The GOP War on Women - The Megathread

[TJ in Oregon]

The single motherhood bill is pretty stupid and they probably shouldn't be holding the domestic violence bill hostage but otherwise I'm fine with this.

Abortion is murder (which many of you disagree with but nevertheless consider the consequences of that statement for a moment). That means somewhat extraordinary means can be used to stop it from occurring. Planned Parenthood murders 1.5% of its patients, so I have absolutely no problem with making is more difficult for them to get money.

[TJ in Oregon]

The single motherhood bill is pretty stupid and they probably shouldn't be holding the domestic violence bill hostage but otherwise I'm fine with this.

Abortion is murder (which many of you disagree with but nevertheless consider the consequences of that statement for a moment). That means somewhat extraordinary means can be used to stop it from occurring. Planned Parenthood murders 1.5% of its patients, so I have absolutely no problem with making is more difficult for them to get money.

Just so we're clear: You're advocating the punishment for murder--15 to life in Ohio-for any woman that knowingly terminates her pregnancy? I likewise presume that you support mandatory bindover to the adult court system for any juvenile teenage girl who commits Murder (again, as is the law in Ohio)?

Yes, that would be the eventual goal. I understand many people find such an idea to be too much and would therefore support any intermediate steps to move in that direction.

[TJ in Oregon]

What should I do then Dibble? Should I oppose laws restricting abortion in strange ways just because they don't prosecute the women with murder? Heck, should I even oppose attempts to outlaw it if they wouldn't charge the women with murder for the sake of moral consistency?

None of that would accomplish a thing toward stopping abortion. Unless you are suggesting the use of force in an uprising (which would also fail btw), I don't see what better way of stopping abortion there is available than trying to pass laws like these to make abortion more difficult to get. Right now it can't be outlawed anyway because the Supreme Court has ruled that way.

The other point that is somewhat lost in this thread is that the amount of time spent in prison is probably not the most important factor in stopping women from having an abortion. The sentence would need to be substantial, yes, but if you suddenly decided to change the laws such that women who had an abortion would be charged with murder starting tomorrow, you would end up with an unmangeable flow of women into the justice system and no way of dealing with that. As a result that would never happen. Too many women who've killed their children but still could live socially productive lives would be forced behind bars, making it all so prohbively expensive and unpopular the public would outcry against such a measure in enough force that it would not last.

It would be wonderful if people could all be stopped from killing each other today but that's not the way the world works. Trying to bring about an immediate end to abortion is like asking for immediate world peace. Attempting to implement both is vapid nonesense. Solving problems of this magnitude requires a long term plan.

[TJ in Oregon]

What should I do then Dibble? Should I oppose laws restricting abortion in strange ways just because they don't prosecute the women with murder? Heck, should I even oppose attempts to outlaw it if they wouldn't charge the women with murder for the sake of moral consistency?

None of that would accomplish a thing toward stopping abortion.

Supporting the strange laws isn't stopping it either. As I pointed out it just puts the women who actually have a medical need for the procedure through extra pain and defunds programs that might actually prevent abortions. I mean seriously, do you honestly think that forcing women to give birth to stillborn babies is going to help your cause?

That's not what I said.

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You wouldn't have to go so far as overthrowing the government. You'll find that terrorism is unfortunately rather effective - why do you think there are people who bomb clinics and kill abortion providers? Those people are really committed to the idea and are willing to defend the innocent. Or hell, if you aren't willing to go that far you could be one of those folks who protest outside of clinics. Do you at least do that much, because if you don't the murder must not be that big of a deal to you.

Oh yes, blowing up abortion clinics is a great way to convince people to outlaw abortion

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There's this thing called a "constitutional amendment" that you might look into.

We both know that 38 states are not going to ratify it. We're much closer to the Supreme Court reversing its ruling that that happening.

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If you admit your position is stupid, then why advocate it in the first place?

That's not what I said.

I said it's currently impractical so we need to take intermediate steps to get there. Those are two entirely different things.


EDIT - sorry if I was a bit of a dick here, was in a rather bad mood yesterday
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[TJ in Oregon]

What should I do then Dibble? Should I oppose laws restricting abortion in strange ways just because they don't prosecute the women with murder? Heck, should I even oppose attempts to outlaw it if they wouldn't charge the women with murder for the sake of moral consistency?

None of that would accomplish a thing toward stopping abortion.

