Reframing the Abortion debate

I think there is a difference between what is legal or illegal under the rule of law and what should and should be allowed under what is right and wrong.

"Is there a right under certain circumstances to an abortion?" No, but that was a pretty big assumption.

"Certainly we can all agree that if a woman is likely to die if the pregnancy is not aborted, and this is denied by law (perhaps even a law targetting the woman by name) then this is an unconstitutional death sentence." No, it isn't. That is the risk a woman takes. If it is a "death sentence," then anything that could kill is a death sentence: knives, buildings, alcohol, cigarettes, cars, aspirin, time,.....

"Hence there is a right to choose to have an abortion at least in the case of risk to the life of the mother." I'll argue this one too. He makes this assessment? Doctors are not infallible. What about the "risk to the life of the" child?

At what point do you believe Human Life begins? That is the question from which to base all others.

When my dad was a medical student, one of the case that came through the medical hospital was a woman, pregnant with "twins." Problem was, this was not a normal pregnancy. One of the "twins" was a molar pregnancy, which is basically a tumor instead of a child.

So you have one normal fetus and one thing that left unchecked will probably kill both (will certainly kill the mother, and almost certainly kill the other fetus).

The accepted medical treatment for a case like this is to abort both. Is there any legal reason why Congress should be permitted to prevent this at the expense of life?

Should read: "Is there any legal reason why Congress or the States..."

Banning abortion in cases where there is a situation like ht eone I mentioned is not to be confused with allowing guns or knives. It would be closer to the nature of saying "we won't let emergency rooms treat gunshot wounds or sew people up when they get cut with a knife."

In this case, it is the government regulation that deprives people of life, and not the risk involved throughout life. Hence the 4th and 14th Amendment Life guarantee applies.

...but if we are to discuss law that's one issue, if we are to discuss what's right and wrong that's another. From which premise are you using? Laws or ethics?

That a government which refuses to allow a life to be saved essentially condemns that person to death. Hence the Life Guarantee of the 4th and 14th Amendment comes into play.

This is not like having a building collapse on you. The question is whether after it has, the Government can arbitrarily limit what can be done with your consent to save your life.

"That a government which refuses to allow a life to be saved essentially condemns that person to death." Like Terri Shiavo?

If you want to debate law, it is a mute point because we are not on the Supreme Court and killing a baby in the womb up to the time of birth is legal.

If you want to debate right vs. wrong, answer: when does an idividual's life begin?

In the case of Terri Shiavo the question wasn't whether the *government* was denying her life but rather *who* was allowed to make end-of-life decisions on her behalf. This is an entirely separate matter. I am sure that had everyone in the family agreed one way or the other, nothing would have come of it.

In short, people have the right to refuse life-saving treatments. When someone isn't capable of this, others have to determine what that person would have wanted. But that is different from whether the government can come in and regulate away life-saving treatments.

There are no bright lines. Everything is gradual. I am not sure that even full consciousness as we know it exists until sometime after birth. Not that killing infants should be legal (though in many traditional cultures it was). The only bright line is at fertilization, and then if we go that route, we would have to consider the fact that in vitro fertilization would then have to be considered taking human life (since often many eggs are fertilized as proponents of using these embryos for stem cell research point out).

There are no easy questions here. I will say this though:

I have spent a fair bit of time abroad in both Catholic and Muslim nations where abortion is illegal. I think that regardless of the legal issues at stake in the question of what degree abortion is protected under the Constitution, from a public policy perspective, the human cost of outlawing abortion is often much higher than many people realize.

For example, in Ecuador, suicide of unmarried girls who find themselves pregnant is not uncommon. And it is understandable because such young women are often excluded from the educational system, and their economic prospects for themselves and their children are severely abridged unless they get married immediately. A lot of this is due to the desire on the part of the Catholic Church to avoid letting them be examples to others. The other solution is for such young women to travel to Spain to get an abortion if they can afford to (or so I recently read in El Diario).

