Ah but many don't accept an exemption for a mother's life as I stated before. The inconsistence is when there is no exception.
I agree. But that's a tiny proportion of the pro-life movement. In fact, I've never met anyone who actually maintains this position when pressed. Some will come out and say "no abortions, no exceptions", but without fail if I ask them "you mean even for a mother's life", they say "OK, well for that we can make an exception".
I'm not trying to convince you that no pro-lifers want no abortions at all with no exceptions, but the numbers are very miniscule.
Some of those who were convicted were in fact innocent of the crime they were convicted of.
That doesn't change the fact that an execution of a criminal is the killing of someone who is thought to be a criminal deserving of such penalty. If you want to make the case that because some innocent people will accidentally be killed, it's not worth it, you can make that case. But that's accidentally kililng innocent people. There's nothing accidental about abortion. That's deliberately killing human beings we know to be innocent.
Surely you can see the difference.
Those who believe in choice don't go around saying everyone has to have an abortion but so called pro-lifers demand everyone else follow their rules. As if they don't have enough faith in their message so they have to mandate it
The contention that pro-lifers are being coercive in some way that is systemically bad or different from other law is ludicrous. This is without doubt the worst pro-choice argument that can be mustered. If the pro-lifers are right and the unborn human being deserves a right to life then no amount of "choice" is sufficient to justify electively killing it. The hackneyed responses all apply: should abolitionists have shut up because they have no right to "demand everyone else follow their rules".
The entire concept of "keep your nose out of my busines" fails miserably to apply when that business involves depriving other human beings of their rights. "Don't like abortions? Don't have one" is as sensical as "Don't like slavery? Don't own one."
Your argument essentially begs the fundamental question by assuming that there is no 3rd party. There are pro-choicers and pro-lifers and that's it. Sure, if you completely rule out any consideration of the unborn, the pro-lifers have no business legislating their morality. But if you've ruled out the 3rd party (the unborn human beings) you've already embraced the cental tenet of the pro-choice side: that the unborn human being has no right to life.
You can't apply the old "keep your nose out of my business" Libertarian thread without implicitly accepting the pro-choice position a priori.
Honestly, and I mean this in all kindness, but you strike me as the proto-typical liberal. You have a big heart, but you just haven't examined these issues with any amount of serious scrutiny.
For example:
I don't see abortion clinics surrounded by tents with people offering counseling, job/financial assistance and volunteering to babysit. I would love to see a political candidate who is truly and universally pro-life like Ghandi.
I'm the co-admin of a major pro-life group on Facebook (40,000+ members). I went out to San Francisco for the Walk for Life and to meet the other co-admin, who lives there. Her father used to do "sidewalk counseling", and when he met a young woman who said "I just don't have any where to live, I have to get this abortion" he opened his family's home to her. She moved in and stayed for the rest of the pregnancy for free. That is what pro-lifers do. I myself have volunteered (and will continue to volunteer) to help out at crisis pregnancy centers that offer this kind of concrete support. I've held the hands of a rape victim and helped her get through the aftermath of her abortion. I've been there, and I will be there. That's what it means to be pro-life. I have given lots of money, and will continue to give money, to a fund to help low income people in developing nation have access to no-interest loans to get better educations so they can provide for their families and lift themselves out of poverty. And if you read the blog post I linked you to, conservatives as a whole give *more* money and *more* time (even as a % of income) to causes like this.
What you don't understand is that the reason you don't see conservative politicians campaigning for these societal changes is not that they don't support them. It's that conservatives don't believe it's the role of government to try and legislate our morality and our culture and our charity. You said it yourself: We must address these social problems rather than just passing laws. If laws aren't the solution to these problems, and conservatives believe they are not, why on earth do you expect legislators to pull a Ghandi and become leaders of social revolutions? It's. Not. Their. Job. And I don't mean "they don't have to do it", I mean "they should not do it". I don't want my legislators - my government - taking that kind of a role in my country. Conservatives believe in small government, and so conservative politicians are not going to try and use government to solve these problems. They think government gets in the way. That's why they don't say all the things you want them to say.
vote against health coverage for children, maternity/paternity leave
Where does it end? Gov't spends 60% of our budget on entitlements. 60%. It will be 70% in the next 8 yaers. Maybe you think governments job is to take care of us, but I don't. You think that government needs to solve all of our problems. I don't. The reason I, and many conservative politicians, don't just rubber-stamp every single increase in government hand outs is not that we think that kids don't deserve health insurance, it's that we think that 1) there are better ways to get it to them than through the government and 2) government is morally obligated to not assume such a tyrannical amount of power over the citizens. You just don't get that, as happy and rose-colored as the idea of an all-encompassing Big Brother government is, benevolent tyranny is still tyranny. Not every problem can or should be solved by expanding government power.
every war
Bullocks. The Republicans got elected to end the Vietnam War. If you want to talk Iraq and Afghanistan, we can talk Iraq and Afghanistan, but Republicans/conservatives are obviously not in favor of all wars or (even more ludicrious) in favor of war in general. They believe that Iraq/Afghanistan are necessary. You don't. But it's not like they think war is great for kicks and thrills.
That's a bias, some don't believe a fetus is a human being until it's viable on it's own. Before then it's a parasite.
A fetus (and I'm aware that I'm using a technical term loosly) is a human being from the moment of conception. It's not a moral or relgious view. It has nothing to do with philosophy or theology. It's science. An embryo is a representative of the species. It is a human being. Whether or not it is a person is debatable, but I believe in human rights, not person rights.
"It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive...It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception." - Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School
"I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception." - Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni Professor of Pediatrics and Obstetrics, University of Pennsylvania
"After fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being. [It] is no longer a matter of taste or opinion...it is plain experimental evidence. Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception." - Dr. Jerome LeJeune Professor of Genetics, University of Descartes
"By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception." - Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo Clinic
"The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter - the beginning is conception." - Dr. Watson A. Boews University of Colorado Medical School
This led the Senate (these quotes come from a hearing of the judiciary subcommittee in 1981) to conclude:
"Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being - a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings."
So yes, I'm aware that some people argue that a fetus is a parasite until viability. The fact that bad argumens exist doesn't really bother me much. They always have, and always will. But the science could not be more clear.
Something I ask pro-lifers is if they would allow an abortion if the expectant mother's life is in jeopardy. Many though not all are against any exception, so I point out they in fact are not pro-life because they'd rather let the mother die, and possibly the fetus as well, than let her have an abortion. In the same vein I may also ask if they are anti or pro capital punishment. And usually they are pro capital punishment. I call these people hypocrites.
Re: life of the mother. If the fetus is a human being (and it is) then killing it is homicide. Under what circumstances is homicide justifiable? The #1 is self-defense. So if one human being is facing either death or serious imminent bodily injury from another human being, they have the righ to kill to protect themselves. There is nothing inconsistent about being pro-life (fetus gets human rights) and making an exception for the life of the mother and for serious threats to the mother's health. The case for rape is a bit more complex, so I won't go through it here, but I will just state that there's nothing inconsistent with the basic premise of the pro-life movement (treat all human beings with an equal right to life) and allowing abortion in cases of rape/incest and life/serious health.
As for the death penalty argument: I've seen that time and time again and I will never understand. From the Due Process clause of the US Constitution: No person shall be... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law....
Now if the term person is Constitutionally defined to equal "all living human beings" (as I believe it should be and was originally intended to be) then clearly elective abortion is against the Constitution and capital punishment is not. T
I am just describing the mind set of a movement that has no intention to value human life after birth. Otherwise, they would be all over universal health care, world food aid, road safety and yes pacifism.
Saying that the pro-life cause doesn't value human life after birth is simply not true. The pro-life cause knows that in America you have a right not to be killed, and we want to extend that right to the unborn. It's that simple: the right to life for all.
I flat-out reject your notion that to be pro-life you have to be pacifist. Look, there are two definitions of pacifism. One is "being opposed to war, and thinking war is bad". According to this definition of pacifism, it is possible to see war as an evil that is sometimes necessary. I am that kind of pacifist, and so are many of the world's military and philosophical leaders:
"We don't thrive on military acts. We do them because we have to, and thank God we are efficient." - Golda Meir
"Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living." - General Omar Bradley
"The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war." - General Douglas MacArthur
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." - John Stuart Mill
"There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending." - Abraham Lincoln
"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime." - Ernest Hemingway
"I have never advocated war except as a means of peace." - Ulysses S. Grant
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of it." - Robert E. Lee
"There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon war with horror." - General William Tecumseh Sherman
I ended with that last quote deliberately. That is the sentiment of the man credited with inventing the modern doctrine of total war. I feel that the vast majority of pacifists subsist on this stereotype of military leaders and non-pacifists as bloodthirsty killers. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Some men revel in war. They are evil. Many men are disgusted, horrified, and repulsed by war but learn to fight and lead anyway. They are heroes. As long as there are evil purposes in the world, there will be need of men and women willing to resist by force when all other means have failed. These men and women can honestly be called pacifists in the first sense of the word.
