Wacky - Give the man a cigar! And it doesn't stop there. Hypocrisy abounds when only ideals matter and reality is offered up on the altar of unfettered idealism. When faced with fact, ideals only make for impertinent subtitles. Many of these forums prove that out. Makes for interesting reading. I see my own progression in some of them.
Wow, how enlightening. First we're told how inconsistent that it is for people to call soldiers baby killers and not abortionists-then after a bit of progression, we're told how we need to start 'facing reality', and chunk the idealism....how interesting. Ok, lemme tell you a little bit about me. I'm against abortion. I'm also against war, the death penalty, and just killing in general. I'm 'pro-life', if you want to call me that, and I'm consistent about it. In fact, I'm a vegetarian, and I don't even step on bugs if I can avoid it....you want some consistency?.... Look-most of these people that call themselves 'pro-life', meaning that they're against abortion, never saw a war they didn't like, see nothing wrong with the increasing despotic power of the state over our lives, and see nothing wrong with the death penalty, even when it's only applied against people that can't afford expensive, glitzy lawyers. We get these analyses of what happens in wars, and the minimization of civilian casualties, and so on. The fact is that the war that we're engaging in in Iraq right now has killed, totally unnecessarily, hundreds of thousands of people, some of them directly, and some through the breakdown of the infrastructure that occurred after the invasion. An invasion based on false pretenses to gain control of the country with the world's second largest oil reserves. And hundreds of thousands more died, mainly sick and malnourished children, due to the sanctions that were in place for years before the invasion. Do the people that say that they're 'pro-life', i.e. anti-abortion, usually see anything wrong with these things? You know the answer to that. In fact, this is exactly what discredits the anti-abortion movement in the eyes of many people, the fact that there is no consistency in it. "Pro-life" people are usually just against abortion, period, and any other state-supported violence, justified or not (and almost all of it is unjustified) is just fine by them. Not with me. I'm a Christian (I'll just let you take a wild guess which kind) and I believe I'm supposed to respect ALL life, not just what suits me in my little utilitarian box that I create for my own comfort. You want some consistency? You just got it. Life is life-whether it's an unborn baby, a two-year old child, an adult, an old person, or even our worst enemy. When we lose respect for some life, it diminishes our respect for the rest. Respect for life shouldn't be about how blasted convenient it is for us to have it. If you want to point fingers, the 'pro-life' neo-cons are just as guilty of this as anybody else is.
This is a cloaked abortion thread. I don't consider elective abortions as killing babies. Ending a life? definitely. But one also ends a life when we pull weeds from the garden, pick a pumkin to carve for Halloween, or squish a mosquito. We end a life when we remove fleas and ticks from our pets or take medicine for Pin Worm. Zygotes, embryos, and fetuses(before 24 weeks IMO) are definitely life but they aren't persons. You are granted personhood when you have passed your first rite of passage...and that's surviving birth. When you take your first independent breath, you are a person entitled to full human rights. For anyone who has studied anthropology, this is exactly how Native americans and other "primitive" cultures determined value as a human. You had to survive the birth and take your first breath. I don't think it should be any different.
Otter - I promise you it is NOT a veiled abortion thread. The comparison of abortion and war just happened to be two subjects that I thought would be good analysis points, based on writings in these forums, to discuss a key issue that I see missing in a lot of these threads and one that DQ hints around, and it is based on consistancy of a sorts. For DQ, I wouldn't want to chunk idealism, it's an intricate part of our humanism, but it seems that many people in these forums put idealism at the forefront and chunk reality. I like some of the points you make about some pro-life supporters being selective. However, I would ask if there could exist, a chink in your armor? If a person walked into your parents house with explosives strapped to themselves intent on detonating it, would you kill that person to save your parents? It's an old Psych class question, but relevent. Which reaction would be the reality you, or the idealist you?
I think I would take my parents by the hand and run as fast as I could outside of the scope of the bombing and let the person intent on detonating themselves do it, without harm to myself or my family. Outside of that option, I think I would tell my folks to run. Put myself between them as a screen and try to talk the bomber out of their misguided action. I would rather risk myself then end another life.
Abortion is never done by a woman easily, it's never based on demand, but more importantly based on need. How many fathers of unwanted children avoid paying child support or accepting responsibility. If more fathers stepped up to the plate and upheld their end of the responsibility, there would never be a need. There would be few children in orphanages. But many men don't acknowledge their responsibility in the equation. Ever watched Morey Povich? Those low lives are proud of the number of children they may have fathered, but most are reluctant to take responsibility.
The only moral exception that I make when it comes to violence is in immediate self-defense, which accounts for a tiny fraction of the violence that occurs in the world. I agree with gardener, that first I would attempt to avoid violence if attacked, and only use it if necessary. War should also be engaged in only in defense and as a last resort, which means that we wouldn't be engaging in too many wars if that ideal was followed. The real problem with violence is the pre-meditated aspect of it, which causes a culture of violence or a 'culture of death', to borrow a phrase coined by someone a lot more well-known than me. The term 'abortion on demand' refers to the legal aspect of a woman being able to request an abortion for no particular reason, simply because she requests it or 'demands' it, and in this sense the term is accurate. Again, life is life, and cannot have a monetary value placed on it. You either respect all of it, or you don't.
I think they are both murder but like everything in reality not even murder is black and white. I oppose abortion but not necessarily a ban on it. I know civialians are killed but still call soldiers hero's.
To avoid violence is not always an option. To conveniently have the time and opportunity, as used above, to avoid situations would be ideal, but not necessarily realistic, especially when faced with a dedicated killer. Ignoring the geo-political conflicts such as the two World Wars, Korea, VietNam, and the Gulf Wars, you still have the enormous killing fields of Pol Pot's Khamer Rouge, Stalin's purge, Idi Amin's purge, the ethnic killings of Yugoslavia, Mao's Cultural Revolution, the Taliban's work in Afganistan, and a thousand other brutal scenarios where millions died and countless more actually faced the choice of their, and others, fates. Unless you've experienced it, how do you judge yourself to be a certain type of person, and do so with total conviction? When it comes to abortion overall, it would seem that the decision to abort is based first on confronting an internal moral killer before having to deal with a physical one. Most of us never have to fight that battle and for that I am glad. But, selectively, with abortion-on-demand, that first battle is apparently not such a tough fight. So much so that abortion becomes a routine procedure...a means of birth control. It becomes literally what it says...abortion-on-demand. I would put it to you that with most soldiers, they don't see killing as a routine procedure, but as a hated last resort.
The whole killing thing goes back to the Ten Commandments, which were interpreted and edited by the Council of Nicea (yeah I hate to keep going back to that but it's historical fact). "Thou Shalt Not Kill" has been edited. It's original form was "Thou Shalt Not Do Murder" because the original scholars recognized that taking humanlife to defend onesself, one's home or one's people was NECESSARY. But I agree, human life is precious. Zygotes embryos and fetuses are not humans.
Wake up! In May 2008 all will need the real ID, this is a RFID internal passport, without it you will not be able to drive, have a band account, travel, have a job, board a plane etc etc etc etc. Resist! Watch Arron Russo's new film here http://video.google.com/videoplay?d...8&q=aaron+russo Wake up, there is not very much time left
WTFery does this have to do with the thread? It's not even a decent hijack attempt. Go away, Spammer.