In Indonesia as well, suicide is often considered the alternative to abortion (which is generally forbidden by law). This is particularly true among the Chinese minority (which is predominantly Christian and Buddhist).

Let's face it: few women go out and say "I don't care if I get pregnant because I can get an abortion." Abortion is usually used after the fact, whether due to indiscretion, use of alcohol, or failure of other birth control methods. If nothing else, it is an immensely expensive and painful thing to use as birth control.

However, there are other cases, where even democratic states allow and even encourage abortion because they have no choice. Consider Singapore, for example, where most of the buildable land has been built upon, where provisions for population growth are hard to make work, etc. So the government started the stop at 2 program and as a result, in 2003, over 60% of the abortions done in Singapore were obtained by married women who didn't want to be a part of a demographic problem in that country.

I don't think that the abortion question comes down to right and wrong. I think it comes down to wrong and more wrong. The question is whether it can be justified as the lesser of evils, and whether legalizing it is better than not (that is a public policy matter which, if abortion can be restricted would be in the hands of legislative bodies).

I suppose I should disclose this:

My wife became pregnant between the time when we were engaged and when we got married. She is an Indonesian national (a Chinese-Indonesian and a Christian), and the Fiancee visa was taking its time to go through the post-9/11 Immigration process. If we just got married, it would mean starting the process over, which meant at the least, another year apart. And of course there were the issues of saving face, etc. The result was that we had a church wedding but no paperwork filed to make it legally recognized.

The stress was so bad that on at least one occasion, she attempted suicide.

Did we talk about abortion? Of course. If she had gotten one would I have blamed her? Most certainly not. Would you? I just let her know that I would support her whichever she decided she needed to do and I thought that was right.

My son was born that December. In the end, in order to avoid all sorts of legal hassles, I quit my job and moved to Indonesia so that I we could file our marriage and short circuit the reapplication process (in stead of 1 year or more via the USCIS, it would be 2 months via the embassy). Of course that took me four months to be able to start the process (total of 6 months spent in Indonesia). This was spent with a pro forma work permit, but no real source of income. I lived the entire time and paid for the medical bills for my son's birth entirely out of savings. Our finances are still recovering three years later (when I got back, I had no job, of course).

In the end, of course, we chose not to go the abortion route. But given that experience, I would not presume to judge another's decision.

...people's failure to "judge another's decision."

You are the one who mentioned Amendments and laws. Our civilization rests on Courts of Law and those Courts consists of juries (peers that should be able to differentiate between right and wrong) and JUDGES! That's right, judges who make judgements on people's actions.

As to Terri Schiavo, there is no difference between "denying her life" and "make[ing] end-of-life decisions on her behalf." To make an end-of-life decision resulting in her death is denying her life.

Life is as easy as "black and white" when you have morals and convictions. "Grey" kills. Again, you began by mentioning U.S. Amendments and Law to turn to not only culture, but "other" cultures. Slavery is still practiced, female circumcision is still practiced, voodoo is still practiced, does it make it right?

The story you elaborated on expressed abortion simply out of convenience to you and your "wife" and want acceptance for it. Assuming your child wasn't conceived by magic and you didn't think she was pregnant with anything other than a human being (cricket, rat, alien, use your imagination), that's the choice you two made when you two bedded.

Your financial situation and job prospects are the results of you and yours' decision to conceive. Reap what you sow.

Congatulations on the boy. When did his Life begin?

The question, as I stated, was whether her husband or her parents were the ones who got to make the decision on her behalf. It wasn't the state who made the decision to take her off life support, in fact the state fought hard agaisnt what her husband said were her wishes.

That was the issue before the courts. Was her husband allowed to decide on her behalf that life support was no longer appropriate?

If I was likely incapable of reasonably recovering, I would rather die. In fact, I have made it known that I would rather be conscious and in pain than drugged and less than fully conscious due to medical intervention. That is my right.

I won't judge it because I would have understood and supported my wife if she had chosen that option. And I would have been right to do so under the circumstances, I think. It would therefore be hypocritical of me to hold it against others.

