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    Posted by $ jbrenner 5 years, 1 month ago
    Whether you agree with abortion or not, one must recognize that abortion is a sacrament to the regressives (I refuse to call them progressives any more.), and I mean sacrament in the religious, sacrificial (as in sacrificing of virgins) sense.
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    • Posted by edweaver 5 years, 1 month ago
      I like your regressive term. Very fitting. Hope you don't mind if I use it.
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      • Posted by $ jbrenner 5 years, 1 month ago
        The only progress that the regressives make is toward the edge of a cliff. Then they claim it is a crisis that only they can solve. When someone poses the reasonable solution to their problem, they then do everything within their power to avoid solving the problem.
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        • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
          The right of abortion is a natural right of a woman to her own body. Exercising it, when required,solves problems, it does not avoid it. The right of abortion is a right of the individual, not political progressivism.
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          • Posted by $ Radio_Randy 5 years, 1 month ago
            One of the problems, as I see it, is that once a baby is capable of sustaining it's own life (breathing, heart beating, etc.), abortion becomes murder, which is illegal in this country.
            Anyone who supports those kinds of abortions would have no problem accepting a woman's drowning of her own child, simply because it was an inconvenience to her.
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            • Posted by LibertyBelle 5 years, 1 month ago
              And once it's out of the body, it is no longer abortion, then it is murder, pure and simple.
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              • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                Hey, c'mon! That idiot governor of Virginia said the legalized full term baby--oops, I mean fetus-- baby would be made comfortable while discussing whether or not to knock the kid off. You wouldn't want the dead baby walking--oops, I meant crying not walking since it can't even crawl yet--to be made uncomfortable before suffering its execution, would you?
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                • Posted by Dobrien 5 years, 1 month ago
                  Destroying an eagle egg
                  668c; 50 CFR 22.3). The 1972 amendments increased civil penalties for violating provisions of the Act to a maximum fine of $5,000 or one year imprisonment with $10,000 or not more than two years in prison for a second conviction.
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                  • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                    The Endangered Species Act giving "rights" to other species is another example of emotions violating the rights of people who are punished. The purpose of proper government is to protect the rights of people, not eggs, obscure plants or fetuses.
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                • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                  A fetus is not a baby. It must be born to be a baby. A fetus is a potential human being. The concept 'rights' does not pertain to a potential.

                  The governor of Virginia did not say anything about "knocking the kid off" or "execution". Those are the words and description of hysterical propaganda circulated by militant anti-abortionists trying to make people believe that laws repealing abortion are for "killing babies". It is a dishonest attempt to irrationally whip up emotional hysteria.
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                  • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                    Abortion stops a beating heart.
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                    • Posted by lrshultis 5 years, 1 month ago
                      So a person is defined as a body with a beating heart? Abortion is done far before any self is made. It can not be just the pain done to the fetus that seems to be one of the reasons against abortion. Many good people do not care about pain to the born baby when they cut off the foreskin of a baby boy. They reason that the baby is not old enough to feel the pain and if it does it does not have an advanced enough brain to remember the mutilation. Oh but, he will not be kidded in the shower like the other boys.
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                    • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                      So does killing a monkey. A "beating" heart does not make anything a person. You do not have rights because your heart beats.
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                      • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                        Me dino would hater for me heart not to beat. I value myself and all of human life at any developmental stage as more valuable and far more precious than a than a monkey. Hey, even that of an ape.
                        Even more than those wonderfully brilliant dolphins! Tell that last bit to a PETA or an Antifa lib and I just might be attacked.
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                        • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                          A "beating heart" does not make anything a human person. You hold the "developmental stage" of the unborn potential as "more valuable and far more precious" than the women you sacrifice.

                          As Ayn Rand put it, "To sentence a woman to bear a child against her will is an unspeakable violation of her rights: her right to liberty (to the functions of her body), her right to the pursuit of happiness, and, sometimes, her right to life itself, even as a serf. Such a sentence represents the sacrifice of the actual to the potential, of a real human being to a piece of protoplasm, which has no life in the human sense of the term. It is sheer perversion of language for people who demand this sacrifice to call themselves 'right-to-lifers'."

                          And, "To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable"
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            • -1
              Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
              A poor person is "capable of sustaining it's own life."
              Does that mean we should be forced to do things for them?

              The anti-abortion arguments of conservatives, are the same as the arguments of socialists.
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              • Posted by $ Radio_Randy 5 years, 1 month ago
                We aren't talking about a total stranger, here. We're talking about the biological child of a woman, so that pretty much invalidates that argument.

                And...wow! How someone can attempt to make a direct connection between pro-life conservatism and socialism...it almost leaves me speechless.

                If you understood socialism, at all, you would realize that forcing ME to pay for a woman's abortion IS socialism, pure and simple.
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                • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                  A fetus is not a child. It hasn't been unborn. The concept "stranger" doesn't even apply, let alone justify banning abortions.

                  The right of abortion does not mean an entitlement to have you pay for it. Banning abortions to impose an entitlement to be born forces the woman to "pay" a lot more.
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                • Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
                  "We aren't talking about a total stranger, here. We're talking about the biological child of a woman, so that pretty much invalidates that argument."
                  What argument does this invalidate?
                  Forcing someone to provide for the life of another, whether they be a stranger or not is, in principle, the exact same thing.

                  "And...wow! How someone can attempt to make a direct connection between pro-life conservatism and socialism...it almost leaves me speechless."
                  It's amazing how amazed you are about having such basic dots connected for you.
                  If you think you can force someone to carry to term, then what argument do you plan to use against forcing people to merely pay for things they don't support?
                  No argument is possible. You are on the same side as socialists.

                  So yes, today's political discourse is a farce of progressives vs very clueless conservatives, who don't seem to understand that they are on the same side, for very fundamental reasons.
                  They are all altruists and collectivists and agree that individuals should be sacrificed for the greater good.
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        • -1
          Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
          Abortion is a perfectly legitimate right.
          Those who want to ban abortion and force people to carry to term, are no different to those who want to force people to pay for healthcare of others.
          In this way, among many others, conservatives are not an alternative to progressives.
          Just religious and more confused version of them.
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      • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
        That progressive political ideology of collectivism and statism is in fact regressive is commonly noted, but it has nothing to do with the right of abortion, which is the right of every individual woman to her own body. Trying to smear the right of abortion as nothing but "progressive" is an illogical package deal. Progressive versus dogmatic religious conservativism is a false alternative. They are both regressive.
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        • Posted by edweaver 5 years, 1 month ago
          I said nothing about abortion. But since you brought it up, abortion is no more of a right than health insurance. Both are a choice and at some point it's removing an individuals right to live.
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          • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
            I did not "bring it up". It is the topic of the thread and was combined with progressivism in the post you responded to.

            The right of abortion is the right of a woman to decide what to do with her own body, with the assistance of anyone who chooses to help her either paid, as doctors normally are, or voluntarily for free. Like all other rights, It does not mean an entitlement to be provided with anything for free.

            Religious conservatives deny the rights of the individual when they try to prohibit abortions, forcing woman to bear children they don't want. Abortion does not "remove an individual's right to live"; it prevents a person from being born at all. A fetus is a potential human being. It does not have "rights".
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            • Posted by edweaver 5 years, 1 month ago
              You responded to me and I did not say anything about the subject, I responded to a term I liked in JB's post. I stand on my statement, abortion is NOT a right, it's a choice. No need in responding. Your not changing my position. I'm done responding.
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              • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                You don't need anyone's permission to say that progressives are regressive. It isn't even new. And I don't need your permission for what to write in responding to a post in a connected sequence.

                Now you acknowledge, which I had not presumed, that you like the whole post smearing the right of abortion as nothing but "progressive", which is an illogical package deal, and smearing a woman's choice to not bear a child as a "sacrament to regressives", which is simply disgusting. Progressive versus dogmatic religious conservativism is a false alternative. They are both regressive.

                The right of abortion is the right of a woman to control her own body. That is what the anti-abortionists condemn as they yell "NOT a right". Of course it is a right. Ayn Rand described the nature and source of rights in her "Man's Rights" and "The Objectivist Ethics".

                Rights pertain to people, who have the characteristics that give rise to the entire subject of morality. They do not apply to other entities.

                Those who deny the rights of women while attributing "rights" to fetuses treat the concept of "rights" as a floating abstraction, disconnected from the facts that give rise to it. They emotionally attach "rights" to whatever they want and dogmatically demand that government force be employed to enforce their feelings. The burden of proof is on those who claim that a fetus or earlier stages have rights and the women do not. Their emotional approach of outbursts shows that they don't know why any of us have rights.
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          • -1
            Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
            Other way around.
            Being carried to term, is no more a right than health insurance.
            Those who want to ban abortion, are basically confused versions of Bernie Sanders.
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            • Posted by edweaver 5 years, 1 month ago
              I didn't say anything about banning abortion.
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              • Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
                You said "abortion is no more of a right than health insurance."
                What am I supposed to conclude from that?
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                • Posted by edweaver 5 years, 1 month ago
                  Just exactly what it says. No more, no less.
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                  • Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
                    So, you don't want abortion banned, but you don't think it's a right?
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                    • Posted by edweaver 5 years, 1 month ago
                      Basically. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. And there's much deeper reasons why abortion should not be easy, especially later in gestation. Once it becomes accepted at any time for any reason, it will lead to killing at any age, someone who cannot take care of themselves. There must be standards, not laws that people adhere to. I believe objectivism requires doing no harm to others in conquest of our own desires. Killing anything that may be viable meets that standard to me.
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                      • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                        You said "at some point it's removing an individuals right to live". Since we are talking about abortion, not killing children, that means you claim a fetus can have "rights", and in particular is entitled to be born. Why?

