Sick? Sicker? Sickest?
Posted by deleted 6 years, 5 months ago to Culture
Hey, y'all! Why don't we celebrate abortions? Like with baby showers! Have a party! Sing and dance! Wheee!
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Anyone who supports those kinds of abortions would have no problem accepting a woman's drowning of her own child, simply because it was an inconvenience to her.
668c; 50 CFR 22.3). The 1972 amendments increased civil penalties for violating provisions of the Act to a maximum fine of $5,000 or one year imprisonment with $10,000 or not more than two years in prison for a second conviction.
The governor of Virginia did not say anything about "knocking the kid off" or "execution". Those are the words and description of hysterical propaganda circulated by militant anti-abortionists trying to make people believe that laws repealing abortion are for "killing babies". It is a dishonest attempt to irrationally whip up emotional hysteria.
Even more than those wonderfully brilliant dolphins! Tell that last bit to a PETA or an Antifa lib and I just might be attacked.
As Ayn Rand put it, "To sentence a woman to bear a child against her will is an unspeakable violation of her rights: her right to liberty (to the functions of her body), her right to the pursuit of happiness, and, sometimes, her right to life itself, even as a serf. Such a sentence represents the sacrifice of the actual to the potential, of a real human being to a piece of protoplasm, which has no life in the human sense of the term. It is sheer perversion of language for people who demand this sacrifice to call themselves 'right-to-lifers'."
And, "To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable"
What are you suggesting we do?
He was talking about palliative care for terminal newborns.
Plop. Oops, there it is. Kill that born unborn fetus!
Many of whom are on this forum with dollar signs for some reason...
Does that mean we should be forced to do things for them?
The anti-abortion arguments of conservatives, are the same as the arguments of socialists.
And...wow! How someone can attempt to make a direct connection between pro-life conservatism and socialism...it almost leaves me speechless.
If you understood socialism, at all, you would realize that forcing ME to pay for a woman's abortion IS socialism, pure and simple.
The right of abortion does not mean an entitlement to have you pay for it. Banning abortions to impose an entitlement to be born forces the woman to "pay" a lot more.
What argument does this invalidate?
Forcing someone to provide for the life of another, whether they be a stranger or not is, in principle, the exact same thing.
"And...wow! How someone can attempt to make a direct connection between pro-life conservatism and socialism...it almost leaves me speechless."
It's amazing how amazed you are about having such basic dots connected for you.
If you think you can force someone to carry to term, then what argument do you plan to use against forcing people to merely pay for things they don't support?
No argument is possible. You are on the same side as socialists.
So yes, today's political discourse is a farce of progressives vs very clueless conservatives, who don't seem to understand that they are on the same side, for very fundamental reasons.
They are all altruists and collectivists and agree that individuals should be sacrificed for the greater good.
Those who want to ban abortion and force people to carry to term, are no different to those who want to force people to pay for healthcare of others.
In this way, among many others, conservatives are not an alternative to progressives.
Just religious and more confused version of them.
The right of abortion is the right of a woman to decide what to do with her own body, with the assistance of anyone who chooses to help her either paid, as doctors normally are, or voluntarily for free. Like all other rights, It does not mean an entitlement to be provided with anything for free.
Religious conservatives deny the rights of the individual when they try to prohibit abortions, forcing woman to bear children they don't want. Abortion does not "remove an individual's right to live"; it prevents a person from being born at all. A fetus is a potential human being. It does not have "rights".
Now you acknowledge, which I had not presumed, that you like the whole post smearing the right of abortion as nothing but "progressive", which is an illogical package deal, and smearing a woman's choice to not bear a child as a "sacrament to regressives", which is simply disgusting. Progressive versus dogmatic religious conservativism is a false alternative. They are both regressive.
The right of abortion is the right of a woman to control her own body. That is what the anti-abortionists condemn as they yell "NOT a right". Of course it is a right. Ayn Rand described the nature and source of rights in her "Man's Rights" and "The Objectivist Ethics".
Rights pertain to people, who have the characteristics that give rise to the entire subject of morality. They do not apply to other entities.
Those who deny the rights of women while attributing "rights" to fetuses treat the concept of "rights" as a floating abstraction, disconnected from the facts that give rise to it. They emotionally attach "rights" to whatever they want and dogmatically demand that government force be employed to enforce their feelings. The burden of proof is on those who claim that a fetus or earlier stages have rights and the women do not. Their emotional approach of outbursts shows that they don't know why any of us have rights.
Being carried to term, is no more a right than health insurance.
Those who want to ban abortion, are basically confused versions of Bernie Sanders.
What am I supposed to conclude from that?
The concept 'rights' applies to people, not a potential, but
on your premise an abortion violates the "right to live" which would be murder. Yet you refuse to answer whether you want to ban it. Do you want only "standards" and not "laws" against murder?
You also wrote (shouted) that "abortion is NOT a right". Rights pertain to a social context, i.e., involving more than oneself. They are moral principles sanctioning freedom of action in a social context, and are legally protected by a proper government, with the only restriction being that one cannot violate others' rights. When a woman chooses to not bear a child she is the only person involved. You are involving yourself as another person. If you don't acknowledge that she has a right to control her own body to not bear a child then whose rights do you claim are violated? What do you propose to do to people who do things you claim they have no right to do?
