1

Disgusting, and not in the way you intend.

2

Disgusting. Precisely in the way you intend.

3

It's digusting that 40 million unborn babies have been afforded no more legal protection than a parasite in this country; that so called "selective reductions," organ harvesting, designer fetuses, infanticide, human cloning, stem cell harvesting and partial birth abortions are part of our Brave New World. And the advocates this madness have the audacity to call Bush a "Hitler!"

4

What's more revolting? Partial-birth abortion or the state of one's soul that supports partial-birth abortion and thinks the defenders of life are disgusting? How much further can one go? Further still I fear.

Not only do pro-abortionists cherish murder on demand, they have enough self-righteousness to condemn the ones trying to stop this.

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight! -Isaiah 5:20-21

5

I've written before that the problem with much of the pro-life movement is arrogance. Terence knows this very well since him and I have had it out over Terri Schiavo back on the Gala thread. The underlying premise, I notice, in the little story here (BTW, I'm a little tired of these 'reruns'....if Joe wants to post a single post listing his 'top ten' that's fine but must entire posts be rehashed as if they were new material?) is that women are all cold, heartless shrews who will run off and abortion their children at the drop of the hat unless the GOVERNMENT(tm) intervenes at the point of the gun.

Rarely in the pro-life argument will you hear any attempt to acknowledge that women who choose abortion might be doing so for non-trivial reasons, that they might honestly disagree with pro-lifers.

6

I'm sorry Boonton, but that is the silliest insult that gets hurled at pro-lifers. Apparently the only pro-lifer you ever listen to is Ann Coulter.

The pro-life movement is full of people and organizations who understand that abortion hurts both a child and a woman. See Feminsts for Life for one prominent example. Of course, they don't scream as loudly as the "baby-killer!" "burn in hell!" types, but I'm sure there's plenty of moderate, sincere pro-choice types who don't get heard over the screams of "anti-choice extremist clinic-bombers!" The predominance of the venom is a result of the media's love of the extreme.

There are many circumstances in which a woman may feel like abortion is the best choice. Authentic pro-life people understand that, but in the end we simply cannot deny the fact that the fetus is a human person and deserving of protection.

Furthermore, satire like Joe's piece here may shock and offend, but it also takes the mask off of the choice rhetoric and reveals just what exactly is being chosen. It's important to note that he's not making light of women who find themselves in crisis pregnancy situations, but those for whom the choice is purely lifestyle-driven. The notion that one human's existence is dependent on the preference of another is a hideous idea, the folly of which needs to be exposed so it can be rejected.

7

I've always thought it ironic that pro-choice women who are happily pregnant IMMEDIATELY start referring to, and thinking of, their unborn babies as "babies." Of course, if they carried through with their ideology, they would converse just like the women in your little skit...and you illustrate my point brilliantly.

8

Actually I've listened to many pro-lifers EXCEPT Ann Coutler. I'm only vaguly familiar with Feminists for Life but if they are an honest organization then more power to them. Over on the Gala thread I noted that many pro-lifers seem to treat the truth in a very dubious fashion. With the Schiavo fiasco the pro-lifers were caught in what can best be described as outright lies. Another case is the charge that abortion causes a bunch of 'hidden conditions' like 'post abortion syndrome' or the charge that doctors do not fully inform their patients therefore the need for state 'informed consent laws'. As I pointed out to Terance, if these are true then all the pro-life movement has to do is find some women who had abortions and sue their doctors for malpractice using existing laws. Granted not all but enough to make an impression.

I've argued that I think the pro-life movement has allowed itself to get hung up on legalisms. Victory is being measured not in reduced abortions but in assorted legal victories that may have nothing to do with abortion (more than a few pro-lifers seemed to act like the Clinton years were a decade of oppression...they were oblivious to the actual reduction in abortions that happened then). I have a couple of arguments that I've fleshed out in more detail elsewhere but I'll present in shortened form. If you want me to go into more detail please feel free to bring them up:

1. Abortion has NEVER been treated equal to murder or homicide historically. Historically in the US abortion was legal until 'quickening' (when the baby's movements can first be felt, believed by some early Christians to be the moment when the soul is made or implanted). It was outlawed later on for safety reasons (as the medical profession became more powerful they lobbied for restrictions on non-doctors such as midwifes and such).

2. Overturning Roe bring up a lot of thorny issues that its critics almost always dodge. Roe is built upon a constitutional right to privacy. If you hold no such thing exists you open up a true 'Brave New World' where people's bodies basically serve the gov't's desires. I've asked before if a gov't can outlaw abortion then why can't it mandate abortion? You may think that would never happen but can you be so sure? China already pushes (and forces in some case) abortion. The idea that abortion may be good social policy is 'in the air', see the recent comments by Bill Bennett & the 'Freakonomics' hypothesis regarding abortion and crime.

