Points on abortion and the crutch of supporters

There's nothing cold-blooded about it. It's a medical procedure with vast emotional impact for the mother.Who among us can know the future? Let's talk about what is. What is is a group of cells with nothing resembling humanity. If you think a few cells are equivalent to a person, would you mind if I took a few of your cells and destroyed the rest of you? Surely that's not murder if a few cells are equivalent to a person?Or maybe there's a little more to a human than a few cells?

You mean, is she committed to putting into practice the idea that women deserve all the same rights and privleges men enjoy?Who's not a part of that?I think there ought to be a rule - if you have a penis, you're disqualified from the abortion debate. Your experience with abortion will never be closer than second-hand.

Not really. Not with a biology that leaves physical coercion as an ever-present circumvention to female choice. Not in a culture where men are usually the sexual initiators. Not without satisfactory (as in, unintrusive, temporary, and effective) means of male birth control.I guess I'm not particularly bothered by the suggestion that men as a group could stand to be more sexually responsible. Well, I confess I was using hyperbole. I do think that the arrogance level of men in the abortion debate needs to be ratcheted way down. Men need to accept whatever consensus the community of women come to on this issue, and that to me is that. There's just simply no way for a man to have all of the facts in the situation, because the experience of pregnancy will always be foreign to him.

Since I myself use hyperbole, I feel pretty comfortable letting other people use it too. What can I say? I understood what she meant. I didn't see her absolving women of all responsibility. I saw her making a case for improving the sexual responsibility of men. Somehow everybody's on the same page but you, maybe? I felt that it was covered by my statements. If you're not a spelunker, if you're not a ropemaker, if you don't sell climbing harnesses, your understanding of the mother and her situation will never be closer than second-hand. I'd say that makes your opinion of the situation next to pointless. I certainly wouldn't give you more credence than anybody who had been in the situation, or had trained to be in it. The alternative is people setting policy for other people's bodies without themselves having the body parts in question. Unacceptable.

What about when you're using birth control, but it fails? It happens, you know.

It's still possible, of course, for two levels of protection to fail. Nothing's foolproof. But I note your point.

What you've said is that Schraf's statements that we should examine men's sexual attitudes as one of many roots of the problem of abortion consitiutes an attitude that women should get a blank check for sexual behavior.And she's right - that is a mistatement of her position. It's surprising that you can't seem to see that. As somebody I usually agree with, it's surprising to see you take this attitude. Quite frankly this isn't the first time you've reacted to attempts to rectify your misunderstandings as though they were attempts to move the goal posts. You did it to me earlier, you did it to Percy a few days before, and now you're doing it to Schraf.Which is more likely, Holmes? That a bunch of people who have, at various times, expressed personal respect for you are now trying to pull the wool over your eyes in several unrelated incidents; or that you're simply having trouble distinguishing between the original intent of language and your own most negative interpretations?Honest debaters give each other the benefit of the doubt in regards to language interpretation. Is there some reason why, of late, you refuse to do this?

Not many, though. Pregnancy is always a potentially fatal condition. It's a very dangerous situation to be pregnant.

I'm no doctor but I don't see how you could D&E without partially delivering the fetus, thus making it a partial birth abortion.Oh, btw - congratulations on reducing the complexity of the abortion debate to cheap, maudlin emotionalism. People like you are going to "think of the children!" us all back into the Stone Age.

The thing about abortion supporters like us is that we'd love for abortions to never be necessary. If no woman ever had an abortion, we'd be happy.But so long as abortion is necessary, it must be legal. So long as women become pregnant unneccesarily, they must have the ability to rectify that situation.Pregancy is a life-threatening condition. If it weren't necessary for the species we'd classify it as a sexually-transmitted disease.Abortion has a horrible cost to the mother, regardless of your position on the status of the fetus. Everybody knows that. But an unwanted preganacy is even worse. It's like a disease, and abortion is a treatment.So why is the government in the business of telling doctors what treatements they can and can't perscribe? I'd rather my doctor made that decision based on what worked, not on what some pinhead suits thought was morally proper.

How would you determine the difference between a woman pregnant because of what you term "stupidity" and one pregnant as a result of rape or the unlikely failure of both BC methods she chose to use?Your method assumes some kind of godlike access to the circumstances of conception. Congrats on finding a position that lets you take the moral high ground but the rest of us have to live in the real world, ok?

I don't find it odd. It's the mother's body, so the mother determines the status of the fetus.Since I doubt Laci Peterson was on her way to the abortion clinic, it's pretty clear that she wanted the baby, so killing it against her wishes is unlawful.Same legal priciple as an involuntary abortion, to my mind.

But where does that fetus's body come from?In nine months there's an 8-pound organism where there was none before. Where does that 8 pounds of matter come from? Magic? The exposure to language creates consciousness. Prior to that point there is no consciousness. Humans aren't humans without it.

Godwin's law. You lose. That doesn't answer my question.A baby is about 8 pounds of carbon and other elements. Where did those come from? Magic? Funny how it works with you conservatives - you want to make government just small enough to fit in a woman's uterus.

If you're not responsible for a baby dropped off on your doorstep, why would you be responsible for one dropped off in your uterus?If your heart bleeds so damn bad for all those poor babies, how many have you adopted? Seriously, there's a bazillion children starving around the world. There's plenty starving in America, even. How many of them have you fed?If you're so concerned about abortion, what are you doing to prevent it? How many condoms have you given out? How many women have you bought the Pill for? How many deadbeat dads have you tracked down?I'm not impressed by moralizing platitudes from somebody who refuses to take action. I'm not impressed by the posturing of somebody who gets his rocks off by telling women what they can and can't do.You hate abortion? I hate abortion too. But it's a symptom of a disease. You don't cure a cold with a ban on snot.