If you don’t criminalize abortion, we’ll start another Civil War.
Gee, I wonder why it might have occurred to anyone to say that the right wing habitually deploys the rhetoric of violence?
Update For those who are hard of reading, here’s the relevant passage. It follows a not-very-well-written rehearsal of the usual wingnut analogy between Roe v. Wade and Dredd Scott
[O]nce before, our nation was forced to repudiate the Supreme Court with mass bloodshed. We remain steadfast in our belief that this will not be necessary again, but only if those committed to justice do not waiver or compromise, and send a clear and unmistakable signal to their elected officials.
Of course, this is silly history as well as appalling rhetoric. The Civil War started not because the abolitionists lost a Supreme Court decision, but because the slavemasters lost an election. But the basic threat is clear: if the lunatic right-to-lifers can’t end abortion by lawful means plus the occasional assassination, they’ll resort to mass violence. Find me a comparable threat from a source with equivalent standing in Democratic politics to the standing RedState has with the GOP, and then let’s talk about the equivalence of the two sides.
Thomas, you have to remember that Mark aspires to be a partisan hack. You've got to expect this sort of thing, if he can't find enough examples of 'eliminationist' rhetoric, he'll just put words in somebody's mouth, no matter how reasonable the words that actually emerged.
Mark, you obviously find the fact that Redstate isn't going to endorse pro-abortion candidates offensive. How about Dr. Gosnell's actions? How about him getting away with stuff like that for years, because somebody in a position of power decided that abortion clinics wouldn't be subject to the same level of regulatory scrutiny as nail salons? How about the very real likelihood that there are other Dr. Gosnells at this moment, thriving in the same carefully maintained darkness?
An infanticide goes on trial, and the think that bothers you is that somebody declares, quite civilly, that they won't support pro-abortion candidates?
Brett, last warning: if you want to insult me, other posters, or other commenters, do so elsewhere. Thomas crossed the line once too often, and has been permanently banned.
To give your comment a more civil response than it deserves: of course the folks at RedState are free to oppose abortion (and support torture). And of course they're free to endorse only candidates who agree with them. They're even legally free to threaten mass political violence if they don't get their way. And others are free to call them on it.
Ok, let's just suppose for a minute that you are right and that the right wing deploys violent rhetoric at a higher rate than the left wing (something which is by the way ridiculous to believe given the many many examples of left wing violent rhetoric provided by several comments in recent threads on this topic on this site alone). Which is worse, violent rhetoric or the actual violent act of abortion itself which the left wing have disproportiately become complicit with in their support of? How can you not read a story like that about the recent abortion clinic practices in Philly and be horrified: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM… ? Take a look at this video clip and tell me that abortion isn't a violent atrocity of disgusting proportions: http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=http%3… . Go ahead, watch it. Look at the first trimester severed hands and feet. Come on, this is outrageous. We don't even have to go to religion. Science and natural law alone says this is a real living human being that is being murdered. Sick, just sick.
Thomas, Kleiman's title is a fair paraphase of these sentences: "The reason for this is simple: once before, our nation was forced to repudiate the Supreme Court with mass bloodshed. We remain steadfast in our belief that this will not be necessary again, but only if those committed to justice do not waiver or compromise, and send a clear and unmistakable signal to their elected officials of what must be necessary to earn our support"
The language that either Mark or his detractors (one will have to guess which) are trying level-best to misunderstand is as follows: "[O]nce before, our nation was forced to repudiate the Supreme Court with mass bloodshed. We remain steadfast in our belief that this will not be necessary again, but only if those committed to justice do not waiver or compromise, and send a clear and unmistakable signal to their elected officials of what must be necessary to earn our support."
For my part, it's not the veiled insurrectionism that rubs, but the dishonesty. If you want a revolution, just say so.
wow, a trifecta or maybe a hat-trick. the 3 posters on this site i disagree with the most are on parade.
@thomas & brett-no one has to put any words in other peoples' mouths. i'm pretty sure the relevant passage from the link would be the following: "The reason for this is simple: once before, our nation was forced to repudiate the Supreme Court with mass bloodshed. We remain steadfast in our belief that this will not be necessary again, but only if those committed to justice do not waiver or compromise, and send a clear and unmistakable signal to their elected officials of what must be necessary to earn our support."
@brett and bux-i have two questions. first, is there any situation in which you would admit that the right of the mother to live supersedes the right of the fetus to be carried to term? second, do you favor easy access to contraceptives and information about their use?
We remain steadfast in our belief that this will not be necessary again, but only if those committed to justice do not waiver or compromise…
I'm surprised how much a spelling error can undercut the solemn tone of such a pronouncement.
Well navarro, I'll answer your questions and then you can answer mine. To answer your first question, no I can't think of a situation in which the right of the mother's life supercedes the right of the fetus to "be carried to term" anymore than I can think of a situation in which my right to live supercedes your right to live. All humans are created equal, and so if I believe that a fetus is a living human being (as I do) then I could not possibly value the mother's life over the life of an unborn baby. Both have an equal right to live.
As per your second question, I have mixed feelings on public policy related to easy access to contraceptives and information about their use. I generally think the government is ineffective in solving many problems, and in this case tend to think parents can and should do a much better job than any other social entity in training their children on the appropriate use of contraceptives and information therein. I'm not taking a hard position on this one though.