In the end, the issue about the divorce was about what I felt was best first for my wife. My willingness and even desire to be a father took a second seat to wanting to take care of her. I do not believe that my priorities were wrong at the time and I stand behind them.

At the end of the day, I think that there are a lot of things to consider. The first is that I don't hold with the religious right on issues of sexual morality.

Also in part due to what I saw in the Christian church I attended in Indonesia, and my quest for answers to quetions that raised, I no longer find any personal value in Christianity. I recognize that most Christians in this country don't manifest the negative potential I see in Christianity, but I can't be intellectually honest and omit from my understanding of what Christianity demands of its followers what I have seen. So while I won't ask you to question your faith, I will say I no consider myself a pagan. And I will say that my judgement of Christian scripture does not pull too many punches.

I believe in having a method for judging based in part on empathy and in part on on other grounds.

I think part of the Christian scripture of judging, boards, and specks (in eyes) is that a lot of it ends up being projective-- people see in others what they don't like in themselves. Or as Aliester Crowly wrote, "The prohibitionist must necessarily be a man of weak moral character, for he cannot even conceive of a man capable of resisting sin." Hence those who accuse everyone else of being intolerant are usually the most intolerant of all. Those who accuse everyone else of stealing from them are probably stealing from others, etc. Works most of the time.

The second part of empathy is understanding what it must be like to grapple with a decision. In a decision like abortion, I figure that others will own that decision. I can share my perspective, and even share why we decided againt it. However in the end, I am not responsible for anyone else's decision.

Where I draw the line about active resistance is where there is objective communal harm. In these cases, I am quite willing to accept some responsibility for my part in ending the problem. For example, when I was in college, I once put a traditional viking curse (basically just a declaration to the Gods and spirits that the people were a problem) on a pair of individuals who were causing a large number of problems for the community including stealing (including from me and several people I knew), harassing many people (including me and my girlfriend at the time), etc. The curse worked justly and appropriately and they were given strong warnings to change their behavior and forced to move. Despite the fact that they were arrested for posession of stolen property, they were neither kicked out of the college nor charged for their crimes. I was happy with this. It didnt hurt them seriously but gave them a chance to reform (which one did far more than the other).

So I am not unwilling to judge people for their actions. I just don't want to be responsible for everyone's decisions. If you make a mistake, that is your problem, not mine. Only if you step across very objective lines, however, will I act. Those usually mean threatening or otherwise harming me and others I know. In these cases, I will often take matters into my own hands and do whatever I feel needs to be done (for example, I have no problem giving my life to protect my family from an intruder).

Finally a word on morality. I do not believe that actions out of fear of divine punishment can ever be moral. Morality implies lifting up the soul, which implies a certain level of confidence. Love is moral. Actions to help others are moral. Helping others solve their problems is moral.

Now if you go back to my Consdervative Principles, I think that allowing abortion fits there.

There are no bright lines which are truly defensible.

...blah, blah, blah, religions and apostasy....

In two words or less, is your son alive today?

My son is alive today, and I of course I love him. In fact, today is his third birthday.

But, I don't think that is by itself dispositive in this argument.

was your son alive in 1962?

...have you given up already? You brought up the debate.

Was your son alive in 1962?

Or have you figured out the fallacy of your "ideas?"

I was out of town for a few days. I was delayed by a day because I blew out a tire while out of town. Jut got back on line and see you have become impatient and resorted to name calling.

Look, we can agree on the following:

1) In a perfect world, abortion would not exist.
2) We don't live in a perfect world.

Where we disagree is simply whether abortion can ever be a lesser evil. I believe that this is an issue that cannot be resolved via logical argument because it is based on different priorities of value.

You ask if my son was alive in 1962? *I* wasn't alive in 1962. Unless you mean in spirit, and I believe in the immortality of the soul (that is the significance of the Yule Tree, after all), so (also, reincarnation is an option we can choose if we want to, or so says my tradition)...

My value was, when facing that decision, the protection of my wife. Yes, I am glad we opted not to go that route, but in the end, I don't think it would have been a matter of serious regret if the decision had gone the other way. I am intellectually honest enough to say so, and I don't think my priorities were misplaced.

