[-V-]

Depending on your interpretation of life it could be argued that killing the female egg or male sperm is murder and all birth control and male masturbation should be illegal. Can it be illegal to terminate a human fetus but legal to execute the human adult who commits the crime? I support the protection of all species of thinking, feeling animals including human embryos at some point in the birth cycle as long as it is not arbitrarilly decided by government or church.

[gratelady1]

I think it is safe to assume this issue dead, since everyone should realize that this is and should be a private issue between a woman and her doctor. It is also a very local issue and should remain as such. If your state has laws you dont agree with move to a state or country that is more in line with your moral obligations as determined by your concscience or religon that is true freedom of choice, many women dont have a choice when they become pregnant. If there is a law that needs to passed is that our federal legislators should not waste our time and money we have invested in them, on issues which have already been resolved, thus, one would wonder why it is being brought up in this chat room. Your wasting your time and space on blog that will not in effect, help any progressive politically- we already won this issue.

[-V-]

my concern with this and any issue is what is moral, ethical, fair and just and not whether you, society, or our courts consider it already "won" or "lost".

[gratelady1]

As with any concern, a society finds a way for everyone to accept conditions that are tolerable. We have a fair and tolerable justice system, which acts as checks and balances so one person can not demand unreasonable actions upon another- due to legislation or loopholes in the system. To trash the checks and balance system to to want a more autocratic system and thus why would anyone live here, if they really want to live in a totalitarian, fascist system? But the good news is, that if you are a good person and wait long enough you will get one in the end anyway. Sooner, if the GWBs of the world get their way.

[gratelady1]

I have to quantify a few things, tough I know 1-tin will get irked at my run-ons, I have assisted in performing abortions, I am not proud of it and was just doing my job, does that make me a bad person- to want to save lives? Maybe, that is between me and my maker. But the olny issue here is that many dont want to be related to mass murder through funding (taxes) becuase they feel that they are then supporting sin and such. I can say this to that, Go to confession and all your troubles are fixed. Those like me and the women who choose to have an abortion, dont have such a luxury. Our actions will haunt our consciences and our souls and though we may be able to ask for forgiveness, this doesnt mean we will be able to ever have comfort with those actions we have no choice with. But look on the bright side, You wont have to tolerate us in heaven will you? SO go ahead and annie up. And by the way, the root cause is sex and impregnation- all the guys could get themselves fixed and no abortions wwould be needed- would they? How moral are you if you would demand from one gender and not the other?

[gratelady1]

Before anyone holds anyone else in judgement, may I suggest you first read "Roe vs, Wade" brief, and then you can have an informed judgement if you feel yourself worthy of playing "God".
http://www.tourolaw.edu/patch/Roe/#rop
Pay close attention to the privacy issues.

[Adolph]

I have assisted in performing abortions, I am not proud of it and was just doing my job, does that make me a bad person- to want to save lives?

Just doing your job?? Where have I heard that one before, it sounds so very familiar? :confused:

Saving lives? Can you elaborate on that one?

When does human life begin? That is the question that needs to be debated. Not some false belief that a person has the right to do with their bodies as they wish.

[gratelady1]

Just doing your job?? Where have I heard that one before, it sounds so very familiar? :confused:

Saving lives? Can you elaborate on that one?

When does human life begin? That is the question that needs to be debated. Not some false belief that a person has the right to do with their bodies as they wish.

The law is as it is right now- so accept it. If not, do what you can to change it, but stay out of people's rights to privacy.

I have saved lives, in relation to abortion, mainly due to physical and psyhcological rationales provided by my clients- it is still none of your business!

I have done it, that is all that matters, and it has nothing to do with you, or your beliefs- that's the part you will never accept.

You seen these folks placing crossesd with statistics of how many babies are aborted, over a certain given amount of time- let me inform you that these can only be estimates grounded on no specific science.

