Further thoughts on Leftist morality
Bookworm on Jun 27 2011 at 3:21 pm | Filed under: Abortion, Leftist morality
Earlier today, I urged you to read Peter Wehner’s post about the way in which Leftist ideology paves the way for massacres — massacres that the Left often refuses to ignore, because they don’t fit into the Leftist narrative. I was thinking about this peculiar morality in connection with a comment I saw on a friend’s facebook page regarding the abortion war certain countries are waging against girls. A good summary can be had in Jonathan Last’s review of Mara Hvistendahl’s Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men
In nature, 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. This ratio is biologically ironclad. Between 104 and 106 is the normal range, and that’s as far as the natural window goes. Any other number is the result of unnatural events.
Yet today in India there are 112 boys born for every 100 girls. In China, the number is 121—though plenty of Chinese towns are over the 150 mark. China’s and India’s populations are mammoth enough that their outlying sex ratios have skewed the global average to a biologically impossible 107. But the imbalance is not only in Asia. Azerbaijan stands at 115, Georgia at 118 and Armenia at 120.
What is causing the skewed ratio: abortion. If the male number in the sex ratio is above 106, it means that couples are having abortions when they find out the mother is carrying a girl. By Ms. Hvistendahl’s counting, there have been so many sex-selective abortions in the past three decades that 163 million girls, who by biological averages should have been born, are missing from the world. Moral horror aside, this is likely to be of very large consequence.
It sounds like a factually interesting book, although Last makes it very clear that Hvistendahl damages her book severely by dancing around the core moral issue here, which is that making abortion commonplace inevitably leads to this kind of moral disaster. Thus:
There is so much to recommend in “Unnatural Selection” that it’s sad to report that Ms. Hvistendahl often displays an unbecoming political provincialism. She begins the book with an approving quote about gender equality from Mao Zedong and carries right along from there. Her desire to fault the West is so ingrained that she criticizes the British Empire’s efforts to stamp out the practice of killing newborn girls in India because “they did so paternalistically, as tyrannical fathers.” She says that the reason surplus men in the American West didn’t take Native American women as brides was that “their particular Anglo-Saxon breed of racism precluded intermixing.” (Through most of human history distinct racial and ethnic groups have only reluctantly intermarried; that she attributes this reluctance to a specific breed of “racism” says less about the American past than about her own biases.) When she writes that a certain idea dates “all the way back to the West’s predominant creation myth,” she means the Bible.
Ms. Hvistendahl is particularly worried that the “right wing” or the “Christian right”—as she labels those whose politics differ from her own—will use sex-selective abortion as part of a wider war on abortion itself. She believes that something must be done about the purposeful aborting of female babies or it could lead to “feminists’ worst nightmare: a ban on all abortions.”
It is telling that Ms. Hvistendahl identifies a ban on abortion—and not the killing of tens of millions of unborn girls—as the “worst nightmare” of feminism. Even though 163 million girls have been denied life solely because of their gender, she can’t help seeing the problem through the lens of an American political issue. Yet, while she is not willing to say that something has gone terribly wrong with the pro-abortion movement, she does recognize that two ideas are coming into conflict: “After decades of fighting for a woman’s right to choose the outcome of her own pregnancy, it is difficult to turn around and point out that women are abusing that right.”
Hvistendahl is not unique in her thinking. Circling back to the facebook comment I saw, someone essential said that, while all of this is very sad, it’s still better than the ancient practice of exposing unwanted girl babies to the elements. The problem isn’t one of morality, you see; it’s just a utilitarian issue. I see mass murder; they see a sad, but relatively humane way that lesser cultures deal with a long-standing societal quirk.
I’m not sure how to wrap up this post. I’ll let you add whatever codas you please.
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80 Responses to “Further thoughts on Leftist morality”
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Hi Book:
Did you mean to say, “… in which Leftist ideology paves the way for massacres — massacres that the Left often refuses to acknowledge, because they don’t fit into the Leftist narrative”?
The Left has always taken a utilitarian view of human life (consider their representatives on this blog). A massacre is only unjust if saying such helps to promote an ideological goal”. That’s why the massacres that routinely took place in the Communist block are routinely ignored. It is also why I maintain that the logical, inevitable end-game of Leftwing ideology is mass murder. When societies take God out of life and their value systems, all that is left is rationalized utilitarian ethics.
Planned Parenthood began as a eugenics movement to rid society of unwanted peoples (blacks, for e.g.). In India and China, it is also used eugenically to destroy unwanted girls (not all that unlike the ancient sacrifice of children to Baal…how little things change!). The fundamental evil of this cannot be comprehended in the moral vacuums of the Left…only if it fits an ideological objective, as explained by the author you cite.
One other consequence of population selection that deprives large number of men the companionship of women is that such societies traditionally turn these “surplus” men into cannon fodder, one more reason why I am convinced that the Left is leading us to another massive and devastating world war.
Gee, I’m so full of happy thoughts at this moment!
Book’s post reminds me of a go-around I had with this blog’s premier name dropper, a thorough utilitarian who pooh-poohed my assertion that China’s 120-to100 ratio of young men to young girls was something will lead to disaster. He assured all here that the Middle Earth Kingdom would address this small problem in its own inimitably subtle, effective and peaceful way.
Danny, we can expect a lot of tu quoques from the usual pests. I’m afraid that Ms. Hvistendahl’s moral cowardice is the general condition of the left. Her reaction to what is so plainly in front of her reminds me of the classic response when the wife catches her husband boinking the babysitter on the couch. He rises indignantly, still rampant, and proclaims, “Who are you going to trust? Your loving husband or your lying eyes?”
A surplus of unmarried men is always a source of violence in society; as mentioned in Unnatural Selection. The Wild West was largely limited to those groups of young, single men; miners and cowboys. And, the Wild West became increasing less wild as the Fred Harvey girls started to come west. The Koran allow a man to marry up to four wives. That means, theoretically, that we have three single men for every married man. Maybe that why jihad is so attractive. As originally practiced, you raided a country of infidels, killed the men and carried off the women. At the very least, you got the promise of 76 virgins in the next life. Finally, surplus men are in many cases conscripted into the army. That army has to justify its existence.
Danny, Chuck, read a series of the unmentioned pest’s posts, straight down a line, and tell me, do you think he might be, ahem, “the last of the line”, unless he has a procreative brother. I’d venture a guess that the unnatural imbalance will not prove a problem for him.
Hvistendahl is clearly an idiot, but don’t entirely overlook the anthropological and (pre)historical basis for the “quirk.” In a historical sense it isn’t really a “quirk” at all, but had, as most such things did/do, a solid basis in in utility for ancestral societies. That we are no longer organized in quite the same way, and no longer have quite the same needs as a society does not immediately erase the pre-existing hard-wiring the experience of two million years of subsistence living put in place.
Killing a fetus in utero is not the same thing as killing a sentient human being. When the right gets around to facing scientific facts and abiding by what they say, then we can have an intelligent discussion on the issue. The US killed tens of thousands of people who were innocent but were at the wrong place at the wrong time in their country of Iraq, and those deaths are a bigger tragedy than millions of fetuses aborted in the US since Roe v. Wade–occuring as they do before the brains in those fetuses know they are alive, feel human pain and loss. To compare these two sets of deaths is just silly. I will never understand how conservatives have no problem with collateral damage in the wars that they eagerly support, but worry about fetuses that have less ability to feel pain or suffering than the cattle or chickens that are slaughtered to create Big Macs and McChicken sandwiches. The morality of the right ignores the realities of pain and suffering, and thus it is morally bankrupt to anyone with basic common sense.
