TRUMP: "There has to be some form of punishment" for women who have abortions

[Why]

Disgusting, possibly the worse non-racist/sexist thing he's said. 

No it is not, being pro the mass murder of babies is about the worst thing a person can be. Pro-choice = pro mass murder.

no it is not, beïng pro your posts is about the worst thing a person can be. pro-unbiased = pro mass murder of brain cells.

Yes it is, being for abortion = being for the killing of babies = being for mass murder. Any one for abortion cannot be against ISIS bombings or gun massacres or any killings without being a hypocrite.

thanks for proving my point

So are you a murderer or are you just pro-murder?

[afleitch]

Because women who seek abortions usually have much more sympathetic motivations, and because, if we're being honest about what sorts of laws a decent society would or should actually tolerate, punishing them is simply impracticable to do in any way that's subjectively reasonable.

I guess, but I still think the people who want to ban abortion but don't want to punish the women should not call abortion murder if they don't intend to punish the woman. It's hypocritical. Why call it murder if you don't intend to treat it like murder?

You're right, actually. This is a good reason to prefer a word like 'homicide'. There are all sorts of types of homicide with all sorts of types of consequences. Unfortunately, 'abortion is homicide' comes across as the sort of technical statement that makes most people's eyes glaze over and makes for terrible copy.

Placing you to the right of Thomas Aquinas there (who would have considered it ‘something less than homicide’)

Ultimately Christian religious objection to abortion is increasingly pseudo-scientific in nature, not religious. Original Christian thinkers made very obvious distinctions, and rather advanced arguments of that distinction between the ‘formed’ and ‘unformed’ foetus (in part because the Bible is peppered with such inferences) Their positions, extrapolated to fit the framework of embryonic development of which we are now aware, are not particularly far removed from the contemporary general position of pro-choicers. As with everything however, the Church shat the bed a few centuries later and we are all having to pay for it.

Like many issues (LGBT matters being another obvious out) we have to deal with religious groups 'opinion forming' without reference to or input from the actual groups affected. What women or gays, think, feel, experience or want is a 'nuisance' to position forming.

For what it’s worth I’ve been pro-choice since I first gave the issue any thought (And I suppose I’ve never shared this before, but taking the position almost got me suspended from the Catholic school I attended but for the fact 14 year old me was able to argue effectively enough with the priest headmaster that he was impressed enough that I had actually put effort into it)

If anything, as a pro-choicer we have to wrestle the ‘ontology’ away from pro-lifers who are setting definitions against which we are measured and by which ‘life’ is defined. For many women, pregnancy is a ‘state’ which they do not wish to be in. Psychologically there is no ‘child’. They are in a state of a psychological and somatic state of which they wish to be relieved. As I argued with you at the start of the year, in opposing abortion by choosing an a priori definition under which to then bar it may satisfy your theological or moral needs, that does nothing to address her needs. Which are very real. There are women, right now who are pregnant. And it is hell for them. In are accepting that a woman has no right to take any action against the physical or psychological harm caused by pregnancy, then you do not have a response to the harm which she is experiencing because you see it as ‘less’ than that which could be experienced by the unborn (which I had suggested was curiously utilitarian of you)

Luckily, with the courts (in the US) there has been a move (in part thanks to the frequent pithy challenges to the law) towards seeing abortion rights as more of an equality over a liberty matter, which addresses this head on; on what assumptions is state intervention in protecting ‘potential’ life based? Are they seeking to protect the unborn in ways it would not do so, but for patriarchal/religious assumptions about women’s roles. Assumptions are being made about how woman should respond to pregnancy, when most terminations occur not on the a priori assumption that in doing so women are consciously rejecting the process, but rather as I mentioned above, that their actions are in response to the state of pregnancy that they are in. What’s helpful to the pro-choice movement is that the anti-choice movement are, generally speaking, so fixed on liberty, as expressed in Roe, that their arguments against equal protection are embryonic at best.

[Wisconsin+17]

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If existence itself is based on feelings, why is murder wrong?

[NHI]

I know this has been said many times throughout the course of this long primary campaign, but if Trump is going to lose, then this will be the week it was realized.

[afleitch]

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If existence itself is based on feelings, why is murder wrong?

You're sort of proving my point on the ontology!  Because you conceive a zygote as life you make the comparison to murder. A pregnant woman isn't wilfully 'murdering' anything; that is not her intent when choosing an abortion.

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

Disgusting, possibly the worse non-racist/sexist thing he's said. 

No it is not, being pro the mass murder of babies is about the worst thing a person can be. Pro-choice = pro mass murder.

no it is not, beïng pro your posts is about the worst thing a person can be. pro-unbiased = pro mass murder of brain cells.

Yes it is, being for abortion = being for the killing of babies = being for mass murder. Any one for abortion cannot be against ISIS bombings or gun massacres or any killings without being a hypocrite.

thanks for proving my point

So are you a murderer or are you just pro-murder?

yeah

[Wisconsin+17]

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End of April, I'd agree. Now? No.

[Wisconsin+17]

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No, a zygote isn't a person because I conceive the zygote to be a person. A zygote is a person because of biological continuity of the individual from conception onwards.

This is a key assumption in child support - that this continuity exists. No continuity = no child support payments.

[Stranger in a strange land]

I know this has been said many times throughout the course of this long primary campaign, but if Trump is going to lose, then this will be the week it was realized.

Nah, he already walked back his position, so it's fine, and maddeningly, the media doesn't hold Trump accountable for his flip-flops the way that they do for a normal politician. The StormTrumpers will have any seed of doubt that might have been planted in their minds removed, and the media will drop it. This won't hurt him in the slightest, and if anything it'll help.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Placing you to the right of Thomas Aquinas there (who would have considered it ‘something less than homicide’)

And yet, I'm to the left of Gregory of Nyssa on whether or not somebody would go to hell for doing it.

(I'm aware that this may not come across as an appropriate riposte or worthy of a to somebody who's not still reeling from a fall semester spent arguing about patristic and medieval theology.)

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If existence itself is based on feelings, why is murder wrong?

You're sort of proving my point on the ontology!  Because you conceive a zygote as life you make the comparison to murder. A pregnant woman isn't wilfully 'murdering' anything; that is not her intent when choosing an abortion.

This is, I agree, an important distinction, and feeds back into the argument I've been making to (or, in some cases, over against) other pro-lifers over the past day that women who have abortions are way more sympathetic than people who commit murder/homicide/acts that pro-lifers believe to be murder or homicide in other contexts and for other reasons.

Re: Your post directly in response to me: I've alluded in the recent past that while I'd still be personally uncomfortable with an equal-protection finding of a right to abortion I'd accept it as perfectly valid and respectable constitutional law.

In general my thoughts on what the best political/legal (as opposed to religious, moral, medical, feminist activists, et cetera) attitude to adopt or consensus to advocate on this might be have been swinging pretty wildly back and forth for...longer than I've let on, and will probably continue to do so, even though my personal religious/moral attitudes are probably going to stay put (and have been where they are for, again, longer than I've let on).

I haven't yet responded to your main philosophical argument--either at the beginning of the year or now--because I don't yet have the grounding in the relevant fields of philosophy to adequately do so and I respect you too much to bullsh**t something. (Also because I'm on Atlas Forum during a class discussion about WHINSEC and liberation theology and don't want to get too too involved in this conversation right now in case something interesting pops up.)

[afleitch]

Placing you to the right of Thomas Aquinas there (who would have considered it ‘something less than homicide’)

And yet, I'm to the left of Gregory of Nyssa on whether or not somebody would go to hell for doing it.

(I'm aware that this may not come across as an appropriate riposte or worthy of a to somebody who's not still reeling from a fall semester spent arguing about patristic and medieval theology.)

You must be logged in to read this quote.

If existence itself is based on feelings, why is murder wrong?

You're sort of proving my point on the ontology!  Because you conceive a zygote as life you make the comparison to murder. A pregnant woman isn't wilfully 'murdering' anything; that is not her intent when choosing an abortion.

This is, I agree, an important distinction, and feeds back into the argument I've been making to (or, in some cases, over against) other pro-lifers over the past day that women who have abortions are way more sympathetic than people who commit murder/homicide/acts that pro-lifers believe to be murder or homicide in other contexts and for other reasons.

Re: Your post directly in response to me: I've alluded in the recent past that while I'd still be personally uncomfortable with an equal-protection finding of a right to abortion I'd accept it as perfectly valid and respectable constitutional law.

In general my thoughts on what the best political/legal (as opposed to religious, moral, medical, feminist activists, et cetera) attitude to adopt or consensus to advocate on this might be have been swinging pretty wildly back and forth for...longer than I've let on, and will probably continue to do so, even though my personal religious/moral attitudes are probably going to stay put (and have been where they are for, again, longer than I've let on).

I haven't yet responded to your main philosophical argument--either at the beginning of the year or now--because I don't yet have the grounding in the relevant fields of philosophy to adequately do so and I respect you too much to bullsh**t something. (Also because I'm on Atlas Forum during a class discussion about WHINSEC and liberation theology and don't want to get too too involved in this conversation right now in case something interesting pops up.)

And I think on that basis, we could have a consensus because ultimately those who are pro-choice are generally not absolutist. No one actually wants everyone to have an abortion under every conceivable circumstance of pregnancy (which is what a theoretical absolutist position would be). Likewise after the point of viability (the point after which when delivered, the foetus ‘may live’ as opposed to ‘always die’), if the foetus and mother are in relatively good health, you are unlikely to find advocacy for it unless the positions change. Indeed, the very fact that viability is able to shift progressively backwards thanks to advances in post-natal care is something that is universally welcomed.

However opposition to abortion under almost every conceivable circumstance (even resulting in nixing what it means by ‘health’ of the mother) is in some areas, becoming mainstream. That opposition can bleed into matters entirely unrelated to being in a state of pregnancy (opposition to birth control) Being pro-life and defining outlook by that ontology can force the movement into what is essentially an absolutist position on the matter (and indeed can lead to some of the hyperbole you’ve just read)

To echo some of that hyperbole in this thread, and to perhaps demonstrate the above, then I would have to consider myself ‘pro-murder’, by another’s definition because I don’t hold an absolutist position with respect to taking a life, even if that life is standing right in front of me and staring me in the face. For very obvious reasons. I’m not going to deny that I’m an animal, like all other animals, when faced with a threat. My grandfather even got medals for it.

Otherwise, I would agree that while employing ‘definitions’ (even if they are strict) would be understandable when trying to define the ‘whole’ they aren’t something that should necessarily be adhered to by the person, nor is it appropriate to elevate a ‘definition’ to such a status in order to facilitate forms of punishment/reward (which shouldn’t necessarily flow from any legal status either) against a person.

That ‘Brand USA’ Christianity (Paul Weyrich et al)  so readily adopted the Catholic position on ‘defining life’, couched as it is marian piety in order to fight the culture wars is the strangest takeaway from all of this!

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

That ‘Brand USA’ Christianity (Paul Weyrich et al)  so readily adopted the Catholic position on ‘defining life’, couched as it is marian piety in order to fight the culture wars is the strangest takeaway from all of this!

Yes; the fact that I had 'Rosa Mística' in my signature for months probably does a good job of indicating my own high regard for Marian piety but the fact that American-Jesus Protestantism has adopted that posture--in this context and no other!--is deeply bizarre and obviously done in bad faith.

My grandfather fought in the big one too. He was very proud of having done so but equally proud of not having killed. I think that says a lot about the deep ambivalence that most people naturally have towards defensive violence (which from the perspective of the pregnant woman abortion typically is).

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Atlas pro-lifers are way nastier about it than pro-lifers I know in other contexts. I'm not sure if this is because of selection bias in my offline life, the fact that Atlas is so overwhelmingly male, the fact that I live in Massachusetts, or some combination of the three.

I'd wager that the average pro-life activist would tend to have even nastier views on the matter. The average person who votes "no in most cases" in a poll probably not, though. From what I've seen, most Americans tend to fall somewhere on the spectrum rather than having clear-cut views.

Pro-life activists are often involved in helping out pregnant and single mothers directly or indirectly through the work of crisis pregnancy centers.  Thus they tend not to fall so easy into villianizing those who have abortions as some generic right-wingers who have less direct experience with the issue.

(of course this depends on how one defines "activist")

[i4indyguy]

It strikes me as odd that there has been near universal condemnation of the idea that women should suffer legal repercussions for engaging in an abortion (amongst the pro-life right).  A case could be made that doctors are bound by professional creed to provide the service requested by the patient, so long as it is compatible with the Hippocratic oath, and professional standards (concerns about the fetus aside).

But what of the culpability of the pregnant woman??  In what framework could she possibly have less responsibility for the abhorrent practice of abortion than the doctor who has the special skills to perform the procedure?    SHE got pregnant. Not the Dr.  SHE pursued the abortion. Not the Dr. SHE paid for the procedure. Not the DR.

IF abortion is to be regarded as a grave evil and injustice, absent political calculations, the woman is obviously much more culpable than the Dr.

Which brings me to this conclusion....

Jumping on women for wanting to end a pregnancy is politically toxic, because there simply aren't enough hard-line pro lifers to safely take that position.   MUCH easier to threaten prosecution, professional censure, or defunding for the extremely small portion of people that provide the service, rather than the much more potent voting cohort that may avail themselves of that service at some point.

Much like the drug war, it's much easier to go after the small number of providers than the large number of customers. We should probably ask ourselves, which is a more effective way to combat abortion? Imposing penalties on the doctor clearly is. If you make it so no one is willing to perform abortions, then you don't need to worry about rounding up the mothers and fining them.

Yes absolutely agree. Except, like drugs, anytime a highly desired service is restricted from a providers standpoint,  some of the worst people will flock to an illegal industry to provide lower quality service at vastly inflated prices.   Dangerous product will ensue.  Think coat-hangers and cutting drugs with dangerous and unknown additives.   

[Likely Voter]

More than anything this comment shows that Trump doesn't seem to understand the details behind his own avowed policy positions. He says "I'm pro life, with exceptions" but he doesn't know the next thing to say? His answer almost seemed to imply that the details would be decided by the courts. While the Supreme court may be the first to say abortion can be banned, it obviously would then be up to legislatures to create laws around it. I actually am not sure that Trump fully understood that.

[Why]

Disgusting, possibly the worse non-racist/sexist thing he's said. 

No it is not, being pro the mass murder of babies is about the worst thing a person can be. Pro-choice = pro mass murder.

no it is not, beïng pro your posts is about the worst thing a person can be. pro-unbiased = pro mass murder of brain cells.

Yes it is, being for abortion = being for the killing of babies = being for mass murder. Any one for abortion cannot be against ISIS bombings or gun massacres or any killings without being a hypocrite.

thanks for proving my point

So are you a murderer or are you just pro-murder?

yeah

Thank you for admitting you are a thoroughly morally bankrupt person, amoral in one word.

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

Disgusting, possibly the worse non-racist/sexist thing he's said. 

No it is not, being pro the mass murder of babies is about the worst thing a person can be. Pro-choice = pro mass murder.

no it is not, beïng pro your posts is about the worst thing a person can be. pro-unbiased = pro mass murder of brain cells.

Yes it is, being for abortion = being for the killing of babies = being for mass murder. Any one for abortion cannot be against ISIS bombings or gun massacres or any killings without being a hypocrite.

thanks for proving my point

So are you a murderer or are you just pro-murder?

yeah

Thank you for admitting you are a thoroughly morally bankrupt person, amoral in one word.

no problem bro

[whanztastic]

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No, a zygote isn't a person because I conceive the zygote to be a person. A zygote is a person because of biological continuity of the individual from conception onwards.

This is a key assumption in child support - that this continuity exists. No continuity = no child support payments.

Continuity is bad argument. More zygotes get lost in periods than become humans. All humans die, how about that for biological continuity. We have to take matters into account for what they are now, not for what they may be later.

If zygotes are people do they count in censuses? Do they get social security numbers? Do natural terminations count as causes of death? If so, step aside cancer or heart disease or any other diseases, because far and away more zygotes "die" than any other cause of death. If a zygote is a person does that mean identical twins are the same person? Are genetic chimeras two people?

Conception is a process, so life at conception is a meaningless phrase and I have yet to meet a single "pro-life" person who is intellectually honest about the implications of their supposed belief.

If a person is "pro-life", if they think that the bundle of cells that sometimes can't be seen by the human eye is a human, they should agree with Trump - either the mother is commitng murder or hiring a hitman.

[This account no longer in use.]

In any case, we shouldn't punish the women, no matter whether you're pro-life or pro-choice. Women who seek an abortion need help, not fines and jail sentences.

[Fuzzy Says: "Abolish NPR!"]

I used to support very harsh punishments for women who have abortions a la beheading and other cruel punishment. But, I don't support those views now and support a large fine while abortion doctors should be tried for murder.

Just so we make this clear: This is not representative of a majority of Pro-Lifers.

What, the majority believes that women who get abortions should instead be hanged, drawn and quartered?

The question asked of Trump was a logical one.  The answer Trump gave was a logical one, given the question.

The only reason to ban abortion is the fact that abortion kills a human being at a pre-birth phase of human development.  That's the reason I'm pro-life.  I really don't want to regulate other people's sex lives, and if they wanted to have multiple abortions as birth control I'd be OK with it if (A) abortion was something other than the taking of human life and (B) it wasn't on the taxpayer's dime.  But abortion is the taking of a human life, and from that perspective, what is wrong with Donald Trump's answer?

Ted Cruz made me laugh.  Mr. Pro-Lifer goes before the media essentially saying he doesn't want to punish women who get abortions.  Really, now, if abortion is murder, why wouldn't there be punishment for one of the parties who made it possible?  I'm sure that if Trump didn't suddenly outflank him on the absolutist side of the question, Ted would have called for Draconian penalties of his own.

Is it "extreme" to be pro-life now?  Is it "extreme" to believe that human life begins at conception?  I would ask those who disagree with that assertion just exactly where they believe human life DOES begin?  In actuality, and not just in law.  The nauseating thing about the Hillary Clintons of the world is that they dodge that question and refuse to answer it.  Isn't it "extreme" to be unwilling to define where, exactly, human life begins?

[Fuzzy Says: "Abolish NPR!"]

As a Pro-choice Republican  RINO and freedom loving American this sickens me.

Fixed it I noticed that both of us identify as Republicans, and because your views don't exactly match mine, I, as the arbiter of conservatism, have decided that you're obviously not a Republican

Fixed it

Actually, Donald Trump fixed it.  The name of the game for the GOP is no longer "Who's the purest Movement Conservative?".

[This account no longer in use.]

As a Pro-choice Republican  RINO and freedom loving American this sickens me.

Fixed it I noticed that both of us identify as Republicans, and because your views don't exactly match mine, I, as the arbiter of conservatism, have decided that you're obviously not a Republican

Fixed it

Actually, Donald Trump fixed it.  The name of the game for the GOP is no longer "Who's the purest Movement Conservative?".

Tell that to 2012 nominee Rick Perry.

[Fuzzy Says: "Abolish NPR!"]

As a Pro-choice Republican  RINO and freedom loving American this sickens me.

Fixed it I noticed that both of us identify as Republicans, and because your views don't exactly match mine, I, as the arbiter of conservatism, have decided that you're obviously not a Republican

Fixed it

Actually, Donald Trump fixed it.  The name of the game for the GOP is no longer "Who's the purest Movement Conservative?".

Tell that to 2012 nominee Rick Perry.

Perry didn't lose to a REAL conservative, but he did lose to a World Class Poser!

[Antonio the Sixth]

Atlas pro-lifers are way nastier about it than pro-lifers I know in other contexts. I'm not sure if this is because of selection bias in my offline life, the fact that Atlas is so overwhelmingly male, the fact that I live in Massachusetts, or some combination of the three.

I'd wager that the average pro-life activist would tend to have even nastier views on the matter. The average person who votes "no in most cases" in a poll probably not, though. From what I've seen, most Americans tend to fall somewhere on the spectrum rather than having clear-cut views.

Pro-life activists are often involved in helping out pregnant and single mothers directly or indirectly through the work of crisis pregnancy centers.  Thus they tend not to fall so easy into villianizing those who have abortions as some generic right-wingers who have less direct experience with the issue.

(of course this depends on how one defines "activist")

I was thinking about the folks who yell obscenities and assault people at abortion clinics, but fair point.

[Ogre Mage]

Note that when Trump was asked whether the men involved should also be held responsible for abortions, Trump said, "no."
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-lewandowski-they-re-destroying-very-good-person-n548036

LOL.  As if his misogyny and overblown sense of male entitlement were not already clear enough.  It will be a pleasure watching Hillary throw this pompous pr**k around the ring.