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but abortions are in no way unavoidable.

While most are probably avoidable, saying that they are "in no way" unavoidable is somewhat over the top. Consider abortions for medical reasons, for instance (in cases where both the mother and child would die if the pregnancy came to term).

Agreed. I did not mean for my statement to be all inclusive. I should have said "the vast majority" of abortions are in no way unavoidable. Quick google: http://www.nrlc.org/archive/ne... http://www.abortionfacts.com/f... https://www.quora.com/What-per...

Similarly, the embryos are already being created and destroyed en masse by fertility clinics. (And yet, for some reason, pro-lifers never complain about that.)

You just haven't been paying attention.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=embryos+destroyed+fertility 3 of the first 4 links are religious type sites that discuss this issue.
http://www.nrlc.org/news/2004/NRL10/Embryo_Adoption.htm Right to life page on embryo adoption as a solution to IVF embryo destruction.
http://www.righttolife.com.au/StemCellResearch.aspx Right to Life Australia states their position on IVF on the same page as stem cell research.

When you accuse the parent poster of partisanship, it's helpful to make sure your post doesn't smack of the same thing!

As to the Dickey amendment--- that was written by a Republican Congressman and attached to a major appropriations bill (that's what "rider" means). Clinton signed it because there's no line-item veto, and thus a President sometimes has to accept undesirable riders when the alternative is killing an important bill. It is in no way representative of his or the Democratic party's agenda.

Someone reading your post might come away with the mistaken impression that Clinton did not care to fund this research, and therefore Bush should be commended for his flexibility! Surprisingly, that reader would be greatly mistaken. Due to lobbying by scientists, the Clinton/Gore administration actually implemented a plan to fund of this type of research in spite of the amendment. The plan involved a grant deadline of March 2001 and had no restrictions on embryonic research. This is when incoming President (a man named George W. Bush) went ahead and stopped the grant review process and imposed his (and in the opinion of researchers --- quite harmful) Executive Order preventing funding of research on new embryonic lines. http://www.nrlc.org/news/2001/NRL02/doerside.html

Now, the interesting thing about your post is that it's technically correct on nearly every point, and yet the overall thrust is entirely misleading. Some might even consider that this was deliberate! Now, you have to remember that people read these comments and judge you on the way you make your argument, not just the factoids that you throw out. So if you're going to offer your opinion, I believe that it's important to your cause that the facts fully support your argument. By offering arguments that are technically correct, but lead the reader to a surprisingly false conclusion, you actually do serious harm to your credibility and damage the cause you support.

(If you'll forgive an old man his rambling, I'm inclined to believe that reliance on this sort of "truthiness" is one of the reasons that the conservative brand is experiencing such a terrible backlash right now. You can fool people once, but they get really pissed off when you do it. Or something.)

You're abit confused. The things your upset about aren't liberal/conservative things but republican/democrat things. There are more sides to the political compas than left and right. What you're worried about is a result of our slow descent into fascism, which both of the major parties are guilty of.

But since you asked so nicely. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/09/28/AR2006092800824_pf.html12 Democrats voted for the torture bill;
over 48 million warantless death sentences of non-enemy non-combatants without a trial or even consulting a judge.http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/abortions tats.html
Here's a couple things from my state of oregon. 4 months after voters in lane county rejected a tax increase, the county commisioners enacted an even larger income tax against the will of the voters which the voters then had to petition to remove.http://www.registerguard.com/news/2007/05/1 3/ed.col.kutcher.0513.p1.php?section=opinion

A few months after voters statewide petitioned to have a bill voted on and then passed defining marriage as beween a man a woman, The senate passed a bill allowing for civil unions for gays with all the same rights as marriage except that it won't be recognized in other states.http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar ticle?AID=/20070422/OPINION/704220333/-1/OPINION01 02


oh and lest we forget the recent firings of shock jocks for being raciall incensitivity; While Opie and anthony blissfully return to the airwaves after just saying they were sorry for having an entire segment on raping laura bush and condoleeza rice.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18631899/ Sorry for all the references, but from the sounds of it you get all your information by listening to the guy with the bullhorn while you walk past city hall in the middle of a work day.

Episode 2.8 - Baby Grobags - is still fiction, since we can't grow humans outside a womb. We are getting there. This may be possible in a few years esp. when declining population in Europe overcomes their ethical and moral concerns. Japanese scientists have grown goat foetus in artificial womb. http://www.nrlc.org/Killing_Embryos/ArtificialWomb s.html And premature human babies around 22 weeks now have decent survival chance.