Ok, my questions for you. Do you believe a fetus is a living human being? If not, when does human life start? End of first trimester? End of second trimester? Birth? If you were convinced that a fetus at the time of conception was a real human life (and I realize that's a big 'if' until I hear your response), would you not have to call abortion murder? Another question, regardless of where you ultimately come down on the issue of abortion, how could this issue be anything less than literally an issue of life or death?
I read a recent post comparing abortion to balloon boy (remember the balloon boy hoax in late 2009). It makes all the difference what's inside. If that balloon was just a balloon floating into outer space, then who gives a flip. But if that balloon contains a real human boy, then we better darn well find a way to get it safely down. Similarly, if a fetus is just a bunch of junk inside the womb, who gives a flip about abortion. But if a fetus is a real human being with life, then how could the stakes possibly be any less?
I'm pretty sure that was indeed the key line, and what it says is that unrelenting political opposition to abortion is the best way to prevent an eventual civil war over the subject.
And, frankly, if the anti-abortion movement ever manages to make the behavior of the Dr. Gosnells of the world legal, as it's clear some of you want, a civil war over it might well be justified if political means can't reverse that.
Mark, you obviously find the fact that Redstate isn’t going to endorse pro-abortion candidates offensive.
WHich candidates are those?
All humans are created equal, and so if I believe that a fetus is a living human being (as I do) then I could not possibly value the mother’s life over the life of an unborn baby. Both have an equal right to live.
Sometimes, it actually does come down to one or the other getting to live.
if the anti-abortion movement ever manages to make the behavior of the Dr. Gosnells of the world legal, as it’s clear some of you want
Name names or shut up.
What, you never heard of Peter Singer? Margaret Sanger? And you think Gosnell managed to go on for so long doing what he was doing without anyone knowing? And thinking it was ok? How about this?
You don't spend much time arguing abortion on the internet without running into the occasional 'feminist' who will defend the proposition that it's ok to kill a baby if the mother decides she didn't want it.
The reason pro-slavery ideology got as far as it did in the US, that eventually we had a civil war over it, was that abolitionists didn't win the fight earlier. We could get a civil war over abortion, too, if the pro-abortion movement weren't constantly being fought, so that it can't freely evolve to it's logical conclusion.
Just read a piece, also on redstate.com, citing the grand jury report for this Gosnell case in Philly (and no, I refuse to refer to this Gosnell character as a doctor because doctors don't destroy life). Apparently our former governor Tom Ridge (a pro-choicer) was presented with evidence of this case over a decade ago and had his department of health ignore it and not implement the inspections previously implemented under Gov. Casey (a solid pro-life democrat by the way) that could have shut this operation down. Shame on Ridge. Glad we have a pro-life governor now.
@bux-i believe that a fetus represents a potential human life but i also believe that it becomes a fully human life only after it has been born. i, therefore, believe that it should be legal for an abortion to take place up to the end of the pregnancy if the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother. with respect to abortions performed for other reasons, i believe states have the right to regulate abortions to the same extent that they have the right to regulate any other medical procedure within the context of a federal system of government. i once dithered around my feelings about abortion, at some points taking an anti-choice position while at others taking a more pro-choice position, but after much reading and much soul-searching i have to conclude that the rights and prerogatives of the actually living have to take precedence over those of the potentially living. at least you don't take the position that some anti-choice interlocutors with whom i have conversed have taken of opposing vehemently both abortion and contraception.
"What, you never heard of Peter Singer? Margaret Sanger?"
Singer's view is that euthanasia of an infant may be justifiable when the "life of an infant will be so miserable as not to be worth living, from the internal perspective of the being who will lead that life."
Sanger has said that "nothing short of contraceptives can put an end to the horrors of abortion and infanticide." (Emphases all mine.)
So…how do these views tie in with what Gosnell's accused of, exactly?
Like navarro, I am pro-choice, but not because a fetus "becomes a fully human life only after it has been born." Questions about when life begins, or when fully human life begins, are meaningless. They have no possible answers, except arbitrarily chosen ones, yet they suggest that the abortion debate could be resolved by an empirical investigation that found their answers.
In fact, the abortion debate centers wholly on values, and not just on the question of a woman's rights versus a fetus's. There is also the question of whether we want the government to have the power to control anyone's body (which I do not), whether by telling her that she cannot abort her fetus, that she cannot ingest whatever plant she wishes, or that she cannot engage in whatever consensual sexual activity she wishes. Thus, one can believe abortion to be immoral (which I do not believe it to be) but still believe that it should be legal.
Henry, it is absurd to say that questions about when life begins are meaningless and with no possible answers except arbitrarily chosen ones. If the definition of the beginning of life is meaningless and arbitrary, then what is to stop us from justifying killing 5 year old little brats on the basis that we have decided their life has not yet begun? I assume you believe the 5 year old has begun his or her life by that age. Well then what do you base this assessment on?