                        The concept 'rights' applies to people, not a potential, but
                        on your premise an abortion violates the "right to live" which would be murder. Yet you refuse to answer whether you want to ban it. Do you want only "standards" and not "laws" against murder?

                        You also wrote (shouted) that "abortion is NOT a right". Rights pertain to a social context, i.e., involving more than oneself. They are moral principles sanctioning freedom of action in a social context, and are legally protected by a proper government, with the only restriction being that one cannot violate others' rights. When a woman chooses to not bear a child she is the only person involved. You are involving yourself as another person. If you don't acknowledge that she has a right to control her own body to not bear a child then whose rights do you claim are violated? What do you propose to do to people who do things you claim they have no right to do?

                        You also said you don't want abortion to be "easy" and don't want it to be just "accepted at any time for any reason," as if the woman's choice and her reasons are not relevant to her freeedom of action. What do you propose to do to make it not "easy", i.e., difficult?

                        Abortion means preventing a potential from becoming a person through being born, not "killing someone at any age". 'Before birth' does not have an "age" of a person and is not a "someone". But on your premises you claim that abortion "will lead to killing at any age someone who cannot take care of themselves". Why?

                        You said, "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should". That applies to every choice. Whether you should do something depends on what you want to accomplish. Whether or not a woman should give birth to a child or have an abortion depends most fundamentally on whether she wants to have a child. How do you apply the generality -- "just because you can, doesn't mean you should" -- to condemn a woman who does not want to have a child for not having one?

                        You said that "I believe objectivism requires doing no harm to others in conquest of our own desires." That is not true. Objectivism says to not violate others' rights or behave dishonestly or unjustly. It does not say that no one else should never be vaguely "harmed", as for example, through competition or in being first to discover something. It does not apply to a fetus at all, which is not an "other", i.e., a person, and does not mean that a woman has an obligation to sacrifice herself to a potential by bearing a child she does not want because a fetus would "harmed".

                        Wherever you are getting this from it isn't Objectivism.
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                      • -1
                        Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
                        I asked a yes or no question and got this contradiction?

                        Do you want abortion banned, yes or no? Because it sure sounds like you do, but you seem to be hedging.

                        Give me your clear position, then we can talk.
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    • Posted by Dobrien 5 years, 1 month ago
      Their Appears to be a battle between Good and Evil playing out daily. Light destroys darkness.
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      • -1
        Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
        Yes, it been hard to quantify the full evil of those who want to ban abortion and turn half the population into cattle.
        Anti-abortionists are as much a threat to all our freedoms as any socialist and must be fought by Objectivists just as hard.
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        • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 5 years, 1 month ago
          Hmm, student of Baphomet and Baal?...that was when people were really turned into cattle...roasted their new born babies at the alter, they did and were happy about it.

          Isn't that what the Left always does...take something good and kill it?

          Those slightly right of center, mystical of not, would never make people into cattle nor sheeple.
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          • -2
            Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
            "Hmm, student of Baphomet and Baal?...that was when people were really turned into cattle...roasted their new born babies at the alter, they did and were happy about it."
            No, what they did was sacrifice individuals for a greater good.
            Which is what the anti-abortionists are advocating.

            "Isn't that what the Left always does...take something good and kill it?"
            No, the left are altruists.
            Which is why anti-abortionists are on the same side as them.

            "Those slightly right of center, mystical of not, would never make people into cattle nor sheeple."
            Then you must agree abortion should be perfectly legal.
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            • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 5 years, 1 month ago
              Well then, I guess my original insight is correct. The only true division in society is Conscience. Those that have and those that have not.

              PS....the left are only altruistic unto themselves,..Oh, and the greater good was only good for Baal...(can't believe mankind fell for that one.)
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              • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                There are many "true" divisions in this society. "Conscience" is not one of them, it is a subjective state that is meaningless without an objective moral standard.
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              • -1
                Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
                Incomprehensible uttering is not "insight."
                You seem to be totally unfamiliar with Objectivism.

                Another religious leftist who has a dollar sign on an Objectivist forum for some reason, while advocating for gross rights violations by regulating or banning abortion.
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                • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 5 years, 1 month ago
                  The statement (insight) has nothing to do with abortion...it's a fundamental observation of behaviors across the entire spectrum, the lowest common denominator.
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                  • -2
                    Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
                    You were asking if I was "a student of Baphomet or Baal?"
                    Aside from being completely out of place on an Objectivist forum, it is also completely backwards. Those who would ban abortion, enslaving mankind, are on the side of Baal and Baphomet.
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      • -1
        Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
        Smearing the right of a woman to her own body as a meaningless "sacrament of regressives" is disgusting, not "light". "Good and Evil" are not some kind of things battling daily, good and evil represent moral judgments of the character, ideas, and actions of individuals. Ignorant dogma promoted as government enforced duty to force women to bear children they don't want is evil.
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    • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
      Abortion described as "sacrament to regressives" makes no sense. It has nothing to do with "sacrificing virgins".
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      • Posted by $ jbrenner 5 years, 1 month ago
        I wrote that abortion is a sacrament to the regressives, not "sacrament to regressives". Every religion has its sacraments. For pagans, the sacrifice of virgins has gone on for millenia. The Christian practice of taking part in Holy Communion is an acknowledgement and acceptance of Jesus' sacrifice of himself. Likewise, abortion is a sacrament for the regressives; they quite literally celebrate its occurrence.
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        • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
          The exercise of the right of abortion is not any kind of sacrament and has nothing to do with sacrifice of virgins. It is done by the choice of a woman in her own interest for her own individual life. The Christian ritual of celebration of the self sacrifice of its hero is morally repulsive. No hedonist, subjectivist "celebration" of an abortion is anywhere near that.
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          • Posted by $ jbrenner 5 years, 1 month ago
            The way that abortion is practiced in America indeed represents a sacrifice to me and to all taxpayers. My money goes against my will to indirectly fund Planned Parenthood.

            If you don't think that abortion is a sacrament to many on the political left, you should read

            https://www.amazon.com/Sacrament-Abor...

            in which Ms. Paris justifies abortion as an act of human sacrifice to the goddess Artemis.
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            • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
              Interesting book, jbrenner.
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              • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                It is "interesting" to those seeking to misrepresent, in bizarre terms unrelated to reality, why women have abortions and why civilized people defend their right to do so. Hysterical fantasy is not a substitute for rational discussion.
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                • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                  Me dino thinks Mein Kampf is an interesting book.
                  It doesn't mean I'm a Nazi. Heck I think The Communist Manifesto is interesting reading too.
                  So is Dante's The Divine Comedy and Shakespeare's A Summer's Night Dream.
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                  • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                    The bizarre book by the New Age academic has no influence on anyone but a small group of crackpots. It does not show that "one must recognize that abortion is a sacrament to the regressives" and "abortion is a sacrament to many on the political left". It has no significance even in the sense of an influential Mein Kampf. What do you find "interesting" about it other than its use as a strawman in ridiculing serious defense of the right of abortion?
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                    • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                      Abortion being called a sacrament is what I find interesting.
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                      • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                        You said "it's an interesting book". What is interesting about calling abortion a sacrament and claiming it as widespread? It isn't true.
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                        • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                          Countless folks in the Jackass Party appear to unconsciously hold that view. With their feelings.
                          Or why Kavanaugh caught so much hell.
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                          • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                            Calling people a "jackass party" who must "unconsciously" hold, with "feelings", a view they do not subscribe to is not an argument. Calling abortion a "sacrament" has nothing to do with the Kavanaugh hearings. The circus created here by anti-abortionists is worse than the mentality of the Kavanaugh hearings.
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            • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
              The right of abortion is a moral right of the woman and is no one else's business. The barbaric violation of rights in banning abortion is not a rational way to eliminate leftist entitlements.

              Woman whom the religious conservatives want to force to bear children they do not want are not responsible for taxes for Planned Parenthood in an irrational war between false alternatives.

              That nutty book you referred to has nothing to do with defense of rights of the individual or what even most leftists think.
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              • Posted by $ jbrenner 5 years, 1 month ago
                Yes, that book is ridiculous. However, the entire socialist movement is ridiculous. The left uses the abortion industry as one of its foundational pillars. While any individual woman has the right to an abortion, he/she does not have the right to do it at my expense.

                What the left has done is play an elaborate game of chess. By including people who support abortion on philosophical grounds with looters and moochers, the left has cobbled together enough votes to confiscate everyone's wealth to support its agenda.

                The abortion situation from the left's perspective is not that much different from those of teachers' unions. The government dollars flow out of our pockets into those of government bureaucrats who give it to those who support them. If you oppose government funded (free?) education, you are "against the children".

                Your correct philosophy has been turned against you by the looters, and you are providing your sanction to your own victimization.
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                • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                  No one can turn a true philosophy against those who understand and live by it. Supporting the right of abortion does not make anyone support welfare statism who doesn't already support it.

                  To grouse against those who defend women against the irrational, barbaric practice of forcing them to bear children they don't want because of objections to welfare statism is a vicious, irrational package deal far worse than guilt by non-association.

                  So is the attempt to tie that bizarre New Age academic's book to defending the right of abortion, along with the vicious tying of its "sacraments" to women who choose to have abortion.

                  The claim that such fringe nonsense demonstrates "abortion is a sacrament to many on the political left" is false. Even the left doesn't follow that. To then try to excuse the strawman by saying "the entire socialist movement is ridiculous" misses the difference between a serious movement driven by serious ideas that are wrong and a crackpot with little influence, dredged up to try to dismiss with false guilt by association all kinds of serious defense of the right of abortion.
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                  • Posted by $ jbrenner 5 years, 1 month ago
                    Perhaps this debate requires a little different perspective. Each taxpayer's portion of the national debt is approximately $175 K, and no doubt, the unfair share that I and most Gulchers pay would be expected to be more than that.