>> She thinks partial-birth abortions (head in, body out, totally viable child - >>that's why they keep the head in - never medically necessary - just pop the head >>out!) should be funded by the taxpayers.

>Scare tactics - can you say with absolute assurance that there is NEVER a medical >reason for the procedure? Yes, I can. The only reason the child's head is kept inside the woman is because if it slipped out it would be illegal to kill it. This procedure is only performed after viability, too, so the child could be removed and would be viable.

Your initial response might be that I am not a doctor, but the American Medical Association also claims it is not medically necessary, either.

Intentional abortion is actually never medically necessary, though it may be a highly likely side-effect of an effort to save the life of the mother (cancerous uterous) or may be necessary in cases where the child is absolutely doomed and the mother is at grave risk (tubular ligation). In these rare cases neither myself or even the Catholic Church oppose it. I can cite Dr. Everett Koop on that though I don't have the link handy and I'm not sure you wouldn't be interested in hearing from him.

Of course Nancy doesn't think you can dunk a terrorist in some water to get him to talk - if only the terrorists were still in utero she would allow the CIA to do whatever they thought necessary.

Based on my experience with one of the issues you mentioned (abortion), your theory that 70% of people are between 60 to 70 (i.e. closer to Dems) is factually incorrect. Almost any poll that asks a more detailed question on abortion than "are you pro-life or pro-choice" shows that more people are in line with the Republican view. For example: http://www.nrlc.org/Polling/zogbyapril2004.pdf I realize that this poll was sponsored by the NRLC, but it was easiest for me to find, and I've seen these results over and over again if you ask people detailed questions about what should be legal and what shouldn't. (Note that only a small fraction of abortions are a result of rape, incest, or threat to the life of the mother, so it is fair to count people who think abortion should only be legal in those circumstances as closer to Republicans, many of whom support those exceptions as well.)

There certainly is an issue of phrasing of the question affecting the results, as polls that ask if abortion should be legal in all or most cases show a majority pro-choice, but questions asking if abortion should be legal just to end an unwanted pregnancy show a majority pro-life. For example: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/aborti on_poll030122.html

Strange, that you think the Democrats would support it.

Here you have a bill that would create an exception in the laws that would allow common people (i.e. internet users) to post whatever political opinion they want on the internet while receiving payments for creating said content.

The Republican party has long triumphed free speech with respect to political positions, where "free speech" is synonymous with money spent to advertise their platforms. The current campaign finance laws "restrict free speech" by restricting the amount of money (and where, and when) a political party can spend on their campaigns.

The Democratic party, which has long proclaimed themselves a "party of the little man" and "enemy of the corporations" have a very hard time raising money from said corporations. So, it is in their best interest to restrict the amounts of spending by their competators, to make it "fair".

Adding this exception would allow their chief competator (Republicans) to use their (larger) campaign funds in a media that is fast outstripping traditional forms of media (TV / newspapers) among voting audiences, increasingly so among younger voters (who statistically are more Democrat). So, is it really that strange that the Democrats would oppose it?

I agree wholeheartedly. What you're describing is called partial birth abortion, and it is supported by the 'pro-choice' crowd. A ban on this procedure was vetoed by then President Clinton.

I warn you that the diagrams and descriptions in the links are pretty gruesome.

Just FYI...

The "estimated 1 million pounds" you speak of is a calculated number based on the expected earnings of the person over their lifetime. It is not the amount spent on "clearing up the dead".

In other words, assuming that I died right after getting out of college, it would "cost" society ~2.2 million US dollars (1 million pounds) in my lost income. If I was older, it would "cost" society less. That's drastically different than society having to pay 1 million pounds to take care of my death.

Keep in mind, the traffic death/cost statistics are generally made by people who want stricter traffic laws. Liars figure and figures lie.





P.S: Think about the conclusion of statistics in that way. People who are retired (and don't/will never own a business or work occasionally at a paying job), are worth $0 to society.

Apply it to abortion. If aborted babies are costing the US $2.2 million each, then at 45 million abortions , that's $99 TRILLION dollars cost since 1973. At a GDP of 11.75 trillion dollars (2004) per year, that means abortion is costing the US fully 26% of the national income to pay for abortions and the resulting cleanup (assuming the GDP has stayed the same from 1973-2004).

The statistic makes no sense.

I'd rather have someone who I agree with and think is qualified and only disagree with them on this one issue rather than someone with whom I only agree on their abortion stance.

Agreed, single issue voting is destructive to good and healthy democracy. And this exactly leads into the next point...

I'm curious as to why people on both sides of the abortion debate place it so highly.

