The Necessity of Partial Birth Abortion: A Scientific Perspective

[selfAdjoint]

Absolutely. There is for example the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, who likes to pray for women entering abortion clinics. By court order, he has to stay across the street, so he uses a bull-horn. And I am sure the mendacious "Partial Birth" law will be struck down by the courts, just as its predecessor was.

But there is also a difference between opposing an injustice, and demeaning the character of those you are opposing.

 

[Jonathan]

adrenaline: I understand, I am only on the computer at night and I can get confused easily when tired . I remember now, and I agree: Better child support laws=less abortion.
Zero: You have my motives wrong, but got some of the politics right:
-sex+love=good (esp. with marriage first)
-meaningless+sex=bad
-I am against public schools because they don't do a good job and are more expensive than the old way: apprenticeship and education by parents.
-Medicare and Medicaid I know little about, so I don't have opinions there yet.
-I am against school lunches because I don't want to pay for someone else's kid's lunch. I will voluntarily give to charities that do the same thing, but I don't want it gov't enforced, that is socalism. I am not against children getting to eat and I haven't thought much about this issue, so I may actually prefer a more conditional opinion, I don't know.

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by selfAdjoint
I am not antiabortion but I am a Catholic and I know a lot of pro-lifers. Your characterization of them could not be more false and insulting. They love their children dearly and are much for helping the poor (Catholic charities is one of the most efficient of help agencies). Beyond that many of them, instructed by the Church, are left-liberal on social issues and supporters of government programs like Medicare and Medicaid - hey, the older ones, including me, are on it!. They do not think sex is dirty, they think it is holy, just as a person is holy. And, here is where I differ from them, they think a fetus is a person. Try to think outside your mindset for a moment and imagine how you would act if you thought fetuses were really, truly people.

You live in Wisconsin...oops.

Sorry folks, I forget that the entire country isn't the Bible Belt. Down here, AIDS is punishment for sin, as are other STDs and unwanted pregnancy. Also sorry, for not being more specific in my attack. There ARE people sho believe the way that I described, lots and lots of them. They are mostly evangelical psuedo-Christians, who embrace hate as a way of life. You should see the glee they get when bad things happen to 'sinners'.

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by Jonathan
adrenaline: I understand, I am only on the computer at night and I can get confused easily when tired . I remember now, and I agree: Better child support laws=less abortion.
Zero: You have my motives wrong, but got some of the politics right:
-sex+love=good (esp. with marriage first)
-meaningless+sex=bad
-I am against public schools because they don't do a good job and are more expensive than the old way: apprenticeship and education by parents.
-Medicare and Medicaid I know little about, so I don't have opinions there yet.
-I am against school lunches because I don't want to pay for someone else's kid's lunch. I will voluntarily give to charities that do the same thing, but I don't want it gov't enforced, that is socalism. I am not against children getting to eat and I haven't thought much about this issue, so I may actually prefer a more conditional opinion, I don't know.

You are allowed your opinions. I don't see how or why your opinions should be made the law for everyone.

 

[cucumber]

Originally posted by Zero
You live in Wisconsin...oops.

Sorry folks, I forget that the entire country isn't the Bible Belt. Down here, AIDS is punishment for sin, as are other STDs and unwanted pregnancy. Also sorry, for not being more specific in my attack. There ARE people sho believe the way that I described, lots and lots of them. They are mostly evangelical psuedo-Christians, who embrace hate as a way of life. You should see the glee they get when bad things happen to 'sinners'.

i agree: i used to live in Rwanda when i was little as my mom and dad were development workers (i am not sure what the job is called) and they told me how the church actively propagated the rumor that condoms did not prevent you from getting aids (as they had "little holes through which the virus can get") and that it is a sin to use them (and if you didn't have sex before marriage and didn't cheat on your partner you wouldn't get HIV anyway), thus destroying the efforts my parents had made promoting the use of them. how can a world religion that claims to be all about love thy neighbour help AIDS to spread around the people that believe in them?!?
it's ridiculous!

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by cucumber
i agree: i used to live in Rwanda when i was little as my mom and dad were development workers (i am not sure what the job is called) and they told me how the church actively propagated the rumor that condoms did not prevent you from getting aids (as they had "little holes through which the virus can get") and that it is a sin to use them (and if you didn't have sex before marriage and didn't cheat on your partner you wouldn't get HIV anyway), thus destroying the efforts my parents had made promoting the use of them. how can a world religion that claims to be all about love thy neighbour help AIDS to spread around the people that believe in them?!?
it's ridiculous!