Supporting the strange laws isn't stopping it either. As I pointed out it just puts the women who actually have a medical need for the procedure through extra pain and defunds programs that might actually prevent abortions. I mean seriously, do you honestly think that forcing women to give birth to stillborn babies is going to help your cause?

That's not what I said.

Earlier you did say you want Planned Parenthood to not get money, (again, even though none of those funds are used for abortion) and the bolded section indicates that you think you should support laws that restrict abortion in strange ways. If that's not your position, then what do you support?

I support making women see ultrasounds to try and guilt them out of having abortions. I support parental notification/consent laws. I support anything that makes abortion illegal after a certain point. I support laws requiring a "waiting period" or a doctor "explaining all other options" since they increase the chance a woman will make the opposite decision. And yes, I would support defunding Planned Parenthood from other services as well because they are our nation's largest abortion provider and anything that hurts them is likely to make abortions more difficult to obtain.

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Didn't say it was. I said terrorism is unfortunately effective. You don't have to get people to outlaw it, you just have to get the providers to stop doing it. I'm not saying you should either. Frankly I think you shouldn't try to legislate your religious morality (and yes, I'm thinking your position is based on your religious beliefs) on others.

Yes, you caught me! I'm trying to legislate my religious morality! Murder is against my religious beliefs and yet, I still think it should be illegal!

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If you admit your position is stupid, then why advocate it in the first place?

That's not what I said.

I said it's currently impractical so we need to take intermediate steps to get there. Those are two entirely different things.[/quote]

And your intermediate steps are...? I mean seriously, your argument above kind of makes it such that no such steps would be feasible either.
[/quote]

1. I would suggest states should put the maximum possible restrictions they are legally able to do now.
2. We should attempt to get "strict constructionist" aka pro-life judges on the Supreme Court by voting for presidents who agree to appoint them.
3. Return the issue to the states and begin outlawing abortion by the state. It is less important to charge the women and providers with murder as it is to make it generally illegal such that an abortion is much more difficult to get.
4. As abortion is increasingly forced under the radar and into back alleys, begin upping the sentences and charging the women and doctors with murder.

That is, in my opionion, the most likely route to achieving the minimum number of abortions. I am not saying it's likely, just that it's a more likely route than anything else. If you have any actual suggestions rather than snarky insults I would be glad to hear them.

[TJ in Oregon]

I support making women see ultrasounds to try and guilt them out of having abortions.

So you support cases like the one I posted where a woman who had to have an abortion or give birth to a child who would require constant expensive medical care and have a miserable life? And are you willing to have the state pay for this constant medical care since you're forcing the issue?

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So you support treating teenage girls as the property of their parents, and forcing those girls to give birth and likely have to drop out of high school?

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So you support making a fetus even more developed before it gets terminated?

All of these are pretty obvious positions resulting from a fetus being a human life since they increase the chances the woman will not have an abortion. First you attack me for not really believing that abortion is murder and now you are asking about whether or not I support these things?! Isn’t it completely obvious that murder outweighs any of these complaints by such a ridiculous margin that it’s pointless to even ask them?

And yes (since this is the only one worth addressing) I would support having the state pay for healthcare for severely disabled people if their parents cannot afford it.

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So you support destroying programs that actually prevent abortions and allow low-income women to have healthy children, even though none of the funding you are taking away actually goes to abortions?[/quote]

Planned Parenthood is not the only healthcare provider in existence. Less money for them means more money for other health clinics. If there were some remote local area where Planned Parenthood was the only local provider of other care then I would be fine granting them an exemption. But in most places the opposite is true, for example, there are five clinics in my hometown that offer mammograms but zero abortion clinics.

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I was speaking of the fact that you think this...



...is somehow a person, even though there's no evidence for that.[/quote]

A human embryo is alive and contains the full capability of progressing into a full grown adult. The embryo is not a part of the mother’s body— they have different DNA than the mother. The only coherent definition of when life begins that can be found is at fertilization because all others are arbitrary. If you say that life begins at birth, then the fetus just about to be born is not a person until it comes out, even though it’s structure before and after that point are essentially identical. The same can be said of any other arbitrary point along fetal development, such as viability or when a heart rate is detected, etc. The only logical place to assign the beginning of a life to is to fertilization (or perhaps implantation but that doesn’t make as much sense since the zygote is still around before then). If you try to trace a person’s existence backward, the place where the existence begins is at fertilization. Before then, the individual person is an egg and a sperm, clearly neither component is a person (and only has half the DNA). As far as truly proving it’s a person, you can’t prove anyone is a person. I can’t prove you are a person and you can’t prove I am.