Bux, let's not confuse the definition of "life" as a biological question with its definition as a moral or legal question. Five-year-olds have a biological life, but we are free to decide that, for moral or legal purposes, their life has not yet begun. This is because morality is determined by values, not by facts. Likewise, a fetus has a biological life of one sort or another, depending on the stage of its development, and we are free to decide that, for moral or legal purposes, its life has not yet begun until it reaches a certain stage of development. For that matter, sperm and unfertilized ova have a biological life of sorts, and we are free to decide that, for moral or legal purposes, their life has not yet begun. But I recommend against using the phrases "its life has begun" or "its life has not yet begun," because, again, those phrases sound like empirical statements and are sometimes misunderstood as such. What we really mean is that it should be moral or immoral, or legal or illegal, to kill a fetus at a particular stage of development, and that is a value judgment, not a biological judgment.
(Mark): "Gee, I wonder why it might have occurred to anyone to say that the right wing habitually deploys the rhetoric of violence?"
1. Gee, I wonder how the abortion issue fits on the one-dimensional left/right economic axis? Cultural conservatives were Democrats up to the 1960s. William Jennings Bryan ran for President as a Democrat, remember. Inter-national comparisons find abortion independent of the free market/socialism axis. Back in the days of the Evil Empire, there were communist countries where abortion was illegal and communist countries where aboprtion was compulsory.
2. Recourse to State violence (e.g., compulsory attendance laws, minimum wage laws, anti-discrimination laws, product safety laws) practically defines "the left".
(Mark): "For those who are hard of reading…wingnut…the lunatic right-to-lifers…"
Not to mention "teabagger".
(Mark): "Brett, last warning: if you want to insult me, other posters, or other commenters, do so elsewhere."
Delicious.
(Mark): "Thomas crossed the line once too often, and has been permanently banned."
Not only banned but "disappeared".
Delicious.
Wow, this throws us into the whole moral relativism realm Henry. If we can legally/morally decide that a 5 year old is not life, then doesn't that make us gods unto our own? We are sitting in judment of who is worthy, legally or morally, to live or die. This is exactly the kind of scary thinking that those of us who value human life are afraid of. What limits, defines, shapes our ability to give a moral/legal definition to life? What if we decided that a black person is only three-fifths of a human life on moral/legal grounds? Who is to stand in judgment of us for making such a decision? We are, as you said, free to decide morally/legally that, for example, blacks are not life (or only partially life). So you agree that a fetus is a human life biologically speaking, and yet you have no moral concern with taking a biologically human life? Are there other categories of biologically living human beings for which you have no problem terminating their life? Your viewpoint is very scary stuff to me. It opens up the floodgates to all kinds of paths that history has been down before in which we now call evil.
Bux, I am not a moral relativist; in fact, I think that the term is oxymoronic, because morality, by definition, must be universal. In any given circumstances, particular conduct is either moral or immoral. Now, who decides whether, in any given circumstances, an act is moral or immoral? There is no one but us to decide, so the power to make such decisions makes us human, not gods. In other words, I am an atheist, whereas you believe in a supernatural power who makes the rules. If believing that helps to make life less scary to you, then I do not begrudge you your belief.
(Brett): "…if the anti-abortion movement ever manages to make the behavior of the Dr. Gosnells of the world legal, as it’s clear some of you want, a civil war over it might well be justified if political means can’t reverse that."
I expect "anti" is a typo?
(Phil): "Name names…"
Me. I'm not pro-choice; I'm pro-abortion, and I believe that Roe v. Wade was badly decided. It was bad law and is bad policy. Had the States been allowed to go their separate ways, abortion would have become incrementally available with time. By nationalizing abortion policy, Brennan created a winner-take-all contest. Further, the Court's dishonest, unprincipled reasoning announced to abortion opponents that the courts would not listen to sane arguments. The world will come to the Chinese policy eventually, if we're lucky. Other options are worse.
(Phil): "…or shut the fuck up."
Watch that inflamatory rhetoric. It contributes to political violence, doncha know. And, you might get banned.
ok, one more question Henry. Where did universal morality come from? Maybe if we could find out where it came from, since you agree it is universal and since you talk about it as if it were an independent entity that we are trying to discover through human assessment, then we could figure out how to be always right or wrong in our assessment of morality. Shouldn't the creator of morality determine what is or isn't moral? And if you don't believe morals are created, then where did they come from and how did they become so absolute? You can't say they evolved, because that would be the moral relativism you have stated you reject.
(Henry): Questions about when life begins, or when fully human life begins, are meaningless."
(Bux): "If the definition of the beginning of life is meaningless and arbitrary, then what is to stop us from justifying killing 5 year old little brats on the basis that we have decided their life has not yet begun?"
(Henry): "Bux, let’s not confuse the definition of “life” as a biological question with its definition as a moral or legal question. Five-year-olds have a biological life, but we are free to decide that, for moral or legal purposes, their life has not yet begun."
(Bux): "Wow, this throws us into the whole moral relativism realm Henry. If we can legally/morally decide that a 5 year old is not life, then doesn’t that make us gods unto our own? We are sitting in judment of who is worthy, legally or morally, to live or die. This is exactly the kind of scary thinking that those of us who value human life are afraid of."
In ancient Greece, deformed newborns were left outside the city walls overnight, for the wolves. In some African societies, twins were considered so unlucky that one was taken into the forest and left (see Chinua Achebe's __Things Fall Apart__). According to Redmond O'Hanlon, in some parts of the Congo, twins were so unlucky that -both- twins and the mother were killed. In ancient Rome, children were their fathers' property until to age twenty (if male) or until they married (if female, at which they became their husbands' property). Basically, in Rome, abortion was legal to the end of the 81st. trimester.