Actually, Mike, in one of his innumerable name drops, abc referred to at least one child in an exclusive private school.
I’m not surprised at his comments above. As people post here, they slowly begin to reveal their moral and intellectual natures. That abc repeats mindlessly the memes of his class and ideology, his contempt for the unborn is something I have always—accurately—just assumed. His science regarding unborn children is certainly old and creaky enough, and long ago disproven, but one that his ilk clings to as frantically as newborn possums riding on their mother’s back.
Again, you’ll note an almost lip-smacking, hardline hatred toward the powerless. It doesn’t matter that the discussion is about the impending terrible consequences of abortion, especially abortion for sexist reasons. The only thing that he will discuss is preserving and honoring the sacred right to destroy human life in the name of proving his superiority to all here.
Смерть нерожденного!
Interesting that ABC waxes on and on about all the people that the Americans supposedly killed in Iraq but nary a mention about all the lives saved by the Americans in protecting the Iraqi populace from the homicidal maniacs in Al Qaeda, Sadr’s army and the Sunni militias of Iraq. He, on the other hand, has no trouble equating the slaughter of the unborn with eating Big Macs and chicken nuggets. Yes, indeed, every now and then we do get vivid glimpses into the depraved emptiness of the existentialist soul.
Regarding “science”…makes me recall Jack Black’s sidekick in Lucha Libra – “I don’t believe in God, I believe in Science”. But then, in that context, it made for great comedy.
“After decades of fighting for a woman’s right to choose the outcome of her own pregnancy, it is difficult to turn around and point out that women are abusing that right.
What did you expect when you sold your soul to the devil. He doesn’t give cash back returns, you know. No return policy on souls.
Any policy that gets rid of more kawaii/cute little girls, I’m against. Those girls should be given a chance to grow up, so that their cuteness reaches nuclear proportions.
When it comes to countless unborn and aborted kawaii little girls up against A through Z here, 1 guess which side I will pick. Come on guess.
?????? ????????????!
Watch your mouth, or you’ll get kicked back to Constantinople, Martel!
abc, you are a damnable fool, and maybe a damned one too – but that is Someone Else’s decision.
An embryo takes in nutrition, it respires, and it excretes waste. It is therefore alive. A human embryo has only human DNA and therefore it is a living human being. Furthermore, it is an innocent life. Abortions in this country are done for convenience. Abortions in China and India are increasingly done to satisfy religious requirements that girls can’t do, and particularly in India, to avoid paying a dowry that most families can’t afford. Innocent human life is being taken for absolutely no good reason.
Your utilitarian notion that this is all perfectly OK is simply disgusting and beyond the pale. Furthermore, it is abominably twisted. It is only when pro-abortion fools like you manage to acknowledge that this embryo, this fetus, this anything-but-a-baby is an innocent human life that we will be able to have a truthful discussion. When women who are so eager not to be pregnant because it’s just not the right time have to finally admit to themselves the truth of what they are doing, then, and only then, can we actually have a rational conversation.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1 …… blast off! Well, that didn’t take too long – only five posts to get ejukated.
Killing is a serious business. Unlike the Left, I try to treat it as a serious issue with immense ethical ramifications and ensure that any killing I condone or advocate, is done by me personally, simply so that I am close to the moral and ethical challenges such cases present. Killing done indirectly, can be too easy and it can become so easy that people are motivated to reproduce them because they are so conveniently easy or useful.
By keeping killing close to one’s hands and soul, one never forgets the intent required to end life as we know it. That’s because humans are very keen on remembering who we killed or didn’t kill, but less keen on remembering who we let died or who we paid someone else to kill for us.
The Left tries to distance themselves from the moral responsibility of killing, by handing it off to doctors or soldiers, in order to wipe their hands clean on someone else’s corpse and exalt themselves as “morally pure” simply because “their hands are clean” of blood and other bodily fluids.
It’s not such a great progression for a person’s character to ignore so much of life and death in human affairs. You won’t grow to be a fully capable adult human by ignoring such serious matters pertaining to humanity’s destiny.
I am unsure who is higher placed on the morality scale here: A or Z. Z is more coldly obtuse and dogmatic, while A is more emotional and adamant. If you combine the two, you might actually get a working body of ethical rules. A is not bothered by my discussions concerning killing, and Z leaves A alone on this matter. Z is bothered by stuff he doesn’t want to think about, yet won’t explain his system of right and wrong and thus while Z’s view is very close to A, Z won’t expose himself like A just did.
Ymarsakar, the difference between Zach and abc is in technique, not ultimate effect. Both are happy to countenance the destruction of inconvenient human beings.
Zach simply has no moral moorings. He is obviously at sea when asked to discuss morality, so studiously avoids that which he simply does not know how to talk about.
Abc has no real moral core either, but unlike Zach he is an open and admitted solipsist. Given his arrogance, that makes him far more willing than Zach to expose the emptiness at his center.
Charles, I read that, too, but I don’t believe him, about that nor about a good many other things.
There was someone who commented on several Town Hall columns, who claimed to be all manner of things that his ignorance suggested that he was not.
So, listen to the shrillness, the slight priggishness, and I think you’ll see what I mean.
BTW, Iraq Body Count.org says the civilian death toll in Iraq was around a hundred thousand, and those included tens of thousands killed by various brands of Iraqi terror. Yes, I know that there was an article in The Lancet in 2004, using extremely dodgy methods, that claimed a half million. The would be an awful lot of bodies to bury. Certainly Saddam’s three hundred thousand left a lot of corpora delecta, so I can’t see how a half million could have been concealed.
Further, the Hague Convention is quite explicit that people who are killed because combatants are hiding among them are the victims of those combatants, not those who shoot at them. This has a parallel in houses of worship and cultural sites.
Moreover, the number of deaths in Iraq at the hands of Saddam and his goons numbered fewer per year, in the decade before the invasion, than died in the fighting after the invasion. In the first year, they kept shrilling that we were “targeting civilians.” After that, as it became obvious that the Iraqis actually were targeting civilians, that propaganda line was mostly dropped.
I find it pretty clear, in most of this, that abc and Z are suckling at the legacy media teat, and reflecting the Line, without much examination, mulch less skepticism. I mean, really, one of them named himself after one of those networks.
“I find it pretty clear, in most of this, that abc and Z are suckling at the legacy media teat, and reflecting the Line, without much examination, much less skepticism.”
Mike, you raise a good point. For such formidable intellects, they sure make certain to stay within the box.
I’ve sometimes thought that abc is doing a parody, given how close he so often comes to sounding like a wicked comedy sketch of a liberal clone.
But his tedious, overwritten diatribes destroy any chance of parody. Good parodists know exactly when to stop, but he just keeps going, and going, and going, ad nauseum.
I would love to be wrong. If I were, I would gladly eat my lamb chop hat.
Interesting gumshoe thinking. Hmm…abc (already been chewed) and sticks to the heel of your shoes.