I can only suspect your propensity to jump to conclusions suggests a certain insecurity on your part.

should be as follows:

First, everone should recognize that the fact that we have a falling abortion rate in the US is a good thing for everyone on all sides of this debate.

The approach shouldn't be to force people to make a decision one personally agrees with but rather to look at *why* women feel that abortion is necessary and then work to reduce those circumstances when people (men or women) see that as the best option. This means providing proper support for circumstances when women find themselves pregnant and either unmarried or in a similar position.

In my case, it was in part different because of the challenges in adapting to a different culture (Chinese-Indonesian culture is *very* unwilling to accept pregnancies among the unmarried and hece the suicide rate among unwed pregnant women is very high). Certainly nobody would rightly suggest that suicide should be the answer, right? Or that the children should suffer (as they often do in these cultures)? Condemning a child in this case is wrong on so many levels it isn't even worth considering. Interestingly the availability of abortion often coincides with an acceptance of women choosing to bring pregnancies to term even without a marriage. Hence, it is not so much an either/or valuation but rather "both." The availability and acceptance of abortion, because it also coincides with support for women who choose not to, often provides for greater opportunities for the children who are born (but in all reality, I suspect that when you factor in suicides, which in this case really are the society's fault-- though I judge as an outsider-- probably mean that from a strictly pro-life perspective, acceptance of abortion might not be the worst thing).

I suppose there are those who will condemn me for being more concerned that the social pressures might drive my wife to suicide than for the life of my unborn son. But that logic is hard to grasp. You would rather see a woman commit suicide (and thus also end the possibility of the baby being born) than give access to abortion. Shame on those who make such an argument.

...your excuse might have went over the head of someone not paying attention, but you left many comments dating your participation.....that's why I waited for another one of your inane posts to commemt....

If your son was not alive in 1962, but is today, when did his Life begin? I'm guessing it was after you and your wife bedded, like you alluded to.

Will you ever tell your "son" that you considered having him killed inorder to make your life more convienent?

originally held that life begins a week after birth.

The problem was that there are no bright lines that are fully defensible.

If it is when the egg is fertilized (genetic independence), then one would be bound to condemn in vitro fertilization as murder since often several eggs are fertilized and only one are used (the rest are discarded, and this would not be different from using, say, early-stage abortifaceants). Yet I dont hear you suggesting that such is immoral. After all, there is a pregancy that results even if several fertilized eggs die in the process, right?

If it is at adherence (i.e. attachment to the lining of the uterus), then what makes that different from fertilization?

Otherwise, everything is a set of gradual projections.

So, are you opposed to in vitro fertilization?

I will probably tell him at some point that we considered abortion but that we are glad we didn't. It is worth talking about so he can understand the gravity of the matter. I don;t believe in hiding such things from my child.

I have a post on this issue at my blog, "A Right To Kill." I think your position on the matter is muddled at best. I will be happy to debate you on this subject.

In preparation you should be clear that the argument concerns right and wrong, not legality. Further, steering into invitro, Terri Schaivo, poor women in other countries, etc. are all avoiding the issue at hand.

Abortion = "A human child has been conceived in a womb capable of carrying it to term and is summarily and knowingly executed by its mother."

You seem to be arguing that this is a grey area. This is the central issue under debate, but you don't seem capable of facing it squarely. Killing a child under these circumstances is immoral and wrong. Or do you disagree?

simple.

The vast majority of Americans support abortion at least in the case of non-consentual pregnancies (rape for example, or cases where a father sexually abuses his/her daughter) in part because there is a sense that forcing a woman who has been so attacked to carry the child to term would be wrong.

So I don't think you will get too much support on certain cases that fall within your definition. I don't even think the other poster would have taken such a position that abortion in the case of rape or child abuse was necessarily to be condemned. If a 13-year-old girl were sexually abused by her father and became pregnant would you condemn her from secretly having an abortion without notifying her parents? Are there other cases where abortion is the lesser evil?

