smiling from the womb

Yet still not as thick as George Hamilton's. Who we all know is made of leather.

 

Both.

I love how anyone who doesn't actually promote the killing of soon-to-be people is far right.

Sidenote - where the hell is Joe Pakovits?

 

You forgot the religous zealot part. If you don't do (potential?) children a favor by eliminating them before they miss a meal or don't get Nike's you're a far right religous whacko.

 

Thank God.

 

Hardly. It's not anyone who doesn't support abortion. It's anyone who seeks to make abortion illegal. You see the difference?

 

I'm having pronoun trouble with your post. What clever point are you trying to make?

 

Sorry. I thought the unclear pronoun referents lend me an air of mystery. No?

Anyway, regarding the flippant assertion that "anyone who doesn't actually promote the killing of soon-to-be people is far right": I was saying that the far right are not those who refuse to promote abortion. The far right are those who seek to make abortion illegal. Crucial difference.

And if you want some real irony, the genuine Christian fundies not only want to ban abortion and welfare, but they also don't want to teach kids about birth control.

 

"Why did you kill me, mommy?"

(You have to listen to the entire thing. And yes, I think the writer / performer is serious.)

 

That was pretty *#*#*#*#*#ing funny, although now everyone in my office thinks I'm insane. Where did you find that?

 

I thought the real irony is that they support the death penalty and are proud to kill brown people for Jesus in the middle east.

Your contention that they do not teach birth control is kind of twisting the thought process. If you convince kids to avoid sex until marriage (an outdated idea) then you will avoid a lot more pregnancies than you will with the promise that contraception is 100% successful. The only 100 % method of avoiding pregnancy is avoiding sex.

 

You can be quite liberal left on social welfare issues and, without any inconsistency, work to make abortion illegal (again). The issues of how society (and since you brought it up, the Christian church) deals with the problems of unwanted pregnancy and abortion are, of course, linked. But the abortion issue is ultimately about the definition of when human life begins and whether the moral code of a country should permit intentional termination of a fetus that, more often than not, would become a healthy child if brought to term.

Stated more crassly, abortion is about the right to knowingly kill a fetus. Advocates, like yourself, of this right like to hide behind so-called social compassion in order to avoid the real result of your position - i.e., promoting termination of the fetus as a method of managing one's future well being. In order to convince yourself of your superior compassion in the matter, it also helps to demonize the other side as being callous and uncaring for either the fetus or the woman (not to mention the man involved who is all but unmentioned in any pro-choice diatribe on personal rights).

Congratulations - you've touched all the bases. I would have been disappointed if you had done anything less.

 

The late, lamented Incorrect Music hour on WFMU. Lil' Markie is an Incorrect Music legend.

Lil' Markie is actually fundamentalist Christian Mark Fox. His picture can be seen here. And yes, he's totally serious.

 

The fact that a fetus may turn out to be a healthy child is irrelevant. By this test, we should unfreeze all embryos and forcibly implant them into people because they could become healthy children. The question really is, is a fetus a human being under the law? On that, I think it's totally reasonable to conclude that the potentially human are not offered the same rights as the fully human.

I don't like abortion but I can understand how reasonable people can conclude that a fetus the size of snot is not a human being.

 

That's a fair critique, and from reviewing your past posts I know you have a thoughtful view on these issues. Limiting this discussion solely to the initial post, do you think about the unintended consequences of what MtMike posted? The article pointingly said that the technology could theoretically be used to identify fetuses with birth defects, albeit at a later stage of development. What do you think the likely result will be?

 

Actually, study after study has shown that abstinence-only sex education not only doesn't work, it increases the likelihood that when people do have sex, they are less likely to use contraception, especially condoms. So not only does abstinence-only sex education not decrease the number of kids having sex, in increases the number of kids having at-risk sex.

 

And the potential child's future well being, of course. I would assume that the majority of women who want to abort their fetus do not want to be mothers. I'm not in favor of forcing children into a world where their parents don't want them. I can't think of a more intolerable cruelty. It's better for them to have never existed at all.

 

John - I'm sure you know that I believe laws are not simply a means to regulate society for the general good, but also are very influential in developing a society's consensus as to what is moral or ethical.

The current right to reproductive choice coupled with technologies that would identify fetuses with birth defects at earlier stages of development will logically result in a more frequent decision to abort the defective fetus.