                    Because of the cumulative effect of all of the looters and moochers, including those whose abortions are financed (about 24% of the costs according to estimates I have seen) and many other types of moochers, my wife and I decided not to have a third child, even though we wanted a third child.

                    https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapoth...
                    The above web site contains a reasonable estimate of abortion frequencies and costs. Most of the costs are born through state taxes, which I pay a lot less of because Florida has no state income tax.

                    Yes, women have a right to an abortion, but the cumulative effects of their decisions do have an impact on me, and their "right" ceases to be a right as soon as it infringes on others.

                    I don't want to make you feel guilty. I look at this situation like D'Anconia telling Rearden that his enemies have a powerful weapon that they are using against him (during the money speech). They are using your correct philosophy against you.

                    If abortions were safe, legal, and rare as Bill Clinton once suggested, then I would not have a significant problem with abortion. With the availability of condoms and morning-after pills as easy as they are, abortions should be rare. They aren't. There are approximately 1 million abortions per year, and that number is not going down.

                    Going back to my earlier point regarding the financial impact of a huge government's failure to either spend within its means (or restrict its borders), the net effect has been to keep salaries in this country down by importing "future Democrat voters" who show no evidence for responsibility and to reduce the family size of producers. The irony is that this happens at the expense of current Democrat voters even moreso than it happens at the expense of producers.

                    In essence, the third child we never had is a mooching rotter with a name and face I do not know.
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                    • Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
                      This doesn't have anything to do with why abortion should or should not be legal.
                      That question is answered by asking if rights are violated.
                      Since abortion is not a rights violation, because the unborn don't have any rights and being carried to term is not a right, it should be perfectly legal.
                      All this other stuff has nothing to do with it.
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                    • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                      The right of abortion has nothing to do with entitlements and no one has any right to interfere with women choosing to not bear children in the name of not wanting taxes paying for them. You don't even have any idea how many abortions are private and not subsidized. Defending the right of a woman to not bear children she doesn't want is not "using your correct philosophy against you". Trying to invoke Rearden and Francisco for this bizarre argument is even more bizarre. What will you do next, oppose the right to eat and go to a doctor because of government subsidies?
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                      • Posted by $ jbrenner 5 years, 1 month ago
                        Actually, if you read the link, you would have seen a pretty good estimate of how many abortions are private and not subsidized. I have no problem with those, and shouldn't.

                        The original point was that abortion is a sacrament of the left, and I am quite sure that for quite a few, that is the case. For example, when my first daughter was five months in my wife's womb, her ob/gyn doctor spent several minutes trying to convince my wife to have an abortion because genetic testing suggested that there was somewhere between a 5-10% chance of what is now my daughter having birth defects. My now 23-year-old daughter is brilliant in every way. I asked the doctor to elaborate on why she thought the way that she did... She made the eugenics argument.
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                        • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                          You argued that in defending the right of abortion I am allowing others to "use your correct philosophy against you" because you don't want to pay for subsidized abortions. That argument makes no sense and neither does the appeal to "eugenics".

                          You know very well that Ayn Rand defended the rights of the individual woman to not be forced to bear a child she doesn't want, sacrificing her life and rights an unborn potential. That right is not to be denied because of other laws providing subsidies, and I have not been co-opted by anything. The right has nothing to do with "sacraments" (or now thrown in, eugenics) and even the left doesn't believe that. The crackpot book is irrelevant, not a basis for rational argument.

                          You have previously told the story of your daughter several times. You took a chance and fortunately won. It has nothing to do with the right of abortion and continuing to interject it, despite its personal importance to you, is irrelevant to discussion of the right of abortion.
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                          • Posted by $ jbrenner 5 years, 1 month ago
                            The point I have been making is essentially independent of your point. The right of a woman to have an abortion is not what I have argued here.

                            What I have said, and stand by, is that a significant number of abortions happen because obstetricians use genetic testing results to encourage people who otherwise would not want to have an abortion into having one. My wife had three OB/GYN's during her childbearing years. All three started the discussion with "You're in your thirties. There is an x% chance of Down's syndrome...." Given that all three had this discussion, I can only conclude that this must be part of the standard protocol so that they protect themselves from malpractice lawsuits.

                            My wife was honestly scared, especially after having had two miscarriages.

                            This argument is about the encouragement of sacrifice of what you and Rand call a potential human for a certain finality of that potential.
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                            • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                              The point you made in your previous posts is what I responded to. What you now say is your point is "essentially independent of" what you wrote in your own previous posts. We will get to what you now say is your point, and how it represents a common underlying theme implicitly, but first look at the progression.

                              Someone playing the role of forum class-clown dancing in glee over a third rate song including "showers" for abortions initiated this thread ridiculing the right of abortion and those who support it. You piled on with a post bizarrely claiming abortions are "sacraments" and "sacrificing virgins". The peanut gallery got the point and voted it up to the lead post.

                              You followed by claiming that a fringe academic book "justifies abortion as an act of human sacrifice to the goddess Artem", as if that has anything to do with either defending the right of abortion or what even most of the left believes.

                              You then switched to arguing that abortion is a sacrifice to you and other taxpayers, as if that is a reason to not support the fundamental right of abortion -- which right does not mean welfare entitlements. You asserted that "your correct philosophy has been turned against you by the looters, and you are providing your sanction to your own victimization", which makes no sense.

                              From that followed a personal story about how you and your wife chose to have a child even though doctors told you that from genetic testing there was a 5-10% of a birth defect, which, along with the rest of the 90-95%, fortunately did not happen to you. But it has nothing to do with the moral right of a woman to choose to not bear a child.

                              You now claim you have been arguing something entirely different: that a "significant number of abortions happen because obstetricians use genetic testing results to encourage people who otherwise would not want to have an abortion into having one" -- which has nothing to do with "sacraments", "sacrificing virgins", pressure to not support the right of abortion at all because some are subsidized, or the equally bizarre claim that I have been somehow philosophically co-opted.

                              From the use of genetic testing as a basis of rational medical decisions you conclude in another non sequitur that "this argument is about the encouragement of sacrifice of what you and Rand call a potential human for a certain finality of that potential."

                              No it is not. It is about the right of a woman to have an abortion when she does not want to bear a child, and the fact that if she does not then the choice not to is moral. No one supporting that moral right is "encouraging sacrifice".

                              A fetus is not "sacrificed" at all, which returns to the original bizarre claims about "sacraments" and "sacrifice of virgins" -- which is how in your own mind, but not stated in the earlier posts, the theme of all your posts is hostility to the choice to abort a pregnancy under the premise that there is something intrinsically wrong with it, that it is intrinsically a moral sacrifice.

                              Sacrifice is "the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue". A fetus is not a moral being, has no "rights", and has no intrinsic value. Value is a moral term. There is no such thing as 'intrinsic value', which is mysticism. https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post... The notion that a potential human is human in the sense of a person as a moral end in itself is mysticism (as is the anti-concept "rights of the unborn" that we hear so often).

                              The concepts of moral value and rights do not apply to fetuses, only to the woman deciding what to do for her values in accordance with her own hierarchy of values. If she decides on that basis that she does not want to bear a child it is not a sacrifice of anything, let alone "sacrifice of what you and Rand call a potential human for a certain finality of that potential."

                              Nor is a fetus only "called" a potential human. It is a potential. It does not become a person until it is born, for reasons discussed here many times. Concepts of morality do not apply to it.

                              You say you concede that abortion is a right politically, yet repeatedly demean it in inapplicable moral terms, apparently ascribing to it intrinsic value emotionally adhered to, as if abortion were somehow inherently morally unsavory. It is not. The only values at stake are the woman's.

                              Subjectively deciding (which all claims of 'intrinsic value' are) for yourself that you value a "certain finality of that potential" does not give you a superior moral status over the woman, who is the only one with any moral say over what is done with her own body.
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                              • Posted by $ jbrenner 5 years, 1 month ago
                                And here is where you and Rand differ from most of us. Our intentional pregnancies represent a significant investment. Yes, it is a "potential", but not one without capital, both financial and personal, invested. We are being asked to sacrifice our effort for a definite death. What we are being asked to do is not all that different than being asked to flush cash down the toilet.
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                                • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                                  No one has told you to flush anything "down the toilet". If someone does want to bear a child with what you call her "intentional pregnancy representing a significant investment" then that is her value that she has a moral right to seek for herself.

                                  To say that Ayn Rand asked you to "sacrifice your effort for a definite death" involving a child that you want for yourself and "invested" in is not true and not honest.

                                  The right of abortion means that a woman who does not choose to bear a child does not have to and that that choice is not unsavory. It does not tell you to sacrifice anything. It means that another woman's body is not yours to sacrifice and her choice is not rationally yours to demean when she doesn't do what you want. The value of having a child is a value or not to the woman, not a supposed intrinsic value apart from that.

                                  The misrepresentation of Ayn Rand (and of me) is also no defense of the assertions claiming bizarre "sacraments", "sacrificing virgins", hostility to someone else's moral right of abortion in her own life by her own means that you package-deal with taxes for welfare entitlements, and the false claim that I have been philosophically co-opted. The misrepresentation is not only false, it does not address what I wrote refuting those claims.

                                  Hostility to the fundamental moral right to the freedom to have an abortion because you don't want to be taxed for some of them makes no more sense than would hostility to the principle of the human right of freedom to decide what food to eat because some today get welfare checks. Freedom of action and welfare entitlements are opposites. Opposing entitlements does not justify opposing, or hostility towards, moral rights.
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                                  • jbrenner replied 5 years, 1 month ago
                • Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
                  People who want to ban abortion are just as collectivist as any socialist.
                  You need to learn how to integrate your ideas and resolve contradictions.
                  Once you do that, you'll see that the anti-abortion position is not on the opposite side from socialist positions.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 5 years, 1 month ago
    This kind of thing has gotten me to reevaluate my faith over the past year or so. When you see this, and the Virginia governor openly talking about killing babies...these things aren't just stupidity. They aren't just mindless collectivism or progressive fascism. Like when they behead little girls in some countries because they attend school. This stuff has biblical context. I think you know what I mean...