In reality more are performed than you will know about, and at different times and with different methods, chosen simply by the educational level of the female choosing it- the smarter ones never truely allow a fetus to develope, others never allow for conception to take place, others hurt themsleves so they end up in an emergency room at all hours of the night- and simply say they had a miscarriage.
No one ever knows the truth- except the would be mother, and who she shares the info with.

Ever heard of miscarriages, partial-birth-abortions, and simple abortions, how about D&Cs, or how a women had some obscure procedure done at certain times of the month.

I can state that men a purely niavee and ignorant about what truely goes on between her and her OB-GYN, and her body! They should like it that way!

If men's purpose here is to defend their offspring, then there is a certain amount of honor to that, but if men are using all these other excuses to fight for the right to make a women take a baby to term- STUPID!

[Aries28]

:mad: Typical right wing garbage. When a woman gets an abortion, she is not destroying life. It is not an actual living breathing human. It is a fetus. You have these mean spirited right wing know it alls that call us pro-abortion. We are not. We are pro-choice. If 999 out of every 1,000 girls or women decide to have the baby, that is great. We Democrats and Liberals will stand by and honor their rights to make that decision. But we also want that 1 girl or woman whose decision might be different, to be able to make that decision, have people respect and defend her right to her decision. We Democrats & Liberals can respect the rights of those who wish to go through with their decision to have childbirth, but the right wingers are so bossy and mean spirited that they refuse to accept the decision of a woman or girl who chooses abortion. Even if she is a complete stranger and lives hundreds of miles away, if they had their way, she couldn't have that abortion, because they (the far right) say so. It makes you think, who the you know what, do they think they are? An, why don't they just butt out and keep their noses out of other people's lives? Oh, by the way, it has to do with the fact that it is the woman's body, and it's her business! This is one man who will defend a woman's right to make whatever choice she wants! I will go down fighting to defend a woman's rights to make her own choice.

[snowdog]

:mad: Typical right wing garbage. When a woman gets an abortion, she is not destroying life. It is not an actual living breathing human. It is a fetus. You have these mean spirited right wing know it alls that call us pro-abortion. We are not. We are pro-choice. If 999 out of every 1,000 girls or women decide to have the baby, that is great. We Democrats and Liberals will stand by and honor their rights to make that decision. But we also want that 1 girl or woman whose decision might be different, to be able to make that decision, have people respect and defend her right to her decision. We Democrats & Liberals can respect the rights of those who wish to go through with their decision to have childbirth, but the right wingers are so bossy and mean spirited that they refuse to accept the decision of a woman or girl who chooses abortion. Even if she is a complete stranger and lives hundreds of miles away, if they had their way, she couldn't have that abortion, because they (the far right) say so. It makes you think, who the you know what, do they think they are? An, why don't they just butt out and keep their noses out of other people's lives? Oh, by the way, it has to do with the fact that it is the woman's body, and it's her business! This is one man who will defend a woman's right to make whatever choice she wants! I will go down fighting to defend a woman's rights to make her own choice.

So since its HER BODY, she should be allowed to produce a crack baby? or
fetal alcohol syndrone, and thats ok?

Pro-choice, pro-aportion, It still, ENDS the chance that a fetus can develop
and have a chance at life. But lets not do that, because YOU want to make
sure that a woman has the RIGHT to terminate a fetus's life. And you call
a person who does not support "A woman's right", MEAN SPIRITED? how mean
spirited is it to terminate a baby? Mean Spirited.... bad chocie of words.

You can go down "fighting", because you can....a fetus can't.

[Jane of Arc]

Snowdog,

The general 'vibe' in this room is that "abortion" is wrong. The religious right have done a brilliant job even with progressives.

A fetus is part of a woman's body. It is not a separate entity. It is a biological part of the woman's body. The woman's body created it when one of her eggs was stimulated by a sperm. This fetus will potentially become a human being when it can breathe on it's own outside the womb.

If you believe in God, you may believe God created the baby.

