If you frame it that way, yes I do see (and respect) your difficulty. We are operating from different assumptions. I choose to err on the side of the mother being compelled to continue a pregnancy.

Hope we can pick up on some other intriguing lines of inquiry. This one is likely at an agree to disagree stage.

If you frame it that way, yes I do see (and respect) your difficulty. We are operating from different assumptions. I choose to err on the side of the mother being compelled to continue a pregnancy.

Hope we can pick up on some other intriguing lines of inquiry. This one is likely at an agree to disagree stage.

I suppose we are in agreement of the uncertainty of when life is life. We have just chosen to error on opposite sides. I can’t help but again suggest that when in doubt the harder path is likely the right one.

Also I’m disappointed you didn’t respond to the convenience statistics. The above combined with this leaves me with:

“So you’re saying that since you can’t be certain that a child is actually a living being until it is viable outside of the womb it is perfectly acceptable for 3441 of them to be destroyed every day since their existence is inconvenient to the would-be mother.”

You certainly must see my difficulty with that.

Gotta disagree with you, as you probably guessed I would. Abortion was not always viewed as murder, and it still is not by a significant portion of the population. There will never be consensus on this issue, and I suspect the numbers opposing overturning Roe v. Wade will remain above 50%. It is murder to you. It is not to me. You are confusing potential human life with actual, legally protected human life. Prior to our ability to determine when a fetus is viable as a human being outside the womb, birth was considered the beginning of human life. It still is in our law code. A birth certificate is not issued until birth.

Roe v. Wade correctly, in my judgement, uses viability outside the womb as a reasonable guide, but the exception for the health of the mother overrides even the viability of the fetus. That’s why I said premature delivery of a viable fetus, with the state assuming responsibility for care and adoption, should be an available option, if there is some reason the mother cannot or will not continue the pregnancy.

I don’t remember saying I wanted to deny your right to speak your mind. I said I don’t like the harrassment of women entering an abortion clinic. The difficulty is defining where the public space ends and the private space begins. That dilemma is now also being played out over the issue of gay-bashers hurling vitriol at the funerals of servicepeople killed in Iraq.

The analogy of killing one’s next door neighbor doesn’t work, because there is consensus on that issue.

You are operating from a particular belief system. I am operating from an attempt to understand what is and what is not appropriate for the society as a whole for the laws regarding abortion.

If your side actually gets the majority of Americans to agree that Roe v. Wade should be overturned, then you will have your way on this issue.

If a 5-4 Supreme Court decision, contrary to the prevailing view of the majority of Americans, overturns Roe v. Wade, the law will be out of sync the majority notion of justice. If, over time, the common sense of justice shifts and the majority agree with denying a woman the right to end her pregnancy, then you will have actually won on this issue. Otherwise, no, and this is what the Republican leadership fears, because protecting a woman’s right to privacy and protection from the power of the state, at least prior to viability outside the womb, will become an issue that will cause Republicans to lose elections.

I am sorry that you feel such animosity toward people who see this the way I do. It’s unfortunate that this is such a divisive issue that there appears not to be room for peaceful co-existence. I have no desire to impose my will on you. You have every desire to impose your will on me because of what you believe. I think it is misguided in this case, because I do not think there is a common sense of justice for your view within the society as a whole, so the only workable answer is for this to be a private decision.

I suspect we’ve gone about as far as we can with this pick-up basketball game, although that seems an odd way to think of a debate over this topic. I’m not sure anyone scores any points in this one. I think I understand your view, and I think I’ve offered all I can to explain to you my view.

“None of those are yours to judge or dictate.”
So using your same reasoning it’s none of your business if I “choose” to kill your next door neighbor right? After all, who are you to judge? In fact, if your reasoning stands then why have any laws at all? There was a living human being before the abortion and after they are dead, terminated, deceased. That is murder and it is my place to judge. It was illegal for decades and if my friends and I hold any weight in this process it will be again.

You hypocrite! You complain that wiretaps should be illegal because it “violates your civil liberties” but deny the right of a child to live. You want to understand righteous anger? It is not Al Gore getting red faced from his frustration over trying to get a man he hates out of office. It is a pro-lifer who values an unborn child’s life more than their own life or freedom.

Would you violate my “freedom of speech” by telling me I cannot shout “recommendations” to a young would-be-murderer? Of course you would, because it violates your agenda. I have never been so proactive. I stick to the peaceful marches, but I must say, you are inspiring me.