3. Unlike laws against homicide abortion is unique in the sense that it is basically mandating by force of law that a person use their body for another....use their body in a very intimate way. If I happened to have a rare blood type I could refuse to donate blood on religious or other grounds. I don't believe the gov't could force me to donate even if my refusal ended up costing someone their life. Yet this imposition is trivial when compared to carrying a child for 9 months.

4. There is a clear difference between the abortion rate and whether or not abortion is legal. There have been countries that had high abortion rates that actually dropped when abortion laws were liberalized. It is possible to imagine plausible sceneros where criminaling abortion can actually cause a long run increase in abortion. I have no doubt, though, that if Roe is overturned and harsh laws are enacted many will call it a day and go home feeling they achieved victory oblivious to whether they actually did anything good.

On the other hand, imagine an alternate universe where the pro-life movement accepted Roe more or less but tried to find ways to decrease abortion as their priority. I think this would have meant a less polarized debate (one of the problems with abortion is that it is almost always an 'all or nothing' argument....) and it would have made the pro-life movement less a special interest group of the Republican Party. It would have meant more coorperative work with liberals to find ways to actually decrease abortion as a choice.

Instead today we get the harsh option. Either we must be totally indifferent to abortion if we take the left side or we must be indifferent to the plight of desperate women in desperate situations. We must excuse their problems as a 'consquence' of their 'choices' to be dealt with only by private charity....yet we advocate that the government mandate that they 'donate' their bodies to someone else without the right to say no nor demand compensation... If the gov't demanded that someone allow the police to park their police car in their back yards he would have a right to demand money from the gov't and conservatives would be on his side.

9

Fyi -- there is some fantastic courtroom footage on C-Span2 of arguments before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals relating to a partial birth abortion bill that doesn't include an exception for the health of the mother (why???? --- who can tell me why someone wouldn't put such an exception in an abortion bill???).

If you haven't seen it, watch out for it.

For what it's worth, the government's arguments in support of the bill were really pathetic, I thought. The attorney speaking for the government was simply awful and the judges ripped her apart.

They were equally hard on the attorney representing the Abortion Providers Group, but he was much more capable of responding to the judges directly (or at least, apparently directly).

10

"And the advocates this madness have the audacity to call Bush a "Hitler!" "

It's just a story, Terence. Joe made it up. The characters are caricatures. My guess is that very few pro-choice citizens refer to our president as "Hitler".

11

Google: Bush Hitler and you will find 5,770,000 posts.
My guess is that represents more than a few pro-death
citizens. My guess is that not every pro-death citizen calls Bush Hitler, but those who do are inclined to be pro-death.

12

My guess is that very few pro-choice citizens refer to our president as "Hitler".

That's reserved for Our Enlightened Betters (TM) in academia, the media, and a lot of blogs.

Last year, I was at LosCon, the LA Area SF convention. Among the books I picked up in the dealer's room there was Harry Turtledove's In the Presence of Mine Enemies, an alternate-history novel following the secret Jews of Berlin a couple generations after Germany won WW2 and Nazified the world.

I went up to the con suite and started reading my recent purchase. While I was immersed in Turtledove's totally-Nazified, Hitler-worshipping, ethnically-cleansed alternate history, an intellectual "political discussion" started up in the con suite, i.e. a shouting match of "BUSH IS HITLER! BUSH IS HITLER! BUSH IS HITLER!"

Overhearing this Enlightened Intellectual (presumably from a history timeline where George W Bush was POTUS) spouting off like this while reading a novel set in the very world Hitler und Himmler und Goebbels und Heydrich AG had done their best to create was, to say the least, highly surreal.

13

Google: Bush Hitler and you will find 5,770,000 posts.

So why don't you go over to those blogs and comment about those real life people? Why rant and rave at fictional sterotypical characters here?

14

BTW, Are we ending our discussion on Terri at the other thread Terence or should I keep checking it for new posts?

15

Larry, you wrote
--relating to a partial birth abortion bill that doesn't include an exception for the health of the mother (why???? --- who can tell me why someone wouldn't put such an exception in an abortion bill???).--

Assuming you haven't heard, the courts have rules that a health exception for the mother includes a mental health exception as well as a physical health exception. That is, if the pregancy depresses you, you then have a right to do a partial birth abortion. In a study on partial birth abortions in the state of Kansas a few years ago, 100% of these abortions were done for mental health reasons.

Hope that clarifies the issue for you. Most pro-lifers would not have any problem with health exceptions if they were limited to physical health exceptions.

16

On today’s “700 Club” broadcast, the Rev. Pat Robertson responded to criticism from the Right regarding the Miers nomination and also offered a stern warning to those conservative senators who might be thinking of voting against her. Rev. Robertson suggested that people should look at who is supporting Miers before they doubt her conservative credentials. He named James Dobson, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, Jay Sekulow of the Robertson-founded American Center for Law and Justice, and himself as proof of support for Miers’ nomination from the Right. Robertson concluded by noting: “These so-called movement conservatives don’t have much of a following, the ones that I’m aware of. And you just marvel, these are the senators, some of them who voted to confirm the general counsel of the ACLU to the Supreme Court, and she was voted in almost unanimously. And you say, ‘now they’re going to turn against a Christian who is a conservative picked by a conservative President and they’re going to vote against her for confirmation.’ Not on your sweet life, if they want to stay in office.”

