Legal Death, Legal Life, Personhood and Abortion

I'm glad that you live in Happy Fantasyland where choosing not to have intercourse means that you will never, ever have intercourse.Those of is in reality, however, have to make policy based on the fact that plenty of people have intercourse without particularly wanting to. I can't believe that there are people in the world for whom the abortion issue is as simple as you portray it. An honest person would look at the issue and say "well, on one hand, we're killing humans. On the other hand, we'd be forcing women to be pregnant and give birth against their will, and pregnancy is still the leading cause of death for women under 20 around the world."When we kill a fetus, the fetus doesn't notice. It doesn't have a mind. It's like destroying an animal. Contrast that to the loss of life experienced by the woman who dies in childbirth, or whose life plans are irrevocably lost due to the responsibiliy of an unwanted child.I'm sure I sound callous and heartless to you, as you do to me. But I'm being honest with you, as you were with us, because I respect you and your position, and I understand it, and I'd like you to come to the same understanding about mine. I realize that I'm setting the freedom and choice of one human being over the life of another. And maybe that doesn't make sense to you. But what the fetus is losing, it doesn't even notice. How can it therefore be worth anything? It's certainly not worth what the adult woman loses.This isn't a simple choice for people like me, and no, we don't feel totally fine about it. But we've come to the decision we think is best. You're free to disagree. But lets not pretend like this is a simple issue for anyone involved.

Yes, but other situations, too. One in three women will be a victim of sexual assault in her lifetime. I'd say that's plenty.

And how will you distinguish those cases from the rest? I'm not just talking about criminaly prosecuted acts of rape, here.

So get off the computer and do something about it. So too with abortion - if you pro-lifers spent as much time educating people about sexual responsibility and contraception as you did spouting inflammatory and scientifically dubious rhetoric, you could halve the number of abortions every year. Telling people to choose not to have sex has abolutely no effect.Oh, and a tip from "Dogbert's Guide to Conversational Geometry": "Reversing" that figure would mean one third of women would not be sexually assaulted in her lifetime, or that two thirds of women would. But I know what you meant.

All pregnancies are life-threatening. The degree of risk varies from case to case, but it is always present.Pregnancy always exposes the woman to risk.Doctors are not perfect. They make mistakes. Or a doctor may refuse to disclose a risky pregnancy because he's ideologically opposed to a woman having an abortion, for any reason. You're asking a woman to literally put her life in the hands of another person, without her choosing to do so. That's unacceptable.

Unless I point with an open hand, which I then use to bitch-slap your ass. 0wn3d!

Back the fuck off. I understood you perfectly.You're the one that seems to misunderstand your own argument. Do you deny that, under your plan, the woman only gets to make the choice about the abortion after her doctor has decided she can? Or do you not understand that your requirement for a medical assessment of risk means that a doctor is determining whether or not an abortion will be allowed?Think it through before you accuse me of reading problems. Yes, that's exactly it. Then the decision is hers. That is, only after the doctor has made his decision.

Wow. Who knew that a ring on your finger could magically shield you from STD's and hurt feelings? Oh, wait.Do you know what effect your "abstience until marriage" initiatives are having, around the country? No, they're not stemming the unstoppable teenage libido. Instead, teens are getting married at earlier ages than they were before. They're getting married just to have sex.That's what your solution does, RR. It doesn't keep teens from playing around with something they're not ready for. It pushes them into committments that they're not mature enough to make.Yeah, sex can burn you, especially as a teenager. But jeez, the emotional cost of a failed sexual relationship is a hell of a lot less than the emotional cost of a failed marriage.Good going, religious conservatives.

I've been searching all day, but no I can't, and though it chaps my ass to do so, I'll withdraw the claim.Though I can certainly substantiate other negative effects of abstinence education, if you would like. Not sure that's on-topic, though. I do get angry, because religious social conservatives like you are literally destroying people's lives.

That's not exactly a meaningful distinction when I see you advocating their exact social agenda - abstinence-only "education", restricting abortion, banning gay marriage, etc.All I know about your social views is what you've advocated here; what you've advocated is precisely the same agenda of the religious conservatives. I don't think you're a bad person, but we're clearly not on the same side, here.

Can I answer? Context: lost my virginity (at an embarassingly late age) via casual sex with an aquaintance. Absolutely not. I was somewhat bummed when I realized she was moving on to some other dude, but I got over it pretty quickly. Met my wife, too, and that was that.

Promoting it is, yes. The data is pretty clear; promoting abstinence increases the spread of STD's and pregnancy. How do you figure that? Of course there's such a thing as "gay marriage." A number of gay people are married in this very country, in several states. Clearly they don't, because they're even now getting married under the same rules as hetero couples. No, it's not. The destination of your agenda is the ruin of our society.

According to the data, yes, it is. No, the only reason I think it correlates to the spread of STD's is because that's what the data indicates. But if what you say is true, shouldn't we take that into account?That is, unless your goal isn't so much to reduce the spread of STD's or pregnancy, but rather, to be able to call sexually active teens "sluts" with a clear conscience. In that case you should probably just keep going the way you're going. But stay the hell away from my future teenagers, please. Responsible sex education is about educating them about that chance, a chance they're going to take anyway - a chance literally everybody wants to take. Responsible sex education mitigates the risks of that chance to the greatest extent possible. Abstinence education, on the other hand, actually increases that risk by preventing teens from being prepared when - not if - they take that chance.

C'mon, Ned.What do you think happens when you tell a teenager not to do something because its dangerous? I reccommend remedial viewing of The Fantasticks.

Oh? You asked her?What if Osama bin Laden's mom had said the same thing? Or John Wayne Gacy's mom? Or Hitler's? Who knows how many lives abortions have saved?