The other type of pacifisim is strict pacifism that says you can never use force ever. I think this is both stupid and pro-death. If the only way to save innocent lives is to kill an aggressor, than any fair reading of the words "pro-life" says "kill the agressor". This type of pacifism is not requried by being pro-life, because it would lead to more death.
The rest of your post has to do with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in particular. Opposing some wars does not make you a pacifist of any kind. Pacifism, of either variety, is about war in general. You can be a bloodthirsty, pro-war tyrant and still oppose some wars for various reasons.
So I don't want to get into a debate about Iraq and Afghanistan. I just want to point out that even if you're right and they were evil wars, that doesn't have a thing to do with being pacifist so it clearly has nothing to do with being pro-life.
Thanks for such a detailed reply. You obviously thought things through and I did look at your web links. Still, I can not agree with a few points:
First off: thanks for the civil tone. It's a pleasure to discuss issues when I can disagree with someone who is both civil and reasonable.
How can people fight for something that they can not even express in the language. George Orwell did a good job describing on how people can be controlled by redefining words.
I don't think there's anything Orwellian about the term "pro-life". I agree that it's a rhetorical device, but I don't think it rises to the level of "Orwellian". The reason that I prefer it to "anti-abortion" is simply that "pro-life" groups:
1. embrace more causes than abortion (e.g. embryonic stem cell research and euthanasia). Check out the website of the NRLC (by far the largest pro-life group in the US) to see their issues.
2. the moniker "pro-life" is accurate in the sense that pro-life groups want to give an equal right to life to all human beings. Right now it is legal in the US to kill unborn human beings for any reason. This is obviously a legally and ideologically worse position than the plight of starving Africans. They have at least some claim to a right to life (you can't just wander around with a gun shooting them) and they are not American citizens so American legislation does not directly impact them (although the indirect impact can be enormous).
3. you make the mistake of assuming that because pro-life organizations are dedicated to abortion/euthanaisa/etc. that the *people* in those movements are not members of other movements as well. The pro-life movement is largely shaped and defined by Roe v Wade and the realities it imposed on America and so it is oriented to those issues. But that's the *movement*. People are free to be a part of multiple movements, and many are.
4. most pro-lifers, and many pro-life groups, are substantially engaged in supporting pregnant women and fighting to end discrimination against pregnant women. Pro-life feminists lead the charge here, but I know that on my campus pro-life group (University of Richmond) our president made it a top priority to address the fact that if a UR student got pregnant there were literally no support services available. No pregnant parking, no day care, no academic allowances for leave, etc. Nothing. The pro-life movement does care about women as well as the children they carry despite the stereotypes to the contrary. One major reason the stereotype persists is that the pro-life movement simply doesn't have the resources and funds the pro-choice movement has. This is in part because the pro-choice movement makes substantial sums of money in addition to government grants (PP gets 1/3rd of their revenue from abortions, another 1/3rd from government funds) and in part because the pro-choice movement is vastly more popular with major donors like Holllywood elite.
But, what if I just bought a shipload of rice and dal and personally came to Africa to feed only pre-teen children and pregnant women? Certainly you don't expect fetuses and babies to be savvy capitalists and take care of themselves. I would think "pro-lifers" would be all over this task - after taking care of the same problem here in USA.
Who says they aren't in favor of something like that? You're not really asking for them to support additional causes, you're asking for them to support additional causes under the same banner. I don't really understand why you think it's necessary for pro-lifers to dilute the pro-life cause in order to support other causes. There are "fight hunger" groups, "aids awareness" groups, and "pro-life" groups. There's no reason to try and merge them all into one monolithic entity. Pro-life groups are focussed on life-issues in American politics. Fighting hunger, as your example demonstrates, is an entirely different endeavor. So why link the two?
(I can't call anyone who supports war and death penalty pro-life).
It amuses me to no end that you think it needs to be clarified by adding "fetal" but not, for example, by adding "human".
And it's stupid to say anyone supports war. No one supports war in general. But most people are realistic enough to realize that sometimes war is morally acceptable as a last resort. Which wars are you against? Iraq? World War II? The American Revolution?
I will leave your rose-tinted view of history for now. It's not worth getting into an argument about how much "damage" Ghandi did to the occupation force or whether the Brits really wanted to be there any more at all. The least you can do, however, is examine the great success Ghandi had applying his principles in Africa before you conclude just how universally irresistable they are.
It takes a real genius to interpret the phrase "pro-life"...
I think that it's relatively fair to allow the movement that self-identifies as X to define X. I don't go around telling a "pro-choier" what "pro-choice" means. I allow the actions, words, and writings of the pro-choice movement (e.g. NARAL, NOW, and PP) to speak for themselves. Is it too much to ask that you allow your political opponents to speak for themslves, rather than insist on retaining for yourself the authority to tell everyone what their own stance really means?
They key, I think, is to take an unpopular group of people and convince the masses that they are second-rate humans and their lives are just not as valuable. Exactly. Other than the word "unpopular" I agree word-for-word, and consider that exactly the method being used to strip unborn human beings of their human rights. Rather than "unpopular" they are "invisible", but certainly expensive to keep around. The pro-choice side rests on the proposition that human rights are not for all human beings: that is that "their lives are just not as valuable" as the lives of the born.
The burka-clad arabs are not even Christians, a carpet bombing is just about enough due process for every one of them. And those starving children in Africa - well, they are n-----rs for god sake! Let them starve! Besides we are not killing them, we are just standing by while they die, while we could have saved each one for $5/year. The right of life is only a negative right you see.
I see your grasp of international aid is no beter than your grasp of history. It really is sad to me that so many liberals subsist on good intentions alone, when good intentions with research would benefit the world far more.
I'll address the points one-by-one:
1. I said that pro-life does not necessitate strict pacifism. You took this to mean that carpet-bombing civilians is A-OK. I am amused, but not surprised, at where you ran off with that argument, but I'd like a response to what I actually said rather than what you think I believe.
I hope you will read, or at least skim, those articles. In case you don't here's the short version: I care deeply about how Americans can best alleviate suffering in the world and have dedicated serious amounts of time to researching this problem. Research will not solve problems, but trying to fix problems without knowing what you're doing can make things much, much worse. Ignorant attempts to "fix" Africa, the Middle East and so on have led to almost as much suffering (if not more) than attempts to oppress those same regions. Far more have died in the name of progress and "help" (Stalin, Pol Pot, the mess made of Africa and the Middle East due to foreign 'aid') than died in quests for God, Glory, and Gold.
Before you condemn conservative as heartless bastards
First off, your example is invalid because the cops may indeed break down the door and check on your kids.
No. They can not break in just to check on my kids. They can not. Your own post confirms this. They have to have reason to believe something is going on *right now*, or they have to have sufficient evidence to get a warrant. I listed both of these examples in my own post. They can not simply pick a random door and, with no basis for suspicion, just enter to check and see how things are going. They. Can. Not. Do. That.
If abortions are made illegal there has to be a reason and enforcement, and both are intrusions into the privacy of individuals at a very basic level.
You are conflating legality and enforcement. To the extent that enforcing abortion laws would violate individual rights they can not be enforced. It does not follow, merely because they are hard to enforce, that the acts themselves can not be criminalized at all. There are, in fact, ways to enforce abortion laws without violating rights. One simple example took place in Spain, where a sting operation went to an abortion provider and asked about getting an illegal abortion. The provider explained how the law could be circumvented and this was probably cause for susbequent raids that found plenty of evidence of illegal activity.
This is no more invasive than sting operations where kids try to purchase alcohol while under age.
I will give you this: pro-actively enforcing a law against *having* abortions would be practically impossible. That's fine. Most pro-lifers have no desire to prosecute women in crisis pregnancies anyway. Pro-lifers beleive that they are in genuine need of help. We believe that abortion is not really help (it's band-aid, not a solution) but certainly additional prosuection isn't "help" either.
Since these examinations were required to determine illegal activities, they managed to become legally mandated.
I agree that it has happened in the past. I disagree that it is necessarily the case that it will happen again.
For instance, random universal drug testing. It should be illegal as a violation of the 4th amendment, but it is not, and the continuous justification for this is that drugs are illegal.
Yes, it is illegal. Drug testing is allowed as a condition of employment, before donating blood, and for other reasons, but "universal rqandom drug testing" is illegal and does not exist. Not in the USA, anyway. The cops don't get to just pick random social security numbers, track down the owner, and adminster drug tests simply as a fishing expedition. It. Is. Not. Legal.
If you think for one minute that the same bunch of folks who literally peek in people's bedroom windows to enforce sodomy laws are going to blanche at having to have women regularly inspected throughout their pregnancies to ensure proper fetal health and that no laws protecting the child were broken (abortion, intoxication in pregnancy)I think you have not been paying attention.
That's not a fair representation of the base of the pro-life movement. There are dinosaur-denying Bible-thumpers, but that's not the norm. I've been involved in the pro-life movement for over a decade. I've been to national conventions. I've worked with state affiliates of the NRLC. I've met Catholics, Baptists, Jews, Buddhists and atheists. There's a difference between the "God says so" social conservatives (who care about sodomy laws) and the pro-lifers who see it as an issue of civil rights. I'm that kind, and the vast majority of pro-lifers are as well. The crazies are just louder.
I do wonder how supporting abortion laws as well as the party most responsible for extending the reach of the federal government and our foreign adventures (especially of late) fit with the rest of it; that would probably have been a better question for Mr. Paul.
Well Paul is obviously attempting to take the Republican party away from the neo-con big-gov't di
I was merely pointing out that the absolute worst that a pro-choicer can expect from President Paul would be him saying "Hey you States sort it out", then having the issue never cross his desk again.
That requires overturning Roe v Wade. Not so many pro-choicers will be thrilled with that.
He also supports, or at least entertains as a real possibility, the idea of a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. Now realistically that's not going to fly any time soon. But ideologically you can't get more pro-life than that.
And for those that might want to know my personal opinions on the subject, I think Bill Clinton said it best. Abortions should be legal, safe, and above all else rare.
That's cheap rhetoric, nothing more. In the US you can get an abortion at any time for any reason. That is the de facto rule. Yes, yes: I know very well that Roe sets up a system of trimesters and talks the talk about "health". But then Doe v. Bolton, handed down the same day, defined "health" so broadly that a health exception is essentially a blanket exception. So, in practice, the US Constitution has been interpreted to say that a woman has a right to an abortion at any time for any reason. That doesn't scream "rare" to me. Add to that the vitriolic opposition form pro-choice groups (PP, NOW, NARAL, etc.) for any law that would (for example): require surgical abortion facilities to adhere to general outpatient surgical standards, require parents to consent or even be informed of a minors abortion*, prevent a non-custodian from taking a minor across state lines to get an abortion, require doctors give basic facts about pre-natal development to women seeking abortions, impose 24-hour waiting periods, etc. and I think that the whole "rare" aspect of that equation is a bit of a joke.
Keep in mind that PP gets at least 1/3rd their operating revenue from abortions. How rare do you really think they want them to be? And what PP, NARAL, and NOW want from abortion they get from the Clintons.
The fact is that Americans are *far* more conservative on abortion than the Constitution allows (2/3rds want stricter laws on abortion than Roe v Wade/Doe v Bolton allow) and that the pro-choice side succeeds largely by obfuscating with rhetoric the extent to which their own agenda is far more radical than most people would suspect.
* all such laws include exceptions where abuse is an issue
The idea that a pro-life stance necessitates being opposed to the death penalty is silly. Everyone knows "pro-life" is a stance about abortion and maybe euthanasia. There's no rational way to get "anti-death penalty" out of "pro-life". If you're going to start saying that "pro-life" means just literally "for life, in all cases", why restrict it to human life? Why woudln't pro-life be against anti-biotics? Why wouldn't pro-life be vegan? Why not pacifist?
It's pure sophistry when someone takes the phrase "pro-life" and decides to interpret some of it literally and some of it non-literally.
I don't know how you can call Ron Paul pro-life unless you assume that life stops at birth.
Because the definition of "pro-life" can easily be summed up as saying: All human beings have an equal right to life. This right to life is a negative right ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights ) and not a positive one. Simply put: all human beings have the right not to be electively killed. That is the pro-life position. It does not say "you can't kill anything, ever" it says "you can't electively kill human beings without due process". Things like: death penalty, just war, and self-defense (not to mention eating meat) are not required (for or against) in the pro-life position.
While Ron Paul is pro-life he would let each state decide for themselves to allow abortion or make it illegal. To him it's all a matter of states' rights.
No, it is not. Ron Paul is a federalist (states rights) but he is pro-life independent of that. Some people oppose Roe v. Wade only because it violated states rights. Paul opposes it for that reason and because he considers abortion to be "the greatest moral issue of our time".
I know a lot of Libertarians are all gung-ho about being pro-choice because, superficially, it sounds like less government intrusion. But a strong pro-life stance is perfetly compatible with maximal liberty. The fundamental issue of abortion is whether or not all human beings deserve equal human rights. If you think they do: then maximal liberty comes from banning elective abortions, not from allowing it.
This is Ron Paul's stance. He's pro-life, not just pro-state's rights. Get over it people.
Given these dilemmas, what should those of us in the pro-life community do? First, we must return to constitutional principles and proclaim them proudly. We must take a principled approach that recognizes both moral and political principles, and accepts the close relationship between them. Legislatively, we should focus our efforts on building support to overturn Roe v. Wade. Ideally this would be done in a fashion that allows states to again ban or regulate abortion. State legislatures have always had proper jurisdiction over issues like abortion and cloning; the pro-life movement should recognize that jurisdiction and not encroach upon it. The alternative is an outright federal ban on abortion, done properly via a constitutional amendment that does no violence to our way of government.http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul100.html
His stance on abortion is one I disagree with but for now I generally support Ron Paul. I am both pro-life and pro-choice.
Word games aside, this is an impossible proposition. Pro-choice means "abortions should be legal on demand". This is the de facto rule of law in the US and, in fact, 90-95% of the 1M+ abortions performed every year are elective. That iS: there is no signficant or unusual health risk, no fetal abnormality, no rape, etc. The pro-choice stance requires stripping some human beings of the fundamental right to life. The pro-life stance (which can include exceptions for rape/incest, life/serious health, etc.) rests upon the proposition that all human beings have an equal right to life.
The stances of the pro-choice and pro-life sides with respect to human rights are mutually exclusive. "I wouldn't get an abortion, but I can't legislate it", or "I think it's morally wrong but I can't impose my morality on you" are not pro-life positions. They are pro-choice and pro-choice only because they rule out the right to life of certain kinds of human beings. That is not pro-life. Merely finding abortion morally problematic or icky is insufficient for being pro-life.
Oh, and for the record, Ron Paul is extremely pro-life.
I think it's important to note that he's extremely against the legality of abortions being a Federal issue, for the record.
You seem to be saying he's against it being a Federal issue as opposed to being pro-life. You can be both. Ron Paul is. His own words:
As an obstetrician who has delivered over 4000 children, I have long been concerned with the rights of unborn people. I believe this is the greatest moral issue of our time. The very best of the western intellectual tradition has understood the critical link between moral and political action. Each of these disciplines should strongly inform and support the other. Ron Paul is indeed concerned that the issue be handled within the bounds of limits on Constitutional powers, but this does not mean his pro-life stance comes only from wishing to turn the issue over to the states. He is committed to the principles of the pro-life cause (equal human rights for all human beings).
There are two approaches he favors to Constitutionally ending elective abortion in the US. One is the kind of federalism you assert is his only motivation (it is not). The other is a Constitutional amendment to prohibit elective abortions. You can't tell me that someone who considers a Constitutional amendment to ban an issue is arguing from a solely "let the states decide" Libertarian philosophy. Ron Paul is a federalist *and* he is pro-life:
We must take a principled approach that recognizes both moral and political principles, and accepts the close relationship between them. Legislatively, we should focus our efforts on building support to overturn Roe v. Wade. Ideally this would be done in a fashion that allows states to again ban or regulate abortion. State legislatures have always had proper jurisdiction over issues like abortion and cloning; the pro-life movement should recognize that jurisdiction and not encroach upon it. The alternative is an outright federal ban on abortion, done properly via a constitutional amendment that does no violence to our way of government.http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul100.html
No, they can't. No matter how much you may hate the government for regulating drugs, and no matter how much controversy there may be over "no-knock" warrants, the fact of the matter is that the cops can come into your house in only one of 3 ways:
1. your permission 2. a warrant (which must be based on some reasonable belief they will find evidence and not just a fishing trip) 3. reasonable evidence of imminent danger/crime in progress
People who go into hysterics about how our nation is a police state already only harm the cause of liberty by sensationalizing a serious issue.
I can't tell if this is hysteria or just sloppy pronoun useage. Does the "it" refer to someone being prosucuted for getting an illegal abortion at all, or does it refer to the draconian methods proposed for ensuring this doesn't happen:
Mandatory pregnancy test on departure for all females of childbearing age. If they are no longer pregnant a month after their return, then short of a proven miscarriage, etc. they are prosecuted. I've noticed that pro-choice people frequently assert that if abortion were to be made legal, the country that made it illegal what have to revert to all kinds of 1984-esque techniques to actually prevent abortions. This is true. The problem is that just because something is illegal does not mean it has to be - or even can be - arbitrarily enforce. For example: child abuse is illegal but that does not mean the government can trample rights at will to prevent child abuse. If you are seen beating your kid, you are likely to be arrested. If you aren't seen beating your kid, the cops have no right to break down your door and check.