The development of technology itself also has a natural independent force. The medical community will obviously use it to aid in making legal and informed decisions about whether to abort (and I certainly would not argue that parents shouldn't have all the information available to them).

So - combining the current legal focus on a person's unrestricted privacy rights with a medical community's obligation to keep parents informed of birth risks and procedural options, including abortion, I expect that someday aborting a defective fetus will become a matter of course ... done most of the time, almost as a presumption, and without a second thought.

It may take some time, but I believe that this is where we are headed.

I have little hope that continued evidence of a fetus having human characteristics at earlier points in the gestation period will lead supporters of abortion rights to conclude that abortion is morally wrong. From a Christian standpoint, which is where I'm coming from, the refusal to accept limitations on an individual's self-will is the very nature of sin.

 

Ergo, if I understand you correctly, a fetus with known birth defects is the will of God and not to be messed with? I'm just seeking to clarify.

 

In other parts of the world reasonable people can conclude that a glob of flesh that can't walk or talk is not a human either. On the other end, is someone that has been in a coma for years and is being kept on life support a human being? I guess it's a matter of where the line is drawn. Roe v Wade answered that for us as a legal issue but it seems that we are still divided on the moral part of it.

 

That is correct and IMO different than the original remark "And if you want some real irony, the genuine Christian fundies ... , but they also don't want to teach kids about birth control."

This sounded to me as though Christians don't teach kids about birth control. My response is that teaching abstinence is in fact teaching birth control. It doesn't work near as well as teaching contraception but it is not the same as closing your eyes and ears and pretending that they'll figure it out on their own.

If you teach kids to have protected sex to avoid pregnancy and disease and they don't do it because it is embarassing or the timing wasn't right then that method of birth control doesn't work either.

 

I do not promote termination of the fetus as a method of accomplishing anything. I simply do not promote abortion, and I know of very few people who do. So what makes you think that abortion rights advocates are hiding from the real result of their position? You think that preserving the legality of abortion necessarily means promoting abortion?

I'm sorry I don't recall doing this.

Congratulations, you just projected on to me a position which I never took.

 

What Biblical distinction could be drawn between a parent's appropriate response to the birth of a child with a birth defect and the birth of a healthy one? I doubt one could find any Biblical support for God's approval of infanticide of "defective" children.

Moving to abortion - assume, as I do, that the best interpretation of God's will (as revealed in the Bible) is that God does not approve of an intentional termination of a pregnancy - setting aside the case where a mother's life is in danger from carrying fetus to term. The same disapproval should apply whether or not the fetus is bound to be born with a birth defect.

Caveat - this is my opinion of the correct Christian view on abortion. However, certainly other Christians could and do hold other views, though I think it would be quite difficult to hold a view that maintains abortion of a healthy fetus is a sin unless that fetus was known to have a birth defect. Many Christians simply do not view abortion as a sin which, while I disagree, is at least supportable.

Caveat #2 - Your question ascribed God's "will" to the birth defect - or at least implied it. The matter of whether God has "willed" a sinful condition is a totally separate issue and I would refer you to John Calvin or Martin Luther or any reformed theologian on free will and predestination to answer this question.

P.S. - I have enjoyed your posts on a wide-ranging set of topics, especially in the legal arena.

 

You had me until the last paragraph. The studies I was referring to actually show that if you teach abstinence only, kids are more likely to have unprotected sex than those that are taught abstinence plus contraception.

In other words, we should absolutely be teaching kids that abstinence is the only 100% surefire method for avoid pregnancy and disease.

However, we have much better results also teaching kids that if they choose to have sex, they should use contraception. Teaching them the first part without the second part doesn't work.

 

I was saying the same thing, just more flippantly.

The original point of my post was to draw a distiction between one's personal feelings and practices, and one's position on public policy. That is, people believe a lot of things, but they don't necessarily demand that everyone else's behavior conform to those particular beliefs.

Thus, when I made fun of Christian fundamentalists, I wasn't referring in any way to what they teach their own children. I could not care less about that. I was referring to the far right wing position that sex education should not be taught in schools.

And if you teach kids to be abstinent but they don't do it because it is embarassing or their hormones take over or the peer pressure is too much, you're in the same boat.