    Recently, I was talking with a very good friend of mine. He's retired from a...um...government security group. He commented about a job he once did for a Hitlary fund raising event in a large home owned by a very wealthy person. This person proudly displayed a black coffin in the entry way for all the attendees to the event to enjoy. Oh, there are other examples.
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    • -2
      Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
      No one has ever talked about "killing babies,
      openly or otherwise.
      The governors words were deliberately misreported, by religious leftists, of today's vile conservative movement, in order to help advance their agenda of reducing half the adult population to the level of cattle.
      These anti-abortionists are the same types of people that support mindless collectivism and fascism and behead little girls because they attend school.

      You don't need to "reevaluate your faith" you need to get a better understanding of this issue, realize how back-ass-wards you have everything, and then learn the Objectivist position on it.
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      • Posted by $ Abaco 5 years, 1 month ago
        I'm not anti-abortion. And, I've never seen you here before. Interesting. You're making assumptions and tossing accusations. You must be a hoot at a party.
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        • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
          The "accusations" are from your own posts, not "assumptions". That you haven't seen his posts here before is irrelevant and this has nothing to do with parties. What is "interesting" supposed to mean?
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    • -3
      Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
      The Virginia did not "openly talk about killing babies". The right of abortion is not "collectivism or progressive fascism", like 'beheading little girls", and has nothing to do with stories about "Hitlary fund raising" with "black coffins". Neither that kind of subjectivism nor "reevaluating your faith" are a means for rational understanding or relevant to discussion on an Ayn Rand forum.
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      • Posted by Dobrien 5 years, 1 month ago
        Hear is his controversial statement.
        Governor Northam: You know, I wasn’t there, Julie, and I certainly can’t speak for Delegate Tran, but I would tell you — one, the first thing I would say is this is why decisions such as this should be made by [healthcare] providers, physicians, and the mothers and fathers that are involved. There are — you know when we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of, obviously, the mother, with the consent of the physicians, more than one physician by the way. And it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that’s non-viable. So in this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.

        What is the discussion between the physicians and the mother for EWV ?
        “The infant would be delivered , the infant would be kept comfortable “
        and then the discussion ensues. Please clarify for the governor.
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        • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
          Kill my born unborn fetus, Doc. I'm trash and I don't want it.
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          • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
            Demeaning women who don't want to bear a child as "trash" is disgusting.
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            • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
              The only women me dino demeaned is a woman who would tell a doctor to kill her baby AFTER it was born.
              Love to put words in my mouth, don't you?
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              • -3
                Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
                No one is putting words in your mouth.
                Why is someone like you on what is supposed to be an Objectivist forum?
                There are plenty of places on the internet for politically illiterate, religious leftists, such as yourself and other conservatives.
                Why on earth are you here?
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                • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                  Now I'm being called names. Not very civil.
                  I don't have to explain a thing to someone like you.
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                  • -3
                    Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
                    No one's called you names.
                    Everything you're saying is simply incorrect.
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                    • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                      "--politically illiterate, religious leftists, such as yourself and other conservatives."
                      Not only are you calling me that, that combo does not make any sense.
                      A religious leftist would be a Catholic abortion supporter like Nancy Pelosi.
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                      • -3
                        Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
                        That's not name calling.
                        The reason you don't think that combo makes sense is because you have not learnt to integrate.
                        To be right wing, is to stand for individual rights, rights protecting government and capitalism.

                        Today's conservatives are religious/traditionalist collectivists. Like all collectivists, this makes them leftists.
                        They want to ban abortion for these collectivist reasons.

                        So, not understanding that politics is about individualism vs collectivism, makes one politically illiterate, and opposing abortion makes someone a leftist.

                        So, taken together, politically illiterate, leftist.
                        I know that this isn't what you hear from the mainstream discourse, but the mainstream discourse is hopeless.
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                        • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                          The collectivism of the 'rights of the unborn' movement is similar to environmentalism in that both demand sacrifice to a collective of non-human entities.

                          At least the Marxists claimed to be for people -- they were not because they sacrificed real individuals to a reified collective, in practice to the state claiming to represent the people, but at least sought to be oriented, though in an illogical way, towards people. Enviornmentalism and anti-abortionism are misanthropic by nature.

                          The viros sacrifice people to an alleged intrinsic moral value of nature regarded as superseding human rights and values in the name of the "rights of nature". Their collective is all entities in nature other than people. There is no such thing as 'intrinsic value', let alone intrinsic value of nature, which is a mystical, invalid concept. And there is no such thing as "rights" applied to nature, which treats 'rights' as a floating abstraction in promoting the invalid concept "rights of nature".

                          Its meaning in reality is politically decreed entitlements forcing people to sacrifice to nature, which requires the wholesale obliteration of (human) rights. The sacrifice is not even altruism in stated intent because altruism means living for other people, but the false nature morality requires in political practice -- as in all collectivism -- sacrifice to the omnipotent state, to be run by and for the viros, which claims to represent "nature".

                          Likewise for the anti-abortionists. They sacrifice people to an alleged intrinsic moral value of a potential human regarded as superseding human rights and values of real people in the name of "rights of the unborn". Their collective is any form of potential life before birth, ranging from fetuses to unorganized clusters of cells. The invalid intrinsic value is a mystical notion of soul, or in the modern version primitive entities with human dna, to which they emotionally attach "rights" as a floating abstraction in the form of the invalid concept "rights of the unborn".

                          It's meaning in reality is the politically decreed entitlement of a potential to be born, requiring the obliteration of the rights of women through the barbaric practice of forcing women to bear children they don't want. That sacrifice is also not altruism in intent (though it often postures as it) because a potential person is not a person. Even the founder of altruism, Auguste Comte, did not demand that people sacrifice to the unborn. But the mystical false duty morality requires in political practice -- as in all collectivism -- sacrifice to the omnipotent state, in this case largely theocratic, to be run by and for religious conservatives claiming to represent the inborn.

                          Both viroism and anti-abortionism, as well as the Marxist economic version of collectivism, are the antithesis of the Enlightenment philosophy of reason and individualism for human beings on which this country was founded, and especially Ayn Rand's pro-man philosophy of reason, explicit egoism, and freedom under the rights of the individual.
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        • -2
          Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
          What clarification do you need?
          It's in your own quote, "And it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that’s non-viable."
          He is clearly talking about palliative care for non-viable newborns.
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        • -2
          Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
          Where is the imagined discussion for you? He said nothing about killing babies. As has already been discussed on this forum he was talking about severe deformity and nonviable births. The question of what kind of extraordinary measures might be taken or not taken to keep hopeless patients of all ages alive arises every day across the country. He did not say he wanted to "kill babies".
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          • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
            Yes, saying the the baby would be kept comfortable while discussing its whatever is not the same as saying "kill babies" when it is so elephant in the room obvious that is what is being discussed.
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            • -2
              Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
              It's called palliative care.
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              • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                Looked it up. So from what I understand from what the governor said--and not at all very clearly--the doctor talks to mama about resuscitating a baby or letting it die.
                Any doctor worth a crap would be immediatly resuscitating--not wasting time asking for permission.
                Letting a baby die when one has the means to at least try to keep it alive is the same as committing murder.
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                • -3
                  Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
                  It's very clear what he says. Here is the specific quote:
                  "And it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that’s non-viable."

                  Your continued, feigned ignorance, is intellectually dishonest and tiresome.
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                  • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                    Quoting facts contradicting the "narrative" is unpopular with the militant anti-abortionists.
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                    • Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
                      So, I see. I have -2 on a comment giving a direct quote.
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                      • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                        And that one was already rotely down to 0 just for saying that, or more precisely, for saying anything. Clearly there are cowardly trolls here rotely downvoting posts they don't read or understand, without response, in a jihad against those who post because of who we are. That along with the anti-intellectual explicitly anti-Ayn Rand posts, many of them savage, are obviously contrary to the purpose of the forum and the guidelines for posting here. The question is why this nihilism is tolerated in allowing them to stay.
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      • Posted by $ Abaco 5 years, 1 month ago
        Are you ok ewv?
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        • -1
          Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
          The quotes are from your own post. The opening sentence inadvertently omitted the word "governor". It was supposed to read "The 'Virginia governor" did not 'openly talk about killing babies". The widely spread claim that he did is a myth, i.e., fake news", hysterically spread by anti-abortion activists who want it to be true as confirmation of their own propaganda.
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        • -2
          Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
          I think he's doing pretty well considering how outnumbered he is by conservative, religious leftists, on what is supposed to be an Objectivist forum.
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          • Posted by $ Abaco 5 years, 1 month ago
            OK, thanks. You guys must be buddies. I hope you find happiness today. You must have typer's cramp from this thread...
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            • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
              LOL!
              Me dino is beginning to regret kicking this hornet's nest.
              It's becoming a waste of my time.
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              • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                What you should regret is the premise that this forum is no better than what you characterize as a "hornet's nest" available for you to "kick". When that is all one can "contribute" it is a waste of time.
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              • -1
                Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
                You mean, you've been thoroughly proven wrong on this subjects, schooled in the correct position from an Objectivist point of view, but still don't want to concede, so are just going to play childish games in the thread instead?
                If understanding Objectivism and discussing its application is a "waste of time" to you, then I can't imagine why you'd be here in the first place.
                There are plenty of blogs for kooky, conservatives out there.
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  • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
    Personally, I dont think the whole abortion thing is particularly important in my life, so I ignore it. If a woman really doesnt want kids, there ARE ways to prevent it before the fact.
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    • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
      Doesn't cost all that much either.
      Me dino has bought condoms in the past.
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      • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
        And competing, equally arbitrary religious dogma also condemns that. But the practicality and moral use of contraception is irrelevant to the morality of the right of abortion, and appealing to it is a deflection from the main topic of the article denouncing what it calls "brazen" rejection of unearned guilt. Such rejection should morally defiant and should be "normal".
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        • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
          Weird how a murderer who murders a pregnant woman can be charged with a double murder
          when all she's carrying is some good as trash disposable conveniently named fetus.
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          • -1
            Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
            That is nonresponsive. When a woman, and presumeable the man, want to have a child and the fetus is killed along with her, of course the killer should be accountable for it. Regardless of legal terminology it does mean that the fetus, which is still a potential human being, is a murdered person. Word games are not conceptual understanding.

