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#269039 - 14/11/2005 11:10 Re: Is France unique? [Re: wfaulk]
JeffS
carpal tunnel

Registered: 14/01/2002
Posts: 2858
Loc: Atlanta, GA
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Assuming you mean legally aborted, you're wrong. Seven months gestation is generally considered the outside limit for legal abortion in the US. Roe v. Wade states that a fetus may not be aborted if it is viable outside the womb, even if it requires life support technology, and specifically mentions 6 to 7 months as the time when that's possible. Medical technology has improved a good deal in the intervening 32 years and earlier dates are possible now. But no one would suggest that an 8-month fetus even begins to fit in the realm of legally abortable, now, back in 1973, or when your wife was born.
You are right- I didn't know that. I'm not sure why I didn't know that, but a quick bit of googling shows that I've been laboring under a false understanding of Roe v Wade for a long time. Thanks for setting me straight.
_________________________
-Jeff
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.

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#269040 - 14/11/2005 11:43 Re: Is France unique? [Re: JeffS]
peter
carpal tunnel

Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4172
Loc: Cambridge, England
Quote:
When do YOU think a life becomes a human enough to be worth protecting under the law?

Once it's outside the womb -- then it's gaining its own experiences and becoming its own person. Before then foetuses are fungible IMO: one can easily knock up another one that's just as good. But I'd settle for "could survive unaided outside the womb".

But if Roe vs Wade says that foetuses which could survive outside the womb with medical intervention can't be aborted, then the controversy is already over: the anti-abortion lobby can sit back and grab a beer, as there seems little doubt that medical advances will one day push that date right back to fertilisation. Plus it seems weird to pin a point of ethics to a moving target: do abortions which were previously ethical become retrospectively unethical as medical technology improves?

Peter

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#269041 - 14/11/2005 17:19 Re: Is France unique? [Re: peter]
tanstaafl.
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/07/1999
Posts: 5539
Loc: Ajijic, Mexico
Plus it seems weird to pin a point of ethics to a moving target: do abortions which were previously ethical become retrospectively unethical as medical technology improves?

And in a tangentially related vein, I've always been bemused by the hyprocisy of people who are adamant that abortion is murder, an absolute evil that must be stopped at all costs... oh, wait, except in cases of rape or incest where apparently those fetuses are not deserving of protection.

tanstaafl.
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"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

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#269042 - 14/11/2005 17:36 Re: Is France unique? [Re: peter]
JBjorgen
carpal tunnel

Registered: 19/01/2002
Posts: 3582
Loc: Columbus, OH
Quote:
Plus it seems weird to pin a point of ethics to a moving target

Quite simple. Since it seems little doubt that medical advances will one day push that date right back to fertilisation, pin it to a stationary target such as fertilisation. Problem solved.

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And in a tangentially related vein, I've always been bemused by the hyprocisy of people who are adamant that abortion is murder, an absolute evil that must be stopped at all costs... oh, wait, except in cases of rape or incest where apparently [i[those fetuses are not deserving of protection.


And I, coming from a viewpoint opposing your own, find this equally disgusting.


Edited by JBjorgen (14/11/2005 17:47)
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~ John

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#269043 - 14/11/2005 17:47 Re: Is France unique? [Re: JBjorgen]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
Since science will someday not need for a womb to be involved at all, let's make masturbation illegal. Menstruation, too. And since science will someday be able to use random genetic material from parents instead of eggs and sperm, let's make sneezing illegal. And skin flaking. And hair loss.
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Bitt Faulk

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#269044 - 14/11/2005 18:03 Re: Is France unique? [Re: wfaulk]
JBjorgen
carpal tunnel

Registered: 19/01/2002
Posts: 3582
Loc: Columbus, OH
Quote:
Since science will someday not need for a womb to be involved at all, let's make masturbation illegal. Menstruation, too


<sarcasm>Great logic.</sarcasm>

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And since science will someday be able to use random genetic material from parents instead of eggs and sperm, let's make sneezing illegal. And skin flaking. And hair loss.


Cloning is a whole different set of ethical issues. I'm sure that wherever my position ends up on those issues, it will be to value human life.
_________________________
~ John

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#269045 - 14/11/2005 18:05 Re: Is France unique? [Re: JBjorgen]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
Quote:
<sarcasm>Great logic.</sarcasm>

About as good as yours, in my opinion.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk

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#269046 - 14/11/2005 19:06 Re: Is France unique? [Re: wfaulk]
JBjorgen
carpal tunnel

Registered: 19/01/2002
Posts: 3582
Loc: Columbus, OH
Sure. Unless you take into account the fact that whether or not a womb is present has nothing to do with fertilisation. Nor does masturbation or menstruation. Basically the whole argument is a non-sequitur. I get what you're attempting to think, but it just doesn't work without sperm fertilizing an egg unless you get into cloning.

