Abortion----Politics

It's really easy for a man -or anyone- to tell a woman that she has to do something that will commit her for the rest of her life. It's not so simple & easy if you're the woman or the girl being told.

How many of you guys have committed & followed through on paying for what you want? I'll give you an example, someone I happen to know:

She's 18, finished high school & just started college. She's been looking for a job for almost a year, finally got hired. In the 3 weeks since hiring she's worked a grand total of 15 hours at minimum wage. There simply aren't any jobs here. She has no money, no income. No way to move to another town & get started, that's about impossible for a broke single female with no real education or skills.

Now, she has medical insurance through her parents as a dependent in school. But if she leaves school, or even drops enough hours to no longer be a full time student, she will lose that insurance. If the baby is born, after birth there will be no medical insurance for it.

Her parents are both unable & unwilling to raise another kid. They've already raised theirs & other than what their own children need as adults, such as this one going to community college, they're done. They simply are NOT going to take on the responsibility of raising some guys kid. That guy, BTW, is NOT going to marry the girl. He did say that he was "going to be man, step up & take it day by day."

She used birth control, it failed. This is an unintended pregnancy.

She has no extended family in the area, there simply is no support in play. If she has the baby, she's going to be a single mom, likely going to survive if you care to call it that by becoming a welfare mom & making use of what govt aid she can.

You & I both know that this is a sewer for her to be trapped into. She will most likely end up not finishing school, end up in the projects, on food stamps & welfare while trying to find a way to get some lousy job (40% unemployment here, BTW) that will pay maybe $6 an hour or so. And how does day care get provided or paid for?

Now, she can have the baby, which is what the pro-lifers want. But she hasn't seen any of them jumping up to do so much as lift a finger to make sure that baby is provided for.

Most of the conservatives here are opposed to welfare & all the aid programs we have that our taxes pay for. We don't like welfare queens who raise a pack of kids on the system & we grips about how we're paying for all that. But at the same time we feel free to demand that they must give birth under any & all circumstances, regardless of their ability to pay for it, provide for the baby (I mean, if the girl can't even provide for herself yet, how does she provide for a baby on her own?), provide medical care after birth, etc. What if it has some serious health issues? With no insurance, then what?

So like I said, it's REAL friggin easy to have a nice, strong moral position & demand that everyone live up to it. But somehow, I can't help but wonder why the people with these beliefs who want to legally take the choice away from her have no responsibility to help her live up to their beliefs? Why aren't they clamoring to send money? After all it's not just next week or next year. It's every week, every month, every year, for at least the next 18 years. And rather than learn something & go on to be a productive member f society, earning a living, paying taxes & possibly getting married & forming a real family a bit later, she'll basically become a brood mare in this guys stable, with her life irrevocably altered to remove what ever potential her life may have held.

I said it once before but no one had anything to say:

It ultimately comes down to who's rights trump the others. Either the woman, who is an actual, legal person in her own right & grown enough to become pregnant & give birth, has the right, or the fetus, someone who isn't quite just yet, has the right.

But both can't have equal rights. One of them has greater rights. The woman either has the right to control her life, or the unborn has the right to the mothers life.

Current law places the power to the woman.
 
Stu,

I have a couple that I am friend with who have plenty of money and are wonderful people who have been trying to adopt for a couple of years. They would love to meet this girl, cover her expenses and adopt her child and give it a great home. Seems like the best option for all involved to me.
 
Hey Totch /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif
 
I don't know what she's going to do. She doesn't know what she's going to do.

But I think most anyone can read that & just maybe realize that it's not so simple a thing to deal with.
 
WyoSongDog, I can see your point. I was merely in this for a good debate and curious as to what other people's arguments were on both sides. I think the written word leaves a lot out of the picture. I certainly do not wish any ill will on anyone regardless if they do not have the same opinion. I look at it like a sports game where you put it all on the line rough each other up a little and go have beers afterword.

True, i would likely not discuss this face to face with strangers because it is such a hot topic.

I apologize to any who I offended in my posts. I am just speaking my mind like the rest of you and will continue to do so. Fortunately we are still allowed to do that. But I wish you no physical harm or ill will.
 
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There’s been some strong opinions expressed here; that’s to be expected because of the complexity of the issue but all and all I think it’s been done well. When I saw the issue raised I thought it would be a lot worse.
 
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There’s been some strong opinions expressed here; that’s to be expected because of the complexity of the issue but all and all I think it’s been done well. When I saw the issue raised I thought it would be a lot worse.