To compare these two sets of facts is just silly (wink wink).
Nothing as sophisticated as comparing murdering a fetus to fast food.
Michael Adams: BTW, Iraq Body Count.org says the civilian death toll in Iraq was around a hundred thousand, and those included tens of thousands killed by various brands of Iraqi terror.
Iraq Body Count puts the “conservative cautious limit” at about 150,000, 80% of which were civilians. Many were killed in sectarian fighting.
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/warlogs/
Michael Adams: Yes, I know that there was an article in The Lancet in 2004, using extremely dodgy methods, that claimed a half million. The would be an awful lot of bodies to bury. Certainly Saddam’s three hundred thousand left a lot of corpora delecta, so I can’t see how a half million could have been concealed.
Apples and oranges. The Lancet study, flawed though it was, was attempting to estimate early mortality. Iraq Body Count attempts an actual enumeration of combat deaths. There is little doubt that many more than 150,000 were killed, most of whom were civilians, millions were made refugees, and misery and fear was widespread among the population.
I said something backwards, the death rate before the invasion was higher than after. Sorry.
“millions of refugees”? They fled during the Iraqi civil war, between Shia and Sunni, as many of their cities and even neighborhoods within cities were ‘ethnically cleansed’. “Lack of concern for Iraqi civilians”? I think it ought to be self-evident, even for an old-media suckling, that we were taking much higher casualties, ourselves,because we cleared neighborhoods of terrorists by house to house fighting, rather than using some of our more impressive ordnance.
Again I say, we are not ignorant of the party line as dispensed by the old media. Most of us who comment here not only know it, we once believed, and, as David Horowitz says, expressed it better than most of its present youthful exponents. We have lost that childlike faith because of our own decades-long experience that contradicts it.
These comment threads would become much less tiresome, if you lads would just come up with SOMETHING NEW.
What is it about abortion that makes liberal women overrule all of their other values? As their reaction to Clinton’s sexual harassment (and alleged rape), and Weiner’s online predatory behavior has shown us, male politicians are forgiven any degrading act against women so long as they fight to uphold abortion. And here we have entire cultures collectively killing millions of female babies – denying these would-be women a right to exist. And still Hvistendahl frets over how this information will be used by the wrong people.
Last’s book review reveals the reason why some (like abc?) can so easily dismiss this:
“Ms. Hvistendahl also dredges up plenty of unpleasant documents from Western actors like the Ford Foundation, the United Nations and Planned Parenthood, showing how they pushed sex-selective abortion as a means of controlling population growth. In 1976, for instance, the medical director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Malcom Potts, wrote that, when it came to developing nations, abortion was even better than birth control: “Early abortion is safe, effective, cheap and potentially the easiest method to administer.”
Sounds like Planned Parenthood hasn’t strayed that far from Sanger’s original goal of stopping undesirable groups from reproducing. Tell me again, why is it that conservatives that are accused of hating “brown people” when we have all of these liberal organizations working so hard to “control the population” of India, China, etc.?
If Leftists didn’t do all they could to stay in the box, they would be excommunicated and ejected from the fold, no longer Leftists: que examples of Juan Williams and Democrat Zell Miller. The Leftist alliance is pretty good at purifying their membership ranks and not allowing organizations or people to claim membership when their goals or methods are at odd with Leftist cant. Remember, you either must be fellow travelers, have the same methods, or have the same goal. In that order of importance.
Two Leftists can have two contradictory goals, such as fighting Western Imperialism vs Conquering new lands for Jihad, but so long as they can travel the same road and use the same methods, they are Leftist comrades in arms. They don’t need the same goals, although it helps grease the wheels of alliance sharing.
Tell me again, why is it that conservatives that are accused of hating “brown people” when we have all of these liberal organizations working so hard to “control the population” of India, China, etc.?
They see themselves as Gods and rightful Slave Masters. That kind of perspective does things to methodology and ethics.
Michael Adams, it is interesting to me how successfully Leftist propaganda has been in convincing people that civilian deaths in Iraq were the US military’s fault. It’s a bit too simplistic a model to apply to something as complex as war, but many people, and not just Leftists, believe that the US has not acted with justice or equality in mind when occupying Iraq or Afghanistan. I hear it all the time. These people may be LibProgs or full outright members of the Leftist Alliance, but they usually start spewing the same line concerning Afghanistan and Iraq. Assuming they have a consistent and coherent line. They used to say put more troops into Iraq. Then when Bush actually did it, they said more troops were useless and the war was lost. Not all Leftist propaganda is consistent. It doesn’t have to be to fool a bunch of moronic sheep, after all.
The problem with leaving Leftist propaganda alone is that it becomes more contradictory as time goes on, and thus more difficult to penetrate with counter-propaganda. At the same time, the propaganda target population don’t notice the inconsistencies and instead accepts them as TRUTH. That kind of mental brainwashing makes it rather complicated to counter because it gives Leftists and LibProgs a rationalization defense. If they say civilian casualties, I say Bush had a low footprint strategy created by General Casey in order to reduce civilian casualties and Iraqi resentment of foreign occupation. They then say that this meant Bush was not putting enough troops in Iraq for the job and was also getting his eye off the Osama ball in Afghanistan. When I then say that the new Petraeus strategy will flow in more troops and forces to deal with COIN, the Left then says that Bush is just sending more cannonfodder in a quagmire and the war is lost. That those troops will do nothing but kill more civilians and bomb more houses. Well, that just means we’re back at square one: civilian casualties. In order to penetrate such a defense, cognitive dissonance must be used and exploited.
People that truly cared about civilian casualties would have cared about helping the US win the war in Iraq AND Afghanistan. They wouldn’t have wiped their hands clean talking about “war is lost” and “it is time to go”. This is why the moral preening from “civilian casualty” Baghdad bobs here and elsewhere are ridiculous on its face. Where were they in 2004 and 2006 when the Left’s propaganda line of more troops and then alternatively less troops, came into vogue?
Leftists rarely if ever have a personal voice, thus it doesn’t pay much to listen to them. You might as well just listen to any Leftist as they speak with the same voice and say the same retarded things over and over again.
Ymarsakar, the US will ALWAYS be blamed for any deaths in any military confrontation. In part, because the US is held to some Utopian standard of perfection (really – a war with no casualties?), and in part, because of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Iraqi soldiers, the Taliban, AQ terrorists, and pretty much any other aggressor is allowed all manner of malfeasance – posing as civilians, targeting civilians, using women and children as suicide bombers, hiding and striking from schools and mosques, targeting hospitals, torturing and beheading hostages, etc. – and still it is the US who is responsible. Even when we’re freeing Afghans held hostage by a repressive Taliban regime (complete with total female subjugation and barbaric punishment of criminals), the narrative must always fit this view: US=bad, Others=noble.
Getting back to Hvistendahl’s book, the idea of population control through sex-selective abortion is especially insidious. Abortion is always referred to as an individual “choice”, but by convincing a particular population to selectively eliminate women, you are taking away that choice a few generations down the line. What “choices” will Chinese and Indian men have 50 years from now?
Libby, I’ve never liked the word “choice” with regard to abortion. Evidently, the baby has no “choice”. Usually, the father of the baby has no “choice” either. There is only one person that has choice and that is the mother of the child and the only choice she makes is between killing her baby or saving its life.