You also said you don't want abortion to be "easy" and don't want it to be just "accepted at any time for any reason," as if the woman's choice and her reasons are not relevant to her freeedom of action. What do you propose to do to make it not "easy", i.e., difficult?
Abortion means preventing a potential from becoming a person through being born, not "killing someone at any age". 'Before birth' does not have an "age" of a person and is not a "someone". But on your premises you claim that abortion "will lead to killing at any age someone who cannot take care of themselves". Why?
You said, "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should". That applies to every choice. Whether you should do something depends on what you want to accomplish. Whether or not a woman should give birth to a child or have an abortion depends most fundamentally on whether she wants to have a child. How do you apply the generality -- "just because you can, doesn't mean you should" -- to condemn a woman who does not want to have a child for not having one?
You said that "I believe objectivism requires doing no harm to others in conquest of our own desires." That is not true. Objectivism says to not violate others' rights or behave dishonestly or unjustly. It does not say that no one else should never be vaguely "harmed", as for example, through competition or in being first to discover something. It does not apply to a fetus at all, which is not an "other", i.e., a person, and does not mean that a woman has an obligation to sacrifice herself to a potential by bearing a child she does not want because a fetus would "harmed".
Wherever you are getting this from it isn't Objectivism.
Do you want abortion banned, yes or no? Because it sure sounds like you do, but you seem to be hedging.
Give me your clear position, then we can talk.
You can't seem to even answer that question.
That's not an answer, that's an evasion.
Like I have often said: Forward...back to the days of Babylon...now we have a word for that.
Thank you.
Ya know, just in case I get caught in the dark.
What is or is not goofy relies on the eye of the beholder.
But if you want to think my "tra la la" is goofy, this is a free country. I can't stop you and wouldn't even try.
Anti-abortionists are as much a threat to all our freedoms as any socialist and must be fought by Objectivists just as hard.
Isn't that what the Left always does...take something good and kill it?
Those slightly right of center, mystical of not, would never make people into cattle nor sheeple.
No, what they did was sacrifice individuals for a greater good.
Which is what the anti-abortionists are advocating.
"Isn't that what the Left always does...take something good and kill it?"
No, the left are altruists.
Which is why anti-abortionists are on the same side as them.
"Those slightly right of center, mystical of not, would never make people into cattle nor sheeple."
Then you must agree abortion should be perfectly legal.
PS....the left are only altruistic unto themselves,..Oh, and the greater good was only good for Baal...(can't believe mankind fell for that one.)
You seem to be totally unfamiliar with Objectivism.
Another religious leftist who has a dollar sign on an Objectivist forum for some reason, while advocating for gross rights violations by regulating or banning abortion.
Aside from being completely out of place on an Objectivist forum, it is also completely backwards. Those who would ban abortion, enslaving mankind, are on the side of Baal and Baphomet.
If you don't think that abortion is a sacrament to many on the political left, you should read
https://www.amazon.com/Sacrament-Abor...
in which Ms. Paris justifies abortion as an act of human sacrifice to the goddess Artemis.
It doesn't mean I'm a Nazi. Heck I think The Communist Manifesto is interesting reading too.
So is Dante's The Divine Comedy and Shakespeare's A Summer's Night Dream.
Or why Kavanaugh caught so much hell.
Woman whom the religious conservatives want to force to bear children they do not want are not responsible for taxes for Planned Parenthood in an irrational war between false alternatives.
That nutty book you referred to has nothing to do with defense of rights of the individual or what even most leftists think.
What the left has done is play an elaborate game of chess. By including people who support abortion on philosophical grounds with looters and moochers, the left has cobbled together enough votes to confiscate everyone's wealth to support its agenda.
The abortion situation from the left's perspective is not that much different from those of teachers' unions. The government dollars flow out of our pockets into those of government bureaucrats who give it to those who support them. If you oppose government funded (free?) education, you are "against the children".
Your correct philosophy has been turned against you by the looters, and you are providing your sanction to your own victimization.
To grouse against those who defend women against the irrational, barbaric practice of forcing them to bear children they don't want because of objections to welfare statism is a vicious, irrational package deal far worse than guilt by non-association.
So is the attempt to tie that bizarre New Age academic's book to defending the right of abortion, along with the vicious tying of its "sacraments" to women who choose to have abortion.
The claim that such fringe nonsense demonstrates "abortion is a sacrament to many on the political left" is false. Even the left doesn't follow that. To then try to excuse the strawman by saying "the entire socialist movement is ridiculous" misses the difference between a serious movement driven by serious ideas that are wrong and a crackpot with little influence, dredged up to try to dismiss with false guilt by association all kinds of serious defense of the right of abortion.
Because of the cumulative effect of all of the looters and moochers, including those whose abortions are financed (about 24% of the costs according to estimates I have seen) and many other types of moochers, my wife and I decided not to have a third child, even though we wanted a third child.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapoth...
The above web site contains a reasonable estimate of abortion frequencies and costs. Most of the costs are born through state taxes, which I pay a lot less of because Florida has no state income tax.
Yes, women have a right to an abortion, but the cumulative effects of their decisions do have an impact on me, and their "right" ceases to be a right as soon as it infringes on others.