As I have said before, I have spent quite a bit of time in countries where abortion is illegal, and I have had conversations about the social impact with people in these countries. I would restate two points:

Abortion is never "good." It may however be the lesser evil in some cases. I would rather see a woman get an abortion than commit suicide during pregnancy, for example. Any argument with that?

Availability of abortion tends to also coincide with a lot less condemnation of unwed mothers, leading to a greater likelihood that they will bring the pregnancies to term if the men in their lives are unsuitable or unwilling to assume the father role. Therefore even if you oppose abortion unconditionally, there is a case to be made for availability of abortion as a matter of public policy.

Perhaps you would do me the courtesy of reading the article on my blog before responding. The fundamental question IS that simple, your continued smokescreen notwithstanding. Sorry I wasted my time here. I wish you well.

"Abortion is never "good." It may however be the lesser evil in some cases. I would rather see a woman get an abortion than commit suicide during pregnancy, for example. Any argument with that?"

Are you seriously contending that the forty million abortions performed in this country have prevented a similar number of suicides? This is an extreme example plucked from another culture more for its abnormality than any bearing on the matter under debate. Sorry, no cigar.

Further, I doubt very seriously that the baby being killed would share your assessment that it is the lesser evil.

"Availability of abortion tends to also coincide with a lot less condemnation of unwed mothers, leading to a greater likelihood that they will bring the pregnancies to term. . ."

The ability to summarily execute an unwanted unborn child means more will be born?! Are you even TRYING to be coherent?

In my original response, I was talking responding to your post, not to your blog entry. I am going to respond to that. I think there are some serious issues with the viewpoint you put forward which affect both the question of abortion but more importantly tangental issues of social justice that seem to be connected in so many cultures.

You wrote:

"While the exceptions for rape and incest are valid in the sense that the culpable party is not the woman but the man - who bears the responsibility for injury to both the woman and the child - this is not the case in more than a small portion of babies conceived. "

This logic seems to imply that a woman is the (and the only) culpable party in an unwanted pregnancy. Hence the willingness to shift when it "isn't her fault." However, this thinking shows exactly why the injury is quite often far more severe than weight gain, stretch marks, and the like. While I realize that you are intending to limit your logic to the harm from an abortion, I don't think you can get there without first suggesting that this is due to responsibility for the pregnancy in the first place. I.e. if a man gets a woman pregnant and she doesnt want to be, then he would be *equally* blamed for the abortion even if he tried to talk her out of it. Yet in practice that never happens.

Of course it is easier to see that a woman has gotten pregnant than that a man has gotten a woman pregnant, right? So it must be all her fault!

In most of the Catholic world, premarital sex is frowned upon, and unwanted pregnancies are used as examples (hence unwed mothers are quite heavily punished for being pregnant while the fathers have very few problems). Often, they are not allowed to continue to attend schools if the Church has anything to say about it, for example, because of the fear that such pregnant girls will "set a bad example." The injury then that the society places on them is extremely harsh both in terms of long-term economic impact, education, and the like. So such logic ends up with what is, we can agree, a blameless party (the child) condemned to a life of poverty.

My own view is that men are and should be equally responsible in these cases. We are, unfortunately not even in this society. But that is wandering off-topic.

So I come back to the only reasonable opposition to abortion being the attempt to give women a truly viable and supported alternative. Don't want women to have to choose to go into debt in order to give a child up for adoption? Make sure there are well funded alternatives. Don't want women to choose between education (and abortion) on one hand and bringing the pregnancy to term? Make sure that there is a viable support structure.

Abortion rate in this country are declining. And this is good news for everyone. It means that women are choosing not to have abortions, and it means that they are finding that other options are viable. As with my previous reply, this is where the emphasis ought to be.

Also since we are not debating law, I would assume that this does not mean anything about public policy other than that sound public policy means ofering alternative support mechanisms.

I have spent time overseas in places where abortion is neither legal nor available. I have talked at length with people in both Catholic and Muslim nations about how they see the debate. My views on the correlation between the condemnation of unwed mothers and the prohibition against abortions are based on first-hand experience. They may be counterintuitive or even paradoxical, but yes, that correlation exists.