Funny, I was thinking the same thing. At points it looked like it was going to get bloody, but not too bad so far.
 
I know a guy on another board. Big liberal, I rarely agree with him. Why I bring him up is because he's opposed to abortion & the death penalty & has made some comments on the subject that I admit are hard to argue with.

Without directly quoting, he said something along the lines of:

"I really don't get conservatives on these things. They demand that every baby be born, but then don't want to do anything to help that child as it grows up, so when it then turns out to get in trouble & sent to death row, they're all too happy to fry him for it."

A bit of a straw man argument, as we do in fact have a lot of govt programs dumping money on things, but he's right that conservatives typically would stop that if they could.
 
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I know a guy on another board. Big liberal, I rarely agree with him. Why I bring him up is because he's opposed to abortion & the death penalty & has made some comments on the subject that I admit are hard to argue with.

Without directly quoting, he said something along the lines of:

"I really don't get conservatives on these things. They demand that every baby be born, but then don't want to do anything to help that child as it grows up, so when it then turns out to get in trouble & sent to death row, they're all too happy to fry him for it."

A bit of a straw man argument, as we do in fact have a lot of govt programs dumping money on things, but he's right that conservatives typically would stop that if they could.



That has always been curious to me as well. It has always seemed a contradiction to me. Force people to have babies by forbidding abortion and turn your backs on the poor Christian baby that you forced to be born and let it grow into a life of crime that costs you and the taxpayers even more money which will cause our taxes to rise to build bigger prisons, etc. Also, why I have been against forcing people to have a baby. I don't want to pay for their mistakes. Why is it my problem they made a poor decision? Why should I pay because they screwed up? I may decide on my own to give to private programs that support teen mothers in need, but don't force it on me.

To date this has and always will be a side to conservatives I don't understand. And because it is such a hot topic, as we have seen on this forum, I think the Conservatives suffer a loss of voters because of it.
 
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Oh, to further complicate it it the baby is mixed. One is black, the other white.




My friends don't care what color the baby is. They have one Cuban Baby already. They just want another one to love. I just can't understand how someone would think it is better to kill a child than give it to a loving family.
 
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I can make a very simple, clear case why murder is illegal without resorting to the 10 commandments or any other source of morals.

You have the right to your life. The definition of murder is the illegal taking of human life. Why is it illegal? Because you have the right to your life, no one has the right to take it from you, with certain exception such as in an act of self defense.

The morality of it is irrelevant from a legal POV. Your right to your life hold the trump card.

Stealing is illegal for the same reason.

I keep telling you guys but you friggin don't want to listen. We have 300 million people in this country and they are NOT all Christians, they do NOT all believe the 10 commandments & those that aren't & don't simple do not give a curled lip for the fact that you do, yet we all have to live under the same laws.

You can argue morality for its own sake, but when it comes to legislation you need to be sticking to things that can clearly & simply be shown to apply to everyone, regardless of their religion or lack thereof.



I beg to differ, Stu...if what you say is true, there wouldn't be all the "issues" with people wanting the Ten Commandments and Nativity scenes taken out of public places. There wouldn't be any "issues" with school children praying or reading a Bible in study hall. Oddly enough, if a Muslim wants to pray or read the Quoran in any public setting, that's considered freedom of religion. These days, a Christian doing the same can be, and often is, grounds for a lawsuit in an attempt to stop it. There are athiests all over this country that are doing their best to try and remove any semblance of God/Jesus from our society, yet they don't have much to say about other religions, just Christianity. They think we're bad, but if the Muslims ever do get ahold of this country, they'll wish that the Christians were their worst problem. Do some research if you don't believe me.

Hate to break the news to you, but our laws were put in place by the founding fathers, not the modern day Evangelical Christian. While they were against(as am I)being forced to worship a certain way(as I recall, that's what led people to start this country in the first place, among other things), they still acknowledged basic Judeao/Christian principals(the Ten Commandments)as the moral standards(otherwise known as "laws") by which we should live as a people. Take those laws away, and you get what we have right now: a nation that is moving away from morality in general, all in the name of personal freedoms.

Take a look at some of the countries that don't acknowledge the Ten Commandments, and you see nations that have no problem with murder(off with your head infidel!)and rape(it was the teenage girl's fault, not the adult men who gang raped her,so she gets X-number of lashes in the town square, and hey, too bad if she dies from her wounds)and domestic violence(beat your wife if she doesn't obey you). As far as they are concerned, you have a right to life, as long as you live and worship like they tell you to...don't and you no longer have a right to life. The right to life is not something that man just inherently believes in, he had to be taught. If you had grown up in a different land that didn't have the same laws as it's basis, it's not unrealistic to assume that your views about murder and so on might be much different than they are now. Nobody gave a second thought about murder, stealing, etc, etc, until God said it was wrong.