If you believe in aliens, you may believe aliens created the baby.

If you believe in inter-dimensional spirits, you may believe they created the baby.

If you believe in science, you may believe that a biological event occured between an egg and a sperm creating a baby.

Or you may believe in a blend of the above.

Different women believe different things concerning 'the baby event' with their body. But it's happening to THEIR bodies. Their bodies do NOT belong to the state. (Yet.) Their bodies are not monitored by the State. (Yet.) Their bodies belong to them.

All women should have the Constitutional right to govern the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for THEIR BODY.

If you don't believe an abortion is right for you ... don't have one. But keep your damn government hands off my body!

I swear, if men got pregnant this would never be an issue in a million years. I have to keep reminding myself women have only been 'allowed' to vote for less than a century, after milleniums of being property.

[jrw71470]

I think that this election showed that most Americans still support a womans reproductive right's. South Dakota overturned a law banning all abortions and Oregon rejected a law requiring a parents approval for a young woman to get an abortion. Generally, I think that people rejected abortion as an issue that defines the political landscape and ignites the religious right. We progressives must frame the abortion debate and protect reproductive right's

[lynchbug]

Aside from the fact that the Constitution provides that you will be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures, and that law has established special confidentiality regarding physician-patient relations, you can find much about how this all really functions by reading the Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade or Googling "Roe v. Wade".

Basically, unlike preceding governmental structures, our form of Government provides as its foundation the basic premise that we each are endowed by our Creator or Nature's God certain inalienable rights, and that these, taken together, provide individual and collective sovereignty.

Personal sovereignty is best summed up in the expressions "A person's home is their castle".

However, Grace Slick perhaps summed it up best when she wrote "It's none of the government's business who comes to or from my body."

[Magi2]

It is not the "Role of Government" to mandate what a person MUST DO or NOT...with their own body!

What is the name for that type of government?



Anyway ladies, especially those Hillary/Cindy girls, I call your attention to this article:
http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/25/putting-the-rat-in-erratum/

Let us review, Kristol has previously suggested McCain will pick the following to run with him: Clarence Thomas, General Petraeus, General Odierno, and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

But (PNAC) Kristol is back and never one to be embarassed, he has a new prediction and suggestion -- that McCain nominate his bestest li'l buddy, Joe Lieberman [somewhere Lindsey Graham is crest-fallen].

And why?

I would like to add the neo cons NEED all the little soldiers they would get to fight their OIL wars all over the world...........if they could defeat Roe v Wade!


Hillary supporters could protest Obama’s glass ceiling by voting for John McCain and the Democratic Party’s 2000 vice presidential nominee.

Yes, because who would bring down the "glass ceiling" faster than another two white guys who opposed equal pay and reproductive rights?

Yes, McCain/Lieberman breaking the glass ceiling in time for the shards to plummet into your uterus -- but it's just a short-ride to another hospital.

[bigtex]

if abortion is not wrong, then why do many women feel guilty about it after they have an abortion?

[Jennifer_SFBA]

Maybe the religious right, not the religious left, has something to do with that feeling of guilt along with right wing, not left wing, cultural pressure?

[lynchbug]

My personal belief is this, that the old rabbinical test of 40 days might be right as to determining the beginning of life, that is, twelve days after a missed period... but no, I am not a Christian, so please do not think that is where I am coming from.

I could go on to say that a human being has a right to life in whatever stage they happen to be in, old, demented and terminally ill, if you want to take it that far. Also, though, I believe that an old, demented and terminally ill person who has left Living Will asking to be euthanized should they reach that state, has also a right to die, humanely, with dignity, and with medical assistance.

As to the decisions such as these, and in consideration of abortion, above all, I believe in the dignity and sovereignty of human will, given freely by Nature's God, the creator, to each who has the capacity to exercise that will. A fetus cannot exercise her will, until, a moment after delivery, when she expresses her will to feed.

I believe that women have the right to act in accordance with their personal beliefs.