            The concept of a fetus is based on the facts of the developing potential person, not an arbitrary name for trash. Those kind of sarcastically flippant irrelevancies that make no sense are not serious discussion.
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            • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
              How could a response be unresponsive? I responded, didn't I?
              Just because anyone doesn't respond in a way you don't like doesn't mean they are being unresponsive.
              Heck, I'm responding right now. When I don't write anything that's when I do not respond.
              Like those many times when I decide that responding to you is a waste of time anyhoo.
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              • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                A non-response consists of words that don't address the content, changing the subject. "Responding" with a weather report would also have been non-responsive, but no less relevant. That is how a "response is unresponsive". Understanding that requires reading and understanding content, not just the presence of some words pretending to be a response.

                The flippant "Me dino has bought condoms in the past" is not a justification to ban abortion.

                It does, however, illustrate how the subjectivism of competing arbitrary dogmatic absolutes demanded to be enforced in law contradict each other with their conflicting 'exemptions': The arbitrary decree that abortion is evil but contraception is not is sinful under the equally arbitrary decree that both are evil. There is no way to resolve in reason disputes between competing faiths: see "Faith and Force".

                All that is what you did not address in the non-response. Changing the subject again to the terminology of murdering a pregnant woman is non-responsive. None of it has even attempted to justify why a fetus has "rights" and the woman does not.

                The arbitrariness and snide dismissal of serious thought appeared again as "all she's carrying is some good as trash disposable conveniently named fetus". The difference between the concepts 'child' and 'fetus' is essential to understanding, not "convenient names", and none of it is "trash".
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                • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                  Me dino never wrote I want to ban abortion. I think it should be limited just like good old Slick Willie once said.
                  I have contributed money toward defunding Planned Parenthood. A reason the Dems are so fond of abortion is that part of the PP funding is kicked back as campaign donations solely for the party with a socialist movement.
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                  • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                    You said you donated money to block a bill allowing third trimester abortions and advocate other restrictions. Banning abortion at any time and with any restrictions is banning abortions.
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                    • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                      I'm not the absolutist thinker that yoiu are. There's an old saying about there being exceptions to every rule.
                      A woman may opt to save her own life. That's what I'd call an actual health issue.
                      Rape or incest may be involved.
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                      • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                        Principles are absolute -- they are true in the context in which they are validated. They are not open to contradictions of subjective exceptions.

                        The principle of the rights of the individual do not permit you to invoke religious demands with or without whatever you deign to grant as an exemption, which exemptions contradict your own premise, but not the deeper premise that contradictions don't matter.

                        You are "absolutist" in your subjectivist decrees you demand to enforce by law. It doesn't get any more "absolutist" than forcing a woman to bear a child she does not want.
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          • -2
            Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
            It's not "weird" it's perfectly logical.
            Murdering someone is a rights violation and made all the worse, if that someone was pregnant. In these cases a double murder charge may be sought.
            Having an abortion, on the other hand, violates no rights and so should be perfectly legal.
            It's very straight forward.
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    • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
      Those measure are routinely employed and not relevant for what to do if they aren't used or don't work.

      But back to the topic of the thread, whatever one thinks of third rate "popular music" and leftist "culture" that is a false alternative to the religious right, the conservative article denounced lyrics telling people they need not feel an unearned guilt instilled by religious denunciation:

      "You don’t need to offer the right explanation
      You don’t need to beg for redemption or ask for forgiveness
      And you don’t need a courtroom inside of your head
      Where you’re acting as judge and accused and defendant and witness"

      Those lyrics are true. Having an abortion is no one's business but the woman's. The song is intended less as gratuitous "celebration" for what it calls a difficult decision, than a statement of defiance against religious dogmatists inculcating unearned guilt -- like the author of the article, who sneers at the lead of his "news" article: "abortion activists are getting more brazen in pushing their agenda to normalize and celebrate abortion every day." People should be brazen in defying the dogmatists. But the basis of doing that is rational understanding of objective morality and rights, not hedonism and bad songs.
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      • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
        well, thats something for the women to be concerned about. I cant get pregnant so its not important to me
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        • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
          It's important to you because rights are indivisible. It's doesn't directly impact you medically, but whether or not it does so for someone you personally care about or know, denying anyone's rights denies the principle, which is a threat to everyone. The entire mentality of militant, dogmatic religious duty is profoundly a threat.
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          • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
            agreed. but its so complex and either way I doubt it impacts me enough to spend the time to analyze it. Maybe it should be up to the states at least, and let people work it out in each state.
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            • -1
              Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
              It is not "so complex". Either you support the rights of the individual to his or her own life or you don't. Once someone advocates "rights" for non persons it is up to him to try to justify it, and to try to justify the violation of rights he demands, not leave it up to competing theocracies under statist "states rights" "working it out" without regard to the rights of people.

              Religious emotions are not the basis for law in this country, and has no 'equal' standing in rational discussion, especially on what is supposed to be an Ayn Rand forum. Agnosticism by those who can't tell the difference is not resolved by competing state statism.
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              • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
                As I understand it, the issue is when exactly a fetus becomes a human and therefore has “rights”. I remember rand had a statement on this subject
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                • -1
                  Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                  A fetus does not attain rights; the child begins to have rights when it is born. Birth is the "when". The article you probably have in mind is "Of Living Death", Ford Hall Forum 1968, "an extended analysis of the 1968 papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, laying bare the vicious motives behind the Catholic Church’s views on sex, contraception and abortion" in The Voice of Reason and available here: https://campus.aynrand.org/works/1968...
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                  • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                    So a baby born a month early obtains human rights while a "fetus" nine months in the womb has no human rights unless mommy is murdered.
                    Interesting.
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                    • -1
                      Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
                      Yes, birth is required to have rights.
                      It's really not complicated.
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                      • -2
                        Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                        He not only doesn't understand that, he's playing word games with laws that refers to killing a pregnant woman as a 'double murder'. Any rationalization will do to drop context and avoid conceptual understanding of essentials.
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                        • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                          Wow, I'm avoiding conceptual understanding of essentials. That's heavy.
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                          • -2
                            Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                            Snide comments are not discussion. You have been avoiding responding to conceptual understanding by substituting evasive tangential wise cracks and equivocation in verbal manipulation, as in the issue just described to you. You should know enough about Ayn Rand by now to know the importance of concepts, definitions and logic.
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                            • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                              Here is my personal opinion~
                              Any Rand had a great mind but was not 100% right about everything. No human being is or was.
                              I'm fallible too. And you?
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                              • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                                That anyone has the potential to make an error is not evidence that someone has on a particular issue. Ayn Rand gave careful reasons for her philosophy, including for the rights of the individual and the right of abortion in particular. So have numerous patient, serious posts on this forum. You have seriously addressed none of it, let alone refuted it. It cannot be dismissed by a sweeping "personal opinion" that people can make mistakes. That is not a defense of your religious assumptions conflicting with the right of a woman to not be forced to bear a child she does not want. That people have the capacity to err does not mean that they have when contradicting your faith.

                                The fact that conceptual knowledge is not infallible is why we need a method for thinking, not subjectivism and faith. The method is logic with a rational, objective epistemology.
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                  • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
                    So what if the “birth” is accomplished prematurely by a doctor and requires mechanical assistance for a time in order to be kept alive. Does it qualify for “human rights”
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                    • -1
                      Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                      Once it's born it's born, regardless of the method used to induce birth. Some form of "mechanical assistance" is common in medicine today.
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                      • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
                        So NOT providing medical assistance to a baby born prematurely (which can happen naturally) would be considered murder then?
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                        • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                          How much artificial assistance should be used depends on the current state of technology and what is available at the time, including affordability. That question arises for patients in dire straights at all ages every day. It has nothing to do with abortion and does not make the moral status of abortion more complicated.
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                          • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
                            It is complicated and I am glad I don’t need to make a decision on this situation.
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                            • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                              Those kind of decisions on medical care that doctors, patients, and families wrestle with every day are complicated, and made more complicated by the uncertainty of the potential outcomes.

                              It has nothing to do with the right of abortion, which concerns only the rights of the woman, before giving birth, and is not made complicated by those extraneous factors.

                              Exercising that right may be complicated for a woman to decide what to choose either with regard to wanting to have a child or unpredictable outcomes of threats to health of herself or the potential child, but that does not make the principle of the right to choose complicated.
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                              • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
                                I take it that if you were a woman, you would unilaterally choose if you wanted to end the pregnancy anytime until the "thing" pops out of the womb and enters the world.
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                                • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                                  You can "take" no such thing. It is not relevant to the principle of individual rights and no one deliberately waits as long as possible to make the process harder. The choice remains a right before birth, available if necessary.
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                                  • term2 replied 5 years, 1 month ago
                    • -1
                      Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
                      Yes.
                      You just can't FORCE someone to provide for it to be kept alive, no more than you could force someone to provide for someone, instead of pulling the plug.
                      Remember, being carried to term is not a right, anymore than free healthcare is.
                      So, you can pretend the unborn is an adult if you like, with full rights, and it changes nothing about the legal question.
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                      • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
                        That’s a good point. So let’s say the baby is born the regular way but the mother doesn’t want to feed it (can’t force her to feed it). So what’s the moral question then?
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                        • -1
                          Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
                          That would be a rights violation.
                          That has nothing to do with abortion.
                          This line of thinking from you is what's called a, "non-sequitur."
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                          • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
                            It does relate to abortion. My initial point was that this whole area is very complicated. The woman could plan on delivering the baby but abandoning it as an alternative to abortion
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                            • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                              Methinks if a pregnant woman is about to pop~why not just put the poor kid up for adoption?
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                              • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
                                yeah, there are a lot of options other than killing the baby- starting with not getting pregnant in the first place !!
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                                • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                                  "Not getting pregnant" is not related to the moral status of abortion, which in turn is unrelated to "killing babies". Without pregnancy there is nothing to abort.