I don't want to make you feel guilty. I look at this situation like D'Anconia telling Rearden that his enemies have a powerful weapon that they are using against him (during the money speech). They are using your correct philosophy against you.
If abortions were safe, legal, and rare as Bill Clinton once suggested, then I would not have a significant problem with abortion. With the availability of condoms and morning-after pills as easy as they are, abortions should be rare. They aren't. There are approximately 1 million abortions per year, and that number is not going down.
Going back to my earlier point regarding the financial impact of a huge government's failure to either spend within its means (or restrict its borders), the net effect has been to keep salaries in this country down by importing "future Democrat voters" who show no evidence for responsibility and to reduce the family size of producers. The irony is that this happens at the expense of current Democrat voters even moreso than it happens at the expense of producers.
In essence, the third child we never had is a mooching rotter with a name and face I do not know.
That question is answered by asking if rights are violated.
Since abortion is not a rights violation, because the unborn don't have any rights and being carried to term is not a right, it should be perfectly legal.
All this other stuff has nothing to do with it.
The original point was that abortion is a sacrament of the left, and I am quite sure that for quite a few, that is the case. For example, when my first daughter was five months in my wife's womb, her ob/gyn doctor spent several minutes trying to convince my wife to have an abortion because genetic testing suggested that there was somewhere between a 5-10% chance of what is now my daughter having birth defects. My now 23-year-old daughter is brilliant in every way. I asked the doctor to elaborate on why she thought the way that she did... She made the eugenics argument.
You know very well that Ayn Rand defended the rights of the individual woman to not be forced to bear a child she doesn't want, sacrificing her life and rights an unborn potential. That right is not to be denied because of other laws providing subsidies, and I have not been co-opted by anything. The right has nothing to do with "sacraments" (or now thrown in, eugenics) and even the left doesn't believe that. The crackpot book is irrelevant, not a basis for rational argument.
You have previously told the story of your daughter several times. You took a chance and fortunately won. It has nothing to do with the right of abortion and continuing to interject it, despite its personal importance to you, is irrelevant to discussion of the right of abortion.
What I have said, and stand by, is that a significant number of abortions happen because obstetricians use genetic testing results to encourage people who otherwise would not want to have an abortion into having one. My wife had three OB/GYN's during her childbearing years. All three started the discussion with "You're in your thirties. There is an x% chance of Down's syndrome...." Given that all three had this discussion, I can only conclude that this must be part of the standard protocol so that they protect themselves from malpractice lawsuits.
My wife was honestly scared, especially after having had two miscarriages.
This argument is about the encouragement of sacrifice of what you and Rand call a potential human for a certain finality of that potential.
Someone playing the role of forum class-clown dancing in glee over a third rate song including "showers" for abortions initiated this thread ridiculing the right of abortion and those who support it. You piled on with a post bizarrely claiming abortions are "sacraments" and "sacrificing virgins". The peanut gallery got the point and voted it up to the lead post.
You followed by claiming that a fringe academic book "justifies abortion as an act of human sacrifice to the goddess Artem", as if that has anything to do with either defending the right of abortion or what even most of the left believes.
You then switched to arguing that abortion is a sacrifice to you and other taxpayers, as if that is a reason to not support the fundamental right of abortion -- which right does not mean welfare entitlements. You asserted that "your correct philosophy has been turned against you by the looters, and you are providing your sanction to your own victimization", which makes no sense.
From that followed a personal story about how you and your wife chose to have a child even though doctors told you that from genetic testing there was a 5-10% of a birth defect, which, along with the rest of the 90-95%, fortunately did not happen to you. But it has nothing to do with the moral right of a woman to choose to not bear a child.
You now claim you have been arguing something entirely different: that a "significant number of abortions happen because obstetricians use genetic testing results to encourage people who otherwise would not want to have an abortion into having one" -- which has nothing to do with "sacraments", "sacrificing virgins", pressure to not support the right of abortion at all because some are subsidized, or the equally bizarre claim that I have been somehow philosophically co-opted.
From the use of genetic testing as a basis of rational medical decisions you conclude in another non sequitur that "this argument is about the encouragement of sacrifice of what you and Rand call a potential human for a certain finality of that potential."
No it is not. It is about the right of a woman to have an abortion when she does not want to bear a child, and the fact that if she does not then the choice not to is moral. No one supporting that moral right is "encouraging sacrifice".
A fetus is not "sacrificed" at all, which returns to the original bizarre claims about "sacraments" and "sacrifice of virgins" -- which is how in your own mind, but not stated in the earlier posts, the theme of all your posts is hostility to the choice to abort a pregnancy under the premise that there is something intrinsically wrong with it, that it is intrinsically a moral sacrifice.
Sacrifice is "the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue". A fetus is not a moral being, has no "rights", and has no intrinsic value. Value is a moral term. There is no such thing as 'intrinsic value', which is mysticism. https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post... The notion that a potential human is human in the sense of a person as a moral end in itself is mysticism (as is the anti-concept "rights of the unborn" that we hear so often).
The concepts of moral value and rights do not apply to fetuses, only to the woman deciding what to do for her values in accordance with her own hierarchy of values. If she decides on that basis that she does not want to bear a child it is not a sacrifice of anything, let alone "sacrifice of what you and Rand call a potential human for a certain finality of that potential."