Also, I am wondering what you think about Singapore's issue regarding abortion. As you may be aware, they actively promote abortion as a means of preventing overpopulation of an island where essentially all buildable land already is built upon. They have a choice between promoting birth control and abortion very agressively (the motto is "Stop ant 2") and as a result their demographics are different than they are in the US. In the US, 80% of abortions are done on unwed women, in Singapore, that number is closer to 30%. In fact, most abortions in Singapore are done on women who already have two kids. What do you think would be a moral public policy for such a small country with limited resources?

The motto at Singapore is "Stop at Two."

"This logic seems to imply that a woman is the (and the only) culpable party in an unwanted pregnancy."

No, but the woman IS the only cupable party to KILLING THE UNBORN BABY to avoid the consequences. Unless the reason is rape, this line doesn't hold water. This decision is the woman's alone, and you want to shield her from responsibility by trying to shift some of the blame to her male partner. He may have had a hand in the creation, but he has no say in the decision to abort the child.

"I.e. if a man gets a woman pregnant and she doesnt want to be, then he would be *equally* blamed for the abortion even if he tried to talk her out of it."

How is this possible outside of rape? How can a woman get pregnant without wanting to in the absence of rape? She can't. If she willingly has sex, she KNOWS it is possible to become pregnant from this behavior. Again, the man is equally to blame for making the child, but only the woman makes the decision to KILL THE UNBORN CHILD.


"In most of the Catholic world, premarital sex is frowned upon, and unwanted pregnancies are used as examples"

Isn't that unbelievable? Why would a moral authority want to discourage behavior that would lead to illegitimate children, destruction of the family structure, venereal diseases and all that? Better to just kill the unlucky offspring, right? Doesn't it occur to you that there is a societal basis for stygmatizing unwed pregnancy?


"The injury then that the society places on them is extremely harsh both in terms of long-term economic impact, education, and the like."

But the economic impact on society that results from this behavior is nothing? Society wants illegitimate children? Since these consequences exist, one could easily argue that many many fewer UNBORN BABIES ARE BEING KILLED as a result of irresponsible behavior. Or didn't that occur to you?


"So I come back to the only reasonable opposition to abortion being the attempt to give women a truly viable and supported alternative. Don't want women to have to choose to go into debt in order to give a child up for adoption? Make sure there are well funded alternatives."

The current shortage of adoptable babies in this country makes your argument false on its face. Why do you think so many American families are adopting kids from overseas? Because there aren't any in America! They're KILLED OFF before they are born. The expense is typically covered by by the adoptive parents. There's a well funded alternative, isn't it. And it's better than asking the taxpayer to subsidize destructive behavior, isn't it?


"As with my previous reply, this is where the emphasis ought to be."

I disagree. The emphasis ought to be on personal responsibility and the sanctity of life over the convenience of the irresponsible.


All in all I am utterly unconvinced by your arguments. Women don't get pregnant by some mystical process, they get pregnant by having sex. If that sex creates a child, the child is a human being that does not deserve to die. You just cannot face that central fact. Instead you would ignore the humanity of the unborn to sympathize with those that carelessly created it.
If an innocent baby can be so callously discarded, what value keeps you or me or anyone else safe from similar decisions of others with the power to decide we're just too inconvenient? How can a human being reduce another to such insignificance, and not expect to be reduced themselves?

"In fact, most abortions in Singapore are done on women who already have two kids. What do you think would be a moral public policy for such a small country with limited resources?"

Ever heard of tubal ligation? How about vasectomies? Abstinance? Diaphrams? Condoms?Nawwww, let's just KILL UNBORN HUMANS that are inconvenient, that's a much more enlightened policy!

You're not very imaginitive are you? Do you even weigh the possibility that there are consequences to killing human beings? Or are you so determined to defend the indefensible, that nothing else gets through?

