The escalation is from irritation on my part. I just wanted to know why it is so difficult to say yes or no to specific arguments that have been advanced over the years as reasons to have an abortion, and to explain why.

Surely one arrives at a pro-choice (or pro-life) position based on a thorough examination of one’s own morality — and conscience. I’m always willing to defend the basis of my belief, so I reasonably expect people who defend abortion to be willing to do the same.

But Ellie’s assertions — and I’m not aiming at Ellie in particular so much as Ellies in general — are not explained or examined. We hear about “choice” or “the mother’s health” from abortion supporters but are never told what they are or why they are so important in a proponent’s own words. The rest of us are to take them at face value and not say, “Yes, but…” or “What if?” And we are told that if we do, that if Bookwormroom and the Republicans advocate against abortion, the correspondent will leave the room.

Telling people what they must not think or say as the condition for participating in a forum seems odd to me. Helen would probably call it something clever, like whitemail.

Is it just me, or is the debate between you and Ellie2 escalating? Beginning to sound intransigent and angry on both sides.

The idea that abortion represents “supreme selfishness or supreme horror” is definitely the impression of abortion on your side of the argument, Charles – and I do in general share it. But I’ve found that for those who are pro-abortion, at least to the point in keeping it legal, simply don’t view it that way. If they did, they would be strongly anti-abortion, wouldn’t they? I suspect that using the phrase “supreme selfishness or supreme horror” won’t be a very convincing argument, either.

As an aside, away from the Ellie-Charles debate itself:
Also I find a rape that results in a pregnancy to be a worse horror – to me – than the abortion resulting from such a rape-pregnancy. As I’ve said, there are many different positions on abortion. In addition for me: Whenever I try to envision even the concept of more than one million abortions per year… just try! ONE MILLION abortions per year… I develop that sense of “supreme horror” that you have mentioned. I disdain pragmatism, yet I find my position on abortion – due to rape and incest and drugs such as RU-486 which attack the newly conceived egg/sperm blastula, and which I find acceptable – I therefore find my abortion position to have elements of pragmatism and even expediency, which makes me uncomfortable.

But I have to agree with you

>>As for “it’s easier to love abortion in the abstract” — well that’s just disgusting.<<

Who are you now, the Church Lady?

You defend abortion. When somebody gives you specific examples of the reasons most often offered for having an abortion and asks you to state why you would or would not agree with them, it is hardly an unfair or unfit question.

That you won’t answer it seems to me to make you a supporter of abortion in the abstract because you certainly refuse to deal with it the concrete. It’s like when I ask my wife what happens when a woman exercises her “other choice” — she gets squeamish at having to describe the dismemberment of a living human being by its own mother.

I certainly can see why you shy away from any real defense of your position. There simply isn’t one that sooner or later doesn’t force you to confront either supreme selfishness or supreme horror.

With regard to gays, condemning their behaviors is hardly the same as condemning them. It’s like when you have a child who does something bad. You hate the deed, not her. Or a friend who smokes. You can hate the smoking but love the friend.

Gays do some pretty debased things to one another. There’s just no way around it — you can’t pile whipped cream on a cow pattie and call it a pie. So I’ll continue to express my disgust at certain acts, and my intention to resist having them beatifed as these wonderful expressions of “gay” love. But I’ll continue loving the gays who are in my life.

Heck, you might even try that approach with a conservative. You know, hate her pro-life, pro-traditional marriage stances, but love the stupid, pathetic, deluded person anyway.

Well, it perhaps does have a specific meaning within Rabbinical tradition. But I think I know what it means as well: That the fetus poses a direct threat to the life of the mother. And in such a case, the mother’s survival is the higher right, and hence the abortion is considered moral.

That the fetus might pose mere inconveniences or difficulties to the mother is not considered to be a part of this definition of “enemy”, and these do not lead to the abortion being considered a moral outcome.

Since you brought it up first, I am using it in the same sense that you mean it. I cannot define it because my definition is a direct result of the context in which you used it. If you change the context in which you use the word, the definition changes for me as well.

As for “it’s easier to love abortion in the abstract” — well that’s just disgusting.

“That being said, I cannot belong to a position that condemns abortions or gays.” And if BW Room or the Republican Party becomes that, I will move on.

Of course you can’t or won’t. After all, it’s easier to love abortion in the abstract than in the particular.

(Wonder where I got that idea?)

Also, I see that you may cite something that uses the word enemy, and all here are supposed to now what it means. But if Ymarsakar uses the word, you demand an definition.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Happy T-day to you, too.

PS: Happy Thanksgiving

But before I go –

“And thus, if the embryo is not an enemy of the mother, but the mother is the enemy of the embryo, abortion is not allowed.”

Define enemy.

And that should serve as a warning to those, on the right and left, who would like to see the GOP defenestrate millions of actual, living, breathing members of the party — e.g., social conservatives — in order to woo millions of largely nonexistent jackalopes. The GOP would simply cease to exist as a viable party without the support of social and religious conservatives. But not so the other way around. We’ve seen what happens in this country when the passionately religious abandon love for limited government and instead embrace social liberalism and government activism. The results have been good, as in the abolition movement. And the results have been more mixed, like during Prohibition and the Progressive Movement.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MjRlMDEyZDcyYTNlODliYmRhZWRkNjc2OGE2YjViOWI=

Work for me.

Ellie, let’s do a thought experiment:

Do you think any of the following qualify under a.) Jewish law as something that makes an embryo an “enemy of the mother or b.) qualify as a legitmate reason in your view to kill a fetus:

—”Having a baby will interrupt my education/career.”

—”My parents will kill me if they learn I’m pregnant.”

—”I have two children already. A third would be too many.”

—”My boyfriend will leave me if I carry through with this pregnancy.”

—”The world is a terrible place to bring a new life into.”

—”My friends and neighbors would not understand how I can deplete the world’s resources with a new mouth to feed.”

—”The fetus is deformed. I will be doing it a favor by aborting it.”

—”I could not stand carrying this baby through to term and then giving it away. I’d rather kill it.”

I hope you’ll answer. It will help me better understand your reasoning.