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=19453

17

ja

Assuming you haven't heard, the courts have rules that a health exception for the mother includes a mental health exception as well as a physical health exception. That is, if the pregancy depresses you, you then have a right to do a partial birth abortion.

Um, okay.

So tell me why, then, a law banning a partial birth abortion wouldn't include an exception for the health of the mother, as required by the Supreme Court?

If I were a lawyer drafting a Federal law for the purpose of preventing partial birth abortions and I wanted to be certain that the law passed Constitutional muster, I would include a health exception for the mother. I would also want to show how the law satisfies the requirements of the Commerce Clause.

It's interesting that the so-called opponents of partial birth abortions did neither of these things.

The straightforward conclusion is that so-called opponents of partial birth abortions are (1) morons or (2) lying about their intent.

My advice is to draft a law that is at least Constitutional on its face.

Then draft a law that attempts to delineate -- using the AMA and other expert organizations as experts providing evidence to Congress -- what qualifies as "depression" for purposes of the "health test". Then argue that certain cases of minor depression are not sufficient to trump society's interest in preventing "pseudo-infanticide" or whatever it is that the partial birth opponents are so uptight about.

At least in that case, you won't look like a freaking idiot when you argue the Constitutionality of your law before a panel of circuit judges.

Don't you get it?

Looking like a clueless idiot or a liar is a BAD THING in a court of law.

WHy do you think creationists and ID peddlers always lose (and will continue to lose until a theocracy is established in the US)????

18

Boonton

I'll grant that some pro-life activists may have a disregard for facts. What side of any issue doesn't have the same problem? Does the pro-abortion lobby have a regard for facts when it reports thousands of women dying every year from illegal abortions pre-Roe? Or when they pretend that a "health" exemption for common-sense abortion restrictions don't effectively nullify those laws? Or when NARAL links John Roberts to clinic bombers? Dishonest activism is a ubiquitous problem.

As for your four points:

1) Over time our understanding of the personhood of the fetus has increased. Many early Christians (including the theological giant Thomas Aquinas) held the belief you describe about ensoulment. These views were based on a flawed biology that held (coincidentally much like modern-day abortion advocates continue to maintain), that the fetus was just a clump of tissue until it resembled an fully developed human being.

We now know better. DNA research has led us to understand that we have a unique human being present at fertilization. To appeal to centuries-old theology and laws that were based on flawed biology is not sound argumentation.

2)The precise problem of Roe v. Wade is that it redefines the fetus as a piece of the woman's body. Saying that a woman can't treat the person inside of her as property is not to grant the government authority over the woman's or anybody's body.

Your Bill Bennett remark is easily dismissed since he was saying that abortion as social control is a heinous, unthinkable notion. Even Steven Leavitt who wrote Freakonomics (which I have read unlike many who comment on it) makes the observation that the only way you can see the decrease in crime due to abortion as a good thing is if you place absolutely no value on fetal life.

It's deeply ironic that you connect those who wish to outlaw abortion with those who would promote mandated abortion. You ask why a government that outlaws abortion cannot mandate it; the answer is that no government has the authority to mandate the intentional harming of innocent human beings (which coincidentally is why I oppose abortion).

The irony thickens since the most famous American who has advocated abortion as a means of social control is Margaret Sanger, foundress of Planned Parenthood and friend of the Nazis.

3) "laws against... abortion basically mandat[e] by force of law that a person use their body for another....use their body in a very intimate way."

I believe I've paraphrased you accurately, apologies if not.

This is an interesting argument in its backwardness. What anti-abortion laws actually mandate is that people should not "use their body in a very intimate way" (sex) unless they're willing to accept the human consequence of that action (baby).

Furthermore, with regards to the murder analogy, our laws have always maintained a distinction between allowing somebody to die and deliberately taking the life of an innocent person.

4) I would be interested in hearing more about countries that had their abortion rates decrease upon legalization. Frankly, I find that hard to believe. How do you accurately measure abortion rates when it's illegal? It brings to mind the "thousands" of women per year cited above - in other words, it sounds like propaganda.

As for the alternate universe you described, I think that would have been precisely the situation had abortion been legalized through the democratic process as opposed to by unconstitutional judicial fiat. In absence of Roe, which has been used literally dozens of times to strike down sensible, incremental abortion laws, there would by necessity be a more rational conversation taking place about when abortion should be legal, and how to help women carry their children to terms. Roe took compromise off the table.

I think this is far more than lengthy enough. I'm not going to comment again, as there's nothing more futile than debating abortion in a comment box, but you presented your four points like they were rebuttal-proof, which they're not. If you wish to continue, email me at odragul [at] juno [dot] com. Otherwise, best wishes.

19

Larry,

I'm pretty sure the PBA ban included documentation and testimony from the AMA that PBA is never medically necessary.