And yes, following that to the logical conclusion, I think throwing away fertilized eggs in the process of in-vitro is wrong too.

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#269047 - 14/11/2005 19:10 Re: Is France unique? [Re: JBjorgen]
peter
carpal tunnel

Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4172
Loc: Cambridge, England
Quote:
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Plus it seems weird to pin a point of ethics to a moving target

Quite simple. Since it seems little doubt that medical advances will one day push that date right back to fertilisation, pin it to a stationary target such as fertilisation. Problem solved.

Yep, that would certainly be a more consistent way of doing it than the current Roe vs Wade compromise. However it still loses out on the goal of promoting overall human happiness when compared to the alternative, also consistent, solutions of pinning either to the target of natural viability, or that of natural birth.

Peter

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#269048 - 15/11/2005 04:45 Re: Is France unique? [Re: JeffS]
jimhogan
carpal tunnel

Registered: 06/10/1999
Posts: 2591
Loc: Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
One of these moments I am going to go find a few threads about France and respond to those, But I think I can only take on one before nap time.

Can we have a new rule? Like the one regarding how far a thread may go before somenody mentions Nazis? Just substitute abortion or Bush. It would be too conceited to make it Hogan's Rule....and I'm not quite sure what the rule should be. Just that there should be a rule.

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That being said, you pretty clearly told us that, electorally speaking, you are pretty much aligned with the folks I call by [the religious right]. Same omnipotent god, right?
Only because I was given a binary choice. And I believe it is probably right to lump me with the religious right, but if I am aligned it is spiritually, not politically.


Not having much of an opinion of spirituality, I don't tend to separate what people do -- how they vote, say -- and what supernaturally-driven beliefs/values they hold or espouse. So I am thinking my lumping is OK.

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There are plenty of things I'd vote against that "the religous right" wants as a rule, but generally I'm not given that option. I've lamented this as a dissapointing part of the process many times before.


As much discomfort with this dilemma as you have consistently expressed, I would expect you to abstain or something. Yet you would still vote for the guy that got thousands of fully-grown, way-past-full-term humans killed for a lie.

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If a large group of people are worshiping a "one, true deity", how is it that the omnipotent deity does such a crummy job of communicating what the rules are?
I don't believe God has done a crummy job of telling us the rules; rather it is we that have put the barrier of sin between us so that we have difficulty understanding.


I think that any devout atheist would take you to task for a bit of circular logic. The notion of the hard-to-understand all-powerful deity has seemed absurd for many years. If we have a hard time understanding him, how do we know he's all-powerful? Or all-loving? The guy could be Norman Bates for all we know. Freaking sadist! Torturing people with the unknown, he is!


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And there are many who claim to follow Jesus with whom I do not align myself at all, including spiritually (these very same would probably feel the same way about me). Jesus makes it very clear in the NT that just because someone claims to represent Him or doing things for Him, it doesn't mean that they are.


All sorts of people across the spectrum there, I'll agree. I'm just having a hard time coping with the notion that so many of the devout are happy with having voted for a war criminal.

Well, I mean, shit, we *hung* Tojo, right?

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You know, of course, that some folks don't accept your basic assumptions re "life of the child".
Right, which I have stated many times. But really this is off point from what I've been trying to say. My whole argument here has been that I have started with a premise and acted logically from that premise. If you disagree with my premise it's one thing, and I think that's the discussion we ought to be having, but I take exception to telling me that my actions are wrong without adressing the premise from which they flow quite naturally.

I believe a LOT of the abortion topic gets mired in highly charged accusations and self rightousness, on BOTH sides, when the dicussion really ought to be about "when does life being" and "at what point does life become a person deserving protected under the law". Because if the answer to those questions leaves with abortion taking an innocent life, it is clear that the law should not allow that. If, however, we agree that abortion is not taking an innocent life then it is equally clear that no one should tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body.


I think that the world would be a better place if fewer women found it necessary to contemplate an abortion. I will opine on women's turf that much. To that end, I think efforts like sex education, contraception and generally helping young, often very poor, people envision a life with more choices and self-determination would be good. Now a good chunk of the folks who pulled the lever for Bush would like to reduce family planning to a less practical, more spiritual process. It can be called absurd, but I do *not* have a hard time imagining some of those folks defining "life" as beginning at spermatogenesis/oogenesis -- *just* so they can makesure that nobody has any extra fun!

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What is almost ironic is that I think, thankfully, that you have been outflanked by (shudder) science.
I have not been outflanked by science, and if I had I wouldn't shudder about it.