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I do not believe aborted babies go to hell. But taking the position that it’s okay to kill anyone who would go to heaven isn’t acceptable. Murder is not okay, regardless of whether or not the person who is killed is in a better place. That person has the right to go through life. This applies to persons in society at large beyond abortion. If we take this as a purely religious argument then the soul of the baby is not the only one we should be concerned about. What about the mother?

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So exactly how are these steps going to change the problems you mentioned earlier with incarcerating women en masse? Abortions are going to still happen in large numbers, just as it always has.

These steps would make abortion much harder to get, therefore drastically reducing the number that occur. You have admitted yourself that some girls would be forced not to have abortions here:

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Would requiring parental consent stop girls from having an abortion or not? You can’t have it both ways.

If you make abortions illegal, fewer doctors will perform them, if nothing else because they must be done in secret (and of course some people will not perform them out of fear of breaking the law), it would reduce the supply of abortions and make them more difficult to get.

[TJ in Oregon]

TJ, would or would not wanting or seeking an abortion, but being legally estopped from going through with it, itself constitute mortal sin?

You are correct (at least for seeking, wanting depends on the situation). However, the gravity of the sin, while still mortal, would be reduced.

[TJ in Oregon]

Planned Parenthood is not the only healthcare provider in existence. Less money for them means more money for other health clinics. If there were some remote local area where Planned Parenthood was the only local provider of other care then I would be fine granting them an exemption. But in most places the opposite is true, for example, there are five clinics in my hometown that offer mammograms but zero abortion clinics.

1. The GOP doesn't care whether or not there are other clinics in a local area. The defunding is universal, regardless of whether a particular clinic even provides abortions. (HINT, not all of them do)
2. Among those five clinics, how many are non-profit? I'm betting most if not all of them are businesses, so that doesn't exactly help those who have low income. Even if you were to fund them for that purpose, they likely would still charge more so the money would not be used effectively)

One is for profit and the other four belong to the same not-for-profit network.

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Potential to become a person does not make it a person.

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Having unique DNA does not make something a person.

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What are you talking about? It's completely arbitrary to give personhood to a zygote. It's a clump of cells with no brain - it can't think, it can't feel, etc. It has none of the qualifications we use to define "person". You might as well give personhood to an earthworm since it at least has a functioning brain.[/quote]

An earthworm is not human. An embyro is. That's not a minor difference.

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Which almost nobody does. This is why even most pro-choice advocates are fine with third-trimester abortions being illegal, and why the are illegal.[/quote]

Which is even more arbitrary than calling birth the start of personhood because the cut-off between the second and third trimesters is when the Supreme Court arbitrarily decided to make it.

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Intellectual capacity is what we should base our determinations on? Does this mean it's much less serious to kill and adult than an infant? They have a greater intellectual capacity.

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I do not believe aborted babies go to hell. But taking the position that it’s okay to kill anyone who would go to heaven isn’t acceptable. Murder is not okay, regardless of whether or not the person who is killed is in a better place. That person has the right to go through life. This applies to persons in society at large beyond abortion. If we take this as a purely religious argument then the soul of the baby is not the only one we should be concerned about. What about the mother?[/quote]

What about the mother? Presuming you're a Christian, then either she's saved or damned, right? If she's a good Christian who makes an honest mistake ("Thou shalt not abort" isn't explicitly stated in the Bible like certain other commands) or becomes one later then won't Jesus forgive her? And if she's not isn't she hellbound anyways? But let's suppose she is someone who does profess to be a Christian and does believe that God forbids abortion - if the only thing keeping her from having an abortion is man's law and not God's law, do you think that when her time comes that she'll really be among the chosen?
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I suppose this goes along with Nathan's point that seeking an abortion, even if prevented from having one, would constitute a mortal sin still so the point about saving the woman directly is moot. However, by changing the legal standards, you would effect what acts people seek to commit or give reasonable consideration of committing and almost certainly affect some women's intentions in that way.

More importantly, there is an intrinsic value in preventing a horrible act from being committed such as the intentional slaughter of an innocent child.