The slippery slope is very real. Christians have good reason to worry. I think the slavery analogy is apt. To what material objects do State actors extend the protections they demand for themselves?
(Bux): "Where did universal morality come from?"
I don't believe in "universal morality". Morality is a result of biological and cultural evolution. I recommend Hayek's __The Constitution of Liberty__ for a discussion of this issue.
AOF,
Thanks for the summary.
So anybody who disagrees with any part of the official 9/11 conclusions is a truther?
I'll say this - if Al Gore was president, he would likely have done a better of preventing 9/11. PDB - Bin Laden determined to strike: GWB - you've covered your ass, you can go.
Thomas keeps coming back under various pseudonyms, and we will keep zapping his comments.
I finally figured out the flimsy basis on which Thomas decided to brand me a "Truther": my belief that the Saudi royal family helped fund al-Qaeda, and that in particular Prince Bandar's Riggs Bank account was used to support the U.S. branch which carried out the 9-11 operation. The fact that Bandar was a close friend of GWB (who called him "Bandar Bush") would cast a dark shadow on the Bush Presidency, if that shadow weren't swallowed up in total darkness.
The decision to cover up the Saudi connection was, I don't doubt, made in good faith for foreign-policy reasons. I don't have to like that decision, but I can certainly understand it.
What no sane person believes is that Bush or anyone else knew in advance that the attacks were coming. Real Truthers believe not only that, but also (some of them) that the attacks themselves were faked: that the Twin Towers were blown up from within rather than knocked down by the planes.
When Van Jones quit his job after it turned out he'd signed a stupid document that included some Truther nonsense, I said he was "a class act" for falling on his sword rather than embarrassing the President by fighting to stay on.
Note that the rejection of Trutherism is a consensus in Blue Blogistan; Daily Kos banned Truther posts early on. The contrast with the handling of Birtherism on the right is stark.
It's true that I haven't spent many pixels denouncing a belief held by a vanishingly small and un-influential minority, but here's what I did write a year ago:
"Among the world’s wacky conspiracy theories – the Elders of Zion, the Illuminati, trutherism, birtherism, perpetual-motion machines suppressed by Big Oil, the fossil record as an evolutionist hoax – global-warming denialism stands out for the sheer vastness of the conspiracy it imagines, involving thousands or tens of thousands of scientists."
https://thesamefacts.com/2009/11/uncategorized/gl…
Yes,I'm prepared to stand behind "hard of reading" for anyone who thinks this site has ever trafficked in Trutherism. I doubt that Thomas actually think that; more likely, like so much of what he (and his sock-puppets) posted here, it was probably mere venom, spewed up in bad faith. Good riddance.
Wow, what a terrifyingly ugly comments thread.
If anyone with a brain is still reading, I have a none-too-hypothetical question. Let's say my wife and I conceive, but it turns out our little fetus has got Trisomy 9. If he's born at all, he's going to live 24 days, give or take, mostly in agony, then die. You make my wife carry him to term, I take it. Let's not argue about that, since it's a counterfactual: let's say instead that his little fetus heart stops beating. The human body, it turns out, is designed to end pregnancies of fetuses with things like Trisomy 9.
Do you give my wife life in prison for murder?
If not, why not?
On a slightly different note, I'll also point out this passage from the Trike Force (emph. added):
Here at RedState, we too have drawn a line. We will not endorse any candidate who will not reject the judicial usurpation of Roe v. Wade and affirm that the unborn are no less entitled to a right to live simply because of their size or their physical location.
Wonder how they make that jibe with their non-stop calls for bombing the snots out of other countries.
WCW, I think one of the biggest problems in this thread - as well as the larger debate - is a lack of nuance. This is really tricky ethical/moral stuff. There is a lot on the line for people, and the issue is in many ways a sort of Rorschach test.
For instance, I don't believe there is a God or creator, or that any of us has any soul, or "meaning" in the grandest sense. I believe we are simply a highly evolved set of molecules placed in a specific sequence, that the original "life" was able to assemble a series of amino acids and self-replicate trillions of times over, covering the Earth with all manner of life we now see around us. In this way my ear cells, when placed in a petri dish are just as "alive" as anything or anyone. Yet I not only believe but *know* that my life has meaning in a smaller sense - actually quite literally as a manifestation of my ability to sense and "make sense" of the world. Thus, I feel emotion and am able to empathize with fellow creatures.
Yet any meaning I assign to my life is well, not arbitrary, but relative to my world view, my culture, my reasoning, etc. This is how I believe that it is wrong to cause animals to suffer. But I realize that this is a meaning that I have created in my mind, at least in so far as it is something I have thought about and come to a conclusion on. Yet I realize that others may have different, yet reasonable views. I think they are wrong, but they won't think so, because their meaning is different than mine. And their views are likely entirely consistent with their worldview. They don't view animals the same way as I do, and so don't empathize the way that I do.
When Rick Santorum brought his dead child's fetal body home to sleep with, he had given it a much different meaning than I would have. When my wife had a miscarriage, I couldn't have cared less. The baby didn't feel pain, we didn't know it, and I had no reason to empathize with it - no more than I would my sperm or my wife's unfertilized eggs. There's nothing especially significant to me about the fertilization process. At a certain point, a the baby begins to feel, or at least develop the capacity to suffer. Although even then, suffering doesn't come into it so much - I no doubt suffered considerably when I was circumsized.