Now a days even Democrats can bomb and kill civilians in Libya, and they are classified as “anti-American” thus they are not to be blamed. If an American, a real patriotic American, killed anyone in Libya directly or indirectly….
The Left has a very clear objective. They must destroy human free for their Utopia to exist.
It’s one of their objectives or you could say it is a means to an end. Regardless, to the Left, even their means are an end in themselves.
Women are just like men. They are easy to manipulate against the art of a master propagandist.
They don’t teach what it means to be a Master Propagandist in public education. There’s a reason for that.
I’ve also never liked the term “choice” in regards to abortion. The time of choice is just prior to conception: choosing whether or not to have sex, choosing the person with whom to have sex (will he be a good father if I conceive?), choosing to use birth control or not, choosing a reliable form of birth control, etc. It’s a little late to be looking for choices after you’ve gotten pregnant. As as for choosing what kind of baby you want – sex, health, etc. – why on earth should one be able to choose the outcome in this particular scenario? We don’t get to choose our family (I have a few cousins I’d like to pretend are not related), we can choose a healthy lifestyle, but we still may get cancer or heart disease, and on and on. Why should we get to play God with our children?
Why should we get to play God with our children?
Because they have the power, but not the maturity and ethical character to utilize it wisely.
Good point, Libby. I don’t actually care much about the issue, every woman must defend herself when standing before the Throne, if the Throne should happen to (a) be there at all; and (b) take an interest in the issue. Everyone gets to go to wherever in their own fashion, and I’m sure the Judge is capable of the decision with no help from me. There are areas where I would be inclined to impose morality: this isn’t one of them.
But you’re right: abortion is less a “choice” than it is a consequence of a choice, or series of choices. (We took care of contraception in this society decades ago, nobody gets pregnant in this day and age unless they wish to, or are very stupid. There are excuses, but they are not reasons.) And that should be remembered. Well said.
Michael Adams: “millions of refugees”? They fled during the Iraqi civil war, between Shia and Sunni, as many of their cities and even neighborhoods within cities were ‘ethnically cleansed’.
Yes, about two million people were displaced by sectarian warfare.
Michael Adams: “Lack of concern for Iraqi civilians”?
Whom are you quoting?
Notice that no one has actually refuted the idea that a killing a fetus and killing a sentient human being are not the same thing, although they have hurled lots of ad hominems my way or engaged in logical fallacies. The point remains unrefuted, so those that argue that abortions pave the way to massacres are making illogical statements.
Danny writes:
“Interesting that ABC waxes on and on about all the people that the Americans supposedly killed in Iraq but nary a mention about all the lives saved by the Americans in protecting the Iraqi populace from the homicidal maniacs in Al Qaeda, Sadr’s army and the Sunni militias of Iraq.”
Al Qaeda only entered Iraq after we did, so I’m not sure how lives were saved by the US, and Saddam wasn’t killing people at the run rate that civilian deaths occurred after we invaded (excluding his war with Iran, which we encouraged and funded). So I think your logic totally fails.
“He, on the other hand, has no trouble equating the slaughter of the unborn with eating Big Macs and chicken nuggets.”
Wrong. I stated, and it is scientifically correct, that those animals killed for food have more intelligence about the pain and suffering that they are experiencing than most fetuses terminated in the first or even second trimester. These are scientific facts that conservatives (surprise, surprise) ignore.
“Yes, indeed, every now and then we do get vivid glimpses into the depraved emptiness of the existentialist soul.”
I don’t believe in souls, which cannot be seen on any scientific instrument, so this comment is totally illogical. It is like saying that my magical unicorn friend disapproves of your comments. Total rubbish.
“Regarding “science”…makes me recall Jack Black’s sidekick in Lucha Libra – “I don’t believe in God, I believe in Science”. But then, in that context, it made for great comedy.”
I remember a great movie about a retarded conservative who didn’t know anything and was made fun of all the time in the movie…oh wait, that was actually a bunch of Hollywood movies that I enjoyed. Relevance? None. But if you’re going to mindlessly quote Jack Black, then I thought I’d follow suit. Whenever you want to engage in a serious discussion, just let me know. In the meantime, I think even you understand that you haven’t really laid a glove on the argument that killing a fetus is not the same as killing a human being. it is not murder under the law, nor the equivalent thing from a scientific standpoint, and those who assert otherwise, are living in a fantasy world devoid of reality and those pesky empirical facts. THanks for playing.
Tonestaple writes:
“abc, you are a damnable fool, and maybe a damned one too – but that is Someone Else’s decision.”
I’ve been called worse, but your ad hominems don’t detract from my argument, much less rebut it. Hopefully, even you understand that much.
“An embryo takes in nutrition, it respires, and it excretes waste. It is therefore alive. A human embryo has only human DNA and therefore it is a living human being.”
So is a brain-dead human that is taken off resuscitation machines all the time, without anyone saying it’s murder. The test in Roe v. Wade was whether the fetus could live unassisted outside the womb, which is the analogous situation at the start of life, and there is a certain rational logic to it. You ignore viability, of course, since those pesky scientific facts would contradict your narrative. You also ignore the maturity of the brain in that fetus, which might have less mental awareness than a lab rat. Killing it is not the same as killing a two day old child, so your logic fails.
“Furthermore, it is an innocent life.”
So were the kids killed in that apartment building that was targeted on day one of the Iraq War. Do you weep for them the way you weep for unconscious, unfeeling fetuses that are aborted? I doubt it.
“Abortions in this country are done for convenience. Abortions in China and India are increasingly done to satisfy religious requirements that girls can’t do, and particularly in India, to avoid paying a dowry that most families can’t afford. Innocent human life is being taken for absolutely no good reason.”
Unlike those kids killed in Iraq, where we had ample reason to go in, since they found WMDs. Oh wait… Why don’t I hear conservatives decrying the loss of innocent life in Iraq? While we cannot control the killing by Al Qaeda or North Korea’s Dear Leader, we do control our own military. I wish I saw the same concern for life by conservatives when it comes to kids that actually did feel pain when the bombs landed, but i only hear it about fetuses that don’t feel pain. What hypocrisy.
“Your utilitarian notion that this is all perfectly OK is simply disgusting and beyond the pale.”
It isn’t utilitarianism. It is a recognition that pain and suffering is based upon empirical facts, rather than ideological fantasy. Accepting collateral damage in Iraq is utilitarianism, and I see tons of conservatives resorting to it.
“Furthermore, it is abominably twisted. It is only when pro-abortion fools like you manage to acknowledge that this embryo, this fetus, this anything-but-a-baby is an innocent human life that we will be able to have a truthful discussion.”
Human life that is still a potentiality is different than human life, which is a fact that anti-choice groups always ignore. That too is required for a truthful discussion. We don’t hold funerals for spontaneously aborted fetuses, and that is the social more across all cultures in this world. Parents feel bad, but it doesn’t rise to the level of losing a child. But pro-choice groups too often equate abortion with child murder, and this is beyond dishonest. Should abortion be rare? Of course, and many liberals feel that way too. But conservatives need to impose their definition of human life on others, despite scientific and anthropological data to the contrary. And that is wrong. Please don’t equate me with the straw man imbecile you’ve been debating in your head your whole life.