Say what you want, but you non-believers have it pretty good in this country. I agree you can't legislate belief or how a person chooses to or chooses not to worship, but it's not fair to chastise those of us that are willing to stand up and complain in a loud voice, wanting to legislate protection for unborn babies when people want the "right" to kill them. These same people that are screaming about their "right" to abort babies are the ones that want to enact laws to protect animals and fish from the "cruelty" of being hunted/caught and eaten, want to make everybody become a vegetarian, and want to make sure that certain....uhhhh...un-natural acts are protected by law.

We complain loudly, because we know what will happen to this country when the country no longer acknowledges God's laws, and we don't want to see the country ruined. You and anybody else that don't agree with the laws of God don't HAVE to live under those laws, you're free to move to another country that doesn't recognize and abide by the Ten Commandments.

The laws that we live under are the laws of the land, but they didn't come about from man's inherent morality, they came from God, whether you choose to believe or not.
 
We do not have a theocracy. Nor do I want one. My personal religious beliefs are irrelevant on that. What's in church belongs in church.
 
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What ever happened to people taking responsibility for themselves?



I think people do. One of the ways that can be done is to abort, but to many people that is not to be allowed. Still, by making that decision they do in fact take responsibility for themselves. They make the decision that they think is the best one for them, given their particular circumstances & abilities.

Along the line of thought of taking responsibility for themselves, how does that work when strangers who have no stake in the problem nor to suffer any consequences in the outcome wish to force their beliefs on another person? Does it not seem that they are making the decision for another while accepting zero responsibility for it?

Personally I have long had conflicting thoughts on this. I think abortion is a terrible thing. I also think forcing a young woman into a life vastly different & far worse for her than it would otherwise be likely to be is also a terrible thing.

I see some of both sides of this argument, when most people who hold strong feelings on it seems to act as if the other side didn't even have a side.

When you get right down to it, I don't think any of us who have not been faced with such problems really have any idea how terrible & difficult they are to deal with, and none of us testosterone pumps, IMO, is even remotely capable of knowing what it's like from the females perspective.
 
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We do not have a theocracy. Nor do I want one. My personal religious beliefs are irrelevant on that. What's in church belongs in church.



I never said we did have a theocracy, I simply stated that the desire to legislate certain issues, which you refer to as the product of religious beliefs that belong in church being forced upon those who may see things differently and nothing else, is not only based upon religious beliefs, but also based on the laws on which this country was founded...regardless of a person's religion or lack thereof.

You attempted to make a case for certain moral convictions being the inherent law of mankind, "without the need for the Ten Commandments or any other source of morals", when in fact they are not, they are the laws of God. My point was that the only reason we as a society see them as moral at all is because our country was founded upon those laws, and that there are plenty of societies in the world that don't just inherently believe that murder, rape, stealing, etc, are wrong.

The killing of an unborn child is still the killing of an innocent human being, whether a young lady that got pregnant is inconvenienced by that child being born and needing care or not. A major point of that particular moral conviction is that if you don't have sex out of wedlock, then you won't be put in a situation that has the possible outcome of deciding whether or not to terminate an innocent life and then have to live with the results of your decision, among other things.

Other people made the point(very well,I might add)that even when a woman becomes pregnant because she was forcibly raped, it's STILL wrong to kill that unborn baby, if for no other reason than because THAT BABY HAS A RIGHT TO LIFE AS A HUMAN BEING, and even as the mother of that baby, a woman does not have the right to take another person's life...to just kill the unborn child because it might make her life difficult later on. The ONLY reason that might be valid(IMO)is if the carrying to term and/or birth of said baby would cause the death of the mother...that reason at least has the definition of "self-defense" behind it, even if it was interpreted loosely. However, in this day and age, that situation is a rarity...from what I understand, nobody is really even questioning that reason. The majority of the people that want to make laws against abortion want to outlaw "convenience" abortions, abortions without parental consent, and partial birth abortions. From what I've seen, very few would insist that the mother die so that the baby could be born. I will agree that none of us who haven't been in that situation can even imagine what it must be like for the person that is or has.

You accuse us Christians who want to make laws about the issue of pressing our religous beliefs on others without a care for the feelings of the people who are involved, when in reality, we know we can't and shouldn't push our beliefs on others...our wanting to make laws about the issue actually amounts to us wanting to defend a helpless child that has no say in the matter.
 