If a woman believes that her pregnancy is not a human person until a certain stage, then, that is her belief. Whether formed by good information or bad information, what goes on in your body is your business (and your doctor's, when you give him consent to treat), and what goes on in my body is my business. It is not the government's business, and if your pastor wants to teach whatever to your congregation, that's fine too, just don't expect me to tell the same thing to my coven, because we do not believe that.

That is why I have helped provide laboratory testing of the products of conception removed in elective and therapeutic abortions.

I support individual Liberty in all matters, and Health care Choices mad by all properly informed patients, and especially Women's Health, where for years, and through the present time, there is frequently inadequate female health research done in this country.

If you think that neither Christian, Mormon nor Muslim women are having pregnancies terminated, then you may want to think about that a little more.

And if you think this is an issue that God disapproves of, well, then it is a matter between those women and the Deity they cleave to, if they cleave to a belief in a Deity at all.

Regardless of my personal beliefs, I would not dare infringe on your Liberty, for I would not like you to do so to myself.

If one believes that abortion is wrong, that is fine, and they should hold those beliefs if they feel strongly.

However, it gives them no right to force their belief on others who think differently.

That is what Osama bin Laden's manifesto was about several November's ago. In that lengthy speech, he basically said, "People of the United States, you must worship Allah [may he be ever praised] as we do, or we will kill you all, as Shari'a says we must"

Bigtex, this here is all about mob rule, if you haven't caught on...that is, the biggest team wins.

For over thirty years the mob has said it is a woman's own decision.

Throughout time, men have used uncontrolled pregnancy rates as a way to oppress women through their child bearing years, forcing them to submit to a man for sustenance and for the sustenance of their children.

We are done being anybody's property.

[lynchbug]

Yes, and I would go with what Jennifer has said, Great Answer Jennifer!

(Maybe the guilt is that she let the guy have her, even though he kept taking the condom off.)

One thoutght there, Bigtex...you might wanna be more concerned with finding out why so many of our wanted, full term babies die as infants in this country.

We have the single highest Infant Mortality rate of any developed nation on earth.

If you are concerned with a right to life, I would start with the live births, and get that problem solved before creating more live births, ya know, if you had any real sincerity about women's and children's wellbeing...

[-V-]

if abortion is not wrong, then why do many women feel guilty about it after they have an abortion?

they feel guilty because they are not sure if it is wrong. They don't know, you don't know, I don't know, the preacher doesn't know, and the government doesn't know.

Given our collective state of ignorance, the difficult decision should only be made by the person with whome this new being would be part of her own being for 9 months. We can only hope she considers all of her options, chooses with wisdom and compassion, and she should be given a reasonable amount of time to make that decision before you are allowed to throw her in jail for making a choice that you don't agree with.

[bigtex]

ok, there is a difference between a "wanted, full term baby" dieing from natural causes and an innocent baby not born yet getting killed in an abortion!!

[lynchbug]

Yes, a big difference between the two. Truthfulness requires addressing the concern of infant mortality with equal or greater zeal than the pursuit of a right to life for unborn fetuses. Truthfulness and honor require at least equal advocacy for the live born, if one is to advocate a right to life position. Why is the USA the worst of developed nations in infant mortality? If you are not advocating on that issue, you really have no Truth in asserting a right to life position. That would be at worst, hypocrisy. Otherwise it indicates just a weakly formed opinion. And any heathen Witch could tell you about The Christ's teaching on hypocrisy.

Some facts:
31% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=940DE0DC1439F934A15754C0A96E948260

Stillbirths raises this about another 1%

Also, keep in mind that very early term miscarriages may be highly under reported as they often are seen by women as delayed periods, and the products of conception recognized only as clots or portions of excess endometrium and mucus.

[Michael DeM]

if abortion is not wrong, then why do many women feel guilty about it after they have an abortion?

