Abortion

okay. so it is only some states.

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okay. so it is only some states.

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At any rate, it's an interesting ethical dilemma.

And one that requires a flexible response. That is the crux of the matter here, because people do have different opinions.A policy that allows abortion allows those that {do not chose it} to behave according to their beliefs.A policy that prevents abortions does NOT allow it for those that {do\would chose it} to behave according to their beliefs.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

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And one that requires a flexible response. That is the crux of the matter here, because people do have different opinions.

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I don't know, does it?Does the First Amendment cover child endangerment (IRT the Jehova's Witness position on transfusion).Edit: Here's a paper.

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Jehovah’s Witness parents who refuse lifesaving blood transfusions for their minor children have been widely considered in bioethics as a paradigm of overreaching parental authority. I accept this conclusion myself, but it must also be acknowledged that this judgment is not free of controversy. Legislative bodies around the world have, over the course of the last century, wavered and reversed themselves over these issues. They have, on the one hand, passed statutes that allow for so called "religious exemptions" that permit parental religious convictions to prevail over recommended medical treatment. But when parents then make judgments that endanger children, many of these legislatures temper or rescind the very religious exemptions they previously allowed.17

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In 1944 the United States Supreme Court decided, in the case of Prince v Massachusetts,18 that a Jehovah’s Witness parent could not neglect the education of her nine year old child by dictating that the child sell religious magazines on the street. In this case, Ms Prince argued that her religious beliefs were constitutionally protected, but the Supreme Court found that rights of religion are not beyond limitation and that a child cannot reasonably be subjected to a poor education, to communicable disease, to ill health, or to death. The court determined that parents may martyr themselves, but may not martyr their children.

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Prince established in US law an important principle that should be no less pronounced in morals, namely that religious standards and practices must yield to sober medical judgment when they seriously affect the welfare and health of children. Nothing in the protection of religious belief, in law, or in morals, should allow for the neglect of a child’s appropriate medical treatment. More specifically, if a child faces a risk of death, disfigurement, serious bodily injury, or ill health a decision to withhold medical care constitutes parental abuse or neglect even if the parent’s reason is religious and reflective of the parents’ considered viewpoint.

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T L Beauchamp. J Med Ethics 2003;29:269-274. Methods and principles in biomedical ethicsMethods and principles in biomedical ethics | Journal of Medical EthicsThis message has been edited by gene90, 10-19-2005 07:17 PM

In both instances you would have parents choices subrogated to some state authority, one forcing unwanted medical treatment and the other with-holding wanted medical treatment. I see this as an irreconcilable conflict unless there is a wide enough freedom to adapt the application to personal beliefs.Nobody should be forced to have an abortion.
Nobody should be forced to watch their child die of a treatable illness.Both of these are possible without a wide enough freedom to adapt the application of available medical practices to personal beliefs. That is one opinion. The question then becomes a redefinition of child abuse, and where do we stop that slope? No more curfew? There is a line - vague and ill defined, but still a line between parental authority and state.And one I do not want to cross - as an American that values the basic individual rights that make this country an icon of freedom and liberty.Personally I have no problem with anyone that wants to willingly remove their genetic material from the gene pool.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

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Nobody should be forced to watch their child die of a treatable illness.

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Beg your pardon?This is not, nor was it ever, about forcing people to watch their children die of a treatable illness.This is about parents who refuse to allow their children to be treated, thus causing them to die of a treatable illness.

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That is one opinion. The question then becomes a redefinition of child abuse, and where do we stop that slope?

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Well, seeing as how child abuse is already illegal...I don't think the slippery slope argument works to well. Especially since this definition of child abuse was essentially adopted by SCOTUS in 1944 and the world is still here.From Prince v Massachusetts:

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The State has a broad power to oversee the acts of children. Parental authority may be restricted when doing so is in the interests of a child’s welfare.

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[Quoting RAZD]

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And one I do not want to cross - as an American that values the basic individual rights that make this country an icon of freedom and liberty.

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*Passes the apple pie*But this isn't really about "individual rights" either. It's about parents denying children medical treatment. Parents have a right to deny themselves medical treatment when they are the ones that are ill: that's an individual's right. This is about parents being allowed to legally block treatment that could lead to a child's death. This is about the rights of a parents to speak for another, not to speak for themselves as individuals.Again, from Prince v. Massachusetts:

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Parents are free to become martyrs themselves. But it does not follow that they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children before they have reached the age of full and legal discretion when they can make that choice for themselves.

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Atheism and AgnosticismPrince was originally about child labor laws, but the justices interpreted it more broadly. If you believe in "individual liberty", does that mean that parents have a right to send their children to sweatshops? That's not a big jump from giving parents authority to force doctors to let their children die on the table from something that otherwise would be non-fatal in the developed world, and the logic is the same.This message has been edited by gene90, 10-19-2005 08:28 PMThis message has been edited by gene90, 10-19-2005 08:36 PM

But, that is the problem with using the same justification for both sides of the argument: it leads to unreconcilable consequences.That is why there needs to be a flexible system.Seems you {the (more) conservative} are arguing for state control while I {the (more) liberal} are arguing for individual rights.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

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Seems you {the (more) conservative} are arguing for state control while I {the (more) liberal} are arguing for individual rights.

