Senate to vote on defunding Planned Parenthood

[Simfan34]

Why are we funding them in the first place? Yes, I know that most of their activities are supposedly not abortions-- but believe they fund or provide most of the abortions in the country.

[Simfan34]

I don't understand why they need funds from the government. Why can't they just be a private non-profit? I hope they try to defund it, even though Obama will veto it.

Because these sort of programs pay for themselves. Less burden on government services and all.

Universal euthanasia at 80 would also reduce the burden on government services, you know. I'm not convinced this is the best line of reasoning to justify this.

[Simfan34]

I don't understand why they need funds from the government. Why can't they just be a private non-profit? I hope they try to defund it, even though Obama will veto it.

Because these sort of programs pay for themselves. Less burden on government services and all.

Universal euthanasia at 80 would also reduce the burden on government services, you know. I'm not convinced this is the best line of reasoning to justify this.

You got me - although I should add that I don't consider embryos persons, while I do consider granny a person and would thus object to euthanising her.

And that is where we differ.

[Simfan34]

I don't understand why they need funds from the government. Why can't they just be a private non-profit? I hope they try to defund it, even though Obama will veto it.

Because these sort of programs pay for themselves. Less burden on government services and all.

Universal euthanasia at 80 would also reduce the burden on government services, you know. I'm not convinced this is the best line of reasoning to justify this.

You got me - although I should add that I don't consider embryos persons, while I do consider granny a person and would thus object to euthanising her.

And that is where we differ.

You don't consider grandma to be a human?!

I was waiting for someone to make that joke.

All I will say is this: there is no intrinsic difference between a child a second before leaving the womb and a second after leaving it. Neither can survive on its own, neither can communicate with other people, neither understands the world around it, and so forth. With that in mind, at what point, if not implantation, can a definitive line be drawn between being human and not being human?

[Simfan34]

Yeah I'm sure the liberal defense of this shady organization has nothing to do with planned parenthood spending millions on ads for democratic candidates

You guys act like Planned Parenthood is some sort of abortion factory when it's 3% of their services and their goal is obviously to make sure women have intended pregnancies and guidance through them.

This is a misleading statistic. Planned Parenthood deflates the proportion by breaking down their "services" into their individual components. Getting an STD test, getting some pills, and taking a condom in one visit count as three individual "services". It's estimated that abortions account for around a third of their revenue, and that they carry out around forty percent of the country's abortions.

It also bears saying that they carried out 327,653 abortions in fiscal 2014, compared to 18,684 "prenatal services" and just 1,880 adoption referrals.

[Simfan34]

You don't think it's not even a little disingenuous to suggest that getting a STD test and getting an abortion are comparable activities?

[Simfan34]

You don't think it's not even a little disingenuous to suggest that getting a STD test and getting an abortion are comparable activities?

Nope, both are legal women's health activities.

So are taking vitamins or an eye examination.

I don't understand why they need funds from the government. Why can't they just be a private non-profit? I hope they try to defund it, even though Obama will veto it.

Because these sort of programs pay for themselves. Less burden on government services and all.

Universal euthanasia at 80 would also reduce the burden on government services, you know. I'm not convinced this is the best line of reasoning to justify this.

You got me - although I should add that I don't consider embryos persons, while I do consider granny a person and would thus object to euthanising her.

And that is where we differ.

You don't consider grandma to be a human?!

I was waiting for someone to make that joke.

All I will say is this: there is no intrinsic difference between a child a second before leaving the womb and a second after leaving it. Neither can survive on its own, neither can communicate with other people, neither understands the world around it, and so forth. With that in mind, at what point, if not implantation, can a definitive line be drawn between being human and not being human?

Yes, it's called neurological and brain development. Next.

And yet that process is nowhere near complete upon leaving the womb. Indeed, it does not conclude until decades after that point.

[Simfan34]

What characteristic does a human being have at the point of birth that it did not have a day before birth that provides the human its right to life?

The ability to think. The ability to rationalize. The very things that make us human.

...it does? I don't think this is accurate.

The anti-choicers sure love to strawman in abortion threads:

We are not talking about aborting the day before birth, we are talking about a time where the fetus is not viable (i.e. it cannot survive outside the womb even with technological and medical assistance) and has not reached the threshold of fetal thought.

Nor are "baby parts" being sold on the black market. Fetal tissue samples that otherwise would've been discarded can be used to advance medical knowledge and save lives.

No one ever claimed that anyone was arguing for abortion just before birth. The idea was was to raise the question of when and how one can try and draw a line between "living" and "non-living" or whatever distinction determines whether one would be killing a human being or not. The point here is that it is very hard to draw a line that isn't ultimately arbitrary, not to claim that anyone supports prepartum abortion or postnatal infanticide. That is a strawman.

For example, the word "viable" is nebulous. The boundaries of "technological and medical assistance" are not immovable, while, conversely, a newborn child cannot survive on its own outside the womb, either. Is it also "not viable"? Again, I ask that not to argue a point, but to emphasise the difficulty of trying to make these clear-cut distinctions when dealing with an issue steeped with ambiguity. "(Fetal) Thought" is an even more ambiguous concept.

As for the videos... no, there are no organs or tissue being sold on the "black market". But there are organs or tissue being sold. Planned Parenthood claims they're being "donated", but that's clearly not a settled matter. This latest video seems to suggest explicit profit-seeking; and I'm not sure whether they're still claiming that there's nothing illegal about them or if it is a fraud. I think I've heard both...

[Simfan34]

No, and we'll have the second government shutdown in as many years over this. The Ted Cruz/Steve Stockman wing of the Republican Party has drawn a line in the sand, saying they'll shut the government down again if Planned Parenthood isn't defunded.

As for the abortion debate, the only problem with abortion is the fact that not enough unfit mothers are having abortions.

What is an "unfit mother", pray tell?