                                  Anti-abortionist demands that a woman not become pregnant is intrusion into other people's sex lives. No one has any right to tell someone else that if she does not want a child then do not become pregnant under penalty of being forced to bear a child if she does.
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                                  • term2 replied 5 years, 1 month ago
                              • -1
                                Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                                "Methinks" is not relevant to what a woman decides for herself. The vast majority of late term abortions are for reasons of threat to health or the life of the woman. You have no role in it whatsoever. A fetus is not a "poor kid", it is none of your business, and it does not become your business through the misuse of words to create a false imagery.
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                            • Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
                              It doesn't relate to abortion, which has nothing to do with harming children, because no children are involved in abortion.
                              Also, this area is not very complicated. You just need to know what individual rights are, what a government role is with respect to them and how to apply this correctly to the issue of abortion.
                              It's as simple as, abortion is not a rights violation, so should be perfectly legal.
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                              • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
                                I would leave the government out if it completely. I would think it’s up to the mother. What a decision to make though !

                                Too bad the default state for a woman isn’t “infertile”, and she would need to specifically choose to be “fertile” in order to get pregnant
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                                • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                                  Here we deal with reality, not "too bad" it isn't something else. But as to the principle of the rights, of course the government should not engage in violation of rights. But politics depends on morality and false morality leads to bad politics. Anti-abortionists argue from false morality and insist on imposing it in their politics. That is how it wound up in government. The Catholic church was historically the main lobbyist for it. Now the religious right evangelicals are in on it.
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                                  • term2 replied 5 years, 1 month ago
  • Posted by mminnick 5 years, 1 month ago
    Yes, lets celebrate abortions. Lets call it Death Day and mark the anniversary of it. Then we can move on to Death Day to make the decrease, even on only monentary, in the total population of the country and world. WE can puch to have birthdays as a day of morning and sadness and misery while we celebrate Death Days with happiness and joy. Just ake it to it's logical conclusion.
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    • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
      Perhaps we should celebrate Death Day with a song similar to what's in this link. Not with the same lyrics, of course. But maybe mentioning the noble sacrifice of keeping down the population with profuse spills of baby blood~https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3sU8...
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      • -2
        Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
        That post is more disgusting and irrelevant than the original fixation on a third rate song. "Noble sacrifice of keeping down the population with profuse spills of baby blood" is a wishful smear fantasy typical of the inability of militant religionists to discuss the topic rationally.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 5 years, 1 month ago
    "Who let the Trolls out"
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    • -3
      Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
      You seem confused. This is a forum for Objectivism and those interested in it.
      Not politically illiterate, conservative leftists, that want to ban abortion.
      Just like it's not for Bernie Bro's that want to nationalize healthcare.
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      • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 5 years, 1 month ago
        Was I speaking to you?...you seem to think I was.
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        • -1
          Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
          Who else could you be speaking to?
          There are only two of us putting forward the actual Objectivist position on this issue here, which you seem to have confused for "trolling."
          In reality the trolling is this original post, along with the posts supporting it.
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          • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 5 years, 1 month ago
            It was to my friend Dino and it was about all the markdowns. We see them even when you guys aren't in the conversation...so no reason to feel guilty?
            We don't mark anyone down...regardless of their position on things.
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            • -3
              Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
              That's not true, as both of us are the ones that get marked down, even though we are the ones advocating the positions in line with Objectivism.
              The posts of you and Dino SHOULD be marked down, on an Objectivist forum.
              That isn't, "trolling."
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              • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                Yeah, you're as objective as that "conservative left" notion of yours.
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                • -2
                  Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                  Ayn Rand emphatically defended the right of a woman to control her own body and rejected laws banning abortion. That is the Objectivist position. Ayn Rand explained why in several articles, and reasons have been given throughout this and other threads on this topic. That is in contrast to the emotionalism, subjectivist dogmatic pronouncements, smears, and sniping wise cracks coming from the anti-abortionists, who not acknowledge or address the explanations on behalf of the rights of the individual against anti-abortionism.

                  The collectivist nature of the anti-abortion activists violating the rights of the individual is described in this thread here: https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
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  • Posted by $ blarman 5 years, 1 month ago
    When people are willing to celebrate the murder of an innocent person, they have lost all grounding to that which is moral in the first place.

    This was the first steps in the fall of Rome - the greatest empire of its time. It signals the coming fall of the greatest Empire since.
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    • Posted by exceller 5 years, 1 month ago
      I don't cease to be amazed that people are willing to engage in a "debate" with ewv or Peter Smith.

      It is an exercise in frustration.
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      • Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
        I'm not sure what you think is being debated.
        The Objectivist position on abortion is quite clear and that's what's being communicated here, along with many clear and repeat explanations.
        Now if this was a conservative blog, then I could see people would want to make arguments against this position and I'd expect to get all the predictable appeals to emotion, non-sequitur, religiousity and self contradictions, that are common to the anti-abortion position.
        I shouldn't expect to see them at Galt's Gulch, though.
        That's the truly amazing part here.
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        • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
          They apparently are not interested in debate, only in militantly emotional attacks refusing to take ideas seriously. Asking why they are here was a good and legitimate question.
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      • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
        Religious dogma and emotional argument are indefensible and do not do well in any "debates", as is illustrated over and over on this forum, making it "frustrating" to those who try it -- especially the occasional evangelists so stuck in an adamant faith and/or emotional thinking, oblivious to what is happening around them, that they don't understand what is being said. This forum is supposed to be about Ayn Rand's ideas, not proselytizing religious conservativism while dogmatically evading understanding Ayn Rand.
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      • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
        Me dino amazes myself.
        Guess I'm engaging because I own this thread.
        Getting tired of this hornet's nest I kicked due to this "debate" becoming a stalemate that I can't see ever ending.
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        • Posted by exceller 5 years, 1 month ago
          Yes, amaze yourself Dino. It is your right, to stay in style, regarding what is a right?

          This Peter Smith posted "why are you on this board", which apparently is against the decorum on this forum.

          Wonder if the moderator acts as strongly as he did when the shoe was on the other foot, demanding to argue the subject not the person.

          Watching with interest.
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          • Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
            What are you watching with interest?
            What the moderators will do with an Objectivist asking why a religious conservative is on an Obectivist forum starting anti-Objectivist threads, while refusing to concede the Objectivist position?
            Not to mention that the Objectivist posts on what is an Objectivist forum, are constantly down-voted by militant, religious leftists, when it should be the other way around.
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            • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
              It says a lot about the integrity of this forum and what it has become. No one has to "concede" any position; it's a matter of their refusing to acknowledge the content of, let alone try to discuss, serious explanation, and of mindlessness attacks in what is supposed to be a forum for rational discussion related to Ayn Rand's ideas. This is what happens when a forum is turned over to arbitrary "community standards" promoted by those with no interest in the stated purpose.

              "Watching with interest" apparently was meant as a smear against the moderators, falsely implying a double standard through misrepresentation. The poster in particular had previously been called out for some very nasty personal attacks.
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          • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
            Three or four years ago when me dino had the audacity to defend that marriage license clerk, Kim Davis,ewv told me
            to leave the board. I responded with a "Make me" and got a -3 for that.
            Me dino didn't care. I thought Mrs. Davis had a right to her religious convictions no matter who she worked for.
            Since then evw and I got on friendlier terms. Guess that's gone.
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            • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
              Allosaur defendinged a state clerk in charge of marriage licenses who instead of quitting her job blocked all marriage licenses because of her religion, disrupting the entire process for the whole county. He claimed that her disruption was justified because she was being told "to sin before God".

              No one said that she had no "right to her religious convictions" and no one told allosaur to "leave the board". He was told that his militant religious injunctions, of which there had previously been many, do not belong on this forum, are not the basis of discussion, and that whether or not it is tolerated is up to the owners.

              His accounts of his own statements and the response to them, including in this current thread several times, are not true. You can read what was actually said on the marriage license topic at https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

              Allosaur subsequently stopped promoting and appealing to religion here, which is how he found friendlier terms. Now it's back in pushing to deny a woman's right to control her own body in conflict with his religion, while substituting obnoxious and irrelevant playground style taunting for serious discussion. The responses to him have continued to be serious discussion with explanation. Any "unfriendliness" has been entirely of his own making both in form and content. Anti-intellectual, snide pronouncements pushing government enforcement of religion are truly obnoxious. The assault on a woman's right to her own body will continue to be "brazenly" defied on moral principle.
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              • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                LOL! Someone just popped a zero on what you wrote after I wrote "Make me."
                That's funny as hell!
                Yeah, yeah, as for all that other stuff above, I'm a terrible person for getting bored by all this.
                Think I'll quit this thread now. Got better things to do.
                Congratulations, you won. Hooray for ewv!
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                • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                  "Popping zeroes" is not rational discussion. You did not respond to the demonstration that you did not tell the truth. A sarcastically fake confession that you're a "terrible person for getting bored by all this" evades the misrepresentation. More juvenile personal taunting and snide "make me" defiance expressing personal contempt does not hide or excuse the dishonesty. This is supposed to be a forum for Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason and individualism. Honest, serious discussion is expected, not the verbal equivalent of spit balls and evasive playground taunting against serious posts that conflict with a militant religious conservative crusade.
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          • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
            The moderator has properly objected to posts by religious conservatives that engaged in repeated baseless personal attacks

            It is a legitimate question to ask why someone is here who opposes Ayn Rand's philosophy and the purpose of this forum and who will not discuss serious points raised against his assertions as he responds with anti-intellectual wise cracks.