20

http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/parenting/10/12/sixteen.kids.ap/index.html

Michelle Duggar just delivered her 16th child, and she's already thinking about doing it again. ...Jim Bob Duggar, 40, said he and Michelle, 39, want more children. "We both just love children and we consider each a blessing from the Lord. I have asked Michelle if she wants more and she said yes, if the Lord wants to give us some she will accept them," he said.

Haahhaahahah!! Jim Bob thinks that his babies come from "the Lord."

I wonder -- where does Jim Bob think starving babies come from?

21

Chris

I'm pretty sure the PBA ban included documentation and testimony from the AMA that PBA is never medically necessary.

Great!

So why not put in a health exception for the mother?

22

Chris

We now know better. DNA research has led us to understand that we have a unique human being present at fertilization.

DNA research? Is that what DNAologists do?

So I guess we should enact laws requiring the constant monitoring of "God's" creation of these "unique human beings" so that, in the event that something happens to them we can convene the grand jury to determine if "God" decided that the "unique human beings" were unfit to be born or if it was negligence or intentional homicide.

Right? That's where you are going with this "unique human being" business right?

Please tell me that's where you are going with this "unique human being" business.

Otherwise, I'll have to assume you are just trying to legislate Pat Robertson's strange religious beliefs about the sanctity of human embryos into laws that affect the ability of my wife to determine what comes out of her vagina.

You see, my wife and I don't like Pat Robertson or Jim Dobson or his personal religious beliefs and we don't understand why his opinions about deities and the desires of deities should be given weight by our elected representatives.

23

"My guess is that not every pro-death citizen calls Bush Hitler, but those who do are inclined to be pro-death."

Pro-death. What a moronic term, like homicide bomber. Did you pick it up on Fox News? If we must use it, let's use it for people who start and/or support unnecessary wars.

24

"Later Wednesday, White House press secretary Scott McClellan denied Miers' religious beliefs had anything to do with her nomination.

"Harriet Miers is a person of faith," McClellan told reporters. "She recognizes, however, that a person's religion or personal views have no role when it comes to making decisions as a judge."

--------------------------------

Whaaa ...???

What happened to the "Christian worldview"???

Evidently the alleged "Christian worldview" vanishes and appears depending on the audience whom the speaker is trying to persuade.

How interesting.

Meanwhile, the fossils lie in the same place in the strata regardless of whether it's Jews, Christians, Buddhists, or atheists who are in the audience.

Compare. Contrast. Think deeply.

25

Article VI, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, states that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

Do you honestly believe that Harriet Miers -- with all her other qualifications exactly the same -- would have been nominated to the Supreme Court if she had been Jewish, or an atheist, or Muslim? Of course not, because the president and Karl Rove, or Andy Card, or whoever's really running things these days, knew that such a choice would not pass muster with the radical clerics who sit on "the board of directors" of Bushco.

George W. Bush has an easy choice now. He can withdraw Miers' nomination. Or he can be impeached.

http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002409.html

26

Ryan,

Sorry man, but I'm "pro-choice" about the use of the word, "pro-death." But I won't use the "N" word on you, even if you "choose" to disagree.

Boonton,

Sorry man, I will not be posting again on the Terri Schaivo case. As far as I am concerned, the "subject" died at 10:30 a.m. on March 31st, 2005. And in retrospect, I see that our post mortum did too, long after the facts of the case could make a difference. Exchanging insults is not "my cup of tea." Life is far too short for that.

27

Larry

In response to post 22: Whether they intended to or not, embryologists have shown us that a uniquely human being is present at fertilization. I could go more into it, but I don't have my resources on it currently with me. If anybody would like me to, email me at odragul [at] juno [dot] com and I would be happy to.

Anyway, this human being who is conceived has rights (we may even call them civil rights) and deserves protection of the law. This child has a right to good prenatal care and to be born. If accidents happen or if deformities have occurred, nobody is at fault, but the direct injuring of this human being by intentional means is a violation of his or her rights.

I don't know what Pat Robertson believes about the sanctity of embryos, and in fact I don't care. These biological facts have implications on their own authority, not that of televangelists.

If you and your wife can't handle those implications, don't conceive. It's actually pretty simple, and a whole lot easier than developing an entire philosophy and several industries around the incredulous notion that certain members of the species homo sapiens aren't human beings and can be treated as we see fit.

Furthermore, I did not once refer to God in my writings, though I do believe in Him. It is you who brought religion into this debate through your venemous assertion of materialist dogma. My reasoning is based on science and logic. I can't determine the basis of yours, though hysteria and hatred seem to be strong candidates.

Now, I'm new to these comment boxes, but judging from the quantity and tone of your posts, you appear to be an unserious troll. Either prove me wrong with serious discourse or have a nice life.

28

"Exchanging insults is not "my cup of tea.""

Sure, Moeller (now that we are apparently on a last-name basis).

Boonton, you should check out Mr. Cup o' Tea's parting salvo in a recent thread.

http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/001616.html

Not only insulting, but disingenuous. Our friend quits the field when things don't go his way.