I should have made "you" more general -- say the entire body of people that voted for Bush. And those people in Kansas

I *do* believe that you have been outflanked, though. In some ways I am less concerned about those anti-clinic forces in Mississippi and elsewhere. With RU486 and the drugs that will inevitably follow, it will be quite possible for a woman to make a personally pragmatic decision on Thursday and stand in the same pews with you on Sunday, with no one else the wiser.

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While Science may inform these questions, it cannot answer them because we are dealing with a moral issue. Science can tell us all about a form of life, but it is left to us to agree whether that life is worth protecting. We did not free slaves because of science, though science could give us all the clues to determine that the color of a person's skin does not change the fact he or she is a human. Many groups of people throughout history that have been unjustly hurt and killed, fiannly becoming liberated not because of science, but because people were enlightened and saw the truth of the moral issue before them.

You can find good and bad science without too much trouble, and I wasn't trying to make too much of an inherently virtuous role for science in this issue. Just couldn't help making fun of those folks in Kansas on the way to saying that the position of abortion foes is going to continue to erode in the face of pharmacology.

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amateur abortions that you, on balance, seem willing to accept
"Accept" is too strong a word, I think. There are MANY wrongs in the world that I cannot stop. People are dying of aids in Africa, and while my church has built an orphenage to aid young children who've lost their parents, we do not have the power to stop the spread of HIV. We could possibly take the strong measure of killing everyone who test positive, but that is not an acceptable answer, as much as it hurts my heart to see what Aids does to these people. Similarly, I think we should do all we can for women receiving dangerous abortions, I don't see allowing the killing of innocents as being an acceptable solution.


I don't think you answered my original point. Why is "accept" too strong a term? History has shown that women have gotten abortions under the most difficult and often dangerous circumstances, notwithstanding the ill will or good will of their oft-religiously-inspired advisors, benefactors, oppressors, and/or parents.

As much spiritual inspiration as you take in protecting the "innocents", it strikes me as an other-worldly tilting at IUDs. Women are going to continue to have abortions and one question is how safe they will be. On the basic elements, you seem aligned with those folks in Mississippi on making sure that abortions performed to some community/insurable standard are not available, just those that have a much higher chance of killing a woman.

And, I forget if you answered this question: Am I right in thinking that you would prevent RU486 from being distributed if you could? Even if it were only to be legally prescribed within, say, two weeks of intercourse? Ah, looking below it looks like you *would* prevent same.

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And how would this play out if we were talking about 2 week old babies? Would that change things? If legalizing the killing of 2 week old babies made it safer for women who did it, would we consider allowing it?

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This, I would like to think, in our current society, is a false dichotomy. I'd never contemplate this, nor would I want to.
I know you wouldn't- my question is WHY you wouldn't. Protecting life only because it is ouside of the womb seems rather arbitrary to me. Is life two weeks before birth nonexistent and life two weeks after precious? My wife was born over a month premature and could have easily been aborted, yet clearly she had all of the qualities necessary for life and protection under the law- with the exception that she was in the womb rather than out of it. Would it have been OK for her parents to take her life? Under the law the answer is "yes", as long as they did it while she was still inside. I'm not OK with that, and I'm not OK with a society that allows that to happen.

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I think that your positions are based on an artificially bounded conception of life
And I think that yours are artifically bounded at birth.

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If, in the broader historical context of women, pregancy and women's right to self-determination, you are willing to argue that women shouldn't be free to employ an early-stage abortifacient like RU486, then all I can conclude is that your "life" definition is simply something based in mysticism
This all comes back to the question of the premise. When do YOU think a life becomes a human enough to be worth protecting under the law?


I would tend to lean toward the "viability" notion that courts have leaned on, as problematic as that is and will continue to be.

I have never worked with a truly anacephalic infant. They don't live long. I have worked with one or two who were pretty close. If their mothers had received some sort of prenatal care and in the course of that -- based say on an ultrasound -- made a decision to abort a little on the long side, I think I would understand. It is ironic that the most brain-dead child I ever worked with (aged six or seven at the time IIRC but essentially brain-dead at birth) was born to a zealously religious mother who kept her alive -- kept the insurers and the lawyers going and kept the two-shifts-a-day nurses coming -- by sheer force of will. That was her choice.

Anyhow, my opinion hasn't changed much. To my jaundiced, aspiritual eye, your morals and ethics appear grounded in mysticism. Women have miscarriages quite frequently. Sometimes women weren't quite aware they were pregnant. Some of these occasions might be greeted with a "Whew!" Many other times this a very sad event for people trying hard to have a child or just really let down after the elation of a pregnancy. And it can be a horribly sad and aweful situation in the case of a stillbirth.