Show me one shred of proof Bdawg that the "same people" who are Pro Choice people are also Animal Rights Activists and so forth. I am sure some of them are but I get the feeling that there are people from all walks of life on different sides of this issue. To make the blanket statement like you did above and say that if you are pro choice, you must be an animal rights activist, a vegetarian or trying to protect uhhh un-natural acts is irresponsible at best.

Dont get me wrong Bdawg. I fully understand that the foundation of this great nation is based on the Word Of God and the Ten Commandments. I honestly think seperation of Church and State like we are seeing is a terrible thing for this country and I pray that people come to their senses before its too late. But like I said earlier, if you are going to use Gods Word to argue your point please answer my question from above. God said, very specifically, in the Ten Commandments, "Thou Shall Not Kill". Thats pretty definitive, cut and dry and not open to much interpretation. But many are using that argument to support their position and then saying in the next sentence, its okay to kill in defense of your life, family or property. That its okay to kill when its a Soldier fighting in war or a Police Officer doing his duty. So which is it? Is it against Gods word to kill period, or does it depend on the circumstances? Does God take all of the factors involved into account on judgement day when he passes judgement or is it cut and dry? I know what I believe. I believe I will be judged by the totality of the circumstances. I believe that "Thou Shall Not Kill" is not as cut and dry as some would like to argue it is. I think abortion is a horrible thing and I wish it was a thing that no one ever had to consider. I also know the God I serve would not condone me standing in judgement of someone who makes that choice under circumstances I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT.

Stu.............Well said.
 
Not saying I support abortion but it's sad knowing millions of kids are born a year just to supply a welfare check and food stamps for a lazy no good piece of crap. While the kid is left to run the streets to be a thief and killer. The place to start is get rid of the free ride.

As an Independent one thing that really [beeep] me off about the Right is they scream pro life and at the same time support destroying employment opportunities for the average working American which gave most kids in this country a decent life. Give the poor rug rats a break, put them out of their misery or quit supporting Japan, China, India, Mexico, Peru, Columbia, Venezuela and every other country except the US and welfare. Fire Away. If The Founding Fathers Knew It Would Come To This.
 
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Show me one shred of proof Bdawg that the "same people" who are Pro Choice people are also Animal Rights Activists and so forth. I am sure some of them are but I get the feeling that there are people from all walks of life on different sides of this issue. To make the blanket statement like you did above and say that if you are pro choice, you must be an animal rights activist, a vegetarian or trying to protect uhhh un-natural acts is irresponsible at best.



Proof: no/guilty ... A blanket statement: yes/guilty...re-phrased to appease the offended: "are usually, or not unlikely to be, the same people, IMO" ...Take a look at the pro-choice crowd and they have at the very least, their fair share of those type of folk. Maybe it's just coincidence, but they seem to be,IMO,the loudest voices. Just like the pro-lifers have their fair share of rabid conservatives that call themselves Christians, but tend to be judgemental of others when God clearly said we shouldn't be. I never said "you must" be anything. I lumped a group of people together under the Birds of a Feather theory...kind of like Stu did in his post that I offered a rebuttal to. Kind of like how many, if not most people on this forum(likely including you as well Wyo, but I won't make that kind of blanket generalization again without proof)tend to lump all liberal Democrats into the "anti-gun" crowd....appearently we all seem to agree on that topic closely enough so that when one makes a blanket statement about that subject, it's ok. Irresponsible?: maybe, but no more so than many, if not the majority, of those that have chimed in on the topic so far.

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Dont get me wrong Bdawg. I fully understand that the foundation of this great nation is based on the Word Of God and the Ten Commandments. I honestly think seperation of Church and State like we are seeing is a terrible thing for this country and I pray that people come to their senses before its too late. But like I said earlier, if you are going to use Gods Word to argue your point please answer my question from above.



I didn't use God's word to argue my point. If you read my reply a little more thoroughly, you'll see that I used Stu's words to argue my point against the right to abort a baby. I also informed him of my opinion that he was wrong about "the right to life" being an inherent moral standard that mankind has in general "without having to resort to the Ten Commandments or any other source of morals", and that if he were raised in another part of the world, his moral views might well be different than they are.

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God said, very specifically, in the Ten Commandments, "Thou Shall Not Kill". Thats pretty definitive, cut and dry and not open to much interpretation. But many are using that argument to support their position and then saying in the next sentence, its okay to kill in defense of your life, family or property. That its okay to kill when its a Soldier fighting in war or a Police Officer doing his duty. So which is it? Is it against Gods word to kill period, or does it depend on the circumstances?