Let's try phrasing this a different way. If abortion is wrong, then why are there so many women who don't feel guilty after having an abortion? Whether or not someone feels guilty about something has very little bearing on whether it is right or wrong.

[Michael DeM]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-filipovic/questions-for-prolifers_b_58563.html

Questions for Pro-Lifers
Jill Filipovic

I know there are at least a few HuffPo readers who self-identify as "pro-life." So here's a question for you: How much time should she do?


One goal of the anti-choice movement is to outlaw abortion. But, as Anna Quindlen points out, anti-choice activists are almost never able to identify what the legal consequences should be for women who terminate their pregnancies. So, pro-lifers, tell me: What should the penalty be? How much time in jail should a woman face for abortion?

Anti-choicers emphasize that a fetus is a person, invested with all the same* natural rights as you or I. Life begins at conception. That fertilized egg has all of its DNA, making it just as human as all of us and endowing it with the right to live. But if a fetus is a person, and abortion indisputably kills a fetus, then abortion is murder -- deliberate, pre-meditated murder. That certainly isn't a new concept for anti-choicers -- the "abortion is murder" line has been around for decades now. But we punish people for murder. We sentence them to long prison terms, often for life. Sometimes we execute them.

Do you support executing women who have abortions?

Do you support jailing them for life? For a few decades?

What if they have multiple abortions? What if they had access to all the literature and information that anti-choicers believe women considering abortion should be required to receive, and therefore could not be construed as ignorant or unaware of what they were doing? What if they acknowledge that they know exactly what abortion entails and thtey feel no guilt or shame for terminating their pregnancies?

Quindlen writes:

Lawmakers in a number of states have already passed or are considering statutes designed to outlaw abortion if Roe is overturned. But almost none hold the woman, the person who set the so-called crime in motion, accountable. Is the message that women are not to be held responsible for their actions? Or is it merely that those writing the laws understand that if women were going to jail, the vast majority of Americans would violently object? Watch the demonstrators in Libertyville try to worm their way out of the hypocrisy: It's murder, but she'll get her punishment from God. It's murder, but it depends on her state of mind. It's murder, but the penalty should be ... counseling?

If women are so infantile that our bad acts toward fetuses must be punished with counseling or left to God, does that apply when our bad acts are directed at born people? If I kill my next-door neighbor, can I simply say that because of my tiny lady-brain and tinier lady-morals, I just didn't know any better? Can I get counseling or some smiting instead of jail time?

Anti-choice legislation has centered on the idea that life begins at conception, and that the legal defintion of "person" should include fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses. According to the National Right to Life Act, introduced to Congress this past January (and several times before that), "The terms `human person' and `human being' include each and every member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including, but not limited to, the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being."

The definition of murder is "killing a person with malice aforethought." If personhood is established at the moment of fertilization, and all people are invested with equal rights under the law, then there is no getting around the fact that under anti-choice legislation, women who terminate pregnancies are committing murder -- or at the very least, paying someone else to do it.

Some anti-choicers argue that doctors should be punished, not women. So I'll ask this:

How much time should doctors do?

Do you support executing doctors who perform abortions?

Do you support jailing them for life? For a few decades?

How do we justify prosecuting doctors for performing abortions, but not the women who pay them to perform the abortion? Are there other situations in which a person can pay another person to commit an illegal act -- an illegal act that allegedly takes a human life -- and not be held culpable?

What about women who self-induce their own abortions, without the aid of a doctor? Do they qualify as illegal abortionists? Should they be prosecuted?

How can it possibly be legally (or even morally) consistent to attach full rights to a fetus and then treat its death as somehow less important, or different, than the death of a born person? Is a fetus's death less important, or different, than the death of a born person?