29

Chris

Whether they intended to or not, embryologists have shown us that a uniquely human being is present at fertilization.

Here's some serious discourse: where do twins come from, Chris?

When a sixteen cell human embryo is split into 16 separate cells, are each of the separate cells 1/16th beings? Or are there 16 separate beings? What does "DNA research" say about the uniqueness of those cells?

I don't know what Pat Robertson believes about the sanctity of embryos, and in fact I don't care.

You should care. If Robertson and Dobson change their minds about the sanctity of embryos, your opinions on the subject will seem even more marginalized by the general population than they do now.

Or perhaps you believe that Jim Dobson and Pat Robertson aren't the most powerful preachers in the United States today. Is that what you believe? If so, please explain your beliefs in that regard.

And yeah, I'm hysterical bro'. Just foaming at the mouth here. Woof.

30

Assuming you haven't heard, the courts have rules that a health exception for the mother includes a mental health exception as well as a physical health exception.

Actually its a trivial exercise to write a law that limits health to physical health.

We now know better. DNA research has led us to understand that we have a unique human being present at fertilization. To appeal to centuries-old theology and laws that were based on flawed biology is not sound argumentation.

DNA research tells us nothing of the sort. It tells us that the genetic code of a fertilized egg is unique (although that egg may split into twins...which by this logic are either 'half humans' or a single human rather than two humans as common sense would tell us. Before fertiliziation DNA tells us that every egg and sperm cell also has a unique code.

2)The precise problem of Roe v. Wade is that it redefines the fetus as a piece of the woman's body. Saying that a woman can't treat the person inside of her as property is not to grant the government authority over the woman's or anybody's body.

It doesnt matter how you treat the fetus. Define it as a full person the fact is the person's body who is being used for this person is the woman's, not the voters, not the justices on the court, not George Bush and so on.

Your Bill Bennett remark is easily dismissed since he was saying that abortion as social control is a heinous, unthinkable notion. Even Steven Leavitt who wrote Freakonomics (which I have read unlike many who comment on it) makes the observation that the only way you can see the decrease in crime due to abortion as a good thing is if you place absolutely no value on fetal life.

31

The point was that it is not unthinkable that some future gov't might seek to use abortion as a method of social control. One should reasonably ask if the gov't has authority to ban abortions why not the authority to mandate them?

To see how this can happen take a peek at http://www.overlawyered.com/2005/10/ind_lawmaker_withdraws_unautho.html. In Indiana some lawmaker toyed with the idea of restricting unmarried people from using fertility clinics. His idea was to have a law where people would first have to get a "permission to procreate license" and bring it to their fertility doctor. Those that fail are guilty of "unauthorized
reproduction, a Class B misdemeanor" (http://familyscholars.org/?p=5149). No it's not a hoax! [Before we get too excited the law was withdrawn & it didn't apply to babies made the old fashioned way].

Now it's not too much of a jump to imagine a future world where this sort of thing has been accepted and some future politician seeking some quick votes by scapegoating certain groups of people decides that those who are exercising 'unauthorized reproduction' be required to get abortions in order to reduce welfare expenses. In actual history the US once toyed with mandatory sterilization laws when eugenics was a brief intellectual fad.

The irony thickens since the most famous American who has advocated abortion as a means of social control is Margaret Sanger, foundress of Planned Parenthood and friend of the Nazis.

There is a world of difference between social control based on individual freedom and social control based on state compulsion. Sanger, while a victim of the intellectual silliness of her time in regards to eugenics and racism, seemed like she was pointed in the right direction overall:

"Eugenists imply or insist that a woman's first duty is to the state; we contend that her duty to herself is her first duty to the state. We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother."

This is quite similar to Levitt's theory....I guess you can call it 'voluntary eugenics'. Since the actual woman is the closest judge to the situation, she is usually the best one to decide when the right time is to have a child. By giving her the tools to avoid having a child she is less likely to have one under bad circumstances that often lead to the things eugenists thought they could eliminate thru 'selective breeding'. What they got wrong was that the best person to do the selecting is the individuals involved, not that state.

You ask why a government that outlaws abortion cannot mandate it; the answer is that no government has the authority to mandate the intentional harming of innocent human beings (which coincidentally is why I oppose abortion).

This would require overturning Roe using a reasoning that would also mandate that every state treat abortion equal to homicide (otherwise 'Equal Protection' would be violated). If you're willing to be happy with less you're willing to be happy with a situation where the state gets to define what is a human beign and where its authority over an individual's body is almost unlimited.

This is an interesting argument in its backwardness. What anti-abortion laws actually mandate is that people should not "use their body in a very intimate way" (sex) unless they're willing to accept the human consequence of that action (baby).