The two main problems are:
1. enforcement of any law has to conform to restrictions on government powers (Miranda rights, warrants, etc.) 2. criminal law is essentially punitive and not preventative in nature
In any case, the story in Spain you refer to is obviously *not* some sort of draconian "you have to take a pregnancy test to travel" and "you have to prove a lack of pregnancy resulted from a natural miscarriage" instance. From your own source, here's what happened:
On November 26th, 2007, police agents searched four Barcelona clinics owned by Dr. Carlos Morin. The raid was ordered by the Court of Justice following a complaint by a Catholic anti-abortion group, e-Christians, which claimed abortions were being performed illegally. Dr. Morin had been shown on TV in a secretly recorded tape offering an abortion to a Danish woman who was in her seventh month of pregnancy, and explaining that "loopholes" in Spanish law that would make this possible. Further raids followed at other clinics; 13 people were arrested, including doctors and anesthesiologists. In Holland, a Dutch woman returning from Spain was arrested and charged with having undergone an illegal abortion. Almost all Madrid clinics were then raided - and a number of irregularities were allegedly found. These included forged signatures of physicians performing abortions, presigned blank medical forms signed by a psychiatrist who certified that the "patient" - unnamed and unexamined - suffered from a serious mental health problems that justified an abortion under Spanish law, and evidence of an attempt by one clinic to destroy medical records in anticipation of police action. So the raids came only after there was reasonable suspicion of illegal activity. I'm not so sure about the admissibility of the hidden video footage, but it certainly doesn't rise to the level of entrapment. Someone goes in, asks for an illegal abortion, and the MD explains how it can be arranged. As a result of this evidence of illegal activity, raids are conducted which result in accumulating far more evidence that abortion laws in Spain were being circumvented.
This has nothing to do with Orwellian mandatory pregnancy tests or some kind of reversal (for the US, anyway) of the presumption of innocence that would require a woman to somehow prove that a miscarriage was spontaneous and not induced. I don't know if the OP actually thinks pro-life advocates would favor such insanity or not, but it's neither required as a part of the pro-life position nor embraced by any pro-life person that I have talked to in my entire life. I, as a pro-life individual, would be right there on the protest lines against such a rampant and unwarranted infringement of individual liberties.
Oh, and for the record, Ron Paul is extremely pro-life.
I knew that any attempt to defend the golden plates would inevitably result in someone posting about "magic underpants" . It's great that wikipedia automatically redirects from "magic underpants" to the actual article: temple undergarments.
Sacred religious clothing is a part of many traditions from all around the world. And to the extent that it's unfamiliar it is strange and thus prone to ridicule. The only thing remotely interesting about Mormon religious apparel is that they were it under rather than on top of their normal clothes.
I actually like the privacy this entails. The temple undergarments symbolize sacred commitments between the believer and God. It appeals to me that this is reflected in private rather than public symbolism. (Not to mock outside religous apparel at all. Thats' just an aspect of the Mormon take that I like.
To a Mormon the undergarments are a symbol of personal commitment. That's why we wear them as undergarments.
If that makes them that much easier to ridicule as "magic underpants", then so be it. It's not like we're trying to makea fashion statement here.
Well, it is if you're talking about a message from Him. You'd expect Him to either stick with tried and true materials (stone tablets were good enough for the ten commandments), or that He knows the periodic table well enough to chose something that's even more resistant than gold, for example. The Bible was not originally written on stone, friend. Only the 10 commandments were. The Book of Mormon is not the 10 commandments. It is the words of prophets. Written on the materials that were available to their culture. Take a look at the dead sea scrolls and other authentic remaining scripture: it was written on whatever people wrote on at the time.
You expect to find the scripture of a given people written on materials that fit with their culture, history, and resources. Ascetic Jewish prophets living in the desert wrote on parchment. They probably would have written on precious plates (gold, brass, etc.) except for the fact that, if you believe the Bible, the guys weren't exactly rolling in precious metals. They were usually living in caves hiding out (e.g. Isaiah). So parchment it is.
The Book of Mormon purports to be a record started by a king and largely kept by rulers. So they had more resources and upgraded to the "precious metals" plan.
The point, however, is that you're supposed to be locating the historical claims of a religion in history. And if that's what you're doing, the "gold plates" are simply not strange. I'm not trying to defend the entire Mormon religion here. But some criticisms make more sense than others, and the criticism based on "gold tablets" is an appeal to ignorant sensationalism. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Yes. A Mormon who decided to make a living by forging documents and ripping off the Mormon Church is a great example of Mormons.
Despite the often considerable amounts of money he was making from document sales, Hofmann became embroiled in financial difficulties. In an effort to clear his debts, he attempted to put together a deal involving the sale of "the McLellin collection" -- an extensive collection of documents purportedly written by William E. M'Lellin, an early Mormon apostle who later broke with the LDS church and actively worked against them. Hofmann often hinted the M'Lellin collection would provide damning evidence against the claims of early LDS leaders. However, Hofmann was unable to forge the entire collection quickly enough to meet his promises to his intended buyers; in a desperate effort to buy time he began planting bombs in Salt Lake City. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hofmann#Hofmann.27s_forgeries
I'm not interested in trying to bury or hide the Hofman murders. He was a Mormon. He was a criminal. He forged documents and then killed people.
What I'm scratching my head over is why you think someone who was trying to rip off the Mormon Church is a good example of the problem with Mormons. I would have expected something more like "Under the Banner of Heaven" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_banner_of_heaven), which at least stands a chance of making a more general case that Mormonism is a violent faith.
Obviously I don't believe that one either, but telling sensational tales about minority religions is about as good a way to make a buck as any I suppose.
one is a mormom (golden tablets - need I say more) Um... yeah. Yeah you do need to say more. The problem with the Mormons seems to be not so much that they have a weird religion (seriously - Jews with the whole "kill your son, no wait - don't" thing, Catholics with the "eat my flesh, literally" thing, Christians in general with the whole "I'm God, nail me to a tree" thing, etc.) as that their weird religion is newer than other weird religions. If you're going to mock Mormons for gold plates, I can't figure out how you're going to do this and not bat an eye at the rest of Jeudeo-Christian tradition.
Also, when it comes to golden plates, they are just not that weird. They are pretty common in ancient cultures that wanted to write something down that would stay legible for centuries. The reason gold, or other precious metals, was used was simple: gold ages well.
In recent decades, scholars have discovered many examples of inscribed metal plates and scrolls throughout the Mediterranean and Mesopotamian regions. One inscribed gold plate was issued by Darius the Great of Persia dating to 500 BCE, and was stored in a stone box in the temple at Persepolis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_plates
If you're going to pick something to make fun of as weird, at least do your homework and find something that really is weird.
Agreed. There are some serious questions about journalistic independence you have to ask when a potentially market-shifting product (cheap linux PCs in general, not necessarily this particular model) gets bashed by a magazine that makes a living selling ads for companies directly threatened by the product being reviewed.
How about telling the tech to supply his own data for burning? Even if there is material on the HD that's legal, how can the tech assert he has the right to make a copy of it? If you read the article you'll see that this is kind of the point: the guy didn't ask them to supply their own data. He understood they would burn some of his data and was fine with that. In this way (the prosecution argues and I agree) he gave up his right to an expectation of privacy. He handed them the drive and said "install the DVD burner" and they said "we'll need to look at some files to test it" and he said "sure thing".
If he had said "get your own data" or even "only use data from this file" or anything like that, he would have been able to argue that there was some expectation of privacy. But since he didn't, I don't think this case is even really that difficult (yes, yes, IANAL). No expectation of privacy = evidence is admissible = he goes to jail.
The alternative is to say that a costumer/client relationship is privileged (like with an MD or a lawyer) and I don't buy that. You *need* to divulge all the details of your health, etc. to get effective care from a lawyer or doctor. You don't need to show your computer tech guy child porn to get your computer fixed. And even if the problem is with child porn specifically, you clearly don't have a right to get your child porn collection recovered or whatever.
I think that actually misses the point. If you've worked as an engineer or a consultant - or even if you've just helped people search for stuff on Google - you probably have realized that THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT TO ASK FOR. A really good consultant/engineer is someone who has the ability to figure out what a person wants based on what they say.
Even if you mastered natural language (and I'm not saying that's a surmountable task) I think people would be shocked to see that Google searches would still be frustrating.
I'm not just saying "blame the user", I'm saying that language itself is not even the last obstacle to overcome. You're going to need to figure out an program that not only understands natural language, but also context, culture, etc.
Getting an AI of near-human intelligence is not enough, because to be really good at getting people the answers to questions they can't ask you have to be of above-average capability.
Well I wasn't just trying to be clever with semantics. It seems that the border overtaking the spacecraft is as scientifically interesting as the spacecraft overtaking the border - or is there something physically different about the border overtaking the spacecraft that makes it different and unremarkable?