Some anti-choicers argue that women are the secondary victims of abortion, that they do not know what they are doing and cannot be held responsible for their actions. If that's the case, how can we hold women responsible for killing born people? If a woman pays someone to kill her three-year-old child, can she simply argue that she didn't know it was murder and therefore lacked the malicious mindset to qualify it as such? Can she say that she was a victim? If abortion is illegalized and the law states that terminating a pregnancy is murder, then surely women will be on notice, which makes it difficult to argue that the poor dear just had no idea what she was doing. If what she needs is some good pro-life counseling, will that be the new standard for any woman who commits murder? Why does the age of the "person" killed, or their born or pre-born status, change the punishment for killing them?

[Michael DeM]

(Continued)

Anti-choicers sometimes offer the solution of criminalizing abortion, but not qualifying it as murder and not prosecuting women. But that isn't the route that anti-choice legislation is taking. And if we do go that route, why? Is killing a person through abortion less bad than killing a person after they're born? If not, then what justifies the different treatment?

To complicate things a little more: If life begins at conception, and from the moment of fertilization an egg is a full-fledged human being with the same rights as you or I, what do we do about calculating the death rate? The miscarriage rate? After all, more than half of fertilized eggs fail to implant in the uterus -- are a majority of Americans dying before they're even born? What about identical twins, who at the moment of fertilization are one person but days later become two?

What do we do about all those embryos in fertility clinics? Do we force women to implant them and carry them to term? If not, how do we justify forcing women to carry naturally-implanted pregnancies to term? If the answer is that we don't force women to be implanted with embryos, but we don't kill the embryos either -- we just let them be -- then would it be OK for pregnant women to simply remove their embryos/fetuses without purposely killing them and just hope for the best?

If a fertilized egg is a full-fledged person under the law, what other legal activities -- other than abortion -- would have to go? We know that most "pro-life" groups already oppose fertility treatments and the use of contraception. Would we make those things illegal? What would the punishment be? Would we outlaw any medical treatment that could potentially harm a fetus, even if foregoing it meant that the woman would experience severe health complications or death? What about ectopic pregnancies, wherein a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, usually in the fallopian tube, threatening the woman's health and life? Ectopic pregnancies are never viable, and it is often possible to simply give the woman a shot of methotrexate, which dissolves the egg, or to perform surgery to remove the pregnancy and saves the woman's life. But that would qualify as the intentional killing of a human being. Do we go with the current "pro-life" solution, which involves removing the entire fallopian tube, compromising the woman's fertility and killing the embryo -- but is justified because it wasn't a direct killing?

What about pregnant women engaging in behaviors that are risky for the fetus? Can she be prosecuted for child abuse or negligence if she, say, drinks coffee while she's pregnant? If she eats tuna? If she smokes? If she drinks? What about if she goes skiing? What if she didn't know she was pregnant, but should have known, and she does something risky -- like goes binge drinking every night and survives off of Cheetos? Willful blindness? Neglect? What if she miscarries, and perhaps you can attribute it to something she did -- negligent homicide?

What do doctors do if they're faced with a life-threatening pregnancy? Do they force the woman to continue it, knowing it will kill her? I mean, it's not the fetus's fault, and it can't really be construed as self-defense to terminate the pregnancy. And their lives are equal, aren't they? Do we just let nature take its course, then?

Finally, what about if we're deciding between an embryo and a born child -- who wins out? Lots of feminists have asked this question before and we've never gotten a straight answer, so let me try again. Take this hypothetical, adapted from a great many abortion-related conversations: There's a fire in a fertility clinic. Inside the clinic there's a three-year-old boy who you've never met and have absolutely no connection to. There are also 100 embryos in a box, none of which you have any connection to. You only have time to run into the clinic one time. You cannot carry the boy and the box at the same time. What do you do? Do you save 100, or do you save one?

Those who want to see abortion criminalized need to think long and hard about the consequences of their ideal policies. They need to think long and hard about their true beliefs when it comes to fetal personhood. Because this post is long and I know all your time is valuable, I'll even let busy "pro-life" readers off the hook with this one. If you don't have time to address all the above-raised points, just answer this one: How much time should she do?