In any event, there must come a point at which infanticide is wrong, either within or without the uterus. We certainly can't have people killing their children. So how does one find that line? The sort of strict, black & white approach would be to draw a line in the sand at a definition of "life". But isn't that a sort of tautological, semantic device? As I mentioned previously, biologically, I don't believe anyone is really a "life" any more than any cell anywhere is. This is where we each simply create meaning. For me, "life", or human life at least, is experiential - in the sense that it is something that emerges from the uterus, and immediately takes on special significance to the immediate relations, and to a lesser extent larger society. The baby has feelings and needs, and the community has an interest in giving it great significance.
Do I have a perfect line I can draw that says after this moment the baby takes on enough meaning for its life to be spared? Certainly not. "Meaning" is almost unquantifiable by definition. When do cookies become "good"? When is a song "beautiful"? Yet we obviously have to make rules as a society, even if they must in a sense be very arbitrary. Rules often are. What should the sentence for theft be? How do you quantify the wrong that was done? It seems that if any debate demands nuance, it is abortion. Yet as is often the case in controversies where one's worldview is at stake, rigidity seems so much the more powerful and "righteous" - one might even say easy, stance.
Some will think me a murderer. Some will say my nuance leaves the door open for a slippery slide into the evils of moral relativism. I see no reason for that to be the case. Just because I know a 70 mph speed limit is somewhat arbitrary, I know that speeding is dangerous. So too do I know that killing people is wrong. I just don't know exactly when one becomes that sort of "human". In standing up for nuance, and rejecting the safe, firm chains of rigidity, one goes out on a limb. Yet there is a great faith there. It is a faith in the reasonableness of humanity. Sure we can be brutal and inhumane. But we can also be incredibly wise and reflective. The irony of nuance may be that the greatest evils have come not from nuance, but rigidity itself. Because with rigidity comes a closing of the mind. That may be a good thing if the cause is good. But what if the cause is bad? And once rigidity has set in, how would one know?
Bux, to the contrary of your argument, morality must be something we can figure out for ourselves. You insist, against the evidence of work both by philosophers and by evolutionary psychologists, that morality must have a divine creator - but this just then begs the question of who gets to decide what that creator is? Should we all follow the rules set out in the key text of the Flying Spaghetti Monster because it claims to be the revealed word of the creator? If morality is subject to the whim of the creator, isn't it a bit of a problem that we don't agree as to what the creator is, or even as to whether there is one?
It is, in fact, perfectly possible to come up with a fairly enlightened version of morality purely on the basis of utility, as long as you take a long enough view. It turns out that selflessness can be perfectly selfish, that sacrificing your future can be a perfectly good way to propagate your lineage so long as it benefits your kin and your society. And keep in mind: one thing evolution is very good at is taking a long view.
All that said, on the subject of the post itself, I have a real problem with this question. If you really think that abortion is murder, all kinds of horrific acts become ethical to perpetrate - perhaps even mandatory. Thing is, that's also true if you're convinced that contraception is murder, or if you you have any number of similarly extreme beliefs. If you think Congresswoman Giffords is implementing a government conspiracy to enslave the human race through twisted grammar, are you not obligated to stop her by any means necessary? It all comes down to how certain you are, and why you are so certain. Because maybe you're wrong; maybe you're actually a raving psychotic, and you'll end up shooting twenty people in Tucson. There's a reason that the anti-abortion forces like the word "fetus" rather than "embryo", and there's a reason they show images that resemble newborns: because as the pregnancy progresses the question of when it becomes a person is really quite hard, and this is why there are a lot of restrictions on late-term abortion. But to most of the anti-abortion activists this is not a hard question: most are absolutists, and they assert that a fertilized oocyte, a zygote, is a person, too. Such a view is just nuts, and is a position that can only be embraced on the basis of theology. Biologically, a zygote is no more a person than is a teratoma. Roughly half of all fertilized oocytes fail to implant - they are murdered by God, if you believe in God and believe a fertilized oocyte is a person. Imposing upon someone else's body the notion that a zygote or a blastocyst or a gastrula is a person requires a mystical leap of faith that your God gives you authority over their life. But, sadly, that's where most anti-abortion people are.
On the actual history: "The Civil War started not because the abolitionists lost a Supreme Court decision, but because the slavemasters lost an election."
Yes, but the Dred Scott decision was a very important part of why Lincoln won the 1860 election. If popular sovereignty could no longer decide the question of slavery in the territories, much of the Northern Democratic position on why slavery was not a threat to the aspiring Northern white homesteader was now incoherent - witness the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Faced with their belief that the spread of slavery to the territories was becoming inevitable due to Southern "slave power," Northerners switched their votes from Democrat to Republican. So, yes, the Dred Scott decision was a key part of the slide to civil war.
I agree that the view that every fertilized egg is a person is nuts. Countering that on the other side is the view that killing an entirely viable infant is ok, as long as the mother doesn't want to be a mother. Leadership on both sides disproportionately is comprised of extremists. On neither side is it representative of most supporters.