First, I am very interested to know what you think of Singapore's policy of aggressively promoting both abortion and birth control in order to avoid overcrowding of the city-state which has essentially no more buildable land left.

Secondly, there is a major issue of responsibility here. True, women don't get pregnant though some mystical process. They get pregnant usually through sex with men when both consent. Therefore, I would assume that any damage caused by the pregnancy should be blamed on both. You don't seem to get that. YOu seem to feel that sexual morality and birth control are just the woman's responsibility and therefore you even defend the Catholic Church lobbying heavily to get girls kicked out of public schools in places like South America condemning both them and their children often to lives in abject poverty because you don't want to see an innocent child killed.

Your reasoning that it is OK to condemn an innocent child to a life on the street (and probably drug abuse and the like) is OK if it reduces the abortion rates seems to me to be absolutely cruel and morally reprehensible. After all, I don't see you demanding paternity tests and compelling genetic samples from those who are named as possible fathers and saying that they should be kicked out of school too. Your reasoning is therefore inherently sexist and unjust simply because you condone punishing one party of a prengnacy (and the child after it is born) without concerning yourself with the other one.

I don't think you understand the problem in Singapore. You see, any child of a citizen or a resident of Singapore is a Singaporean citizen. This means that population control of such a small country with no options for expansion is critical.

So what do you do when a couple has two kids and the condom breaks? Recommend an abortion and punish them with tax disinsentives if another Singaporean citizen is born.

Under what circumstances do you consider it proper to kill an absolutely innocent human being?

Maybe if they aren't productive? Maybe if they're really expensive to care for? How about if they are of a different race, or religion? Since you seem willing to advocate the propriety of killing the innocent, what parameters do you use?

What part of being born makes life so much more valuable than it was an hour before birth? Or a week before? Or a month before?

Have you truly thought this out? Or are you desperately trying to justify a position you've held without any intellectual investment? Anecdotal arguments don't change the premise that you are attempting to justify; that killing the innocent is OK with you. Could you clarify under what circumstances this is so?

Yep, you win. A human child is conceived in a womb capable of carrying it to term and it is OK to kill it because Singapore is overpopulated.

What a brilliant master stroke! Wow, I never even saw it coming! You win! I can no longer withstand your blinding logic and convincing turns of phrase. Please, share your wit and intellectual firepower with as many people as you can; but have mercy on me, as I am a mere mortal and can no longer withstand the barrage. You win, I guess it's OK to kill innocent humans after all. Singapore! Who'd have thunk it?

My concern isn't just about abortion but the whole society of social injustice and sexism that seems to largely coincide with those societies where it is prohibited. You seem to defend these systems which are fundamnetally unjust because they fail to protect all individuals equally. Treating pregnant women *any* differently or disadvantaging them any more than the fathers of their children in order to make examples of them is unjust. But I suppose as long as it is anyone but yourself, you won't complain too much...

I see two basic human rights which must be preserved at the cost even of all others: equal protection from the State and those otherwise in power (in the case I mentioned the Catholic Church), and collective self-determination. Because kicking pregnant girls out of school violates the equal protection bit, I have a problem with it. Of course, we have issues wrt to children born out of wedlock and equal protection in this country (and it goes the other way) but that is a different matter altogether.

In the end, I am not an Ecuadorian and so I can use them as an example of where this logic leads (and why I think it is a bad idea) but it isn't my responsibility to change the way they handle these matters.

I would suppose that if we were to take your questions at face value, it would naturally lead to an opposition to the death penalty (courts make mistakes, so innocent people get killed), war (remember when the Israeli bomb hit the bomb shelter in Lebannon and killed the 13 kids), and attempts to destroy the water treatment infrastructure in Iraq via sanctions under Bush Sr and Clinton (leading to diarrhia-related deaths of hundreds of thousands of children over the years). As critical of the Catholic Church as I have been, at least they are consistant in condemning all these things. Yet I cautiously support capital punishment, I support the war in Afghanistan even though we support people who deliberately target innocents (some of the worst issues of this have been by misinformation fed to us by our Afghan allies), etc.