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I noticed. Ironic isn't it?Normally I'd favor the parent's rights, especially their right to practice religion as they see fit. But in this case it trumps the rights of a minor. In Prince v. Mass, the minor's rights that were trumped were that they should be in school rather than working.In the case of refusing lifesaving medicine, we up the ante: the right of the child to live vs. the religious rights of the parents. My opinion? No contest.But I understand your position.This message has been edited by gene90, 10-19-2005 08:44 PM

Griswold is a boogeyman for the religious right: it is one of the cases with which they wink-and-nudge communicate in the mainstream media without tipping off moderates who don't know the code.Apparently, Attorney Miers left Senator Specter with the impression that she felt Griswold was sound, settled law. He said as much to reporters after their private meeting; she called to inform him that he had "misunderstood" her. He released a terse written statement saying he accepted her assertion that he had misunderstood her. Conservative pundits opposed to her nomination pointed out that Specter is fairly sophisticated on Constitutional issues and unlikely to misunderstand any comment on Griswold. Griswold, of course, is code for Roe v. Wade which found the same right to privacy.After insisting that no inquiry should be made into where a judge stands on Roe v. Wade, or any other issue that might come before the court, the religious right is now demanding proof that she would overturn Roe v. Wade--as though there were any doubt. The thing of great wonder is that there is great doubt among the religious right; as always, they seek certainty.Personally, I think overturning Roe v. Wade would be suicidal for the Republican Party, a classic case of be careful what you wish for...overturning that basic right to privacy, and turning women's reproductive rights over to the wingnuts in the individual states, would radicalize millions in the same fashion as Vietnam and the draft, and the upheaval would be even more bitter.

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IMHO

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What? She's against Griswold vs. Connecticut? I would have thought that would be the least contentious of the Warren Court's decisions. I realize that I am a fanatical, rabid left-wing terrorist (and probably a pedophile to boot), but I cannot conceive how anyone could disagree with Griswold.

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I have no problem with Griswold. Apparently I missed the memo with the code-key.This message has been edited by gene90, 10-19-2005 09:16 PM

Perhaps you show some stain of moderateness.

I'm not sure, it seems that most so called conservatives these days are merely liberals with a different social agenda. This is where you should be spotting the irony. Here you are arguing that the State should be an advocate for children's rights over those of the parents. Yet is not the point of families a recognition that there are parents who should have control over the rights of their offspring? Replacing parents with the state based on an idea that the state will know better is pretty dangerous.If children really do have rights, then what can parents do at all? How can they teach their children a religion by forcing them to go to church (that violates many rights), set curfews, limit the friends they can see, use corporal punishments, limit what they can read, forcing them to go to school, etc?Now you may answer the above points by stating that the parents have a reason for doing such things. They are doing so (violating the rights of the child) in order to improve the child. But isn't that also what motivates the parents to do those other things that you do not like? With perhaps the exception of forced slavery for simple profit of the parents, all other things are generally the parents looking out of the interests of their children. In the case of denying medical treatment, that would be to save the child's spiritual well being.If your answer is that while parents may believe they are helping the child they may only violate rights if the state also agrees with those reasons, then parents become simple caretakers for the state.I would also find it interesting to hear that you would deny that there is a spiritual realm, or that the State may know that saving the temporal corporal life through medical procedures CANNOT harm the permanent spiritual life of the child. That would be an interesting development for legal precedents.And of course this discussion of rights of children to GET things is also interesting. They have a right to education and medical services? Then why are we shifting toward privatized schooling and as yet have no socialized medical system. If the state can say the parents MUST provide X because receiving X is the right of the child, then is the State not compelled in the same fashion, especially when it can abrogate the rights of parents in that name?This message has been edited by holmes, 10-20-2005 05:21 AM

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

I'm a bit confused here...where did I say I felt that God hates fags and/or that God loves sinners? I said fundies would oppose an abortion even if they knew that the child would grow up to be homosexual, because for reason that I cannot fathom, they think that homosexuality is a choice. Therefore they (the fundies) would simply need to show the homosexual the "errors of his/her ways" and all would be right with the World again.
Personally, if I had to bet on who I think God would hate most, the fundies or the homosexuals, I'd place my money on the former. No...nothing in particlular comes to mind.

it was a rehetorical question and i apologize that you thought i meant that you or i think that way.

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Griswold is a boogeyman for the religious right: it is one of the cases with which they wink-and-nudge communicate in the mainstream media without tipping off moderates who don't know the code.

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Yes, as I read read a bit about it, it is rather a stretch to think that the US Constitution guarantees marital privacy over other forms of privacy. Once Griswold is accepted, then it is hard to resist accepting Eisenstadt v. Baird, giving the same sexual privacy rights (and reproductive control) to unmarried couples, and then eventually Lawrence v. Texas, where now consenting male partners have the right to privacy in their sexual lives. (Oh, the horror! The horror!)Since we all know that a just and loving god would never condone consenting adults engaging in behavior that leads to their happiness and fullfillment, we must reverse the satanic and subsversive principles contained in Griswold!

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"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt