to confuse the labels. Remember when Wendy Davis, the Texas state senator who filibustered a law to ban abortions after preborn babies can feel pain, declared she was actually pro-life in the Texas gubernatorial race?
It shows how little time those of us in the pro-life movement have actually spent trying to define our pro-life brand, while letting others do it for us as we scramble to promote and fundraise for our individual organizations.
In 2014, Planned Parenthood advocated dropping the pro-choice label, saying publicly it didn’t really mean anything any longer and privately that it was associated with the negative connotations of abortion. So they went broader and began using code terms such as “women’s health” and “reproductive freedom.”
With the labels of pro-life and pro-choice falling by the wayside and the GOP frontrunner for the presidential nomination saying he’s pro-life one day and supports existing abortion laws the next, what are we to do?
It’s time to speak plainly, stop using vague language and have an honest and open conversation about abortion and when it should be legal.
The pro-life movement needs to take back the brand and proudly declare what the term means.
Being pro-life is about empowering women and providing resources to those facing unplanned pregnancies. It centers around the belief that abortion is the taking of innocent life and that abortion is not acceptable at any point in the pregnancy. It means believing there are two victims in every abortion – the mother and the baby. It means that we want to see abortion made unthinkable and illegal."
The one part she left out is methods to prevent pregnancy, safe sex and yes abstinence all preclude abortion as an issue. Another way is cease rewarding a culture that produces 12 year old mothers as something to be proud of.l...
I just ripped the livig shit out of any chance you have to make a difference in the up coming election by exposing how easy it is to control the conversation and send people off on what for election purposes are meaningless fruitless tangents.
You lose but Bernie, Hillary or Donald are going to win.
The key point had nothing to do with abortion per se. It serves as a hot button issue that can and just did slice and dice any chance or possibility of a cohesive coalition to support whomever Cruz or Webb or Johnson or ...or ....or...
One more time and I repeat..
"My main issue is to attack the hardest issues head on and point out until they can be set aside albeit temporarily and a ....constitutional centrist coalition ..... which is my phrase and nothing to do with any other similar named groups, put together the splintered 46% will remain dog food for the left either republicans or democrats and that would be flushing the constitution irrevocavbly down the toilet.
Quit Enabling
Take Control
Make Changes"
But you nicely took the bait and went off completely controlled and directed with nothought to those six words. .
Sucker punched? Yes. Ambushed? Yes Decimated? Hell no that's only ten percent. My unit's standards were do the job right and there are no names left to take.
Too busy looking in the wrong directions....with, as near as I can detect, absolutely no interest in anything else.
The worst part is most of the abortion debate was dealt with as much as it could be years ago.
The main point is
Quit Enabling - you didn't.
Take Control - you won't
Make Changes - not a chance.
Now go think about it.
We had a test question once which showed us how simple most solutions are. What is the easiest and most clandestine method to destroy a class 60 timber trestle bridge using the least amount of explosives?
Some said there aren't any anymore, some said not enough to worry about, some said what's a timber trestle bridge. some came up (using dimensions provided) with 8 pounds of TNT. Those are the answers you gave in this boobytrapped discussion thread even after I gave warning in other threads....
The answer is a gallon of gas and a match. both of which are classified as explosives.
The answer to your dilemma is start working together accomplishing what can be done and quit providing aid and comfort to the other side. Form a coalition based on one idea and that's a return to constitutional government and a rejection of fascist socialism.
Once that is done then use that document to solve these other issues.
I'm still betting 95% plus of those voting will choose fascist socialism.
Welcome to the world of realpolitik
for if you don't hang together you will surely hang separately
I'd need a whole page or perhaps two in order to address your issues, but for me, the abortion problem is a sidebar and not entitled to anywhere near the time spent on it.
"The basic freedom of the world is woman's freedom. A free race cannot be born of slave mothers. A woman enchained cannot choose but give a measure of that bondage to her sons and daughters. No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother." ~ Margaret Sanger
If I find it, I will post it.
My point being...WITHOUT getting mystical (which I dislike) I think, like most things the unaware does...we just might be messing with something we shouldn't be.
Life may be common place in creation but Conscious life might be limited and prized...just observe life on this planet..."Conscious life" certainly is limited...