This is a type of 'implied consent' argument. It goes by having sex the woman implicitly consented to the possibility of accepting the duty to bring a child to term. Obviously rape/incest is a chink in that arguments armour since those are cases where consent is questionable. Even more potent, though, is abortion among teenagers. Minors typically are not considered capable of giving informed consent. That is why business contracts with minors require a parent/guardian's consent. That is why when adults have sex with teenagers it is considered statutory rape even if the teen consented. Take this reasoning to its conclusion and abortion should be legal for rape victims and underage girls but not adult women!

4) I would be interested in hearing more about countries that had their abortion rates decrease upon legalization. Frankly, I find that hard to believe. How do you accurately measure abortion rates when it's illegal? It brings to mind the "thousands" of women per year cited above - in other words, it sounds like propaganda.

How do you measure abortions when they are legal? Abortions are like car washes, there's no central register that checks off a tally whenever a car wash happens. If you wanted to estimate how many car washes take place each year you'd have to apply statistical methods to derive an estimate. For the sake of argument I assume we can get a handle on abortion rates that is accurate enough for some comparison work.

As for the alternate universe you described, I think that would have been precisely the situation had abortion been legalized through the democratic process as opposed to by unconstitutional judicial fiat. In absence of Roe, which has been used literally dozens of times to strike down sensible, incremental abortion laws, there would by necessity be a more rational conversation taking place about when abortion should be legal, and how to help women carry their children to terms. Roe took compromise off the table.

You might be right there. The democratic process is one of bargaining and comprimise while judicial fiat tends to be more absolute. But we see that if you carry your argument to its logical conclusion you couldn't be happy in a comprimise world. Like Lincoln and slavery, abortion may start towards comprimise but gravitates to absolutes quickly. If abortion is killing a human beign then New York as a state has no right to permit that as a 'compromise' anymore than Alabama had a right to pass a law saying killing black people was no longer illegal! Your reasoning leads right to the door of judicial fiat!

However the situation is that there are very good reasons for having something like Roe even if you choose to reject the actual decision itself. A right to privacy certainly seems to imply some degree of sovereignity over one's own body and banishing a right to privacy from the Constitution leads to some really problematic possibilities.

IMO the idea of soverignity over one's own body nicely illustrates how government is limited. Most of us accept territorial soverignity. We don't, for example, support invading Nigeria and forcing them to adopt our economic system...even though doing so could conceivably improve living conditions there and even save lives. I don't see why this idea shouldn't extend down to the individual level where there is a point at which the gov't may not go even if it would save lives (from the position that abortion kills a human life).

That doesn't mean, though, that potent policies couldn't be developed that accepted soverignity yet still pushed for better outcomes. We may not invade every country with a bad human rights record but we can use diplomacy and sanctions and aid to encourage them to improve.

Sorry man, I will not be posting again on the Terri Schaivo case. As far as I am concerned, the "subject" died at 10:30 a.m. on March 31st, 2005. And in retrospect, I see that our post mortum did too, long after the facts of the case could make a difference. Exchanging insults is not "my cup of tea." Life is far too short for that.

I'm sorry to hear that. While combatative I thought our discussion had substance beyond simply exchanging insults.

Anyway, this human being who is conceived has rights (we may even call them civil rights) and deserves protection of the law. This child has a right to good prenatal care and to be born.

Rights are almost always expressed in the negative. For example, the right to free speech is that the gov't may not infringe on your right to speak freely. Rights expressed positively are problematic because they don't take into account who provides for these things. A 'right to healthcare' means that somewhere someone has to be made to provide it to you. A 'right to be born' is almost absurd. it's like declaring a right to immortality. The Constitution cannot provide it and probalby should not!

32

larry,

What does "DNA research" say about the uniqueness of those cells?

Embryology says(I realize I used the phrase DNA research earlier - that was an inaccurate choice of words) we have life. All they require is nurturing to develop more fully.

If Robertson and Dobson change their minds about the sanctity of embryos, your opinions on the subject will seem even more marginalized by the general population than they do now.

And that would prove what? Reasoning by straw poll is meaningless. So let's ignore those who believe embryos are humans because that's what Dobson says. At the same time, let's also ignore all those who believe it's a clump of tissue because that's what Planned Parenthood says. Instead let's concentrate on biology, which shows that we have life which requires only a hospitable environment to thrive.

Or perhaps you believe that Jim Dobson and Pat Robertson aren't the most powerful preachers in the United States today.

They may or may not be. I honestly don't care. In as far as anybody's opinion is based on something besides the natural, biological realities, their views are irrelevant for determining the identity of the unborn. If faith helps them see that the unborn is human, bravo, but it's not necessary.

33

Boonton,

I said I'm not going to argue this in com boxes any more, and I won't. Suffice it to say your twins argument says nothing about the existence of unique human life requiring nothing more than nutrition at conception.

That said, I just want to draw attention to one statement:

It doesnt matter how you treat the fetus.

Yes it does. The fetus is a human person.

Define it as a full person the fact is the person's body who is being used for this person is the woman's, not the voters, not the justices on the court, not George Bush and so on.

Earlier you said:

Rarely in the pro-life argument will you hear any attempt to acknowledge that women who choose abortion might be doing so for non-trivial reasons...