There are some wicked people in this world, their opinions and rationalizations attest to their state. If you chip away the shell of deceit it boils down to selfish ideals. Selfless vs. selfish. What do I have to gain by seeing a child saved from the incinerator? Maybe the privilege of knowing them, maybe they will even significantly impact the world, maybe I will adopt them and love them myself? That’s the most you could accuse me of. Perhaps you can claim I have a selfish need to control others? That’s a stretch but okay. I am not pure and selfless but I base my belief in truth on principles separate from myself. It must be to actually be true.

Civil liberties… That’s liberal code for selfish ideals. The recent Muslim uproar over these cartoons is so sickening, they themselves engage in the creation of cartoons that go far beyond the case in point, they claim to hate terrorism, but you don’t see them demanding the hands of the terrorists do you? They lie when they say they hate terrorism, they live for it and if you believe any different you’re a fool. They are much like the ACLU, how in the world can they be tax-exempt? Easy, they lie, they cheat, they steal, and when it’s all done they have a lot of self serving egotists to support them. God forbid a church, or even any tax-exempt conservative group (are there any?) should mention politics. The ACLU will be there to try to have their status yanked and keep the game fixed.

It’s all pickup basketball, and David, now I see you’re one of those crying “foul”.

I had headed off to college, so learned only that she had died as a result of the pregnancy. I do not know the circumstances under which she learned that the pregnancy could kill her. It could be that she did not learn about this threat to her health until after she became pregnant, in which case the dilemma for which they counseled with their pastor and over which they prayed might have been whether or not to have a therapeutic abortion to save her life. If that is the case, they did take the medical diagnosis quite seriously, which would make sense.

I was no longer active in the church, and to their credit, the people I knew thought that only what I related in the post was appropriate commentary back when they told me about it. There were no details except among their very closest friends (I was a general friend and admirer of what kind of people they were).

If they chose to risk death because they did not know before she became pregnant, the decision was either courageous or foolish. For me, it was sad.

But my point is that in general the Southern Baptist Church forbade and the law severely restricted the option of abortion, which would condemn her to death whether she wanted to die for the gestation of a fetus or not. In fact, I don’t know what she would have had to go through in 1959 in Florida. I do know my aunt had, in 1954 in Florida, what I think y’all refer to as a partial birth abortion because the hydrocephalic fetus was going to kill her. Details are quite sketchy because I was only 12, but in my family the important outlines of such significant aspects of human existence were shared with us as soon as we had the capacity to comprehend what was being said.

I reject your characterization of most abortions as for convenience. I do respect the efforts of women who wind up regretting the choice in trying to deal with their own feelings. I don’t think that regret should be generalized to or inflicted on other women who have chosen to have an abortion. I really object to the harangues women entering abortion clinics are subjected to by those who believe they are railing against murder.

If you don’t believe in abortion, don’t have one. If you can counsel a woman who has had an abortion and wishes she hadn’t, do. But if you can’t resist the urge to villify the other women, leave them alone with their own particular circumstances, needs, and relationship with God. None of those are yours to judge or dictate.

After nearly a decade of work with Muslims in Kosovo one of the missionary families we support have come to the profound revelation that before they can become Christian they must learn what truth means. The culture itself ignores factual reality, for them truth is whatever you can get someone else to believe.

It is a deeply rooted cultural fact. Most of you have not studied their religion, but it starts there. They actually rewrote the writings of Moses switching the roles of Isaac and Ishmael. This only works for people who do not care to observe reality since the Pentateuch predates the Qur’an by about a thousand years.

Ironically American politics seem to work the same way today. Truth is whatever you can get someone to believe. When you watched the alJazeera news casts you have to wonder who would believe this stuff. Saddam’s aid proclaiming that the infidels are surrounded and fleeing the city. It’s the culture, truth is not true. :-\

Special thanks for this link - kudos to Bay Area Muslims. I also found Hamas’s response intriguing. That it is apparently so surprising is also quite intriguing. This is one of those times when I’m reminded of how often, no matter how hard we try to be legitimately informed, we are still all too often stuck with guessing in the dark. I think that what distinguishes us from reactionaries is that we do want the darkness lifted, including by shining a very bright light in every corner of America’s current administration.