[TJ in Oregon]

A human embryo is alive and contains the full capability of progressing into a full grown adult. The embryo is not a part of the mother’s body— they have different DNA than the mother. The only coherent definition of when life begins that can be found is at fertilization because all others are arbitrary. If you say that life begins at birth, then the fetus just about to be born is not a person until it comes out, even though it’s structure before and after that point are essentially identical. The same can be said of any other arbitrary point along fetal development, such as viability or when a heart rate is detected, etc. The only logical place to assign the beginning of a life to is to fertilization (or perhaps implantation but that doesn’t make as much sense since the zygote is still around before then). If you try to trace a person’s existence backward, the place where the existence begins is at fertilization. Before then, the individual person is an egg and a sperm, clearly neither component is a person (and only has half the DNA). As far as truly proving it’s a person, you can’t prove anyone is a person. I can’t prove you are a person and you can’t prove I am.

You need to read up on reproductive physiology.  For one, it is absolutely untrue that all zygotes contain "the full capability of progressing into a full grown adult".  All zygotes with trisomies other than Trisomy-21 have a 0% chance of progressing into a full grown adult.  Zygotes with Tay Sachs have a 0% chance of progressing into a full grown adult.  Zygotes with  any number of inherent diseases have a 0% chance of progressing into a full grown adult.  In fact, many, many disorders mean it isn't even possible for a zygote to develop into a fetus, let alone a full grown adult, and many proto-humans with what we would consider perfectly well-formed genomes are spontaneously aborted all the time; though we wouldn't know it otherwise, they apparently had a 0% chance of progressing into a full grown adult. (Note that this isn't a particularly good justification for abortion in those cases, either, as we'd then have to be okay with infanticide in, say, cases of Tay-Sachs.  I'm just saying that your first definition needs revision.)

Okay, that's a great semantic point but it doesn't really change anything. There are plenty of infants and children with diseases that will also never reach maturity. You are correct the definition I gave needs some revision. I should have put the full genetic ensamble (which you could again split hairs and suggest that genetic disorders resulting from extra or missing chromosomes but then again those embryos would still have the entire set they mature with if they somehow do reach adulthood; the only possible argument there to differentiate them would be that they aren't human).

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Science cannot answer questions of personhood because of the concept of a "person" is not a scientific concept. But we still have people and still afford a certain level of protection to people than we do other forms of life, so the question must be answered regardless. I contend that the best definition of a "person" available is a singular instance of human life. The question of "when life begins" is really a question of "what is a life". Life is defined scientifically in such a way that it is not a very useful question to ask is something is alive. Sperm cells are alive; egg cells are alive; you can cut a piece of tissue from the inside of my cheek and it would be alive. But what is a life? The singularity is the difference and it doesn't make sense to say that the singularity comes into existence at any other time than when its first cell comes into existence. As far as in what point during fertilization this occurs, I would contend the most logical answer is when the nuclei of the sperm cell and egg cell fuse. From that point onward the developing zygote/embryo/fetus/infant is a singular instance of human life (unless it splits into identical twins as you point out and in that case the singular instance becomes two singular instances, not too terribly different from how many organisms have asexual reproduction).

[TJ in Oregon]

Hi all.
I've been lurking here for months, but after seeing some of the responses in this thread, I just had to respond.

First of all, welcome to the forum

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I would label you a person who murdered your child; the term "monster" is your word. In general, I do not view the criminal justice system as a means of using punishment under the premise that by such punishment we can achieve justice. The point of having a criminal justice system is to protect others from having crimes committed against them by 1)locking up those who have committed crimes previously, and 2) creating a deterent. To use the system as a means of simply inflicting punishment is no longer justice but revenge. For this reason I oppose using the death penalty as a criminal sentence. In an ideal world (aside from the part about you killing your child because that obviously would not happen at all in an ideal world) you would be sentenced until you are no longer dangerous and can once more be a productive member of society or at least some number of years long enough such that others would not do the same simply because there are no consequences.

I believe the exact same when it comes to abortion.

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I am aware of the magnitude of the situation.

Comparisons to Hitler and to the Holocaust are rarely a good idea to make even if they are true. The primary reason why I would never make such a comparison is that these types of comparisons are purely rhetorically anyways (What actual difference does it make who's worse?) and they tend to offend more people than they convince. There are much more effective ways at conveying the magnitude of the problem than comparing it to the Holocaust.

In general, I make some degree of effort not to compare the moral worth of any two people. I can't claim to know what God will say to me when I die and go before him, but I'm pretty sure he won't say "well TJ, you deserve to burn in hell for all eternity but you were at least better than that Son of Will guy, so I'm going to let you off". This does not mean I should not question the morality of any act, lack of action, etc., but I do think these sorts of comparisions between people are not particularly meaningful.