About 2/3 of the public do not want to overturn Roe v Wade and about 1/3 do. A substantial portion of that 1/3 are indeed single issue voters. The abortion-is-murder group. The Republican leadership has been using and abusing it as a wedge issue.

I think very few people who want to uphold Roe v Wade do so with single issue determination, and as a 2/3 position they ordinarily have no need to. If there any signifigant number of pro-choice voters actually "placed the issue so highly" then with a 2-to-1 majority all elections involving the issue would be a forgone conclusions. With a 2-1 majority almost all elected officials would be pro-choice *if* pro-choice had any substantion single-issue base. However the pro-choice side does often need to take notice and respond to the intense and magnified single-issue-abortion-is-murder politics.

There were... and are... abortion-is-murder activists who have said and are saying that they handed Bush the election on this single-issue-basis. Saying that he *MUST* make good on his "promise" to them to make a Supreme Court appointment on a single-issue-basis. Powerful activists, Bush's own supporters, who have said that they will raise bloody hell if Bush "betrays" them.

I recall one of the debates in Bush's reelection campaign where he was asked about Supreme Court appointments. Bush answered that he had no litmus test for Supreme Court judges, being careful not to alienate the pro-choice majority, but then his answer was dominated by a bizzare tangent. A bizzare tangent that slipped past most of the public as meaningless jibberish. A tangent about the Dred Scott Supreme Court case. The key point here being that the abortion-is-murder camp often equate Roe v Wade to the Dred Scott case. See here and here. Bush was speaking out of both sides of his mouth. To most of the public he said that he would not appoint judges on a single issue basis, while he said "in code" to his abortion-is-murder base that he would absolutely positively only appoint a judge that would overturn Roe v Wade in exactly the same way Dred Scott was overturned.

Here's the transcript from the debate:
QUESTIONER: Mr. President, if there were a vacancy in the Supreme Court and you had the opportunity to fill that position today, who would you choose and why?

BUSH: I'm not telling.
(LAUGHTER)

I really don't have -- haven't picked anybody yet. Plus, I want them all voting for me.
(LAUGHTER)

I would pick somebody who would not allow their personal opinion to get in the way of the law. I would pick somebody who would strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States.

Let me give you a couple of examples, I guess, of the kind of person I wouldn't pick.

I wouldn't pick a judge who said that the Pledge of Allegiance couldn't be said in a school because it had the words "under God" in it. I think that's an example of a judge allowing personal opinion to enter into the decision-making process as opposed to a strict interpretation of the Constitution.

Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges, years ago, said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights.

That's a personal opinion. That's not what the Constitution says. The Constitution of the United States says we're all -- you know, it doesn't say that. It doesn't speak to the equality of America.

And so, I would pick people that would be strict constructionists. We've

I support partial birth abortion.

Why? this is an innocent human being, born, and murdered with a pair of scissors being rammed into his (or her) skull.

Why would any right-thinking person do such a thing?
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/
http://www.priestsforlife.org/partialbirth.html#sh owit

Brenda Pratt Shafer, a registered nurse from Dayton, Ohio, assisted Dr. Haskell in a Partial Birth Abortion on a 26-1/2 week (over 6 months) pre-born baby boy. She testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee (on 11/17/95) about what she witnessed. According to nurse Shafer, the baby was alive and moving as the abortionist "delivered the baby's body and arms - everything but the head. The doctor kept the baby's head just inside the uterus. The baby's little fingers were clasping and unclasping, his feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors through the back of his head, and the baby's arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks he might fall. The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby's brains out. Now the baby was completely limp.
http://www.abortionfacts.com/literature/literature _9313pb.asp

1. (10) notwithstanding paragraph (4), the following is not an infringement of copyright:
2. 1. the making imperceptible, by or at the direction of a member of a private household, of limited portions of audio or video content of a motion picture, if(B) no changes, deletions or additions are made by such computer program or other technology to commercial advertisements

Courts work by understood intent, and the intent is clear: "Congress says that zapping commercials is not not an illegal infringement. Double negatives cancel out, so go directly to JAIL, do not collect $200". This is all the leverage a barrister needs.

Furthermore, although I didn't paste in this section, the complete law also restricts that exemption to ephemeral copies, meaning that a system which recorded a blank screen over sections of a VHS tape would be illegal if applied to commercials.

Since you are not reading the law, but are instead making crap up out of thin air and then getting worked up about your imaginary laws

I'll pass along your opinion to Senator John McCain. He'll be interested in picking up some tips from a more experienced legislator like you!

The new 110 exemption is GOOD. Take it from me.

