stevo

This is just foolish. In case you didn't realize it, I just cut and pasted what your suggestion was. I don't know and I don't really care. If they have the means to get out of the country then so be it, but if it can be proved that an american citizen went to a foreign country with the sole purpose of breaking an american law, then they are to be held responsible for it.

host

Yes, stevo. It is foolish to advocate restrictions of women's reproductive
rights, or to try to discuss the practicality of enforcing proposed restrictions,
most likely because discussion exposes how un-American and arbitrary such
restrictions would be in the real world.

FoolThemAll

For what it's worth, I agree with stevo except for his desire to punish abortions that occur in other countries. I don't believe that would be within our jurisdiction. Also, I disagree with his 'priest' answer; my pick would be 'doctor'. But I would, in addition, desire medical audits to determine whether abortion-performing doctors are not labeling any abortions falsely as 'medically necessary', with leeway towards the doctors in order to allow erring on the side of caution.

__________________
I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

StanT

Fair enough. The point is, why should a non-Catholic subject themselves to a Catholic priest. The other point is that Catholicism really needs to clean up it's own act before acting as the world's arbiter of all that is moral.

host

Well...it has been a while....

Over on this thread,
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=130633
there is a discussion related to whether the circumstances of men's parental rights, and obligations, are fair, or not.

In post #33 on that thread, I wrote:
...and I got the same response as I got to the questions about procedure and implementation, as I got so long ago, on this thread?

Isn't the best way, "to be fair", to require that all women of childbearing age have weekly or bi-monthly "pregnancy screenings", with results officially certified and "on file", available to inspection, for the sake of "fairness", whether abortions in a given jurisdiction are legally permitted, or not?

If they are legally performed, the purpose of the mandatory, regular pregnancy screenings would be to satisfy the "fairness" requirement in maintianing male parental rights. All a potential father would need to keep tabs on the results of his sexual couplings, would be the full names, and maybe a pregnancy screening client reference number, of his recent partners.

Under such a mandate, a woman would be much less likely to be pregnant without her partner having an opportunity to attempt to prohibit her from terminating her pregnancy without him having his say, and hopefully a court hearing where he could attempt to convince an impartial magistrate of his fitness and financial soundness, so an intervention could be accomplished to maintain the pregnancy to allow him to become a father.

If, in a given jurisdiction, abortion was prohibited by law, this same mandatory, frequent pregnancy screening would serve to "lock down", women of considerable financial means to leave an abortion restricted jursidiction, to bring fairness to an abortion prohibition that would much more likely make legal, clinical abortion only beyond the reach of women of limited financial means. The frequent screenings would require any woman who tested pregnant, and then subsequently tested negative, to explain to enforcement authorities, how the pregnancy ended. All women would then be legally accountable.

It seems fair to me, but kind of restrictive for advocates of abortion restriction who otherwise strongly favor less government intervention and regulation, not more....

....or is all of it, either not thought completely through, or just absolutely fucking absurd, because we are in the US of A, and it is 2008?

Willravel

I'd have been happy with "When a woman gets an abortion, the father is notified." or "When the father wants the child, and the mother doesn't, the father is given the option to be put on an adoption list." in the other thread. State sponsored pregnancy screenings? Heh, no thanks.

pan6467

I am always perplexed about the hypocrasy of the whole pro-life/pro capital punishment and the pro-choice/anti death penalty.

Isn't life, life? If you claim it is wrong to have an abortion because it is murder is not capital punishment murder and since most people who are in this class are religious, does not the Bible say Jesus says "Vengeance is mine"?

But the case for the other side makes no sense either. Isn't death death? Aren't both in essence murder?

I don't know just an observation.

Me? I'm pro-choice, pro-capital punishment. I believe that if we allow one we must allow the other. Or if we ban one we must ban the other.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

Cynthetiq

I don't know what book of the bible you're quoting but Jesus never said, "Vengence is Mine." Jesus preached in Matthew 5:39 "But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also."

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

pan6467

Just went by the old saying "vengeance is mine, so sayeth the Lord".

Barclay Newman and Eugene Nida, in their excellent Translator's Handbook on Paul's Letter to the Romans (New York: United Bible Societies, 1973, page 242), write regarding Rom 12:19:

http://www.bibletexts.com/qa/qa057.htm

Also found at the same site is:

Shows the hypocrasy: "If you kill an unborn it's murder, but we need to fry all those that kill in society."

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

joshbaumgartner

It has been explained to me by anti-choice/pro-death penalty folks that the rationale for this is that the death penalty is executed under the authority of government and law, and not by individuals based on personal desires, while abortion gives individual citizens the right to hold power of life and death over a fetus, which they claim to see as a person on par with any born person. The idea is that killing is not okay done by individuals, but is okay when done by the government (within the law).

Personally, I see the government, particularly in a democracy, as an extension of its citizens. Thus I see this reasoning as a form of collective evasion of responsibility. Thus I can't condone this approach to the problem.

1010011010

Suicide reduces a consumer's ability to participate usefully in the economy. Unwanted children reduce the earning (read: spending and tax paying) potential of the mother (or both parents). The added spending associated with child-rearing is a non-issue because the abortion of an unwanted pregnancy does not preclude a wanted pregnancy (and associated economic activity) later in life. Further, the spending associated with a more established parent will be greater than in the outcome of an unwanted pregnancy.

The motivation behind the expansion of drug laws was also initially economic, but is now primarily political.

__________________
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions

joshbaumgartner

Economic arguments for or against abortion can be made easily enough. One can point out the fact that unwanted children, or more importantly children born to those without the capacity to properly care for them, can often pose more burden then benefit (economically). Simplistic calculations of the number of abortions times the average productivity of a citizen are meaningless. Many abortions don't cut into population at all: many women have abortions, particularly at younger ages, and then go on to have a family. Even if the numbers are the same it is true that planned families result in a greater chance the children will be more productive citizens than impromptu families.

However, I believe the motivation for both banning or allowing abortion is not primarily economic, but a more broad social motivation. The question is social stability, of which economic stability is a component but not the only major component.

FoolThemAll

I don't like that argument much, either. Nor arguments of 'justice' (read: retribution). And I'm greatly skeptical of the deterrent argument. I prefer the argument of protection.

Prison is to protect society from dangerous men. The death penalty is to protect prisoners - and guards - from dangerous men.

That's a much better argument in my opinion. Though I'm still against the death penalty myself.

__________________
I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

n0nsensical

Well, no, life is not life, because then you have to include all the other non-human life forms, which is practically taboo. The fact of the matter is life is a huge gray area and staking out definitive positions is bound to run into exceptions, objections, and endless argument. But wait. I like this one even better. If abortion is murder then women who have abortions have either commissioned a murder for hire or are murderers themselves. Now find me a pro-lifer who would support convicting and punishing those women appropriately. (How about the death penalty?) *crickets* Nobody does hypocrisy better than moral conservatives.

The fault of your argument is that you take Social Security to be a big pyramid scheme wherein the earlier entrants (retirees) are supported by the later entrants (young workers). But Social Security is not a pyramid scheme. Pyramid schemes can work for a while but are bound to failure when you run out of people to join them (regardless how many of them you're aborting you can never have enough to support the whole pyramid). The point of Social Security is for workers to support THEMSELVES in retirement by paying into the system while they work and getting that money BACK later. The current problems with Social Security are basically due to projections that underestimated the amount of money the system would need to pay benefits. It was never intended for the workers to support the retirees, thus it's irrelevant how many workers there are since they're only paying themselves.

__________________
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." --Abraham Lincoln