FWIW, I do think that the US Presidents you mention are somewhat different than Hitler becuase the abortions that took place while they ran the country were not specifically ordered by their governments. Theirs is a sin of failing to stop someone else from doing something bad rather than actually orchestrating it. That is a very important moral difference.

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Thank you.

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What part in particular do you find delusional? The underlying point that life begins at fertilization or something else that follows? I can see how people might disagree with that point, but where does that become delusional? Or is it something else?

[TJ in Oregon]

I support making women see ultrasounds to try and guilt them out of having abortions.

So you support cases like the one I posted where a woman who had to have an abortion or give birth to a child who would require constant expensive medical care and have a miserable life? And are you willing to have the state pay for this constant medical care since you're forcing the issue?

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So you support treating teenage girls as the property of their parents, and forcing those girls to give birth and likely have to drop out of high school?

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So you support making a fetus even more developed before it gets terminated?

All of these are pretty obvious positions resulting from a fetus being a human life since they increase the chances the woman will not have an abortion. First you attack me for not really believing that abortion is murder and now you are asking about whether or not I support these things?! Isn’t it completely obvious that murder outweighs any of these complaints by such a ridiculous margin that it’s pointless to even ask them?

And yes (since this is the only one worth addressing) I would support having the state pay for healthcare for severely disabled people if their parents cannot afford it.

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So you support destroying programs that actually prevent abortions and allow low-income women to have healthy children, even though none of the funding you are taking away actually goes to abortions?

Planned Parenthood is not the only healthcare provider in existence. Less money for them means more money for other health clinics. If there were some remote local area where Planned Parenthood was the only local provider of other care then I would be fine granting them an exemption. But in most places the opposite is true, for example, there are five clinics in my hometown that offer mammograms but zero abortion clinics.

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I was speaking of the fact that you think this...



...is somehow a person, even though there's no evidence for that.

A human embryo is alive and contains the full capability of progressing into a full grown adult. The embryo is not a part of the mother’s body— they have different DNA than the mother. The only coherent definition of when life begins that can be found is at fertilization because all others are arbitrary. If you say that life begins at birth, then the fetus just about to be born is not a person until it comes out, even though it’s structure before and after that point are essentially identical. The same can be said of any other arbitrary point along fetal development, such as viability or when a heart rate is detected, etc. The only logical place to assign the beginning of a life to is to fertilization (or perhaps implantation but that doesn’t make as much sense since the zygote is still around before then). If you try to trace a person’s existence backward, the place where the existence begins is at fertilization. Before then, the individual person is an egg and a sperm, clearly neither component is a person (and only has half the DNA). As far as truly proving it’s a person, you can’t prove anyone is a person. I can’t prove you are a person and you can’t prove I am.

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I do not believe aborted babies go to hell. But taking the position that it’s okay to kill anyone who would go to heaven isn’t acceptable. Murder is not okay, regardless of whether or not the person who is killed is in a better place. That person has the right to go through life. This applies to persons in society at large beyond abortion. If we take this as a purely religious argument then the soul of the baby is not the only one we should be concerned about. What about the mother?

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So exactly how are these steps going to change the problems you mentioned earlier with incarcerating women en masse? Abortions are going to still happen in large numbers, just as it always has.

These steps would make abortion much harder to get, therefore drastically reducing the number that occur. You have admitted yourself that some girls would be forced not to have abortions here:

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Would requiring parental consent stop girls from having an abortion or not? You can’t have it both ways.

If you make abortions illegal, fewer doctors will perform them, if nothing else because they must be done in secret (and of course some people will not perform them out of fear of breaking the law), it would reduce the supply of abortions and make them more difficult to get.

[/quote]
By your logic, we should just let cancer progress to it's natural outcome - death of the host.
[/quote]

I guess that statement was a little too vague. Obviously cancer is not a separate person since it comes from a mutation rather than reproduction.

[TJ in Oregon]

I guess that statement was a little too vague. Obviously cancer is not a separate person since it comes from a mutation rather than reproduction.

Don't get caught up in the rhetoric , or we might have some candidates for submission to The Atlas Deluge of Absurdity, Ignorance, and Bad Posts thread.

I have a bit of bad habit of returning whatever style and tone the other person has when arguing. There wasn't a whole lot of subtlety from anyone in this thread right from the start.