Can you really not see how a promise to avoid an activity in a narrowly-defined circumstance is actually an admission that the action will likely take place in other times? Remember the trouble George W Bush faced when he claimed to have never used illegal drugs in the past 11 years?

If Congress passed an exemption that citizens of 6'4" or taller wouldn't be fed to the smelting vats without a fair trial, would you call it GOOD too? "Oh, they're never going to churn lamp-oil from human corpses anyhow, so the fact that this exemption is here shouldn't worry us much"

If a masked gunman jumps into your office and explains "Stay down and I won't hurt you", will go you on moving around anyway, because you don't think his exemption imputes the opposite?

Or to put it in more political terms, do you understand why Senator Feinstein saw fit to propose an alternate Unborn Victims Act without the exemption protecting abortion? It's because such language paves the way for the exemption becoming NECESSARY in the future.

Take it from me.

Argument from authority. So who's got more prestige? You, or the legislators actually grappling over these bills every day?

And not just any degree, but a master's in IP. My personal specialty is copyright law, which I read all the time, FOR FUN.

I found it fun too, for a while. Except for the part that all US copyright laws passed since 1951 have been b

Sure, we Americans love to complain about war deaths that save many more lives, but what about the 44,670,812 innocent children we've killed since 1973?

I can see you've been completely brainwashed by Karl Rove and Fox News. Your above statement is an outright, vicious, republican lie.

They do not drill a hole in the baby's skull. They insert a pair of scissors, then open it to enlarge the hole.

I hope this will teach you not to swallow wingnut propaganda in the future!

Well, it's obvious that rhetoric rules in your mind instead of fact. Ask one of these "unsupported" children if they would rather be alive or dead and you might be surprised at the answer. I left a lot of issues unanswered and will continue to do so. A wise man once said "don't cast your pearls before swine" so I apologize for doing so. For any others who want to know the truth of how partial birth abortion is performed please check out this link http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/

Here are a couple of resources:

http://www.house.gov/burton/RSC/haskellinstruction al.pdf

http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/diagram.html

Pictures of partial birth abortions and clinic horror stories are common propaganda for anti-choicers to scare people with.

It is about Christianity. A quick google for abortion wrong shows that most of the links are to Christian sites. If it's not about Christianity, then it's certainly about religion. I don't dislike lobbyists, but I do dislike the system that encourages politicians to pay more attention to special interests, as opposed to voters, of which lobbyists are a symptom.

Every human being hatched from an egg. It proves nothing, because nothing can be empirically proven if you are willing to question your senses, but it does make you look a little hypocritical if you've ever eaten scrambled eggs. I didn't that a human embryo was a chicken embryo, I said that it was indistinguishable from one, which means that it does not feel any more or less torment than any other embryo does when "murdered". Unless of course, it had a soul . But of course, this isn't about religion.

> > "nature itself makes it plain that we're different (as in "special") from other species"
> In what way? Intelligence? We are not the most intelligent animal
> ...
> science has shown that distinction to belong to a creature of the sea, not use. We just happen
> to be among the higher

Yes - intelligence. But primarily - morality. Don't you think that percepts like "do not murder" or "do not covet what is someone else's" or "love your neighbour as you would love yourself" are inherently "good", and worthy of being obeyed? You don't exactly decide to obey them after examining the results of sophisticated genetic-algorithm societial simulation -- you just "know" they are "good" - right?

BTW, what "sea-animal" is it that you say is more intelligent than human beings? And how was this determined?

> > "Fetuses feel pain, sleep, play - they *are* sentient."
> Interesting, it'd more interesting if we were
> talking about fetuses and not embryo but hey
> this is slashdot right?
Right :). I apologize. You guys were talking about embryos, and I spoke about fetuses by mistake (a fetus is definied here as an unborn baby older than eight weeks). Do you support aborting embryos but not aborting fetuses? Also, what is your position on the partial birth abortion procedure on fetuses (described in my previous post and repeated below for convenience)?
_____________________
Fetuses feel pain, sleep, play - they *are* sentient. In fact, some fetuses killed in a Partial Birth Abortion procedure are old enough to survive a premature delivery. Yet, the fetus is pulled out of the mother (with the head kept in the vagina so it's not officially "a baby" yet), and THEN aborted. Of course, they wiggle to resist the surgeon's knife as it's jammed into their neck... just as you or I would.
_____________________

In the case of embryos, consider that a Time magazine article ("Inside The Womb", Dec 9, 2002), notes that the embryo at 42 days (or 6 weeks) has nerve endings, a forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain, heart, hand... the embryo's nervous system starts existing at 23 days! Do you support abortions on this unborn child?