” When women who are so eager not to be pregnant because it’s just not the right time have to finally admit to themselves the truth of what they are doing, then, and only then, can we actually have a rational conversation.”
Blame it on the woman. Nice. Let’s just ignore rape and incest. Typical conservative fantasy narrative. In any case, until conservatives recognize the difference between a baby and a fetus, there will be no rational conversation.
Zach: The Lancet study, flawed though it was, was attempting to estimate early mortality.
No it wasn’t. It was a brazen example of the politicization of “science” in pursuit of ideological objectives.
What they did was count death certificates issued by the Iraqi government in the most violent area of Baghdad and use establish a death rate as a percentage of population. They then took that value and extrapolated it to the whole of Iraq. Ironically, as it was pointed out, the Iraqi government was pretty good about issuing death certificates on a nationwide basis. The Lancet paper authors, had they wanted to be honest in their endeavor, could have simply counted the death certificates issued by the Iraqi government nationwide. But they chose not to do so.
What they did was so obvious that there could not be any pretense of it having been anything but a corrupted study. It was not “science”. As I have said in this blog before, the Lancet has been referred to by serious scientific and medical professionals as the “comic book of science”. Some will argue that it is nevertheless one of the most cited “scientific journals” but that is because it (like the New England Journal of Medicine) has actively promoted itself to the mass media and non-scientific individuals through press releases and other PR techniques.
I like how subject of the debate has ultimately come down to WMD’s in Iraq. ABC: living the cliché.
/sigh
I have to wonder, abc, if you’re a parent, because being pregnant really changed my perspective on when a “clump of cells” becomes a sentient human being. I can understand why one would not consider a fetus under 3 mos. old a human life, but if you’ve seen ultrasounds of a fetus at 20+ weeks (especially if he/she is grabbing his/her toes) or felt a child move inside you, it becomes infinitely harder to pretend this is not human being worthy of care and protection. And I would encourage you to visit a NICU to see a whole lot of babies, some of them as young as 22 weeks, not only fighting for their lives (i.e. making their “choice” known) but surviving.
The problem with abortion as it stands today is that it is all or nothing – women can and do abort up until the time the child is born (and sometimes as it is born, as was the case with that PA abortionist). Oh, and I’ve attended two funeral for children that were lost at 4-5 mths into the pregnancy, and the parents certainly did mourn the loss of their child.
Alabama has, just this month, listened to scientific opinion on the other side of the discussion (where there resides just as much weight as there is going in the other direction – which is why it remains a question) and joined the growing group of states that forbid abortion after 20 weeks. (Interestingly, Roe, referenced by all, actually read by few; forbids it after 24 weeks – but don’t hold your breath waiting for the practitioners of so-called ‘partial birth’ procedures to be put in jail. Somehow or other that 24 weeks has become very elastic.) There are many, many, many, many in utero pictures of fetuses (why is the plural of ‘fetus’ not ‘feti’?) at 20 weeks – and even a bit earlier – that show them doing what seems to be very common for them at that age: sucking their thumb. They do this because it it is stimulative to the growing jaw musculature and the mouth, and because it apparently produces pleasure. It does not seem a great leap to suppose that if they are capable of experiencing both stimulation and pleasure, they are equally capable of experiencing pain.
Is there someone in their right mind who actively supposes that as many as 10% of the abortions performed in this country on an annual basis are the result of rape and incest? I am able to believe there is a good bit of rape out there – especially in the inner cities, where smacking women around and raping them seems to be the primary way some groups of citizens relate to members of the fair sex. Still, it seems a suspiciously large number, and still, ‘morning after’ pills remain available. And is there really that much incest floating around? (If it’s going to become socially acceptable that would be irritating at this stage of my life: I have coveted a first cousin for fifty years!)
Libby, I have kids and understand–through my wife–the sentiment you describe. And there should be gradations, reflecting the maturation of the fetus into something increasingly resembling a human being. But you are wrong that women can abort up to the time of birth. Roe v Wade made clear and state laws reflect the notion that one cannot abort a fetus if it is viable on its own outside the womb, which puts an upper limit on late-stage abortions well before the due date. Actual weeks vary from state to state, but none are within a couple of weeks of the due date. If an abortion is done at this point, it is not lawful.
JJ,
Actually, Roe set 24 weeks as an estimated guideline for viability of a fetus outside the womb, but the Court noted that this could move over time with more advances in medicine. But that isn’t the end of the story. For medical reasons, the Court also recognized a right to abortions beyond that time to protect the health of the mother, and this is the basis for late-term abortions (beyond the latest stage of normal-course abortions). The problem is that the definition of health in considering the well-being of the mother is very broad, making it effectively meaningless. For more, see: http://peacepigeon.tripod.com/demand.html
Abc, just doing a quick review of late-term abortion info on Wikipedia (I’m no expert on this), it states that “the Supreme Court has held that [state-level late-term abortion] bans must include exceptions for threats to the woman’s life, physical health, and mental health.” So, yes, late-term abotions happen legally (especially with that part about for a woman’s “mental health”), and there are doctors who are willing to do this both legally and illegally (as with Dr. Kermit Gosnell). Further, I am not aware of any pro-choice leader or organization that didn’t think that that bans on late-term abortions was in infringement on their “reproductive rights”.
A woman can choose to abort a baby at the very last second, as long as the head has not left the birth canal, thus making the baby still a potential human according to abc’s science.
It is interesting that this board’s biggest proponent of science (actually, scientism) should believe in magical thinking:
Doctor: “Your baby is just about ready to be born!”
Mother: “I’ve chganged my mind! Abort it!”
Doctor: “Are you sure?”
Mother: “Yes! Yes! Hurry before it becomes human!”
Doctor: “OK, let me spin it around. There. Nurse, please hand me the scissors so I can collapse this sucker’s head!”
Isn’t abc’s world a wonderful place?
Our first baby (or fetus if baby offends ABC’s sensibilities) was spontaneously miscarried. My wife and I felt a bit more than “bad” about that. But that is a personal thing I guess. ABC has pretty much hit every talking point from the play book. He even hit the rape/incest talking point somewhere after the WMD’s, like the conservative position totally ignores that. I suppose if you throw everything up like a shotgun you can win by default by tiring people out. I’m still waiting for the personal friend that is an expert/insider he can quote to tell us how wrong everyone is. I’m not sure why you bother… this is one of those areas that the left and right will never agree on. Your side does not have the weight of science behind it anymore than our side. It is a philosophical issue that science cannot resolve. As a society are we ok with killing off large numbers of our next generation out of what is essentially convenience? And about half of our country is ok with that or don’t care. It doesn’t matter if the baby (or fetus) is aware or feels pain… that is just scientific gobbly gook to justify a policy that is damaging to our soul and future as a nation. Regardless of what you say, it is different than collateral damage in war. It is different than the pain and suffering of animals used as food. And conservatives don’t support and celebrate either of those, and it is disingenuous for you to infer that we do simply because we don’t directly address your attempt to distract the issue. We just recognize that they are separable issues beyond the scope of this particular debate.
Sorry about the run on paragraph… the formatting changed when I posted. Oh well.