Nor is a fetus only "called" a potential human. It is a potential. It does not become a person until it is born, for reasons discussed here many times. Concepts of morality do not apply to it.
You say you concede that abortion is a right politically, yet repeatedly demean it in inapplicable moral terms, apparently ascribing to it intrinsic value emotionally adhered to, as if abortion were somehow inherently morally unsavory. It is not. The only values at stake are the woman's.
Subjectively deciding (which all claims of 'intrinsic value' are) for yourself that you value a "certain finality of that potential" does not give you a superior moral status over the woman, who is the only one with any moral say over what is done with her own body.
To say that Ayn Rand asked you to "sacrifice your effort for a definite death" involving a child that you want for yourself and "invested" in is not true and not honest.
The right of abortion means that a woman who does not choose to bear a child does not have to and that that choice is not unsavory. It does not tell you to sacrifice anything. It means that another woman's body is not yours to sacrifice and her choice is not rationally yours to demean when she doesn't do what you want. The value of having a child is a value or not to the woman, not a supposed intrinsic value apart from that.
The misrepresentation of Ayn Rand (and of me) is also no defense of the assertions claiming bizarre "sacraments", "sacrificing virgins", hostility to someone else's moral right of abortion in her own life by her own means that you package-deal with taxes for welfare entitlements, and the false claim that I have been philosophically co-opted. The misrepresentation is not only false, it does not address what I wrote refuting those claims.
Hostility to the fundamental moral right to the freedom to have an abortion because you don't want to be taxed for some of them makes no more sense than would hostility to the principle of the human right of freedom to decide what food to eat because some today get welfare checks. Freedom of action and welfare entitlements are opposites. Opposing entitlements does not justify opposing, or hostility towards, moral rights.
You need to learn how to integrate your ideas and resolve contradictions.
Once you do that, you'll see that the anti-abortion position is not on the opposite side from socialist positions.
Recently, I was talking with a very good friend of mine. He's retired from a...um...government security group. He commented about a job he once did for a Hitlary fund raising event in a large home owned by a very wealthy person. This person proudly displayed a black coffin in the entry way for all the attendees to the event to enjoy. Oh, there are other examples.
The hysteria generated by conservatives in mocking and taunting their enemies with ever-expanding fantasies substituting for rational argument of principles has become a circus worse than the Kavanaugh hearings.
openly or otherwise.
The governors words were deliberately misreported, by religious leftists, of today's vile conservative movement, in order to help advance their agenda of reducing half the adult population to the level of cattle.
These anti-abortionists are the same types of people that support mindless collectivism and fascism and behead little girls because they attend school.
You don't need to "reevaluate your faith" you need to get a better understanding of this issue, realize how back-ass-wards you have everything, and then learn the Objectivist position on it.
I am a hoot at a party though, so you got that right :)
Governor Northam: You know, I wasn’t there, Julie, and I certainly can’t speak for Delegate Tran, but I would tell you — one, the first thing I would say is this is why decisions such as this should be made by [healthcare] providers, physicians, and the mothers and fathers that are involved. There are — you know when we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of, obviously, the mother, with the consent of the physicians, more than one physician by the way. And it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that’s non-viable. So in this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.
What is the discussion between the physicians and the mother for EWV ?
“The infant would be delivered , the infant would be kept comfortable “
and then the discussion ensues. Please clarify for the governor.
Love to put words in my mouth, don't you?
"Kill my unborn fetus" is not "AFTER it was born."
https://www.lifenews.com/2019/02/21/w...
Why is someone like you on what is supposed to be an Objectivist forum?
There are plenty of places on the internet for politically illiterate, religious leftists, such as yourself and other conservatives.
Why on earth are you here?
I don't have to explain a thing to someone like you.
Everything you're saying is simply incorrect.
Not only are you calling me that, that combo does not make any sense.
A religious leftist would be a Catholic abortion supporter like Nancy Pelosi.
The reason you don't think that combo makes sense is because you have not learnt to integrate.
To be right wing, is to stand for individual rights, rights protecting government and capitalism.
Today's conservatives are religious/traditionalist collectivists. Like all collectivists, this makes them leftists.
They want to ban abortion for these collectivist reasons.
So, not understanding that politics is about individualism vs collectivism, makes one politically illiterate, and opposing abortion makes someone a leftist.
So, taken together, politically illiterate, leftist.
I know that this isn't what you hear from the mainstream discourse, but the mainstream discourse is hopeless.
Now me dino has heard everything.
Excuse me, I have a flight to catch with Peter Pan.
But yes, conservatives that oppose abortion, are as left wing as they come, for the reasons explained in the post you're responding to.
At least the Marxists claimed to be for people -- they were not because they sacrificed real individuals to a reified collective, in practice to the state claiming to represent the people, but at least sought to be oriented, though in an illogical way, towards people. Enviornmentalism and anti-abortionism are misanthropic by nature.
The viros sacrifice people to an alleged intrinsic moral value of nature regarded as superseding human rights and values in the name of the "rights of nature". Their collective is all entities in nature other than people. There is no such thing as 'intrinsic value', let alone intrinsic value of nature, which is a mystical, invalid concept. And there is no such thing as "rights" applied to nature, which treats 'rights' as a floating abstraction in promoting the invalid concept "rights of nature".