I would observe that the Supreme court has tremendously politicized this issue, by preventing some compromise position from being democratically implemented. If not for Roe v Wade, we'd probably have abortion laws typical for Europe, (Which is to say, a lot more restrictive after the first 'trimester', and relatively unrestricted prior.) and a lot less arguments about it.
Brett, you clearly need to read Roe v Wade. from the decision:
Yup, that’s right: you complain that if not for Roe, we’d probably have essentially unrestricted abortion rights in the first trimester and more restricted thereafter, especially once the fetus is viable - but that’s exactly what Roe sets forth. You complain about allegedly extant demanding the right to terminate pregnancies once the fetus is independently viable - but this has never been legal except to protect the life of the mother, and I don’t know who you think is demanding it become so. Can you name a politician in federal office with such an agenda?
You say that a level of abortion regulation that is, if anything, more permissive than current federal law and that is wildly more permissive than many current state laws would lead to “a lot less arguments”. This is patently, demonstrably untrue. With some caveats about when in the second trimester the restrictions are imposed, this is exactly the situation we do have - and by pure tautology it’s clear that we don’t have a lot less arguments than we have.
Er, “allegedly extant” s/b “allegedly extant people”.
What, you never heard of Peter Singer? Margaret Sanger?
And they post here, do they? A neat trick seeing as one of them is dead. Your comment referred to “you,” and I expect you to specify which population of “you” desired unregulated infanticide performed by untrained individuals. Frankly, it seems to me that the Gosnell nightmare is a nearly inevitable result of the right making legal abortions harder to obtain, if not this specific case then in the general case.
Still waiting for that list of “pro-abortion” candidates, too. You said it, so you must have SOME concept of who it is you mean. At least five names would be nice.
Or maybe, despite your much-vaunted “libertarianism,” you’re really just another lying right wing freakshow. I’m willing to give odds if anyone wants.
Bux, at 8:47 asks how morality became so “absolute,” or, as I said at 8:34, “universal.” As I said at 8:34, morality is universal by definition. If we claim that a particular rule, such as the prohibition of slavery, is a moral rule, then we mean that to violate it would be immoral at all times and in all places. We believe it to be immoral even in a culture that endorses slavery, and even if every person in that culture, including the slaves, believes that slavery is moral.
There are rules, by contrast, about which we can say, you do it your way and we’ll do it ours. These rules address, for example, sartorial practices. These are not moral rules, even if the people who practice them take them so seriously as to consider them moral rules. Thus, Jewish rules that require head coverings, Muslim rules that require women to reveal no portion of their bodies, or Victorian standards of dress are not moral rules, and impose no obligation on people of other cultures.
It’s also charming beyond words to call people “pro-abortion,” and accuse “us” — for whatever value of “us” it is you’re thinking of — of having a nation of Dr. Gosnell’s as our desired endpoint, then turn around and decry that “Leadership on both sides disproportionately is comprised of extremists,” as if you’re some kind of reasoned centrist.
Wait, did I say “charming?” I meant “nauseating.”
Also, in re: Dr. Gosnell being a result of the right wing making abortion availability more difficult, please note that this is the state of the law as it applies to abortion in Pennsylvania:
Anti-choice* zealots demand that pregnant women seeking abortions be subject to increasingly difficult, insulting and infantilizing hoops to jump through, and making reputable providers harder to find. In many cases, the nearest clinic is in another state entirely, hundreds of miles away and essentially unreachable. Pennsylvania has only 61 providers in the entire state, according to the Guttmacher Institute, with 50 of its 67 counties — or 75% — having no providers at all.
Given that, is it any wonder that — just as the pro-choice side predicts, lo and behold! — you have disreputable providers offering dangerous, unsupervised and unregulated services?
*Yes, I’m going to use “anti-choice,” which is the proper language. While I can’t think of a single person that is “pro-abortion” — which implies that they think EVERYONE should have an abortion — anti-choice describes properly people who don’t want to have an abortion, and don’t want anyone else to be able to get one either.
Eli, you are right that this is tricky moral stuff and that there’s a lot on the line for people. As I stated earlier, this is literally a matter of life and death. I appreciate your honesty in that area, in not trivializing the debate over abortion. As to the rest of your comments, your position is not consistent. You state at one point that you “know that killing people is wrong”. How do you know that killing people is wrong. If I take your position on moral relativism, than I can argue that, no, I don’t believe killing people is wrong. If I can convince enough people to follow me, then we can legalize killing people (regardless of what age they are) and call in “right” instead of “wrong”. You don’t think this could happen? Don’t you think people could start being convinced that killing anybody is no big deal at all, morally speaking, since in the grander scheme life is meaningless as you admitted. Now pragmatically speaking it still makes no sense to go around killing people under this worldview, since game theory comes into play and if I kill you then one of your people is likely to come looking to kill me and then my interests are at stake. But morally there is no objective grounds to speak of murder under any circumstance being wrong. In fact to speak of meaning by definition indicates that there must be a reference point for giving the meaning. I just find it so ironic that people want to take the view that any meaning assigned to life is relative to their worldview, but then think we should be outraged that in their worldview they consider torture or gay bashing or fill-in-the-blank to be wrong. Well that’s fine for your worldview but someone else is perfectly entitled to take a different view and you have no absolute basis other than your opinions to draw on in condemning them. By your seeming definition of murder (it is murder when it causes something like felt, experienced pain to another living form), how do you know that your wife’s miscarried baby did not experience pain or that an aborted fetus did not experience pain? Where is your evidence for that? Have you seen the videos or heard the testimonies of fetuses squirming in pain and drawing back from the abortion doctor? That to me seems like evidence of pain.