            The sentence "It is your right, to stay in style, regarding what is a right?" makes no sense.
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        • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
          You knew before you posted it that religious dogma, in particular the "rights" of the unborn, are contrary to the purpose of this forum and are not a basis for discussion here.. There is no stalemate, only the usual rejection of repetitious evasion of the reasoned discussion that remains available for thinking people to read.
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          • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
            LOL! Me dino anin't popping all the zeores and minus points I keep seeing.
            Don't worry, you just wrote in so many other words that you have won.
            Guess when I tire of this thread you will believe I'm defeated.
            And I'm getting to that not caring anymore point.
            Congratulations. (Oops, I just snickered).
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            • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
              You can believe whatever you want to, but snickering at the purpose of the forum being corrupted by militant emotionalists is not rationally responsive. For those who read for content your own posts defeat yourself.
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    • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
      No one is "celebrating the murder of an innocent person" and the right of abortion is not associated with "lost all grounding to that which is moral in the first place", which grounding is not faith.

      Hyperbole about the right of abortion as the "first steps in the fall of Rome" makes no sense at all. It is more hysterical sloganeering by militant opponents of a woman's right to her own body.
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      • -2
        Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
        Once again we see militant, cowardly anti-Ayn Rand religious dogmatists bulk-downvoting rational discussion they don't like, with no response even attempted, as they try to subvert the forum by non-rational means. They repeatedly violate the purpose of the forum and do not belong here.
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        • Posted by brucejc04 5 years, 1 month ago
          To seek an abortion is the result of GROSS PESONAL RESPONSIBILITY. Read on . .
          Abortion, just the word alone brings strong images and emotions to most people whether or not they have religious reasons for their viewpoint.

          It is a very controversial issue made all the more complicated by the current push by some in Congress to include funding for abortions in the new health legislation. Your view on the issue of abortion notwithstanding, it is clearly a highly personal issue and not something that should be paid for by taxpayers. So, with that position stated, let’s move on to the reasons that some people consider having an abortion.

          Here are some definitions that may be helpful:

          Embryo – from conception to 8th week of development

          Fetus – a developing human from 2 months to birth.

          First, the reasons that are absolutely not valid.

          a. To terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

          b. To terminate the pregnancy of a child of a certain sex, when that sex has been determined by ultrasound.

          Next, the only valid reasons for having an abortion.

          1. When the mother’s life is threatened by continuing the pregnancy.

          2. When the embryo is not viable.

          3. The pregnancy was caused by rape.

          4. The pregnancy was caused by incest.




          Numbers 3 and 4 are only valid when the pregnancy is in the first trimester. A better alternative
          would be an embryo transfer to a woman who desires a child. See below for more information on human embryo transfer.

          My friend, James B. Andrews of Cave Creek, AZ commented “If women were born sterile and needed a fertilizing shot to be fertile, there would be no abortions performed. We do not have an abortion problem; we have an unwanted pregnancy problem, caused by conflicting education/communication problems. Since this is not possible, then voluntary temporary sterilization (birth control) must be taught and socially accepted by all. The process starts by having everyone be taught at a young age, at home and in school, and then enforced by society in general, the following statement, “EVERY CHILD BORN MUST BE A WANTED CHILD, WANTED BY BOTH PARENTS”.

          I heartily agree with Jim’s statement and would add that I am also “Pro-Choice” and the choice to be made is before sex, not after!

          To engage in sex for pleasure, without desiring the result to be the creation of a child, one must actively engage in proven birth control measures such as condoms, birth control medication or sterilization. To actively engage in sexual activity, without desiring the result to be the creation of a child, and to consciously not use the inexpensive birth control procedures
          mentioned above is, simply, gross personal irresponsibility. If a pregnancy occurs and to then seek an abortion, as opposed to giving birth or considering an embryo transplant, is grossly immoral and made worse if the individual seeks taxpayer funding for the abortion. To ask for taxpayer funding for the result of an act that is totally voluntary and absolutely avoidable is
          tantamount to theft or extortion.

          Some religions forbid the use of contraception with elaborate justifications but, on analysis, it is clearly an attempt to increase the population of those religions.

          History of Human embryo transfers.

          The first transfer of an embryo from one human to another resulting in pregnancy was reported in July 1983 and subsequently led to the announcement of the first human birth February 3, 1984.[16] This procedure was performed at the Harbor UCLA Medical Center [17] under the direction of Dr. John Buster and the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine.

          In the procedure, an embryo that was just beginning to develop was transferred from one woman in whom it had been conceived by artificial insemination to another woman who gave birth to the infant 38 weeks later. The sperm used in the artificial insemination came from the husband of the woman who bore the baby.[18][19]

          This scientific breakthrough established standards and became an agent of change for women suffering from the afflictions of infertility and for women who did not want to pass on genetic disorders to their children. Donor embryo transfer has given women a mechanism to become pregnant and give birth to a child that will contain their husband’s genetic makeup. Although donor embryo transfer as practiced today has evolved from the original non-surgical method, it now accounts for approximately 5%
          of in vitro fertilization recorded births.

          Prior to this, thousands of women who were infertile, had adoption as the only path to parenthood. This set the stage to allow open and candid discussion of embryo donation and transfer. This breakthrough has given way to the donation of human embryos as a common practice similar to other donations such as blood and major organ donations. At the time of this announcement the event was captured by major news carriers and fueled healthy debate and discussion on this practice which impacted the future of reproductive medicine by creating a platform for further advancements in woman's health.

          This work established the technical foundation and legal-ethical framework surrounding the clinical use of human oocyte and embryodonation, a mainstream clinical practice, which has evolved over the past 25 years.[18][19] Building upon this groundbreaking research and since the initial birth announcement in 1984, well over 47,000 live births resulting from donor embryo transfer have been and continue to be recorded by the Centers for Disease Control(CDC)[20] in the United States to infertile women, who otherwise would not have had children by any other existing method.[21][22]

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryo_t...
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          • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
            I think human biology is set up to make it easy to reproduce and therefore keep the human race going. In todays world, it would be better IF a woman was infertile UNTIL she did soemthing to make herself fertile IF she wanted a kid.

            Kids should be born to two parents so they grow up balanced and happy.
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            • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
              Human biology isn't "set up". Normal reproduction as it is is a product of evolution. So is our rational capacity to think and act in choices for our lives. Whatever anyone would prefer that we be biologically that is different than what is, it is not relevant to our rights, which are based on the nature of human beings as we are.
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              • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
                If one looks at the history if humans, I am not so sure about how effective the “rational capacity” really is. Humans on the average don’t act rationally very often over the millennia.
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                • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                  Everyone has the capacity; not everyone fully exercises it. Over the millennia it has been exercised at least enough to survive, with some thriving. The best show how much more is possible.
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                  • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
                    I think history and neurological studies hasve certainly suggested some may have more mental capacity than others. The brain is a physical, chemical, and electrical structure built by the effect of genes. Why would you assume every human has the same capacity to think? People don’t look the same, don’t have the same athletic capabilities..
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          • -1
            Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
            None of that even attempts to explain why a fetus should have "rights" and women supposedly do not have a right to their own bodies. Yelling about "gross personal responsibility", demands to control other people's sex lives, "absolute" decrees and appeals to "strong images and emotions" are irrelevant. Your demands to force women who don't want to bear children are barbaric.

            The right of a woman to decide for herself if she wants an abortion is none of your business. It has nothing to do with objecting to tax-funded entitlements. Public funding of abortions is not the only area in which government uses force in matters of "a highly personal issue", and does not justify demanding to ban abortions. Of the unlimited number of examples of interfering in "personal issues", another one is the use of government force to compel women to bear children they don't want. The intrusions don't get any more "personal" than that. Religious conservatives versus welfare statism are a false alternative.

            Religions that forbid the use of contraception do so on grounds of their mystical dogmas against interfering with what they call "God's will". It is just as arbitrary as the competing religions that subjectively forbid abortions but not contraception, or forbid abortions with arbitrarily decreed "exceptions". It is not "clearly an attempt to increase the population of those religions" -- the biggest one of all, the Catholic Church, demands to forbid both contraception and abortions world wide, not just for its own church subjects. There is no excuse for banning abortion or any other kind of theocracy.
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          • -2
            Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
            Nothing in this wall of text has ANYTHING to do with why abortion should or should not be legal.
            This is the political illiteracy I expect from conservatives, not in an Objectivist forum.

            To determine whether something should be legal or not, we ask if rights are being violated or not?

            Since the unborn don't have any rights and since being carried to term is no more a right than free healthcare, abortion should be perfectly legal.

            That's all there really is to it, from an Objectivist point of view.
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  • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    I agree that the government should have no interference in abortion
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    • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
      Why? Because you think it's too complicated to figure out? Meanwhile, those with less scruples want it banned by brute force in the name of "rights" of the unborn. They aren't waiting for you; regarding agnosticism as helping them.