> > "This was Hitler's philosophy. Let that, at least, make you pause for thought."
> Simply because hitler believed something that
> means I shouldn't? Sorry I don't work on that
> basis, give me some kind of actual basis for
> your belief that hitler was wrong in this, then
> we'll talk.

Firstly, see point on morality above.

Secondly, empirically-speaking, Nazi Germany and Japan were superior to many other nations. Germany was (still is) an industrial giant compared to the Eastern European countries. Japan was (and still is) an industrial giant compared to the countries to it's west. However, my point is that this does NOT matter. To do right, we have to treat all human beings as equals.

The real reason we know that this position is valid (and you were given a conscience that "knew" this too), is because (switching to a less secular argument here) - God desires us to be merciful. And God hates the arrogant - whether it be Nazis exterminating "lower races" and pushing for "living space", or the Japanese carrying out dissections on living Chinese "logs". WWII was but a mild judgement on them, compared to the one that is to come soon on the entire world.

I really cannot elaborate anymore - if your conscience is already so seared that you still don't get why evil is evil, you're lost. I hope this is not the case.

> I don't believe we should kill off those with
> genetic defects per say, but rather let them
> survive on their own.
Eh? What do you mean? Do you turn out your autistic child to live in caves and scrounge for his own food, while feeding your able-bodied kids (in the hope they will do likewise to you in your old age)?

> I believe in the pursuit of knowledge in it's
> own sake is essential to the survival of the
> species
Yes, pursuit of knowledge is certainly good...
> this is what we have brains for
> (whether you believe some god or nature
> provided them) it's to think,
Yes...
> to reason,
Yes...
> to learn,
Yes...
> to experiment.
Yes, but NOT on other less-fortunate human beings - whether they be embryos or fully-grown Jews and Chinese!

> > What makes a human special in the first place?"
> Nothing.

Laconic, but wrong. I believe in Jesus, but even from a secular perspective (the perspective used in this post) nature itself makes it plain that we're different (as in "special") from other species. If you still disagree, I take it that you're either a vegetarian , or that you don't see anything wrong with hunting humans for food.

> > "If an embryo has no right to live"
> This would be a factor in the discussion if
> embryo's were sentient living things rather
> than sacks of basic unformed cells that have
> not become anything.

Fetuses feel pain, sleep, play - they *are* sentient. In fact, some fetuses killed in a Partial Birth Abortion procedure are old enough to survive a premature delivery. Yet, the fetus is pulled out of the mother (with the head kept in the vagina so it's not officially "a baby" yet), and THEN aborted. Of course, they wiggle to resist the surgeon's knife as it's jammed into their neck... just as you or I would. Is this sentient enough for you yet?
Plus, as someone else asked, at what point in time does a fetus transform from a "clump of cells" to a "human"? The point of conception is the safest choice.

Something does not have to be sentient to be human. Just because a man is mentally retarded, does not mean he deserves to die. Similary, just because a 15-year old bimbo has better communication skills than her unborn child, does not mean the fetus deserves to die on the say-so of his mum.

> If those who are not genetically
> flawed and are capable of surviving
> individually or carrying their own weight in a
> cooperative structure of survival, work to keep
> those cannot in the picture we are working to
> thwart natures process for improving our
> species. This is bad news and something we
> shouldn't be tampering with.

This was Hitler's philosophy. Let that, at least, make you pause for thought.

The question is not about being born in general. The question is whether the newborn had any influence in the decision that his or her genes be artifically altered.

Interestingly enough, in recent years parents have sued doctors for not diagnosing potential disabilities in their future children. They claimed that, had they known about them, they would probably have aborted. There's a number of stories about this, for example, French court extens.

What a lovely troll.
China is a communist nation. You must have posted because you think this is somehow a bad thing. Yet from you comment I assume (please correct me if I'm wrong) that you are a democrat. Now, who do you think is more like the communists, the Democrats or the Republicans?

Campaign Finance Reform: Limits free speech close to an election (John McCain is a Democrat btw)

Fairness in Broadcasting Act: Limits speech on the radio.

Quotes:
"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans" - Bill Clinton

"You know the one thing that's wrong with this country? Everyone gets a chance to have their fair say." - Bill Clinton

If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees. - Bill Clinton

We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society." Hillary Clinton

Although it seems clear to me that all politicians seek power through control and subjugation of the populace, the Democrats are obviously (to me) the worse of the two. I challange anyone to rebut this by posting similar quotes by Bush or Ashcroft.

The bottom line is, I'll gladly take 10 years of Ashcroft as Attorney General than 4 years of pretty much any democrate as president.