I know this is out of the scope of this discussion:
“I don’t believe in souls, which cannot be seen on any scientific instrument, so this comment is totally illogical.” - ABC
Interesting comment coming from someone who believes the science is settled in a field that claims it can conclusively predict the temperatures decades out when the weather itself cannot be predicted 2-weeks out.
Sorry about that.
spiff580, I think you’ve summarized the situation well. It is obvious to me that abc has some very deep doubts about the gods he worships (scientism, ultilitarianism, anti-Americanism, himself). So, what better way to test one’s faith than to enter a room of articulate conservatives and deluge them with his carefully assimilated and honed leftist memes?
That his arguments do not work, and increasingly sound grotesque and out of touch does not concern him. When one administers therapy to oneself, other people cease to matter. The whole point is to make onself feel better. As to whether that’s working, you can see his pattern, which swings wildly between attempts to present rational arguments and angry, spit-flecked attacks on the people here for believing their way and not his. When he is being rational, there is some hope for him.
It is an interesting spectacle and one that actually elates me. Abc is a bright young man and represents the best the left can offer. That being the case, I feel confident that we will win our country back.
Charles M: “That his arguments do not work, and increasingly sound grotesque…”
Yup!
Danny Lemieux: What they did was count death certificates issued by the Iraqi government in the most violent area of Baghdad and use establish a death rate as a percentage of population.
That is incorrect. They used 47 random clusters, interviewing more than 12000 people. There are a lot of problems with the study, but that’s not one of them.
Danny Lemieux: Some will argue that it is nevertheless one of the most cited “scientific journals” but that is because it (like the New England Journal of Medicine) has actively promoted itself to the mass media and non-scientific individuals through press releases and other PR techniques.
Being mentioned in the press has nothing to do with scientific impact measures.
Libby: I can understand why one would not consider a fetus under 3 mos. old a human life, …
Which is when 90% of abortions occur. Another 9% occur in the second trimester.
I’ve always been impressed with the “it’s not a human life” argument. As everybody knows, a fetus, being not human, will grow into a pencil or elephant if left to its own devices.
Libby, I thought I was clear but maybe not. Abortion, according to Roe, is legal based upon a viability test until 24 weeks, although it could be less now, given the progress of science. Beyond that, the law mandates that it must be medically indicated to protect the health of the mother. But this is a problem since the legal precedents set a very low bar for this. Regardless of what pro-choice activists say, the legal basis for late term abortions must be to protect the health of the mother. These types of abortions are exceedingly rare, but perhaps should be rarer still if the rationale is being abused. If don’t have data on this but would be interested in seeing it.
spiff, I see a lot more protests and concern amongst conservatives over abortion than over collateral damage in war. The silence over this descrepancy, and it is a huge one, is very revealing. Conservatives want to reserve the right to wage war even in countries that do not threaten us, but they don’t want to afford women freedom over their own bodies when the cost of doing so is less than the collateral damage of those unnecessary wars. You can choose to maintain that they are separate, but the fact that you have no rational basis for it suggests that your logic could be seriously flawed, as I believe it is. When conservatives have bad logic, they usually just remain silent and hope no one notices. But I have not only noticed. I have highlighted the gross hypocrisy. And science, which has clearly shown that the kids in Iraq killed by the US shock and awe–and they did die even if conservatives want to ignore this unfortunate fact–felt much more pain and suffering than the vast majority of fetuses terminated in the US since Roe v Wade. These are facts that your side ignores since it undermines your case. And you silence over it and your side’s hypocrisy is deafening.
Abc – You were clear, and you clearly contradicted yourself. You first responded to my comment that late-term abortions can & do occur with:
“But you are wrong that women can abort up to the time of birth. Roe v Wade made clear and state laws reflect the notion that one cannot abort a fetus if it is viable on its own outside the womb, which puts an upper limit on late-stage abortions well before the due date.”
But in a later comment state:
“For medical reasons, the Court also recognized a right to abortions beyond that time to protect the health of the mother, and this is the basis for late-term abortions (beyond the latest stage of normal-course abortions). The problem is that the definition of health in considering the well-being of the mother is very broad, making it effectively meaningless.”
So we agree, late-term abortions can and do occur, even if it is rare.
I think we’d all like to see how often late-term abortions occurs, as well as how often it is truly medically necessary (as opposed to being for the mother’s mental health). I wonder why Planned Parenthood and NARAL don’t track this information and make it public? There’s only a few doctors in this country who perform late-term abortions, right? Could it be that to analyze late-term abortion data would reveal how morally bankrupt the pro-choice advocates are, how willing to defend a woman’s “choice” even in the face of grisly infanticide? This is the moral issue that started this thread: what responsibility do abortion advocates take for the outcome of their quest for choice, including aborting perfectly healthy babies simply because they are girls, or callously killing a viable human being just before or during labor for the mother’s mental health.
[...] Bookworm on Jun 28 2011 at 11:58 am | Filed under: Abortion “Killing a fetus in utero is not the same thing as killing a sentient human being. When the right gets around to facing scientific facts and abiding by what they say, then we can have an intelligent discussion on the issue. The US killed tens of thousands of people who were innocent but were at the wrong place at the wrong time in their country of Iraq, and those deaths are a bigger tragedy than millions of fetuses aborted in the US since Roe v. Wade–occuring as they do before the brains in those fetuses know they are alive, feel human pain and loss. To compare these two sets of deaths is just silly. I will never understand how conservatives have no problem with collateral damage in the wars that they eagerly support, but worry about fetuses that have less ability to feel pain or suffering than the cattle or chickens that are slaughtered to create Big Macs and McChicken sandwiches. The morality of the right ignores the realities of pain and suffering, and thus it is morally bankrupt to anyone with basic common sense.” — abc [...]
abc, the topic of this post is sex-selective abortion. You are the one who keeps trying to change the subject to children killed in Iraq who, unless you felt they could help you score points about abortion, I doubt you give a second, much less third, thought to.
Your point about whether or not a baby has a decent brain in utero is, again, an amoral, utilitarian one, so it has been answered multiple times. A utilitarian view of humanity leads to Auschwitz or the Gulag; it always has and it always will.
As to a brain-dead adult, we can’t fix him. We can’t make him better. We’re not so much making a choice for him as we are acknowledging what has already happened to him.
We all fight the battles we choose to fight. Your attempt to equate abortion and the War in Iraq is nothing but a play straight out of Rules for Radicals, so congratulations on your unoriginal thinking. You can always attempt to hang people who believe in virtue on hypocrisy, but we are free to refuse to be hung.
I’m afraid you are a fool, abc, and you refuse to look past the end of your own prejudices to see where your utilitarian point of view will lead. Hazlitt’s one lesson of economics is true for just about everything: you have to look not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act; you must trace the consequences of the act not just for one group, but for all groups. And one consequence of abortion on demand is to provide support and cover for some societies hatred of and contempt for women.
@ABC,
My logic is not flawed simply because it differs from yours (or because you say so).
Abortion is a separable issue from collateral damage in warfare regardless of what you say. And my (and others) failure to address your attempts to distract and cloud the subject does not reveal any rank hypocrisy. But it does reveal your ability or lack thereof to stay focused and on topic. For someone who claims to be immersed in logic and science you’re debating tactics are rather amateurish (and somewhat illogical in my opinion).