In the end, I think you have to look at a balance of harm. There are plenty of things worse than death. Certainly all of these things are to be avoided, but I think that condemning someone to a life on the streets is worse than death in many cases.

The policies I mentioned are well known in many Catholic nations. They aren't simply anecdotes, but deliberate policies. They are unjust because they deny the human right to equal protection for men and women. And you have shown me that I am right to fear that those who suggest abortion is always wrong in this country would at least morally support similar measures here. While it isn't my job to fix the social injustices in Ecuador, I will oppose with all my strength attempts to move us in that direction.

Also Ecuador has a lot of good in it as a nation too. This is, however, one area I do not want to see us emulate.

"I see two basic human rights which must be preserved at the cost even of all others: . . ."

You forgot the right to LIFE itself. Without that, no other rights are possible.

Just call it "sexist", then you don't have to worry your pretty little head with concepts like justice, or humanity.

You are simply incapable of rational debate. Your education has failed you. What you feel is more important than what you think; this is evidenced by your inability to reason.

Let me recommend a good book to you.
http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Morons-Ideology-People-Stupid/dp/1400053552/sr=8-1/qid=1166797948/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-0520884-3912768?ie=UTF8&s=books
Pay particular attention to the Marcuse School section that explains the division of society into warring victim groups. The Margret Sanger section will explain how abortion started as a eugenics movement to rid society of undesirable "weeds". I doubt you have the intellectual curiosity, but this single volume covers a lot of material you obviously have never considered at any depth. I'm sorry, but you simply lack the intellectual integrity necessary for me to continue this exchange with you. I take my leave saddened by the exchange.

The requirement of equal protection would seem to rule out eugenics policies because they would discriminate against various people based on race, ethnicity, and various things perhaps including hair and eye color.

As for the right to life, I would suggest that it is more conditional than the other two. I don't hear you denouncing the Iraq War, capital punishment, or the other examples I met which have enabled many innocent people to be killed at our hands. So you seem to be unwilling to suggest that our collective selfdetermination out to be subject to our unwillingness to allow innocent lives to be taken in actions you might otherwise agree with.

With a capital PUTZ

Ad hominems are not effective ways to win arguments. I have no doubt that you have thought a great deal about your position as I have mine. While I believe you certainly go too far in defending the policies I described, I can recognize that you are entitled to your opinion. I believe that the policies you have defended are inherently both unjust and sexist. But that is your right in our great republic.

In my view, the rights I have enumerated are the prime two human rights in the world, and they essentially equate to liberty (collective self-determination) and justice (equal protection). I believe that without those rights to liberty and justice, the value of human life is far less (I agree with Patrick Henry on this one). So in the end it comes down simply to a judgement of priorities (liberty and justice vs life). I do not expect to convince you that my view is right. If you want to argue right or wrong, I will happily admit (as I have) that abortion is never "good" and can at best be a "lesser evil." I am unwilling to oppose undue restrictions on abotion however because I have seen what happens in other countries, and your view has hardened my position in this regard.

So, we agree that abortion is never "good" but we disagree as to a public policy about it. My approach is that we need to offer alternative support structures so that this isn't a compelling choice any more often than t needs to be. I think that safe, legal, and rare is an important formula. Sure we ought to work to make abortion more rare, but we ought to do so by looking at the needs that it fills and working on those.

There is no right to abortion in the Constitution. Reasonable people can see that there are cases where abortion is morally justified, in extremely limited circumstances, such as when the life of the mother is in jeopardy.

Otherwise, there is a very dubious rationale for this murderous act.

My main premise is that the life guarantee in the 4th and 14th amendments should at least be seen as forbidding the state and national governments from arbitrarily limiting life-saving therapies. Imagine, for example, that if Jehovas Witnesses took got a majority, they couldn't ban blood transfusions without running amok with those amendments.

As I point out the liberty guarantee is far more vague and must necessarily be nuanced. Adn where life of the mother is not at risk, there is more room for intelligent disagreement over what exactly the liberty guarantee means for this discussion.