I never used "Thou shalt not kill" as my reasoning for not aborting a baby, but yet you seem to be grouping me in as one of the crowd that does...I said "the killing of an unborn child is still the killing of an innocent baby" and according to Stu's logic, it should be obvious that the practice is wrong. My belief is that an unborn baby has no means for which to defend themself, or even the ability to argue their case for why they should be allowed to live, and therefore,IMO, it's wrong to kill said child for any reason. As far as the other examples you mentioned people using for justifying the act of killing another human being, my only reply for that question is that maybe you should put some extra time into reading the entire Bible, the answer(s) to your question should be obvious when you see it/them. I know that I have seen the answers to those questions while reading it. I'm not exactly a biblical scholar, or I would be better prepared to cite particular books and verses, but I get the impression that me just stating them here would not be as effective as you reading and finding the answers for yourself anyway. If one is going to use the tactic of only taking one phrase or sentence or passage and using it to make a blanket statement, then one will see what one wants to, and nothing more...like so many people tend to do.

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Does God take all of the factors involved into account on judgement day when he passes judgement or is it cut and dry? I know what I believe. I believe I will be judged by the totality of the circumstances. I believe that "Thou Shall Not Kill" is not as cut and dry as some would like to argue it is. I think abortion is a horrible thing and I wish it was a thing that no one ever had to consider. I also know the God I serve would not condone me standing in judgement of someone who makes that choice under circumstances I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT.

Stu.............Well said.



Once again, if you read the whole Bible, God makes it very cut and dry about what He takes into account on the Judgement Day. What "you believe" isn't really going to matter to Him unless it's what He said to believe. He does say that we'll all have to give an account for our actions, but there is only one thing that He takes into consideration when He actually passes judgement. According to Him, it's did you accept His plan of Christ's death being the one and only payment for your sin, or did you decide that you could also sway His decision by adding how you live and conduct yourself to His plan? One can add any other method that they believe instead of that one, but I was using your particular belief as an example, seeing how you brought it up. Hope it works out for you. My personal belief is that how one's actions in life add up is directly proportionate to the rewards that one recieves or doesn't, but that final judgement is determined by the one thing that God said it is...did you accept Christ and His sacrifice as the way to salvation?

I'd also like to point out that I have never judged anybody that has had an abortion, I merely voiced my opinion about the need for legislation against it. That is no different than you or anybody else supporting or defending against the legislation of any deed or action that you personally feel is right or wrong...unless you're one of the folks that feels we shouldn't have any laws at all,and then well,you're probably missing the point. FWIW, I don't think that you are one of those people, according to what you have said. My point is that no matter what law you can come up with(here again,IMO)you will be able to find somebody that doesn't agree and feels that it's their right to do whatever that particular laws says is wrong, as well as somebody that does agree with it and denies somebody else's right to do the thing that was legislated against. As I understand it, the way the system is supposed to work is that the way the majority of the society feels about the subject is what the law is supposed to end up being, while the minority that doesn't agree either has to a.)deal with it, b.)cease the behavior that has been deemed illegal, or c.)be an outlaw and be prepared to handle the consequences.

I'm sorry that I offended you when replying to Stu, but my reply was directed at him in particular, not you. Accordingly, I was not trying to offend Stu either. I refered to him and others that feel the same way as "non-believers" because he was refering to "you guys" as the Christians in the group, and as one of those Christians, I felt it was proper for me to respond...appearently, you may have felt that you are one of the "non-believers" I was refering to. Once again, sorry to offend. To any others that felt I was out of line, I offer my apologies for offending to you as well, but will make none of any sort for voicing my opinion.
 
You really didnt offend me and I have no worries about my salvation. I accepted Jesus a long time ago and have no doubt that while I may not be without sin, my sins will be forgiven. I guess I made the mistake of directing some things towards you that others have used as an argument. In re-reading my post, I can see where you got that impression. For that I apologize. Also, I have read the Bible, more than once and I know the answers I have gotten from it. I was simply hoping that some who used the argument I was referring to might answer the question.

Please dont take from my posts and the questions that I have presented that I am necessarily Pro Choice. For me, on this particular issue, the jury is still out. I think abortion has gotten out of hand and has become a thing of convenience in many cases. I am just not ready to take a blanket stance that it is not a viable option for some situations and circumstances. I normally am not a fence rider on sensative subjects and I have been known to be strongly opinionated but I can see valid points to both sides of this argument.
 
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