Collateral damage is an unfortunate part of warfare that the US military has gone through great lengths to minimize to their own detriment might I add. I’m really not sure what you want me (and people like me to say)… especially since I know lefties and people like you (but I repeat myself) will do all the whining and protesting anyways. I live in the real world… I won’t pretend that collateral damage is completely avoidable once combat has begun.
No, I think what you want to do (or appear to want to do) is distract the issue to debate whether or not the US should have invaded Iraq… which really has nothing to do with abortion, how it is applied in the US, the morality behind it, what it means for our nations soul and future and the contortions you and your fellow travelers go through to convince yourself it is a good (or necessary) thing as it is applied currently. For arguments sake, assuming we are wrong going into Iraq doesn’t all of a sudden make our position on abortion wrong too… As you and Z like to say “apple and oranges”.
Switching the subject around is an old and tired tactic generally reserved for adolescents and liberals (but I repeat myself).
Libby writes –
“You were clear, and you clearly contradicted yourself. You first responded to my comment that late-term abortions can & do occur with:
‘But you are wrong that women can abort up to the time of birth. Roe v Wade made clear and state laws reflect the notion that one cannot abort a fetus if it is viable on its own outside the womb, which puts an upper limit on late-stage abortions well before the due date.’
But in a later comment state:
‘For medical reasons, the Court also recognized a right to abortions beyond that time to protect the health of the mother, and this is the basis for late-term abortions (beyond the latest stage of normal-course abortions). The problem is that the definition of health in considering the well-being of the mother is very broad, making it effectively meaningless.’
I don’t think I contradicted myself. A woman can get an abortion up to 24 weeks no questions asked. After that, it needs to be medically indicated. The latter are called late-term abortions.
“I think we’d all like to see how often late-term abortions occurs, as well as how often it is truly medically necessary (as opposed to being for the mother’s mental health). I wonder why Planned Parenthood and NARAL don’t track this information and make it public? There’s only a few doctors in this country who perform late-term abortions, right? Could it be that to analyze late-term abortion data would reveal how morally bankrupt the pro-choice advocates are, how willing to defend a woman’s “choice” even in the face of grisly infanticide?”
Perhaps. Or maybe since there are conservatives willing to shoot those doctors in the head in a church in front of their family and friends it kind of limits the number of people willing to do even the legitimately medically indicated late-term abortions, which every OB-GYN specialist will tell you do in fact exist.
“ This is the moral issue that started this thread: what responsibility do abortion advocates take for the outcome of their quest for choice, including aborting perfectly healthy babies simply because they are girls, or callously killing a viable human being just before or during labor for the mother’s mental health.”
Let’s separate China’s abortions, since we don’t control policy over there. Our laws say that a woman can abort for any reason up to independent viability (let’s say 24 weeks), and then after that it must be medically indicated. If you want to strengthen the laws around those late-term abortions to raise the bar on them, that is fine and most people would agree with you. But the vast majority of abortions are not late-term, and the law is settled there. And I happen to agree with it based only in part on the viability argument raised in Roe. My main issue is that as long as you don’t have a mature and functioning human brain with consciousness, you don’t have a human being. So I don’t lose sleep over killing it. Just like I don’t lose sleep over sperm that never fertilize an egg. Human potentiality is not human. Terminating without pain and suffering or that being terminated being aware that it will die is not killing.
Tonestaple writes:
“the topic of this post is sex-selective abortion. You are the one who keeps trying to change the subject to children killed in Iraq who, unless you felt they could help you score points about abortion, I doubt you give a second, much less third, thought to.”
That’s funny. Bookworm never differentiated between US and China abortions and presumably views them both unfavorably. My point was that equating them with a “massacre” is just dishonest–no doubt done for partisan reasons of elevating the right and denigrating the left, which is how every issue is framed on this site. I disagree and clearly stated the reasons why, and no one here has logically refuted my reasons.
“Your point about whether or not a baby has a decent brain in utero is, again, an amoral, utilitarian one, so it has been answered multiple times. A utilitarian view of humanity leads to Auschwitz or the Gulag; it always has and it always will.”
Wow. Ford Motor Company makes utilitiarian decisions all the time on how much to invest in safety in the car, which are based upon dollars and cents. But somehow that doesn’t lead to cars that murder people. All of this slippery slope stuff is for gullible people with political agendas. It doesn’t even pass the smell test for a reasonable discussion, much less have any rigorous logic or empirical evidence in support.
“As to a brain-dead adult, we can’t fix him. We can’t make him better. We’re not so much making a choice for him as we are acknowledging what has already happened to him.”
We can keep him on a respirator for a long period of time, and who knows what the future holds?? And the fetus may not make it to full-term, as a great many do not… You cannot assert knowledge over situations that often end up different than your ideology demands we assume… But the real point here is that it isn’t murder to take a brain-dead person off of a respirator, so how can it be murder to terminate a brainless fetus that relies on its unwilling mother to survive?
“We all fight the battles we choose to fight. Your attempt to equate abortion and the War in Iraq is nothing but a play straight out of Rules for Radicals, so congratulations on your unoriginal thinking. You can always attempt to hang people who believe in virtue on hypocrisy, but we are free to refuse to be hung.”
Ad hominem argument here, to avoid confronting the point that the collateral damage in Iraq is greater than all of the first trimester abortions ever done in the US–when we measure it on the basis of pain and suffering. Now, you can choose to take a different measure, like human potential lost, but then if that is the goal, then perhaps we should also outlaw contraception, which prevents pregnancies that would have occurred naturally or according to God’s will, as many Catholic theologians have argued… I don’t agree with that line of thinking, but I thought that most everyone could agree on the pain and suffering criterion. But maybe I am wrong. According to the right, some pain and suffering is to be ignored while the lack fo pain and suffering is to be fictionalized into even greater pain and suffering. Strange how the conservative mind works (or doesn’t).
“I’m afraid you are a fool, abc, and you refuse to look past the end of your own prejudices to see where your utilitarian point of view will lead.”
The ad hominem arguments again. A sure sign you have lost the battle of facts and logic.
“Hazlitt’s one lesson of economics is true for just about everything: you have to look not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act; you must trace the consequences of the act not just for one group, but for all groups. And one consequence of abortion on demand is to provide support and cover for some societies hatred of and contempt for women.”
Funny how limiting women’s freedom connotes hatred of women. I guess the vast majority of women in America, who according to polls would allow for some legal resort to abortion, do not know what is good for them. Luckily they have you to dictate their interest to them…
One thing it is always good to remember when dealing with a leftist is that changing the topic or twisting language is second-nature to him.
In abc’s case, he cannot address the topic of killing unborn baby girls without having to face some uncomfortable truths about his airtight ideology (the irreconciliable tension between feminism and the popularity of aborting females). So he attempts to hijack the thread, Zach-style, to a more comfortable groove where he can recite his beloved memes.
Another tack, much more subtle, is to inveigle us into agreeing with his warped concepts of right and wrong. When abc says it’s OK to kill the unborn because they feel “no pain and suffering,” he is saying that it is permissible to take a human life if the person whose life is being taken doesn’t feel it. You can see how easy the step will be to the taking of the lives of people in vegetative states or deep comas. “They won’t feel a thing!”