The threshold and spacecraft will cross each other 3 times, right, not two. So why only talk about two?
Other than "we sent something outside the solar system again", does this mean anything? Will we get any new data about "termination shock" or whatnot? Also, and stop me if I'm wrong, but if the probe is going outwards and the boundary isn't perpetually expanding it can't really cross the boundary twice, can it? It has to be once or thrice.
Once to get outside the boundary, twice if the boundary expands and catches back up with it, and thrice to once again get outside the boundary.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah but many don't accept an exemption for a mother's life as I stated before. The inconsistence is when there is no exception.
I agree. But that's a tiny proportion of the pro-life movement. In fact, I've never met anyone who actually maintains this position when pressed. Some will come out and say "no abortions, no exceptions", but without fail if I ask them "you mean even for a mother's life", they say "OK, well for that we can make an exception".
I'm not trying to convince you that no pro-lifers want no abortions at all with no exceptions, but the numbers are very miniscule.
Some of those who were convicted were in fact innocent of the crime they were convicted of.
That doesn't change the fact that an execution of a criminal is the killing of someone who is thought to be a criminal deserving of such penalty. If you want to make the case that because some innocent people will accidentally be killed, it's not worth it, you can make that case. But that's accidentally kililng innocent people. There's nothing accidental about abortion. That's deliberately killing human beings we know to be innocent.
Surely you can see the difference.
Those who believe in choice don't go around saying everyone has to have an abortion but so called pro-lifers demand everyone else follow their rules. As if they don't have enough faith in their message so they have to mandate it
The contention that pro-lifers are being coercive in some way that is systemically bad or different from other law is ludicrous. This is without doubt the worst pro-choice argument that can be mustered. If the pro-lifers are right and the unborn human being deserves a right to life then no amount of "choice" is sufficient to justify electively killing it. The hackneyed responses all apply: should abolitionists have shut up because they have no right to "demand everyone else follow their rules".
The entire concept of "keep your nose out of my busines" fails miserably to apply when that business involves depriving other human beings of their rights. "Don't like abortions? Don't have one" is as sensical as "Don't like slavery? Don't own one."
Your argument essentially begs the fundamental question by assuming that there is no 3rd party. There are pro-choicers and pro-lifers and that's it. Sure, if you completely rule out any consideration of the unborn, the pro-lifers have no business legislating their morality. But if you've ruled out the 3rd party (the unborn human beings) you've already embraced the cental tenet of the pro-choice side: that the unborn human being has no right to life.
You can't apply the old "keep your nose out of my business" Libertarian thread without implicitly accepting the pro-choice position a priori.
Honestly, and I mean this in all kindness, but you strike me as the proto-typical liberal. You have a big heart, but you just haven't examined these issues with any amount of serious scrutiny.
For example:
I don't see abortion clinics surrounded by tents with people offering counseling, job/financial assistance and volunteering to babysit. I would love to see a political candidate who is truly and universally pro-life like Ghandi.
I'm the co-admin of a major pro-life group on Facebook (40,000+ members). I went out to San Francisco for the Walk for Life and to meet the other co-admin, who lives there. Her father used to do "sidewalk counseling", and when he met a young woman who said "I just don't have any where to live, I have to get this abortion" he opened his family's home to her. She moved in and stayed for the rest of the pregnancy for free. That is what pro-lifers do. I myself have volunteered (and will continue to volunteer) to help out at crisis pregnancy centers that offer this kind of concrete support. I've held the hands of a rape victim and helped her get through the aftermath of her abortion. I've been there, and I will be there. That's what it means to be pro-life. I have given lots of money, and will continue to give money, to a fund to help low income people in developing nation have access to no-interest loans to get better educations so they can provide for their families and lift themselves out of poverty. And if you read the blog post I linked you to, conservatives as a whole give *more* money and *more* time (even as a % of income) to causes like this.
What you don't understand is that the reason you don't see conservative politicians campaigning for these societal changes is not that they don't support them. It's that conservatives don't believe it's the role of government to try and legislate our morality and our culture and our charity. You said it yourself: We must address these social problems rather than just passing laws. If laws aren't the solution to these problems, and conservatives believe they are not, why on earth do you expect legislators to pull a Ghandi and become leaders of social revolutions? It's. Not. Their. Job. And I don't mean "they don't have to do it", I mean "they should not do it". I don't want my legislators - my government - taking that kind of a role in my country. Conservatives believe in small government, and so conservative politicians are not going to try and use government to solve these problems. They think government gets in the way. That's why they don't say all the things you want them to say.
vote against health coverage for children, maternity/paternity leave
Where does it end? Gov't spends 60% of our budget on entitlements. 60%. It will be 70% in the next 8 yaers. Maybe you think governments job is to take care of us, but I don't. You think that government needs to solve all of our problems. I don't. The reason I, and many conservative politicians, don't just rubber-stamp every single increase in government hand outs is not that we think that kids don't deserve health insurance, it's that we think that 1) there are better ways to get it to them than through the government and 2) government is morally obligated to not assume such a tyrannical amount of power over the citizens. You just don't get that, as happy and rose-colored as the idea of an all-encompassing Big Brother government is, benevolent tyranny is still tyranny. Not every problem can or should be solved by expanding government power.
every war
Bullocks. The Republicans got elected to end the Vietnam War. If you want to talk Iraq and Afghanistan, we can talk Iraq and Afghanistan, but Republicans/conservatives are obviously not in favor of all wars or (even more ludicrious) in favor of war in general. They believe that Iraq/Afghanistan are necessary. You don't. But it's not like they think war is great for kicks and thrills.
unrestricted ownership of even automatic gu
That's a bias, some don't believe a fetus is a human being until it's viable on it's own. Before then it's a parasite.
... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ....
A fetus (and I'm aware that I'm using a technical term loosly) is a human being from the moment of conception. It's not a moral or relgious view. It has nothing to do with philosophy or theology. It's science. An embryo is a representative of the species. It is a human being. Whether or not it is a person is debatable, but I believe in human rights, not person rights.
"It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive...It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception." - Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School
"I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception." - Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni Professor of Pediatrics and Obstetrics, University of Pennsylvania
"After fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being. [It] is no longer a matter of taste or opinion...it is plain experimental evidence. Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception." - Dr. Jerome LeJeune Professor of Genetics, University of Descartes
"By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception." - Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo Clinic
"The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter - the beginning is conception." - Dr. Watson A. Boews University of Colorado Medical School
This led the Senate (these quotes come from a hearing of the judiciary subcommittee in 1981) to conclude:
"Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being - a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings."
So yes, I'm aware that some people argue that a fetus is a parasite until viability. The fact that bad argumens exist doesn't really bother me much. They always have, and always will. But the science could not be more clear.
Something I ask pro-lifers is if they would allow an abortion if the expectant mother's life is in jeopardy. Many though not all are against any exception, so I point out they in fact are not pro-life because they'd rather let the mother die, and possibly the fetus as well, than let her have an abortion. In the same vein I may also ask if they are anti or pro capital punishment. And usually they are pro capital punishment. I call these people hypocrites.
Re: life of the mother. If the fetus is a human being (and it is) then killing it is homicide. Under what circumstances is homicide justifiable? The #1 is self-defense. So if one human being is facing either death or serious imminent bodily injury from another human being, they have the righ to kill to protect themselves. There is nothing inconsistent about being pro-life (fetus gets human rights) and making an exception for the life of the mother and for serious threats to the mother's health. The case for rape is a bit more complex, so I won't go through it here, but I will just state that there's nothing inconsistent with the basic premise of the pro-life movement (treat all human beings with an equal right to life) and allowing abortion in cases of rape/incest and life/serious health.
As for the death penalty argument: I've seen that time and time again and I will never understand. From the Due Process clause of the US Constitution: No person shall be
Now if the term person is Constitutionally defined to equal "all living human beings" (as I believe it should be and was originally intended to be) then clearly elective abortion is against the Constitution and capital punishment is not. T
I am just describing the mind set of a movement that has no intention to value human life after birth. Otherwise, they would be all over universal health care, world food aid, road safety and yes pacifism.
Saying that the pro-life cause doesn't value human life after birth is simply not true. The pro-life cause knows that in America you have a right not to be killed, and we want to extend that right to the unborn. It's that simple: the right to life for all.
I flat-out reject your notion that to be pro-life you have to be pacifist. Look, there are two definitions of pacifism. One is "being opposed to war, and thinking war is bad". According to this definition of pacifism, it is possible to see war as an evil that is sometimes necessary. I am that kind of pacifist, and so are many of the world's military and philosophical leaders:
"We don't thrive on military acts. We do them because we have to, and thank God we are efficient." - Golda Meir
"Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living." - General Omar Bradley
"The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war." - General Douglas MacArthur
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the
exertions of better men than himself." - John Stuart Mill
"There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing
good in war. Except its ending." - Abraham Lincoln
"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime." - Ernest Hemingway
"I have never advocated war except as a means of peace." - Ulysses S. Grant
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of it." - Robert E. Lee
"There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon war with horror." - General William Tecumseh Sherman
I ended with that last quote deliberately. That is the sentiment of the man credited with inventing the modern doctrine of total war. I feel that the vast majority of pacifists subsist on this stereotype of military leaders and non-pacifists as bloodthirsty killers. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Some men revel in war. They are evil. Many men are disgusted, horrified, and repulsed by war but learn to fight and lead anyway. They are heroes. As long as there are evil purposes in the world, there will be need of men and women willing to resist by force when all other means have failed. These men and women can honestly be called pacifists in the first sense of the word.
The other type of pacifisim is strict pacifism that says you can never use force ever. I think this is both stupid and pro-death. If the only way to save innocent lives is to kill an aggressor, than any fair reading of the words "pro-life" says "kill the agressor". This type of pacifism is not requried by being pro-life, because it would lead to more death.
The rest of your post has to do with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in particular. Opposing some wars does not make you a pacifist of any kind. Pacifism, of either variety, is about war in general. You can be a bloodthirsty, pro-war tyrant and still oppose some wars for various reasons.
So I don't want to get into a debate about Iraq and Afghanistan. I just want to point out that even if you're right and they were evil wars, that doesn't have a thing to do with being pacifist so it clearly has nothing to do with being pro-life.
Thanks for such a detailed reply. You obviously thought things through and I did look at your web links. Still, I can not agree with a few points:
First off: thanks for the civil tone. It's a pleasure to discuss issues when I can disagree with someone who is both civil and reasonable.
How can people fight for something that they can not even express in the language. George Orwell did a good job describing on how people can be controlled by redefining words.
I don't think there's anything Orwellian about the term "pro-life". I agree that it's a rhetorical device, but I don't think it rises to the level of "Orwellian". The reason that I prefer it to "anti-abortion" is simply that "pro-life" groups:
1. embrace more causes than abortion (e.g. embryonic stem cell research and euthanasia). Check out the website of the NRLC (by far the largest pro-life group in the US) to see their issues.
2. the moniker "pro-life" is accurate in the sense that pro-life groups want to give an equal right to life to all human beings. Right now it is legal in the US to kill unborn human beings for any reason. This is obviously a legally and ideologically worse position than the plight of starving Africans. They have at least some claim to a right to life (you can't just wander around with a gun shooting them) and they are not American citizens so American legislation does not directly impact them (although the indirect impact can be enormous).
3. you make the mistake of assuming that because pro-life organizations are dedicated to abortion/euthanaisa/etc. that the *people* in those movements are not members of other movements as well. The pro-life movement is largely shaped and defined by Roe v Wade and the realities it imposed on America and so it is oriented to those issues. But that's the *movement*. People are free to be a part of multiple movements, and many are.
4. most pro-lifers, and many pro-life groups, are substantially engaged in supporting pregnant women and fighting to end discrimination against pregnant women. Pro-life feminists lead the charge here, but I know that on my campus pro-life group (University of Richmond) our president made it a top priority to address the fact that if a UR student got pregnant there were literally no support services available. No pregnant parking, no day care, no academic allowances for leave, etc. Nothing. The pro-life movement does care about women as well as the children they carry despite the stereotypes to the contrary. One major reason the stereotype persists is that the pro-life movement simply doesn't have the resources and funds the pro-choice movement has. This is in part because the pro-choice movement makes substantial sums of money in addition to government grants (PP gets 1/3rd of their revenue from abortions, another 1/3rd from government funds) and in part because the pro-choice movement is vastly more popular with major donors like Holllywood elite.
But, what if I just bought a shipload of rice and dal and personally came to Africa to feed only pre-teen children and pregnant women? Certainly you don't expect fetuses and babies to be savvy capitalists and take care of themselves. I would think "pro-lifers" would be all over this task - after taking care of the same problem here in USA.
Who says they aren't in favor of something like that? You're not really asking for them to support additional causes, you're asking for them to support additional causes under the same banner. I don't really understand why you think it's necessary for pro-lifers to dilute the pro-life cause in order to support other causes. There are "fight hunger" groups, "aids awareness" groups, and "pro-life" groups. There's no reason to try and merge them all into one monolithic entity. Pro-life groups are focussed on life-issues in American politics. Fighting hunger, as your example demonstrates, is an entirely different endeavor. So why link the two?
Don't presume that because I'm pro-lif
(I can't call anyone who supports war and death penalty pro-life).
It amuses me to no end that you think it needs to be clarified by adding "fetal" but not, for example, by adding "human".
And it's stupid to say anyone supports war. No one supports war in general. But most people are realistic enough to realize that sometimes war is morally acceptable as a last resort. Which wars are you against? Iraq? World War II? The American Revolution?
I will leave your rose-tinted view of history for now. It's not worth getting into an argument about how much "damage" Ghandi did to the occupation force or whether the Brits really wanted to be there any more at all. The least you can do, however, is examine the great success Ghandi had applying his principles in Africa before you conclude just how universally irresistable they are.
It takes a real genius to interpret the phrase "pro-life"...
I think that it's relatively fair to allow the movement that self-identifies as X to define X. I don't go around telling a "pro-choier" what "pro-choice" means. I allow the actions, words, and writings of the pro-choice movement (e.g. NARAL, NOW, and PP) to speak for themselves. Is it too much to ask that you allow your political opponents to speak for themslves, rather than insist on retaining for yourself the authority to tell everyone what their own stance really means?
They key, I think, is to take an unpopular group of people and convince the masses that they are second-rate humans and their lives are just not as valuable.
Exactly. Other than the word "unpopular" I agree word-for-word, and consider that exactly the method being used to strip unborn human beings of their human rights. Rather than "unpopular" they are "invisible", but certainly expensive to keep around. The pro-choice side rests on the proposition that human rights are not for all human beings: that is that "their lives are just not as valuable" as the lives of the born.
The burka-clad arabs are not even Christians, a carpet bombing is just about enough due process for every one of them. And those starving children in Africa - well, they are n-----rs for god sake! Let them starve! Besides we are not killing them, we are just standing by while they die, while we could have saved each one for $5/year. The right of life is only a negative right you see.
I see your grasp of international aid is no beter than your grasp of history. It really is sad to me that so many liberals subsist on good intentions alone, when good intentions with research would benefit the world far more.
I'll address the points one-by-one:
1. I said that pro-life does not necessitate strict pacifism. You took this to mean that carpet-bombing civilians is A-OK. I am amused, but not surprised, at where you ran off with that argument, but I'd like a response to what I actually said rather than what you think I believe.
2. Allegations of racism and religious intolerance are about par for the course. It's just a matter of commonly known fact that if you're conservative it is because you are intolerant of others: http://kiriath-arba.blogspot.com/2006/11/libertarians-liberals-and-who-really.html (my blog)
3. The staving children in Africa: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,363663,00.html (der spiegal interview of kenyan economist) http://kiriath-arba.blogspot.com/2007/06/myth-of-big-push.html and (my blog again)
I hope you will read, or at least skim, those articles. In case you don't here's the short version: I care deeply about how Americans can best alleviate suffering in the world and have dedicated serious amounts of time to researching this problem. Research will not solve problems, but trying to fix problems without knowing what you're doing can make things much, much worse. Ignorant attempts to "fix" Africa, the Middle East and so on have led to almost as much suffering (if not more) than attempts to oppress those same regions. Far more have died in the name of progress and "help" (Stalin, Pol Pot, the mess made of Africa and the Middle East due to foreign 'aid') than died in quests for God, Glory, and Gold.
Before you condemn conservative as heartless bastards
First off, your example is invalid because the cops may indeed break down the door and check on your kids.
No. They can not break in just to check on my kids. They can not. Your own post confirms this. They have to have reason to believe something is going on *right now*, or they have to have sufficient evidence to get a warrant. I listed both of these examples in my own post. They can not simply pick a random door and, with no basis for suspicion, just enter to check and see how things are going. They. Can. Not. Do. That.
If abortions are made illegal there has to be a reason and enforcement, and both are intrusions into the privacy of individuals at a very basic level.
You are conflating legality and enforcement. To the extent that enforcing abortion laws would violate individual rights they can not be enforced. It does not follow, merely because they are hard to enforce, that the acts themselves can not be criminalized at all. There are, in fact, ways to enforce abortion laws without violating rights. One simple example took place in Spain, where a sting operation went to an abortion provider and asked about getting an illegal abortion. The provider explained how the law could be circumvented and this was probably cause for susbequent raids that found plenty of evidence of illegal activity.
This is no more invasive than sting operations where kids try to purchase alcohol while under age.
I will give you this: pro-actively enforcing a law against *having* abortions would be practically impossible. That's fine. Most pro-lifers have no desire to prosecute women in crisis pregnancies anyway. Pro-lifers beleive that they are in genuine need of help. We believe that abortion is not really help (it's band-aid, not a solution) but certainly additional prosuection isn't "help" either.
Since these examinations were required to determine illegal activities, they managed to become legally mandated.
I agree that it has happened in the past. I disagree that it is necessarily the case that it will happen again.
For instance, random universal drug testing. It should be illegal as a violation of the 4th amendment, but it is not, and the continuous justification for this is that drugs are illegal.
Yes, it is illegal. Drug testing is allowed as a condition of employment, before donating blood, and for other reasons, but "universal rqandom drug testing" is illegal and does not exist. Not in the USA, anyway. The cops don't get to just pick random social security numbers, track down the owner, and adminster drug tests simply as a fishing expedition. It. Is. Not. Legal.
If you think for one minute that the same bunch of folks who literally peek in people's bedroom windows to enforce sodomy laws are going to blanche at having to have women regularly inspected throughout their pregnancies to ensure proper fetal health and that no laws protecting the child were broken (abortion, intoxication in pregnancy)I think you have not been paying attention.
That's not a fair representation of the base of the pro-life movement. There are dinosaur-denying Bible-thumpers, but that's not the norm. I've been involved in the pro-life movement for over a decade. I've been to national conventions. I've worked with state affiliates of the NRLC. I've met Catholics, Baptists, Jews, Buddhists and atheists. There's a difference between the "God says so" social conservatives (who care about sodomy laws) and the pro-lifers who see it as an issue of civil rights. I'm that kind, and the vast majority of pro-lifers are as well. The crazies are just louder.
I do wonder how supporting abortion laws as well as the party most responsible for extending the reach of the federal government and our foreign adventures (especially of late) fit with the rest of it; that would probably have been a better question for Mr. Paul.
Well Paul is obviously attempting to take the Republican party away from the neo-con big-gov't di
I was merely pointing out that the absolute worst that a pro-choicer can expect from President Paul would be him saying "Hey you States sort it out", then having the issue never cross his desk again.
That requires overturning Roe v Wade. Not so many pro-choicers will be thrilled with that.
He also supports, or at least entertains as a real possibility, the idea of a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. Now realistically that's not going to fly any time soon. But ideologically you can't get more pro-life than that.
And for those that might want to know my personal opinions on the subject, I think Bill Clinton said it best. Abortions should be legal, safe, and above all else rare.
That's cheap rhetoric, nothing more. In the US you can get an abortion at any time for any reason. That is the de facto rule. Yes, yes: I know very well that Roe sets up a system of trimesters and talks the talk about "health". But then Doe v. Bolton, handed down the same day, defined "health" so broadly that a health exception is essentially a blanket exception. So, in practice, the US Constitution has been interpreted to say that a woman has a right to an abortion at any time for any reason. That doesn't scream "rare" to me. Add to that the vitriolic opposition form pro-choice groups (PP, NOW, NARAL, etc.) for any law that would (for example): require surgical abortion facilities to adhere to general outpatient surgical standards, require parents to consent or even be informed of a minors abortion*, prevent a non-custodian from taking a minor across state lines to get an abortion, require doctors give basic facts about pre-natal development to women seeking abortions, impose 24-hour waiting periods, etc. and I think that the whole "rare" aspect of that equation is a bit of a joke.
Keep in mind that PP gets at least 1/3rd their operating revenue from abortions. How rare do you really think they want them to be? And what PP, NARAL, and NOW want from abortion they get from the Clintons.
The fact is that Americans are *far* more conservative on abortion than the Constitution allows (2/3rds want stricter laws on abortion than Roe v Wade/Doe v Bolton allow) and that the pro-choice side succeeds largely by obfuscating with rhetoric the extent to which their own agenda is far more radical than most people would suspect.
* all such laws include exceptions where abuse is an issue
Define extremely. Is he against death penalty?
The idea that a pro-life stance necessitates being opposed to the death penalty is silly. Everyone knows "pro-life" is a stance about abortion and maybe euthanasia. There's no rational way to get "anti-death penalty" out of "pro-life". If you're going to start saying that "pro-life" means just literally "for life, in all cases", why restrict it to human life? Why woudln't pro-life be against anti-biotics? Why wouldn't pro-life be vegan? Why not pacifist?
It's pure sophistry when someone takes the phrase "pro-life" and decides to interpret some of it literally and some of it non-literally.
I don't know how you can call Ron Paul pro-life unless you assume that life stops at birth.
Because the definition of "pro-life" can easily be summed up as saying: All human beings have an equal right to life. This right to life is a negative right ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights ) and not a positive one. Simply put: all human beings have the right not to be electively killed. That is the pro-life position. It does not say "you can't kill anything, ever" it says "you can't electively kill human beings without due process". Things like: death penalty, just war, and self-defense (not to mention eating meat) are not required (for or against) in the pro-life position.
No, it is not. Ron Paul is a federalist (states rights) but he is pro-life independent of that. Some people oppose Roe v. Wade only because it violated states rights. Paul opposes it for that reason and because he considers abortion to be "the greatest moral issue of our time".
I know a lot of Libertarians are all gung-ho about being pro-choice because, superficially, it sounds like less government intrusion. But a strong pro-life stance is perfetly compatible with maximal liberty. The fundamental issue of abortion is whether or not all human beings deserve equal human rights. If you think they do: then maximal liberty comes from banning elective abortions, not from allowing it.
This is Ron Paul's stance. He's pro-life, not just pro-state's rights. Get over it people. Given these dilemmas, what should those of us in the pro-life community do? First, we must return to constitutional principles and proclaim them proudly. We must take a principled approach that recognizes both moral and political principles, and accepts the close relationship between them. Legislatively, we should focus our efforts on building support to overturn Roe v. Wade. Ideally this would be done in a fashion that allows states to again ban or regulate abortion. State legislatures have always had proper jurisdiction over issues like abortion and cloning; the pro-life movement should recognize that jurisdiction and not encroach upon it. The alternative is an outright federal ban on abortion, done properly via a constitutional amendment that does no violence to our way of government. http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul100.html
His stance on abortion is one I disagree with but for now I generally support Ron Paul. I am both pro-life and pro-choice.
Word games aside, this is an impossible proposition. Pro-choice means "abortions should be legal on demand". This is the de facto rule of law in the US and, in fact, 90-95% of the 1M+ abortions performed every year are elective. That iS: there is no signficant or unusual health risk, no fetal abnormality, no rape, etc. The pro-choice stance requires stripping some human beings of the fundamental right to life. The pro-life stance (which can include exceptions for rape/incest, life/serious health, etc.) rests upon the proposition that all human beings have an equal right to life.
The stances of the pro-choice and pro-life sides with respect to human rights are mutually exclusive. "I wouldn't get an abortion, but I can't legislate it", or "I think it's morally wrong but I can't impose my morality on you" are not pro-life positions. They are pro-choice and pro-choice only because they rule out the right to life of certain kinds of human beings. That is not pro-life. Merely finding abortion morally problematic or icky is insufficient for being pro-life.
I think it's important to note that he's extremely against the legality of abortions being a Federal issue, for the record.
You seem to be saying he's against it being a Federal issue as opposed to being pro-life. You can be both. Ron Paul is. His own words: As an obstetrician who has delivered over 4000 children, I have long been concerned with the rights of unborn people. I believe this is the greatest moral issue of our time. The very best of the western intellectual tradition has understood the critical link between moral and political action. Each of these disciplines should strongly inform and support the other. Ron Paul is indeed concerned that the issue be handled within the bounds of limits on Constitutional powers, but this does not mean his pro-life stance comes only from wishing to turn the issue over to the states. He is committed to the principles of the pro-life cause (equal human rights for all human beings).
There are two approaches he favors to Constitutionally ending elective abortion in the US. One is the kind of federalism you assert is his only motivation (it is not). The other is a Constitutional amendment to prohibit elective abortions. You can't tell me that someone who considers a Constitutional amendment to ban an issue is arguing from a solely "let the states decide" Libertarian philosophy. Ron Paul is a federalist *and* he is pro-life: We must take a principled approach that recognizes both moral and political principles, and accepts the close relationship between them. Legislatively, we should focus our efforts on building support to overturn Roe v. Wade. Ideally this would be done in a fashion that allows states to again ban or regulate abortion. State legislatures have always had proper jurisdiction over issues like abortion and cloning; the pro-life movement should recognize that jurisdiction and not encroach upon it. The alternative is an outright federal ban on abortion, done properly via a constitutional amendment that does no violence to our way of government. http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul100.html
But they can!
No, they can't. No matter how much you may hate the government for regulating drugs, and no matter how much controversy there may be over "no-knock" warrants, the fact of the matter is that the cops can come into your house in only one of 3 ways:
1. your permission
2. a warrant (which must be based on some reasonable belief they will find evidence and not just a fishing trip)
3. reasonable evidence of imminent danger/crime in progress
People who go into hysterics about how our nation is a police state already only harm the cause of liberty by sensationalizing a serious issue.