How interesting that from this demand that we acknowledge the non-trivial (which I sincerely do), you devolve into "It doesn't matter how you treat the fetus" (yes it does. the fetus is a human being) and a defense of the trivial. "It's my body, dammit!" Well, it's the fetus' body, dammit, and you have no right to kill it.

One more thing, and I'm done:

How do you measure abortions when they are legal?

You ask a representative subset of abortion providers and then extrapolate. The problem when abortion is illegal is that you can't get a representative sample because there's no way to know how many you have, where they are, etc.

I'm not saying there is no way to measure abortio when it's illegal. I'm just saying that I would have to check the methodology of any study that claimed to do so before I give its conclusions any weight.

34

I'm done. We're not going to solve this in a comment box.

I just want to appeal to Christians who are pro-life to study the biology and learn about the mystery of the first moments of life so you'll have more firepower and won't be intimidated by materialist dogma which in the end can't carry the burden of proof.

35

How interesting that from this demand that we acknowledge the non-trivial (which I sincerely do), you devolve into "It doesn't matter how you treat the fetus"

I think you misread what I was saying there. I was saying it doesn't matter how you treat the fetus as a matter of law. In the analogy I used the example of being asked to donate my rare blood to someone who would die without it. There is no question there that the other person is a human beign and entitled to all the rights you would give anyone else. There is, though, personal sovereignity over my body and I think most of us will agree that the state should not force me to donate blood against my will. My will might very well include 'non-trivial' reasons such as a deep religious belief that God forbids transfusions but it can also be influenced by trivial reasons such as I just don't like the person who needs my blood. My reasons are very important if you're judging the morality of my decision but as a matter of law they don't matter.

So to be fair to your side I took the most friendly position possible, treating the fetus as a full human beign. Obviously if you don't consider the fetus to be human then there's really not much of an argument. No one considers spermacide an murder weapon because it kills sperm cells since no one considers sperm cells human beigns....even though each one has unique human DNA.

You ask a representative subset of abortion providers and then extrapolate. The problem when abortion is illegal is that you can't get a representative sample because there's no way to know how many you have, where they are, etc.

Social sciences have more than a few tricks up their sleaves. You can go the opposite way and ask women if they ever had an abortion. If you think they may lie even if you never take their names then you can tackle the problem in a more indirect fashion. You can survey people as to how often they have sex, what types of protection they use etc. From this you can figure out how many conceptions should be expected from the population (this will be an estimate, of course). Then you can examine the actual birth rate in the population. If the difference is large enough then you have evidence of a given number of underground abortions going on. I don't have any particular expertise in this area, if you want to examine a study of abortion rates in countries where it is illegal, though, we can look at that and see what methods the researchers used. Note even in your example there's plenty of things that can screw up your calculations. For example, there's no way of knowing your sample is really representative. There are many doctors who do abortions that do not operate in specialized clinics and do not call themselves 'abortion providers'.

I just want to appeal to Christians who are pro-life to study the biology and learn about the mystery of the first moments of life so you'll have more firepower and won't be intimidated by materialist dogma which in the end can't carry the burden of proof.

It's odd that you write this considering that your try to depict materialism (the structure of DNA) as the primary evidence for believing that human life begins at fertilization.

36

I have trouble taking seriously anyone who uses the word abortion as a verb.
abortion is a noun.
the verb is 'to abort'

37

CHris

so you'll have more firepower and won't be intimidated by materialist dogma which in the end can't carry the burden of proof.

Huh?

In the end, only the "materialist dogma" matters. That is why courts in the United States pay attention to these things called "facts" and don't consult the Bible or pray to find the right answers.

They do that sort of thing in Iran, however, where hypocritical religious fundamentalists opposed to "materialist dogma" have managed to seize power.

Why not move there, Chris? It will be a paradise for you. Can you think of any reason why you wouldn't be happy there? If so, please share that reason with us and, while sharing, imagine how people who are not Christians will feel living under the sort of theocracy you fantasize about.

Then, consider why the framers put a separation clause in the first amendment and elsewhere in the Constitution forbid the use of religious tests for determining who can hold public office.

38

Rob:

"Not only insulting, but disingenuous. Our friend quits the field when things don't go his way."

I "quit the field" when it became apparent to me that the debate was no longer productive. I would be wasting too much precious band-width if I enumerated the personal invective directed at me since I first wandered on to the Outpost. If I recall, what I responded with was often sarcasm, but probably the strongest personal adjective that I ever used to describe you (or anyone else) was "childish," which is no more apparent than in your last post.

You are a better than average writer, but the substance of your arguments is often diluted with petty recriminations and stereotypes. As I surveyed this thread and re-read the insightful posts of Ken, Ja and Chris, I could see that they independently reached some of the same conclusions about other posts. To summarize, they politely said that the issues being discussed are too serious to waste their time in a comment box turned mosh pit. Especially since the central issue (embryonic human life), was settled long ago by science. The verdict is in. Human life begins at conception. I find it ironic that we are wasting billions of dollars in the search for life in outer-space when a large segment of our society can't even recognize it in the womb.