Warren, I of course find the same problems with your comments. You once again live on borrowed capital of the theist’s worldview, by making so many seeming absolute value judgements in your comments with no absolute moral reference point to draw on. How, for instance, can you define as objectively horrific, or anything more than your own equally valid opinion as anyone else’s, the hypothetical “horrific acts” that can be perpetrated in response if one believes that abortion to be murder? What makes the responses you speak of horrific? You and other moral relativists use words like “horrific”, “right”, “wrong”, “evil”, “good”, etc., but don’t qualify it with saying it is only these things in your view. To be consistent, you should always follow up a statement of something being horrific with “in my opinion”. Make clear that you are talking about opinions alone under the moral relativist viewpoint, and therefore it is only by popular opinion that something becomes right or wrong. Of course, again, there are plenty of examples in history of popular opinion leading to terrible things. Nothing is to stop popular opinion from swaying the way of the past again. You are right though that morality is something that we must figure out for ourselves. The key part of that statement is “figure out” though. This isn’t the same as saying that morality is something we define ourselves. The rules of morality can (and I say must) be defined by an external authoritative source, but still leave us with having to struggle with figuring the rules of that objective reality out for ourselves. And actually you are wrong that my view of moral absolutes is against the view of the work of philosophers. Actually, the majority of the greatest philosophical minds throughout our history have demonstrated a decided commitment to a view of moral absolutes. As far as evolutionary psychologists, what a joke of a discipline. I don’t even take that label seriously. You mention that it’s a bit of a problem that we don’t agree who the deity is or whether there even is one if we take my position. You’re right, that is a problem to be struggled with. We use evidence and logic to struggle with this problem. It doesn’t change the fact that a deity does in fact exist and defines morality, if in fact that is true. So just because you or I have a hard time figuring something out, doesn’t say anything of whether that something is true or false. It seems that where you are heading is that you are using the difficulty of figuring the thing out as evidence that the thing doesn’t exist. This would of course be flawed logic.
Someone remind me who the philosopher was (an atheist by the way) who essentially said if his view of moral relativism was right then the only real serious question left to struggle with is why we don’t all resort to suicide.
Bux, Camus said, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide,” but I don’t think that it had anything to do with moral relativism.
Also, to say that morality is something that we must figure out for ourselves is the same as saying that morality is something we define ourselves. But that doesn’t mean that we define it arbitrarily. We try to figure out what rules will best promote the desires of all sentient beings to live a fulfilling life.
Warren, you can’t really understand Roe v Wade, without looking at Doe v Bolton, decided the very same day. The former permitted state regulation, the latter foreclosed the possibility of real regulation, by prohibiting inquiries into whether a doctor’s determination that an abortion was medically necessary. Turning “medical necessity” into just a box to check on a form, not a genuine requirement.
It’s sloppy, but a lot of people refer to “Roe v Wade” when it’s the way that it interacts with Doe v Bolton that’s really the problem.
And with that Brett puts to bed any claim of being a libertarian. Yes how dare the government not investigate this one particular instance of medical procedures!
Bux, thanks for the thoughtful response. I’ll respond to you with a question: how is your view any less relative to your thoughts/culture than mine? You have a worldview, from which you decide what is right or wrong. You can claim that what you consider right or wrong is some kind of moral absolute, but you have no more evidence than I do.
Let me make a distinction that I think is often missed. There is a difference between “moral relativism” and the idea that morals are relative. The former means a sort of moral anarchist/libertarian view that we should accept any behavior because each person is entitled to define his own morals. I’ve never encountered anyone who holds this view. The latter is the view that there is only behavior and the meaning we give to it, and that society decides what behavior is acceptable. According to this view, it is not “right or wrong” in any grand sense for you to steal from me, but I think it is wrong, and along with most members of society, we have made an agreement to prosecute you for that behavior.
So, taking your example, if you can convince enough people that killing is OK, then you have every right to assign that meaning. Yet I’ll have a different meaning, and act accordingly. (Interestingly, your example has already occurred: many people believe that warfare is often justified.) In the end, it comes down to who can make the best argument, based on evidence. As with abortion, we’ll often disagree. But it is irrelevant to me whether one side is “right” in some kind of cosmic sense, only whether the result is consistent with my meaning. And truthfully, whether or not you believe you are “cosmically right”, you are doing the same thing as I am: basing your beliefs on the meaning you have interpreted from some source, whether history, law, philosophy, religion, etc.
Brett,
1) Given that you were the one blaming Roe V Wade for poisoning the debate, it’s a little rich to complain about “a lot of people” sloppily referring to Doe instead of Roe.