Its meaning in reality is politically decreed entitlements forcing people to sacrifice to nature, which requires the wholesale obliteration of (human) rights. The sacrifice is not even altruism in stated intent because altruism means living for other people, but the false nature morality requires in political practice -- as in all collectivism -- sacrifice to the omnipotent state, to be run by and for the viros, which claims to represent "nature".
Likewise for the anti-abortionists. They sacrifice people to an alleged intrinsic moral value of a potential human regarded as superseding human rights and values of real people in the name of "rights of the unborn". Their collective is any form of potential life before birth, ranging from fetuses to unorganized clusters of cells. The invalid intrinsic value is a mystical notion of soul, or in the modern version primitive entities with human dna, to which they emotionally attach "rights" as a floating abstraction in the form of the invalid concept "rights of the unborn".
It's meaning in reality is the politically decreed entitlement of a potential to be born, requiring the obliteration of the rights of women through the barbaric practice of forcing women to bear children they don't want. That sacrifice is also not altruism in intent (though it often postures as it) because a potential person is not a person. Even the founder of altruism, Auguste Comte, did not demand that people sacrifice to the unborn. But the mystical false duty morality requires in political practice -- as in all collectivism -- sacrifice to the omnipotent state, in this case largely theocratic, to be run by and for religious conservatives claiming to represent the inborn.
Both viroism and anti-abortionism, as well as the Marxist economic version of collectivism, are the antithesis of the Enlightenment philosophy of reason and individualism for human beings on which this country was founded, and especially Ayn Rand's pro-man philosophy of reason, explicit egoism, and freedom under the rights of the individual.
Really well said.
It's in your own quote, "And it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that’s non-viable."
He is clearly talking about palliative care for non-viable newborns.
Any doctor worth a crap would be immediatly resuscitating--not wasting time asking for permission.
Letting a baby die when one has the means to at least try to keep it alive is the same as committing murder.
"And it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that’s non-viable."
Your continued, feigned ignorance, is intellectually dishonest and tiresome.
Me dino is beginning to regret kicking this hornet's nest.
It's becoming a waste of my time.
If understanding Objectivism and discussing its application is a "waste of time" to you, then I can't imagine why you'd be here in the first place.
There are plenty of blogs for kooky, conservatives out there.
Me dino has bought condoms in the past.
when all she's carrying is some good as trash disposable conveniently named fetus.
A pregnant woman was stabbed to death in New York on Feb. 3, but the state's new abortion law means there will be no justice for her unborn baby who was killed in the attack.
"He's got a knife! He's going to kill the baby!" screamed Jennifer Irigoyen as a man pulled her from her third-floor apartment, horrified witness Maurice Roman Zereoue told The New York Post.
Irigoyen was five months pregnant and already the mother of a young child when a man brutally stabbed her and her unborn baby to death.
Please , I don’t need or want your endorsement.
The concept of a fetus is based on the facts of the developing potential person, not an arbitrary name for trash. Those kind of sarcastically flippant irrelevancies that make no sense are not serious discussion.
Just because anyone doesn't respond in a way you don't like doesn't mean they are being unresponsive.
Heck, I'm responding right now. When I don't write anything that's when I do not respond.
Like those many times when I decide that responding to you is a waste of time anyhoo.
The flippant "Me dino has bought condoms in the past" is not a justification to ban abortion.
It does, however, illustrate how the subjectivism of competing arbitrary dogmatic absolutes demanded to be enforced in law contradict each other with their conflicting 'exemptions': The arbitrary decree that abortion is evil but contraception is not is sinful under the equally arbitrary decree that both are evil. There is no way to resolve in reason disputes between competing faiths: see "Faith and Force".
All that is what you did not address in the non-response. Changing the subject again to the terminology of murdering a pregnant woman is non-responsive. None of it has even attempted to justify why a fetus has "rights" and the woman does not.
The arbitrariness and snide dismissal of serious thought appeared again as "all she's carrying is some good as trash disposable conveniently named fetus". The difference between the concepts 'child' and 'fetus' is essential to understanding, not "convenient names", and none of it is "trash".
I have contributed money toward defunding Planned Parenthood. A reason the Dems are so fond of abortion is that part of the PP funding is kicked back as campaign donations solely for the party with a socialist movement.
A woman may opt to save her own life. That's what I'd call an actual health issue.
Rape or incest may be involved.
The principle of the rights of the individual do not permit you to invoke religious demands with or without whatever you deign to grant as an exemption, which exemptions contradict your own premise, but not the deeper premise that contradictions don't matter.
You are "absolutist" in your subjectivist decrees you demand to enforce by law. It doesn't get any more "absolutist" than forcing a woman to bear a child she does not want.
You may as well have not responded.
Murdering someone is a rights violation and made all the worse, if that someone was pregnant. In these cases a double murder charge may be sought.
Having an abortion, on the other hand, violates no rights and so should be perfectly legal.
It's very straight forward.