As I apologized for earlier, it isn't everyone...but I do think it is an awful ot of them. I also love the lies that are told 'for our own good', like the idea that condoms don't prevent pregnancies or STDs. In the real world, if you want to stop abortion, you promote birth control.

 

[selfAdjoint]

The Vatican has just repeated this canard about condom effectiveness. Although elsewher on these boards I pointed out that there really are such things as defective condoms, I can't say how disgusted I am at their action.

For the Vatican (not for all Catholics, or even all Bishops), sex, embryology, abortion, contraception, and homosexuality are all tied together in one big bundle. You can't eliminate one without eliminating all. So their response to AIDs is continence and only continence. I have many times heard from other Catholics the opinion that this irrational position comes from the Curia being all old virgin men. Sex is the big no-no in their lives, and it must be the big no-no in any unmarried person's life. And as for married people, sex is only for procreaation; having sex for fun or to strengthen your marriage while using contraceptives is a sin. Phooey.

 

[Jonathan]

I agree! I hate those pompous, self-righeous pseudochristians! If you have seen the TV show 'Everybody Loves Raymond', Amy's family are the ones I'm thinking of.
However Zero, your (second to most recent) post didn't make a lot of sense to me, I didn't say that my opinions should be the law for everyone, esp. given that I admit to not knowing much about two of them. And almost everyone agrees with the first two opinions I wrote.

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by Jonathan
I agree! I hate those pompous, self-righeous pseudochristians! If you have seen the TV show 'Everybody Loves Raymond', Amy's family are the ones I'm thinking of.
However Zero, your (second to most recent) post didn't make a lot of sense to me, I didn't say that my opinions should be the law for everyone, esp. given that I admit to not knowing much about two of them. And almost everyone agrees with the first two opinions I wrote.

Well, not you, maybe...but plenty of people who think like you do seem to think that we should write the laws to suit them.

 

[Jonathan]

That's not me, the laws should be written to suit what is right in the majority's veiw and what is best for the majority.

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by Jonathan
That's not me, the laws should be written to suit what is right in the majority's veiw and what is best for the majority.

WHat are you, some sort of anti-American traitor?

Seriously, laws absolutely must NOT be written based on majority opinion. That sort of attitude, attractive though it may be, stands in sharp contrast to the values that America is based on.

 

[HAVOC451]

Originally posted by Jonathan
That's not me, the laws should be written to suit what is right in the majority's veiw and what is best for the majority.

Thanks goodness our laws are geared toward protecting us from the tyranny of the majority.

 

[Jonathan]

So you all are telling me that the right and wrong that are in the laws should come from some other source? And what pray tell, is this other source in it's infinite wisdom that isn't God? If laws are not written by what is right in the majority's view and is good for the majority, then what in the world have we been using these past several hundred years in this democracy?

 

[selfAdjoint]

Laws in the US are written and passed according to the political process laid down in our constitution. This allows some influence of minorities (e.g. the 60 percent vote requirement for cloture against filibusters). It also has the effect that laws which over a long term are perceived as bad by the majority - enough to get them off their duffs and vote - will be overthrown.

God does not tell us what laws he wants - only the human run churches do that. Let them take their chances in the political forum.

BTW before somebody points out that cloture is not in the constitution, it says the Senate can make up its own rules. And those are the rules they made.

 

[Jonathan]

Yes, that is my understanding of it, laws are passed by representatives whose job it is to pass the laws and okay the spenting that they see fit. Given that the representatives are elected, then the veiws they hold are supposed to be approximately what the majority thinks. I can tell you all that if it didn't work this way, that if the rules didn't say what the majority wants them to say, the gov't would be overthrown and then it would be that way.
My mentioning of God in my previous post was referring more to logical philosophy. We have only two ways of knowing a truth:
-believing what God tells us, if we go to the trouble of agknowledging him
-making assumptions and observations, and then coming to logical conclusions
However, as human history shows, we are far to fallable to put a lot of faith in the second. It is generally pretty good, and generally gets better, but we can prove that it will never be perfect.
Now for those who don't believe in God, there is no way to be perfect, one can only get so close that one merely makes that extra assumption that very very close is close enough.
For those who believe in God, what God says is the only perfect, and all the others are just varying approximations of truth. However, one must make the big and important decision in this case of which god/s to listen to.
This is why most scientists take a generally atheistic veiw.