      "Politics depends on morality and false morality leads to bad politics. Anti-abortionists argue from false morality and insist on imposing it in their politics. That is how it wound up in government. The Catholic church was historically the main lobbyist for it. Now the religious right evangelicals are in on it."
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  • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    I am not weighing in on abortion. That said , it’s a better solution to just not get pregnant in the first place unless you are sure you want the responsibility of raising a child that’s what I meant
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    • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
      Of course it's better to not get pregnant if a child is not wanted. That is not a solution to moral questions about abortion. Abortion arises as a choice when there is a pregnancy regardless of any precautions that may have been taken, or when a child may have been wanted but there is an unusual health problem. Anti-abortionists who try to rationalize their demands by going off on contraception are evading.
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      • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
        As I said, if you were a woman, you would terminate the pregnancy for any reason just up to the point it pops out and is 'born"
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        • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
          You don't tell me what I would hypothetically do, nor is it relevant to the principle of individual rights. The right is the woman's to exercise, if she chooses to, for whatever reason she chooses before birth. It is no one else's business. In practice no one deliberately waits as long as possible to make the process harder. The choice remains a right before birth, available if necessary.
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  • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    You have no right to control other people's sex lives. In the modern world people who don't want pregnancy ordinarily do use contraception, but not guilt-induced abstinence. If they don't, or it doesn't work, then the possibility of abortion as an option arises. This has already been discussed many times and you continue to ignore it.

    No matter what was or wasn't done to avoid pregnancy, the choice of abortion at any stage of the pregnancy is none of your business.
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    • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
      Me dino ain't controlling anyone's sex life.
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      • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
        Anti-abortion laws promoted with the demand that people practice 100% effective birth control in accordance with your wishes or be punished by bearing unwanted children is controlling others' sex lives. Nothing about contraception is an excuse to interfere with a woman's right to choose an abortion when she needs it to protect her own health or chooses not to bear a child. It is not your business and appealing to birth control does not make it your business.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 5 years, 1 month ago
    This thread is a reminder that there are people out there who will use this medium to hurl insults and say things they'd never say face-to-face. If you don't agree with somebody's argument, insult them. We've had very little of that at the Gulch in the past. If it continues this place will go to the internet boneyard like so many other forums.

    Objectivism works. Questioning your own philosophy works. The problem here is the topic of abortion. It is like religion in that it drives people to behave irrationally. And, I'll bet $100 that a couple irrational, upset people apply to this comment. Please don't waste your time. I won't read it...
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    • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
      The religious attacks on Ayn Rand's philosophy, in particular her support of the right of a woman to control her own body, are not questioning their own philosophy.

      In contrast, explaining and defending the principles of the rights of the individual that are under attack are not "religion" and not "behaving irrationally". The anti-intellectual attacks on Ayn Rand's position and the ignoring and avoidance of serious discussion here are not providing anything useful.

      Everything posted here can be read by anyone. That the poster doesn't want to bother reading responses doesn't matter. He cannot tell anyone to not bother responding and has no right to dismiss in advance those who do respond, whoever he thinks they are, as "irrational" and "upset".

      The lack of integrity and respect for the purpose of this forum may indeed mean that it is circling the drain.
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  • Posted by $ rainman0720 5 years, 1 month ago
    This is yet another of those things that if I didn't know it was true, I'd think it was something from The Onion.

    And I also really like jbrenner's substitution term of "regressive". Not in my wildest nightmares can I conceive (pun intended) of an abortion shower as progress.
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    • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
      No one said an "abortion shower is progress". The misrepresentation evades the central issue that moral defiance "brazenly" rejecting the unearned guilt of religious dogma should be "normal".
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 5 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    My wife's response to the OB/GYN doctor who didn't just counsel her with regard to genetic testing but for five minutes actively encouraged an abortion: "After two miscarriages, I am now five months pregnant, and you are asking me to flush this down the toilet." I was prepared to continue the counseling, but she had already started toward the door. You will not convince me that ob/gyn doctors do not encourage sacrifice. I have seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears. If it happened to us, it can't possibly be uncommon.
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    • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
      Whatever your doctor explained and recommended about the risks of that pregnancy have nothing to do with Ayn Rand, me, or any other assertions you made about "sacraments", "sacrificing virgins", welfare entitlements, or alleged philosophical co-opting for defending the right of abortion.

      You said, "here is where you and Rand differ from most of us. Our intentional pregnancies represent a significant investment. Yes, it is a "potential", but not one without capital, both financial and personal, invested. We are being asked to sacrifice our effort for a definite death. What we are being asked to do is not all that different than being asked to flush cash down the toilet."

      You know very well that neither Ayn Rand nor I told you any such thing, nor does that misrepresentation address the discussion of your other accusations.
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  • Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    There's no stalemate here. Just a great many "gulchers" who don't seem to understand or support the Objectivist position on abortion, and ewv patiently explaining it to them.
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    • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
      The claims of "stalement" are from those who don't take ideas seriously at all, may or may not have at least some sense that they are losing by the standards of logical argument, don't know what to do beyond the equivalent of snide verbal spitballs, and arbitrarily declare a "stalement" the way they arbitrarily declare everything else.
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  • Posted by exceller 5 years, 1 month ago
    Abortion showers?

    Yes, that's what we need.

    Your title asks if this is "Sickest" but by definition it should be the most deranged status and I don't think women like this here demonstrated the final stage. They will go even farther although it is difficult to fathom what can be more unhinged than abortion at 9th month or giving a shower?

    I bet the next stage will come when this crowd realizes the options genetic research can offer. I don't want to speculate what that will be but given the power of the technology, we ain't seen nothing yet!
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    • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
      Exceller has denounced Ayn Rand's position affirming the right of abortion as "unhinged", "sickest" and "deranged", smearing it as tied to celebrating abortions with a "shower".

      Rejecting the smear has been 'downvoted' by militant conservatives piling on to the smear, and the rejection, not the smear, has been 'hidden' from view. Is this what this forum is supposed to be? Is that what the advertised "Galt's Gulch is a community of like-minded individuals who come together regularly to share interesting content and ideas with each other and debate politics, economics, philosophy and more" means? Is this the stated purpose of the forum: " We have ideas to spread - We're passionate about Ayn Rand's ideas and we hope to assist in their propagation by engaging in some inspired conversation"? Who and what are this forum being maintained for?

      This is the post that is 'hidden':

      "A woman's choice to have an abortion at any stage is not 'unhinged'. The vast majority of late term abortions are for reasons of health and threats to the life of the woman. 'Unhinged' is the barbaric practice forcing women to bear children they do not want."
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    • -3
      Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
      A woman's choice to have an abortion at any stage is not "unhinged". The vast majority of late term abortions are for reasons of health and threats to the life of the woman. "Unhinged" is the barbaric practice forcing women to bear children they do not want.
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  • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    That’s the tricky part. EXACTLY when does the ability to “abort” end and killing begin. It’s complicated
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    • Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
      The ability to abort ends after birth. That's it.
      There's no "killing" of any kind.
      It's as "complicated" as that.
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      • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
        The complication surrounds the exact definition of birth
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        • Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
          There is no complication around the definition of birth.
          You've run out of word game runway.
          What now?
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          • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
            It’s not word games. I don’t think government should be involved at all. The subject has been exhausted and in some ways it’s making a mountain out of a molehill. The need for abortion is the result of a lot of bad choices in most cases, with the number of cases the result of real need like health and rape just not being that large

            The churches have a hidden agenda to get more members
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            • Posted by PeterSmith 5 years, 1 month ago
              You keep ignoring everything that has been patiently explained to you, providing the correct position and reasoning on abortion, just restating your own position and claims of complexity, over and over.
              The need for abortion is not a result of bad choices in most cases, there's no way for you to know that, nor would it change anything about the legal question even if it were true.
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              • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
                Ok, I dont mean to be a pain in the ass. I give up on the discussion. I have no need for abortion so I really would leave it up the women who want it
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            • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
              Churches don't have a hidden agenda for nore members. Their desire for more subjects is open. But their demand to ban abortion is ideological, not as a means to get more subjects. They want abortion banned for everyone world-wide, not just for their own members.

              It's not enough to only say "government should not be involved". That is a-philosophical libertarianism. The anti-abortionists are motivated by a false, anti-man morality generated by a false and destructive epistemology of faith, subjectivism and mysticism. They cash in on a lack of understanding of reason and rational egoism.

              The threat of that destruction is not "making a mountain out of a molehill". It has caused a lot of damage including, but certainly not only, a millennium of the Dark and Middle Ages after the collapse of Greek civilization.

              It is not enough to be against evil, you must know and understand what you are for and why, and give the proper philosophical basis for it on behalf of reason and rational egoism.

              With a basic understanding of the rights of human beings it is not complicated to understand what is wrong with sacrificing women to a potential for life (let alone a mystic soul). Whether or not someone makes a "bad choice" leading to unwanted pregnancy, it has absolutely nothing to do with the morality of abortion as a choice.
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              • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
                I think you are wrong at least about the Catholic Church. Yes their dogma supposedly comes from their god, but their disapproval of birth control and abortion is a thinly veiled method of getting more members in the church. Remember that catholic parents are commanded to raise the child as a catholic.
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                • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
                  The Catholic Church condemns abortion for everyone and tries to ban it everywhere, not just among its own subjects. That is not a strategy for increasing its own numbers. Over a thousand years of belief in church dogma is not explained by a membership drive. People are driven by their philosophic beliefs. The destruction of western civilization in the Dark and Middle Ages was a result of their religious ideas, and so is the contemporary proselytizing and lobbying.
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                  • Posted by term2 5 years, 1 month ago
                    But it’s coupled with being against birth control. And required all children of Catholics to be raised catholic. The Catholic Church is very irrational except that it wants to gain members and keep as many people under their thumb. I would suggest that their dogma is designed to accomplish that end
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        • Posted by ewv 5 years, 1 month ago
          That is a matter of the precision, not the principle. Almost every concept is susceptible to "border line cases" -- see Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology for how they are properly dealt with. Remember that concepts and principles are objective, not discoveries of the intrinsic or subjective. A legal definition must be objectively specified with a criterion that can be used in practice. You can't say wait until such and such happens, then go back one minute. This was recently discussed here: https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
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