But back to the topic of the thread, whatever one thinks of third rate "popular music" and leftist "culture" that is a false alternative to the religious right, the conservative article denounced lyrics telling people they need not feel an unearned guilt instilled by religious denunciation:
"You don’t need to offer the right explanation
You don’t need to beg for redemption or ask for forgiveness
And you don’t need a courtroom inside of your head
Where you’re acting as judge and accused and defendant and witness"
Those lyrics are true. Having an abortion is no one's business but the woman's. The song is intended less as gratuitous "celebration" for what it calls a difficult decision, than a statement of defiance against religious dogmatists inculcating unearned guilt -- like the author of the article, who sneers at the lead of his "news" article: "abortion activists are getting more brazen in pushing their agenda to normalize and celebrate abortion every day." People should be brazen in defying the dogmatists. But the basis of doing that is rational understanding of objective morality and rights, not hedonism and bad songs.
Religious emotions are not the basis for law in this country, and has no 'equal' standing in rational discussion, especially on what is supposed to be an Ayn Rand forum. Agnosticism by those who can't tell the difference is not resolved by competing state statism.
Interesting.
It's really not complicated.
Objectivism is not, in any way shape or form, related to conservatism.
I think that's the main confusion here.
Any Rand had a great mind but was not 100% right about everything. No human being is or was.
I'm fallible too. And you?
The fact that conceptual knowledge is not infallible is why we need a method for thinking, not subjectivism and faith. The method is logic with a rational, objective epistemology.
It has nothing to do with the right of abortion, which concerns only the rights of the woman, before giving birth, and is not made complicated by those extraneous factors.
Exercising that right may be complicated for a woman to decide what to choose either with regard to wanting to have a child or unpredictable outcomes of threats to health of herself or the potential child, but that does not make the principle of the right to choose complicated.
You just can't FORCE someone to provide for it to be kept alive, no more than you could force someone to provide for someone, instead of pulling the plug.
Remember, being carried to term is not a right, anymore than free healthcare is.
So, you can pretend the unborn is an adult if you like, with full rights, and it changes nothing about the legal question.
That has nothing to do with abortion.
This line of thinking from you is what's called a, "non-sequitur."
Anti-abortionist demands that a woman not become pregnant is intrusion into other people's sex lives. No one has any right to tell someone else that if she does not want a child then do not become pregnant under penalty of being forced to bear a child if she does.
Also, this area is not very complicated. You just need to know what individual rights are, what a government role is with respect to them and how to apply this correctly to the issue of abortion.
It's as simple as, abortion is not a rights violation, so should be perfectly legal.
Too bad the default state for a woman isn’t “infertile”, and she would need to specifically choose to be “fertile” in order to get pregnant
Not politically illiterate, conservative leftists, that want to ban abortion.
Just like it's not for Bernie Bro's that want to nationalize healthcare.
There are only two of us putting forward the actual Objectivist position on this issue here, which you seem to have confused for "trolling."
In reality the trolling is this original post, along with the posts supporting it.
We don't mark anyone down...regardless of their position on things.
The posts of you and Dino SHOULD be marked down, on an Objectivist forum.
That isn't, "trolling."
The collectivist nature of the anti-abortion activists violating the rights of the individual is described in this thread here: https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
This was the first steps in the fall of Rome - the greatest empire of its time. It signals the coming fall of the greatest Empire since.
It is an exercise in frustration.
The Objectivist position on abortion is quite clear and that's what's being communicated here, along with many clear and repeat explanations.
Now if this was a conservative blog, then I could see people would want to make arguments against this position and I'd expect to get all the predictable appeals to emotion, non-sequitur, religiousity and self contradictions, that are common to the anti-abortion position.
I shouldn't expect to see them at Galt's Gulch, though.
That's the truly amazing part here.
Guess I'm engaging because I own this thread.
Getting tired of this hornet's nest I kicked due to this "debate" becoming a stalemate that I can't see ever ending.
This Peter Smith posted "why are you on this board", which apparently is against the decorum on this forum.
Wonder if the moderator acts as strongly as he did when the shoe was on the other foot, demanding to argue the subject not the person.
Watching with interest.
What the moderators will do with an Objectivist asking why a religious conservative is on an Obectivist forum starting anti-Objectivist threads, while refusing to concede the Objectivist position?
Not to mention that the Objectivist posts on what is an Objectivist forum, are constantly down-voted by militant, religious leftists, when it should be the other way around.
"Watching with interest" apparently was meant as a smear against the moderators, falsely implying a double standard through misrepresentation. The poster in particular had previously been called out for some very nasty personal attacks.
to leave the board. I responded with a "Make me" and got a -3 for that.
Me dino didn't care. I thought Mrs. Davis had a right to her religious convictions no matter who she worked for.
Since then evw and I got on friendlier terms. Guess that's gone.
No one said that she had no "right to her religious convictions" and no one told allosaur to "leave the board". He was told that his militant religious injunctions, of which there had previously been many, do not belong on this forum, are not the basis of discussion, and that whether or not it is tolerated is up to the owners.
His accounts of his own statements and the response to them, including in this current thread several times, are not true. You can read what was actually said on the marriage license topic at https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
Allosaur subsequently stopped promoting and appealing to religion here, which is how he found friendlier terms. Now it's back in pushing to deny a woman's right to control her own body in conflict with his religion, while substituting obnoxious and irrelevant playground style taunting for serious discussion. The responses to him have continued to be serious discussion with explanation. Any "unfriendliness" has been entirely of his own making both in form and content. Anti-intellectual, snide pronouncements pushing government enforcement of religion are truly obnoxious. The assault on a woman's right to her own body will continue to be "brazenly" defied on moral principle.