I can't tell if this is hysteria or just sloppy pronoun useage. Does the "it" refer to someone being prosucuted for getting an illegal abortion at all, or does it refer to the draconian methods proposed for ensuring this doesn't happen: Mandatory pregnancy test on departure for all females of childbearing age.
If they are no longer pregnant a month after their return, then short of a proven miscarriage, etc. they are prosecuted. I've noticed that pro-choice people frequently assert that if abortion were to be made legal, the country that made it illegal what have to revert to all kinds of 1984-esque techniques to actually prevent abortions. This is true. The problem is that just because something is illegal does not mean it has to be - or even can be - arbitrarily enforce. For example: child abuse is illegal but that does not mean the government can trample rights at will to prevent child abuse. If you are seen beating your kid, you are likely to be arrested. If you aren't seen beating your kid, the cops have no right to break down your door and check.
The two main problems are:
1. enforcement of any law has to conform to restrictions on government powers (Miranda rights, warrants, etc.)
2. criminal law is essentially punitive and not preventative in nature
In any case, the story in Spain you refer to is obviously *not* some sort of draconian "you have to take a pregnancy test to travel" and "you have to prove a lack of pregnancy resulted from a natural miscarriage" instance. From your own source, here's what happened: On November 26th, 2007, police agents searched four Barcelona clinics owned by Dr. Carlos Morin. The raid was ordered by the Court of Justice following a complaint by a Catholic anti-abortion group, e-Christians, which claimed abortions were being performed illegally. Dr. Morin had been shown on TV in a secretly recorded tape offering an abortion to a Danish woman who was in her seventh month of pregnancy, and explaining that "loopholes" in Spanish law that would make this possible. Further raids followed at other clinics; 13 people were arrested, including doctors and anesthesiologists. In Holland, a Dutch woman returning from Spain was arrested and charged with having undergone an illegal abortion. Almost all Madrid clinics were then raided - and a number of irregularities were allegedly found. These included forged signatures of physicians performing abortions, presigned blank medical forms signed by a psychiatrist who certified that the "patient" - unnamed and unexamined - suffered from a serious mental health problems that justified an abortion under Spanish law, and evidence of an attempt by one clinic to destroy medical records in anticipation of police action. So the raids came only after there was reasonable suspicion of illegal activity. I'm not so sure about the admissibility of the hidden video footage, but it certainly doesn't rise to the level of entrapment. Someone goes in, asks for an illegal abortion, and the MD explains how it can be arranged. As a result of this evidence of illegal activity, raids are conducted which result in accumulating far more evidence that abortion laws in Spain were being circumvented.
This has nothing to do with Orwellian mandatory pregnancy tests or some kind of reversal (for the US, anyway) of the presumption of innocence that would require a woman to somehow prove that a miscarriage was spontaneous and not induced. I don't know if the OP actually thinks pro-life advocates would favor such insanity or not, but it's neither required as a part of the pro-life position nor embraced by any pro-life person that I have talked to in my entire life. I, as a pro-life individual, would be right there on the protest lines against such a rampant and unwarranted infringement of individual liberties.
Oh, and for the record, Ron Paul is extremely pro-life.
Thanks for that response.
I knew that any attempt to defend the golden plates would inevitably result in someone posting about "magic underpants" . It's great that wikipedia automatically redirects from "magic underpants" to the actual article: temple undergarments.
Sacred religious clothing is a part of many traditions from all around the world. And to the extent that it's unfamiliar it is strange and thus prone to ridicule. The only thing remotely interesting about Mormon religious apparel is that they were it under rather than on top of their normal clothes.
I actually like the privacy this entails. The temple undergarments symbolize sacred commitments between the believer and God. It appeals to me that this is reflected in private rather than public symbolism. (Not to mock outside religous apparel at all. Thats' just an aspect of the Mormon take that I like.
To a Mormon the undergarments are a symbol of personal commitment. That's why we wear them as undergarments.
If that makes them that much easier to ridicule as "magic underpants", then so be it. It's not like we're trying to makea fashion statement here.
You expect to find the scripture of a given people written on materials that fit with their culture, history, and resources. Ascetic Jewish prophets living in the desert wrote on parchment. They probably would have written on precious plates (gold, brass, etc.) except for the fact that, if you believe the Bible, the guys weren't exactly rolling in precious metals. They were usually living in caves hiding out (e.g. Isaiah). So parchment it is.
The Book of Mormon purports to be a record started by a king and largely kept by rulers. So they had more resources and upgraded to the "precious metals" plan.
The point, however, is that you're supposed to be locating the historical claims of a religion in history. And if that's what you're doing, the "gold plates" are simply not strange. I'm not trying to defend the entire Mormon religion here. But some criticisms make more sense than others, and the criticism based on "gold tablets" is an appeal to ignorant sensationalism. Nothing more, and nothing less.
I'm not interested in trying to bury or hide the Hofman murders. He was a Mormon. He was a criminal. He forged documents and then killed people.
What I'm scratching my head over is why you think someone who was trying to rip off the Mormon Church is a good example of the problem with Mormons. I would have expected something more like "Under the Banner of Heaven" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_banner_of_heaven), which at least stands a chance of making a more general case that Mormonism is a violent faith.
Obviously I don't believe that one either, but telling sensational tales about minority religions is about as good a way to make a buck as any I suppose.
Um... yeah. Yeah you do need to say more. The problem with the Mormons seems to be not so much that they have a weird religion (seriously - Jews with the whole "kill your son, no wait - don't" thing, Catholics with the "eat my flesh, literally" thing, Christians in general with the whole "I'm God, nail me to a tree" thing, etc.) as that their weird religion is newer than other weird religions. If you're going to mock Mormons for gold plates, I can't figure out how you're going to do this and not bat an eye at the rest of Jeudeo-Christian tradition.
Also, when it comes to golden plates, they are just not that weird. They are pretty common in ancient cultures that wanted to write something down that would stay legible for centuries. The reason gold, or other precious metals, was used was simple: gold ages well. In recent decades, scholars have discovered many examples of inscribed metal plates and scrolls throughout the Mediterranean and Mesopotamian regions. One inscribed gold plate was issued by Darius the Great of Persia dating to 500 BCE, and was stored in a stone box in the temple at Persepolis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_plates
If you're going to pick something to make fun of as weird, at least do your homework and find something that really is weird.
Agreed. There are some serious questions about journalistic independence you have to ask when a potentially market-shifting product (cheap linux PCs in general, not necessarily this particular model) gets bashed by a magazine that makes a living selling ads for companies directly threatened by the product being reviewed.
How about telling the tech to supply his own data for burning? Even if there is material on the HD that's legal, how can the tech assert he has the right to make a copy of it?
If you read the article you'll see that this is kind of the point: the guy didn't ask them to supply their own data. He understood they would burn some of his data and was fine with that. In this way (the prosecution argues and I agree) he gave up his right to an expectation of privacy. He handed them the drive and said "install the DVD burner" and they said "we'll need to look at some files to test it" and he said "sure thing".
If he had said "get your own data" or even "only use data from this file" or anything like that, he would have been able to argue that there was some expectation of privacy. But since he didn't, I don't think this case is even really that difficult (yes, yes, IANAL). No expectation of privacy = evidence is admissible = he goes to jail.
The alternative is to say that a costumer/client relationship is privileged (like with an MD or a lawyer) and I don't buy that. You *need* to divulge all the details of your health, etc. to get effective care from a lawyer or doctor. You don't need to show your computer tech guy child porn to get your computer fixed. And even if the problem is with child porn specifically, you clearly don't have a right to get your child porn collection recovered or whatever.
I think that actually misses the point. If you've worked as an engineer or a consultant - or even if you've just helped people search for stuff on Google - you probably have realized that THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT TO ASK FOR. A really good consultant/engineer is someone who has the ability to figure out what a person wants based on what they say.
Even if you mastered natural language (and I'm not saying that's a surmountable task) I think people would be shocked to see that Google searches would still be frustrating.
I'm not just saying "blame the user", I'm saying that language itself is not even the last obstacle to overcome. You're going to need to figure out an program that not only understands natural language, but also context, culture, etc.
Getting an AI of near-human intelligence is not enough, because to be really good at getting people the answers to questions they can't ask you have to be of above-average capability.
Well I wasn't just trying to be clever with semantics. It seems that the border overtaking the spacecraft is as scientifically interesting as the spacecraft overtaking the border - or is there something physically different about the border overtaking the spacecraft that makes it different and unremarkable?
The threshold and spacecraft will cross each other 3 times, right, not two. So why only talk about two?
No no. The article says that due to the expansion/contraction of the barrier, voyager 2 will cross the threshold twice.
Once to get outside the boundary, twice if the boundary expands and catches back up with it, and thrice to once again get outside the boundary.
Just a thought.
Pure speculation is always a great debate tactic.