Abc and people like him face a problem that for all of their intelligence they cannot solve. He obviously believes that “pain and suffering” are bad, therefore are to be avoided. But he also has said that there is really no basis for declaring something to be good or bad because the concepts are changeable human constructs that have no basis in objective reality. So here he is left using the despised concepts of good and bad to make his points: killing the unborn is “good” while the deaths of Iraqi innocents is”bad.”
That he does not see the radical disconnects in his reasoning is why he gets so angry at us. As he awaits our epiphany at the elegance of his philosophy, we’re laughing our adult asses off at him.
spiff seems to miss my argument yet again, so I’ll spell it out. The collateral damage of children being killed by US shock and awe is closer to a massacre than the termination of fetuses, especially when done in the first trimester, by any reasonable understanding of the term massacre. Bookworm and spiff, obviously, think differently, and that is fine. But to ignore pain and suffering, which occurs in the case of Iraqi collateral damage, but not in the case of early term abortions, is to make a mockery of the term “massacre.” And to fictionalize some slipperly slope to make actual pain and suffering seem smaller than the lack of pain and suffering in the case of a brainless fetus only makes that mockery look more tragic.
spiff writes:
“Abortion is a separable issue from collateral damage in warfare regardless of what you say. And my (and others) failure to address your attempts to distract and cloud the subject does not reveal any rank hypocrisy. But it does reveal your ability or lack thereof to stay focused and on topic. For someone who claims to be immersed in logic and science you’re debating tactics are rather amateurish (and somewhat illogical in my opinion).”
Hopefully, now you can see that I am not changing the subject at all, but highlighting that the concern over abortion has little to do with concern over the pain and suffering of a fetus, because if the right were concerned with pain and suffering, then they wouldn’t be so quiet about the collateral damage occuring in the many wars that the US has waged when it didn’t need to. The right worries about the welfare of the fetus, and then seems to drop the concern when the fetus is a child that might require public health care, for example. At a time when 25% of American children will go hungry at some point this year, the right refuses to renew unemployment checks or fund child welfare programs. Money becomes more important than child welfare, but it is the left that is slavishly and wrongly following the precepts of utilitarianism. How funny that.
“Collateral damage is an unfortunate part of warfare that the US military has gone through great lengths to minimize to their own detriment might I add. I’m really not sure what you want me (and people like me to say)… especially since I know lefties and people like you (but I repeat myself) will do all the whining and protesting anyways. I live in the real world… I won’t pretend that collateral damage is completely avoidable once combat has begun.”
Nor will I, but I recognize that one needs to be realistic and honest about more than war. One needs to recognize that to deny women freedom over their bodies when the fetus inside can be terminated without pain and suffering seems like a great intrusion of government into the private life of a female. And to call her or her doctor a murderer, although science can clearly distinguish a human baby from a fetus, is beyond dishonest.
“No, I think what you want to do (or appear to want to do) is distract the issue to debate whether or not the US should have invaded Iraq… which really has nothing to do with abortion, how it is applied in the US, the morality behind it, what it means for our nations soul and future and the contortions you and your fellow travelers go through to convince yourself it is a good (or necessary) thing as it is applied currently. For arguments sake, assuming we are wrong going into Iraq doesn’t all of a sudden make our position on abortion wrong too… As you and Z like to say “apple and oranges”. Switching the subject around is an old and tired tactic generally reserved for adolescents and liberals (but I repeat myself).”
The real apples versus oranges false comparison is the one made between abortions and massacres. Conservatives should look in the mirror.
“I’m afraid you are a fool, abc” – Tonestaple
“The ad hominem arguments again. A sure sign you have lost the battle of facts and logic.” – ABC
It’s not an ad hominem argument… it is a classification supported by observation and reproducible in a controlled environment. At worst it is a hypothesis… maybe a theory.
“spiff seems to miss my argument yet again, so I’ll spell it out.” – ABC
Bingo: please spell it out for me. It says more about you than it does about my ability to comprehend your logic (or lack thereof).
“science can clearly distinguish a human baby from a fetus.”
My scientist friend from Berkeley says the latest theory is that a fetus, although not human, somehow becomes human if it is not dissected and dismembered in time.
He says the transition to becoming human may have something to do with when the priest or rabbi sneaks in at night and says magic words over the fetus. One second it’s not a human and the next second it is!
Charles M, that’s interesting. I always thought that it happened the moment the foetus is bathed with light rays upon exiting the birth canal. Mysterious things, those light rays.
What I can’t figure out, though, is what happens when the baby is born in the dark. Not quite human?
Can someone please put together a spreadsheet outlining all of the arguments, points and talking points that ABC has thrown at this subject. Maybe a flowchart will help.
Abortion -> Fetus -> Dead Children -> McNuggets-> Big Mac->Pain-> Collateral Damage -> Iraq War -> WMD -> Choice -> Woman’s Bodies-> Freedom->Abortion
Is that about right?
Damn… I forgot to add “Bush’s fault”.
@Danny: That might make it a Xenomorph.
spiff, you are worse at logic than I thought. The chart is much simpler than that: abortion =X= slippery slope to massacre, and fetus =X= baby. Your comprehension skills are off today.
@ABC:
LOL… I shotgunned it I admit it.
What is X by the way… you need to define your variable.
To spiff580:
THAT’s the word I was looking for!
spiff580, you forgot the part where abc calls his children to his side and says, “Kids, we live in a wonderful country. I want you to know that if your mom had been in a bad mood and decided not to recite the magic words, ‘I’m gonna let these fetuses live!’ you would not have been here to hear my Harvard-certificated words. Doesn’t it just make you glow to know that your mom cared enough about you—even though you weren’t human—to let you become human?”
Charles M. “…or a xenomorph, in which case we would have had to kill you.”
@Danny: it would probably be considered a protected species… in which case it would be more important than human life.
Hey, guys, why don’t we publish a comic book aimed at feminists like abc?
The protagonist’s official name will be Dr. Reproductive Health, but he’ll go by the nickname The Eviscerator.
His arch-enemy will be Xenomorph, a shadowy figure that some feminists say looks human even though his mommy never said the magic words over him to make him so.
Only if McDonalds has tie in collector glasses sold with Big Macs and McChicken sandwiches.
Lucky for me and computer board, Spiff, I had finished off my coffee before reading that! I just hate what the computer screen looks like after a spit take.
A is flawed because he failed Epistemology 101.
I notice that Z gets in a huff n puff about what I write here, but says nothing about A. Coincidence?
SADIE, “spit take?” Wasn’t that the legendary fighter the RAF flew against the Luftwaffe?
Spitfire.
spiff, I didn’t have a “does not equal” key on my PC, so I improvised. I guess it wasn’t so clear…
ABC: ≠
How did you do that? Where were you when I needed you??
I edit my comments in word and copy paste to wordpress. That is why formatting gets all mussed up sometimes. I am a horrible and slow writer and tend to have to use spell check and think through my thoughts. That is also why I tend to be well behind the commenting curve or genearlly say nothing at all.
In word:
Insert tab, symbols drop down, more symbols, a window will open with a bunch of symbols. It is there. Pick your symbol and insert. Copy and paste into wordpress.