That's funny as hell!
Yeah, yeah, as for all that other stuff above, I'm a terrible person for getting bored by all this.
Think I'll quit this thread now. Got better things to do.
Congratulations, you won. Hooray for ewv!
It is a legitimate question to ask why someone is here who opposes Ayn Rand's philosophy and the purpose of this forum and who will not discuss serious points raised against his assertions as he responds with anti-intellectual wise cracks.
The sentence "It is your right, to stay in style, regarding what is a right?" makes no sense.
Don't worry, you just wrote in so many other words that you have won.
Guess when I tire of this thread you will believe I'm defeated.
And I'm getting to that not caring anymore point.
Congratulations. (Oops, I just snickered).
Hyperbole about the right of abortion as the "first steps in the fall of Rome" makes no sense at all. It is more hysterical sloganeering by militant opponents of a woman's right to her own body.
Abortion, just the word alone brings strong images and emotions to most people whether or not they have religious reasons for their viewpoint.
It is a very controversial issue made all the more complicated by the current push by some in Congress to include funding for abortions in the new health legislation. Your view on the issue of abortion notwithstanding, it is clearly a highly personal issue and not something that should be paid for by taxpayers. So, with that position stated, let’s move on to the reasons that some people consider having an abortion.
Here are some definitions that may be helpful:
Embryo – from conception to 8th week of development
Fetus – a developing human from 2 months to birth.
First, the reasons that are absolutely not valid.
a. To terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
b. To terminate the pregnancy of a child of a certain sex, when that sex has been determined by ultrasound.
Next, the only valid reasons for having an abortion.
1. When the mother’s life is threatened by continuing the pregnancy.
2. When the embryo is not viable.
3. The pregnancy was caused by rape.
4. The pregnancy was caused by incest.
Numbers 3 and 4 are only valid when the pregnancy is in the first trimester. A better alternative
would be an embryo transfer to a woman who desires a child. See below for more information on human embryo transfer.
My friend, James B. Andrews of Cave Creek, AZ commented “If women were born sterile and needed a fertilizing shot to be fertile, there would be no abortions performed. We do not have an abortion problem; we have an unwanted pregnancy problem, caused by conflicting education/communication problems. Since this is not possible, then voluntary temporary sterilization (birth control) must be taught and socially accepted by all. The process starts by having everyone be taught at a young age, at home and in school, and then enforced by society in general, the following statement, “EVERY CHILD BORN MUST BE A WANTED CHILD, WANTED BY BOTH PARENTS”.
I heartily agree with Jim’s statement and would add that I am also “Pro-Choice” and the choice to be made is before sex, not after!
To engage in sex for pleasure, without desiring the result to be the creation of a child, one must actively engage in proven birth control measures such as condoms, birth control medication or sterilization. To actively engage in sexual activity, without desiring the result to be the creation of a child, and to consciously not use the inexpensive birth control procedures
mentioned above is, simply, gross personal irresponsibility. If a pregnancy occurs and to then seek an abortion, as opposed to giving birth or considering an embryo transplant, is grossly immoral and made worse if the individual seeks taxpayer funding for the abortion. To ask for taxpayer funding for the result of an act that is totally voluntary and absolutely avoidable is
tantamount to theft or extortion.
Some religions forbid the use of contraception with elaborate justifications but, on analysis, it is clearly an attempt to increase the population of those religions.
History of Human embryo transfers.
The first transfer of an embryo from one human to another resulting in pregnancy was reported in July 1983 and subsequently led to the announcement of the first human birth February 3, 1984.[16] This procedure was performed at the Harbor UCLA Medical Center [17] under the direction of Dr. John Buster and the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine.
In the procedure, an embryo that was just beginning to develop was transferred from one woman in whom it had been conceived by artificial insemination to another woman who gave birth to the infant 38 weeks later. The sperm used in the artificial insemination came from the husband of the woman who bore the baby.[18][19]
This scientific breakthrough established standards and became an agent of change for women suffering from the afflictions of infertility and for women who did not want to pass on genetic disorders to their children. Donor embryo transfer has given women a mechanism to become pregnant and give birth to a child that will contain their husband’s genetic makeup. Although donor embryo transfer as practiced today has evolved from the original non-surgical method, it now accounts for approximately 5%
of in vitro fertilization recorded births.
Prior to this, thousands of women who were infertile, had adoption as the only path to parenthood. This set the stage to allow open and candid discussion of embryo donation and transfer. This breakthrough has given way to the donation of human embryos as a common practice similar to other donations such as blood and major organ donations. At the time of this announcement the event was captured by major news carriers and fueled healthy debate and discussion on this practice which impacted the future of reproductive medicine by creating a platform for further advancements in woman's health.
This work established the technical foundation and legal-ethical framework surrounding the clinical use of human oocyte and embryodonation, a mainstream clinical practice, which has evolved over the past 25 years.[18][19] Building upon this groundbreaking research and since the initial birth announcement in 1984, well over 47,000 live births resulting from donor embryo transfer have been and continue to be recorded by the Centers for Disease Control(CDC)[20] in the United States to infertile women, who otherwise would not have had children by any other existing method.[21][22]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryo_t...
Kids should be born to two parents so they grow up balanced and happy.