These aren't all the same to me, though. By the very strict notion of spritually-driven "innocent life", I'm guessing that first woman should feel guilt for uttering "Whew!" and that the sad, disappointed 5-weeks-gestation miscarrying woman should be obliged to have a full funeral ceremony. I don't think so.
_________________________
Jim


'Tis the exceptional fellow who lies awake at night thinking of his successes.

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#269049 - 16/11/2005 03:24 Re: Is France unique? [Re: jimhogan]
canuckInOR
carpal tunnel

Registered: 13/02/2002
Posts: 3212
Loc: Portland, OR
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There are plenty of things I'd vote against that "the religous right" wants as a rule, but generally I'm not given that option. I've lamented this as a dissapointing part of the process many times before.


As much discomfort with this dilemma as you have consistently expressed, I would expect you to abstain or something.

Preferably, the "something". There are plenty of third-party candidates that would like your vote -- perhaps one of them might be a bit more aligned. The "it's throwing your vote away" rationale for not voting for a third-party is exactly what keeps the two party system in place. One day, I hope enough people wake up to this fact -- it'll sure suprise the hell out of a lot of politicians.

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#269050 - 16/11/2005 03:32 Re: Is France unique? [Re: canuckInOR]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
It, in fact, is not what keeps the two-party system in place. What keeps that in place is winner-take-all voting. Unless three parties are equidistant politically, two of them are liable to steal votes from each other, thereby making the remaining party more likely to win. Also, even if they are equidistant, it is unlikely for a third party to have enough of a presence for it to gain any ground in this sort of election. That is, while two parties may trade back and forth for seats, a third party, especially a niche party, which third parties usually are, is unlikely to be able to carry any seat. It is this fact of voting mathematics that created the coalition systems you see in many other countries. It's what we effectively have in the US, too, it's just that the sub-party factions don't usually have names, nor do they usually change allies. Other countries have systems that correlate numbers of votes to seats in a congress, so that a party that gets 5% of the vote gets 5% of the seats, as opposed to the 0% they'd be incredibly likely to get in the US system.

It's this reason that Nader was accused of costing Gore the election in 2000. Few people who voted for him would have voted for Bush had he not been in the election, while many of them would have voted for Gore. That's the notion, anyway.

It would require a different voting system to get rid of the two-party system. I'm sure Dan would be happy to elucidate.

Actually, doing some research to make sure I had my terms straight (I didn't), I find that there's a law that states exactly what I'm saying: Duverger's Law.


Edited by wfaulk (16/11/2005 03:45)
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#269051 - 16/11/2005 07:24 Re: Is France unique? [Re: wfaulk]
JeffS
carpal tunnel

Registered: 14/01/2002
Posts: 2858
Loc: Atlanta, GA
It seems that congress is less "winner takes all" than the presidency, since it gets more granular than one winner for the whole country. I guess that was the intention of the founding fathers when they set up our government- to give the people who weren't really represented by the president a way to be represented. Unfortunatly, I don't think it's quite worked out since we only ended up with two parties and not really a broad spectrum of representation.

I agree it would be better if we had a system in place where the seats matched the percentages. We are unlikely to see this kind of a change, however, since it would take people in the current system deciding to open it up so people outside their party could have more of a say and thus weaken their own party's power- this is political suicide and even if someone where willing, certainly he or she would be hard pressed to find support.
_________________________
-Jeff
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.

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#269052 - 16/11/2005 13:00 Re: Is France unique? [Re: JeffS]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
Congress is still winner-take-all for the individual seats. There is only one independent in the 535 Congressional seats, and that's just because he changed parties after he was elected. While there's a different distribution of those two parties, it's still just two parties. If there was proportional representation in the US, and 5% of the population voted for Libertarians, then there would be about 26 Libertarians in Congress. If 1% voted for them, there'd still be five. As it is now, one seems outrageous.
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Bitt Faulk

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#269053 - 16/11/2005 19:24 Re: Is France unique? [Re: wfaulk]
canuckInOR
carpal tunnel

Registered: 13/02/2002
Posts: 3212
Loc: Portland, OR
Eeek. Math!

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#269054 - 18/11/2005 02:52 Re: Is France unique? [Re: JeffS]
jimhogan
carpal tunnel

Registered: 06/10/1999
Posts: 2591
Loc: Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
Just a follow up on the abortion tangent. I heard this evening what I thought was a very interesting report on the radio program "Pacific Time". The subject was illegal abortion in (mainly Muslim) Indonesia. Interesting, I thought:

http://www.kqed.org/programs/program-landing.jsp?progID=RD37

(looks like that link is Real, but since I heard it live, I am not sure...)
_________________________
Jim


'Tis the exceptional fellow who lies awake at night thinking of his successes.

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