2) I don’t know anything about Doe, and I don’t know much about the state of late-term abortion, but - despite the existence of this one awful case you repeatedly cite upthread, which in any case hardly seems to be an example of a remotely responsible doctor trying to follow any laws or codes of practice - I’m far from convinced that there is any significant number of doctors willfully stretching the “life or health of the mother” exception to include hangnail. Indeed, when George Tiller was murdered, one of the things that was made clear was that he was one of a very few doctors in the country willing to perform late-term abortions at all, and the people who were interviewed as having sought him out from long distances away seemingly had very real medical reasons to require a termination.
3) I’m really quite skeptical when you assert that Doe left no avenue for investigation or sanction of doctors who stretched the “life or health of the mother” standard too far. Leaving aside state action on this specific point (which I know has at least been attempted, in the case of Tiller, by an anti-abortion DA), a doctor knowingly falsifying a prognosis would open themselves up both to malpractice and to professional sanctions. And what would be their motive, in any case? You seem to be imagining some cabal of pro-choice doctors determined to perform unnecessary abortions and even to kill newborn babes, as with this Pennsylvania case you repeatedly cited. But doctors who perform abortions contemplate human life and morality too, they’re not some cartoon Snidely Whiplash of the medical world.
In any case, since you cite the European regulation of abortion as being more effective and sensible, do they really handle the “life or health of the mother” standard any differently?
So Bellmore doesn’t even trust the government to pick up his trash, but thinks they’re qualified to second-guess doctors on whether a particular abortion is medically necessary? Delicious.
“[O]nce before, our nation was forced to repudiate the Supreme Court with mass bloodshed. ”
I presume that is a regret that the Dred Scott decision, which deprived blacks of all human and civil rights, did not being the “slavery agitation” to a close, as President Buchanan and his Southern allies hoped it would.
… the idea of ‘ensoulment’ at conception is actually a radically new change in Christianity that dates back only to 1869.
For the first 1800 years or so of Christianity, the fetus was NOT considered human and was not ‘ensouled’ with a human soul until ‘quickening,’ some time in the second trimester.
Abortion before that point was not considered murder or a mortal sin by the Church. Though, to be sure, a number of Christian scholars argued for instant ensoulment, the Church rejected their theological arguments and stuck to the dogma of delayed ensoulment.
In 1869, Pope Pius IX was trying to gather support within the church hierarchy for the adoption of the principle of ‘Papal Infallability.’ He approached the French leader, Bonaparte III, an Bonaparte demanded a political trade. Worried about a century-long decline in the French population. Bonaparte agreed to back Papal Infallibility, but only if Pope Pius IX would ban all abortions, even those before quickening when the fetus changed from fetus inanimatus to fetus animatus and received a human soul.
Pius IX accepted the political quid-pro-quo and, in exchange for Bonaparte’s political support, he issued a new Papal Bull declaring that conception was the point at which the pre-embryo became ensouled.
It wasn’t until 1917 that that Church Canon was finally changed to remove the distinction between the fetus inanimatus and the fetus animatus.
(Phil): “While I can’t think of a single person that is “pro-abortion†— which implies that they think EVERYONE should have an abortion…”
I’m neither anti-abortion nor “pro-choice”. I’m pro-abortion. That is, I believe that the world will come to the Chinese policy eventually, or worse. Value is determined by supply and demand. A world in which human life is precious is a world in which human life is scarce. Legal to the end of the fifth trimester and compulsory after three kids, will do for now. The sooner politicians hit the brakes, the fewer faces will go through the windshield of this bus.
(Mark’s a Nitwit, 2011-01-23): “Mark is dishonest in every single thing he does. I think someone ought to take a look at his academic work, given his track record here. Certainly no one should rely on any of it, absent independent verification.”
Within his area of expertise (drug policy), I provisionally accept his word. He even makes good arguments for civility. It would be nice if he demonstrated that he believes them.
(Mark’s a Nitwit, 2011-01-23): “Thomas never branded Mark a truther. Thomas said that Mark trafficked in truther-friendly theories. And Mark did. Mark has pulled out a couple of irrelevancies from the archives and is pretending that that’s what the controversy is about. It isn’t.”
It is hard to disavow allies. Most of us place a higher burden of proof on arguments which move against our favored position. Most of us criticize enemies more harshly than we criticize friends for similar behavior (e.g., “crosshairs”, etc.).
(Mark): “What no sane person believes is that Bush or anyone else knew in advance that the attacks were coming…It’s true that I haven’t spent many pixels denouncing a belief held by a vanishingly small and un-influential minority…”
A lot of Democrats are insane, then.
(Mark): “Note that the rejection of Trutherism is a consensus in Blue Blogistan; Daily Kos banned Truther posts early on. The contrast with the handling of Birtherism on the right is stark“. Maybe because the theory that two poor grad students would blow plane fare halfway around the world for the privilege of delivering on the floor of a mud hut is not as widely held or vehementally advanced as 9/11 conspiracy theories. Some of the free market persuasion believe, however, that Constitutional requirements for Presidential candidates (e.g., US citizen by birth) require proof. Like a birth certificate.
Malcolm, you seem to have mistyped; surely when you entered the passage:
what you actually meant was:
There, that’s better. Isn’t it irritating when your fingers slip like that?
But, yeah, I mean, George W Bush had shown by going AWOL for a year how seriously he was capable of taking an oath to defend the Constitution, but an incomprehensible 40 year-long conspiracy to misrepresent the birthplace of two students’ child that you yourself admit is beyond risible really raises troubling Constitutional issues.