The right of a woman to decide for herself if she wants an abortion is none of your business. It has nothing to do with objecting to tax-funded entitlements. Public funding of abortions is not the only area in which government uses force in matters of "a highly personal issue", and does not justify demanding to ban abortions. Of the unlimited number of examples of interfering in "personal issues", another one is the use of government force to compel women to bear children they don't want. The intrusions don't get any more "personal" than that. Religious conservatives versus welfare statism are a false alternative.
Religions that forbid the use of contraception do so on grounds of their mystical dogmas against interfering with what they call "God's will". It is just as arbitrary as the competing religions that subjectively forbid abortions but not contraception, or forbid abortions with arbitrarily decreed "exceptions". It is not "clearly an attempt to increase the population of those religions" -- the biggest one of all, the Catholic Church, demands to forbid both contraception and abortions world wide, not just for its own church subjects. There is no excuse for banning abortion or any other kind of theocracy.
This is the political illiteracy I expect from conservatives, not in an Objectivist forum.
To determine whether something should be legal or not, we ask if rights are being violated or not?
Since the unborn don't have any rights and since being carried to term is no more a right than free healthcare, abortion should be perfectly legal.
That's all there really is to it, from an Objectivist point of view.
Facts don't care about your feelings.
"Politics depends on morality and false morality leads to bad politics. Anti-abortionists argue from false morality and insist on imposing it in their politics. That is how it wound up in government. The Catholic church was historically the main lobbyist for it. Now the religious right evangelicals are in on it."
No matter what was or wasn't done to avoid pregnancy, the choice of abortion at any stage of the pregnancy is none of your business.
Objectivism works. Questioning your own philosophy works. The problem here is the topic of abortion. It is like religion in that it drives people to behave irrationally. And, I'll bet $100 that a couple irrational, upset people apply to this comment. Please don't waste your time. I won't read it...
In contrast, explaining and defending the principles of the rights of the individual that are under attack are not "religion" and not "behaving irrationally". The anti-intellectual attacks on Ayn Rand's position and the ignoring and avoidance of serious discussion here are not providing anything useful.
Everything posted here can be read by anyone. That the poster doesn't want to bother reading responses doesn't matter. He cannot tell anyone to not bother responding and has no right to dismiss in advance those who do respond, whoever he thinks they are, as "irrational" and "upset".
The lack of integrity and respect for the purpose of this forum may indeed mean that it is circling the drain.
And I also really like jbrenner's substitution term of "regressive". Not in my wildest nightmares can I conceive (pun intended) of an abortion shower as progress.
You said, "here is where you and Rand differ from most of us. Our intentional pregnancies represent a significant investment. Yes, it is a "potential", but not one without capital, both financial and personal, invested. We are being asked to sacrifice our effort for a definite death. What we are being asked to do is not all that different than being asked to flush cash down the toilet."
You know very well that neither Ayn Rand nor I told you any such thing, nor does that misrepresentation address the discussion of your other accusations.
Yes, that's what we need.
Your title asks if this is "Sickest" but by definition it should be the most deranged status and I don't think women like this here demonstrated the final stage. They will go even farther although it is difficult to fathom what can be more unhinged than abortion at 9th month or giving a shower?
I bet the next stage will come when this crowd realizes the options genetic research can offer. I don't want to speculate what that will be but given the power of the technology, we ain't seen nothing yet!
Rejecting the smear has been 'downvoted' by militant conservatives piling on to the smear, and the rejection, not the smear, has been 'hidden' from view. Is this what this forum is supposed to be? Is that what the advertised "Galt's Gulch is a community of like-minded individuals who come together regularly to share interesting content and ideas with each other and debate politics, economics, philosophy and more" means? Is this the stated purpose of the forum: " We have ideas to spread - We're passionate about Ayn Rand's ideas and we hope to assist in their propagation by engaging in some inspired conversation"? Who and what are this forum being maintained for?
This is the post that is 'hidden':
"A woman's choice to have an abortion at any stage is not 'unhinged'. The vast majority of late term abortions are for reasons of health and threats to the life of the woman. 'Unhinged' is the barbaric practice forcing women to bear children they do not want."
This was just discussed here here https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post... with a another link in that to more from a few weeks ago.
There's no "killing" of any kind.
It's as "complicated" as that.
You've run out of word game runway.
What now?
The churches have a hidden agenda to get more members
The need for abortion is not a result of bad choices in most cases, there's no way for you to know that, nor would it change anything about the legal question even if it were true.
It's not enough to only say "government should not be involved". That is a-philosophical libertarianism. The anti-abortionists are motivated by a false, anti-man morality generated by a false and destructive epistemology of faith, subjectivism and mysticism. They cash in on a lack of understanding of reason and rational egoism.
The threat of that destruction is not "making a mountain out of a molehill". It has caused a lot of damage including, but certainly not only, a millennium of the Dark and Middle Ages after the collapse of Greek civilization.
It is not enough to be against evil, you must know and understand what you are for and why, and give the proper philosophical basis for it on behalf of reason and rational egoism.
With a basic understanding of the rights of human beings it is not complicated to understand what is wrong with sacrificing women to a potential for life (let alone a mystic soul). Whether or not someone makes a "bad choice" leading to unwanted pregnancy, it has absolutely nothing to do with the morality of abortion as a choice.