We might have had a serious discussion about the fact that
the people who describe themselves as "pro-choice" are also the most outspoken supporters of "selective reductions," human cloning, stem cell harvesting, "designer fetuses," organ harvesting, infanticide and partial birth abortion. Most of these practices were fantasy when the Nazis were first experimenting with eugenics and organ farming and Brave New World was first written. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction, and today a new breed has emerged that are convinced that these abominations are "acts of compassion" and those who oppose it are religious fanatics and enemies of "scientific progress."

Yesterday I spent several hours doing a TV production at the Humane Society with a woman, whom I had known for years. She once confided in me that she had had five abortions. Before her last one, I pleaded with her to change her mind and offered to adopt her child, even though I already have three of my own. Her answer was something like, "No, I want to devote my life fully to helping animals. That is my calling and I know in my heart that I'm doing the right thing." When I explained to her the value of human life compared with that of a dog or cat, it resonated with her like an Arab to an igloo.

Some time has passed since that episode. She is no longer the "sex symbol" that she once was. Instead she is a lonely spinster, whose maternal instincts will probably never be satisfied and whose personal moral guilt will never be erased by anything but the grace of God.

When I gave her "Evidence That Demands A Verdict," a masterful 750 page book on Christian apologetics, she returned it. Ironically her response was: "I can't accept this. Any religion that preaches that sex outside of marriage is bad, I want no part of."

I mention her because, like others on this thread, she will never "get it" if she clings to a utilitarian worldview that relegates the value of human life to that of a beast and rejects the saving message of the Gospel because she is under the illusion that it will deny her the pleasures of this life.

39

"The verdict is in. Human life begins at conception."

You'll get no argument from me on that one. For me and millions of others, the question is not when human life begins but when it should be given rights. I think a fetus should be viable before it is protected by the government. Before that, people should mind their own business.

40

A last parting salvo since I've been personally insulted by Larry.

In the end, only the "materialist dogma" matters. That is why courts in the United States pay attention to these things called "facts" and don't consult the Bible or pray to find the right answers.

Spoken like a true materialist dogmatist. Way to automatically rule out the majority of people in our nation, whose views, opinions and even their interpretations of facts are formed by their worldview.

My whole point is that even debating the issue on a purely materialist level - specifically looking only at embryology - the pro-life argument is vindicated. Sure, you won't cave because your fierce attachment to the concept of "choice" won't let you face the reality, but that's inconsequential. There are enough open-minded people out there to make your particular brand of utilitarianism irrelevant.

They do that sort of thing in Iran, however, where hypocritical religious fundamentalists opposed to "materialist dogma" have managed to seize power.

Why not move there, Chris? It will be a paradise for you. Can you think of any reason why you wouldn't be happy there? If so, please share that reason with us and, while sharing, imagine how people who are not Christians will feel living under the sort of theocracy you fantasize about.

I was right. You are rabid and unserious. Conversation over. When you stomp into a room hurling insults and mocking those things which people hold most dear, you ought not be surprised when people leave the room.

Oh, I almost forgot... One reason I wouldn't want to live in Iran is because I would not have the freedom to worship as I please and to bring my religion into the public square - in that, Iranian Islamic fundamentalists are much more akin to American materialist fundamentalists than to me.

So long!

41

Terence:

Five abortions because pregnancy and childrearing would take time away from Saving the Animals? Sounds about par for the course for an animal-lover type -- a lot of them are for the animals mostly to stick it to the humans. You see it all the time in the heavy-duty Animal Rights activists as well as furry-fanboys.

And 90% of the time the reason people turn away from the Gospel is because they can't stomach Christian sexual morality. Maybe one in ten is honest enough to admit that's the real reason.

42

Chris

Way to automatically rule out the majority of people in our nation, whose views, opinions and even their interpretations of facts are formed by their worldview.

Huh?

Here's a fact, Chris: we both need food, water and oxygen to survive.

Now, how does anyone's "worldview" affect his or her "interpretation" of this fact, Chris?

Here's another fact: courts in the United States don't cite the Bible or divine revelation through prayer when deciding, e.g., the guilt or innocence of accused human beings.

How does anyone's "worldview" affect his or her "interpretation" of this fact, Chris? Why is my recitation of this fact "materialist dogma" Chris?

One reason I wouldn't want to live in Iran is because I would not have the freedom to worship as I please and to bring my religion into the public square

Oh really? Perhaps that's because your religion is just a bunch of silly myths as far as the clerics who rule Iran are concerned. Why should they encourage such lies, which cause people to blaspheme against the One True Prophet?

Why, Chris? Please tell us how allowing you to bring your religion into the public square in Iran benefits Islam?

I'm really curious to hear you explain to us how unfair Iran's policies are when, as the Ayatollah will tell you, a belief that Jesus is God is blasphemy.

Or can you prove to the world that the Ayatollah is wrong about Christianity?

That would be interesting. Good luck with that.

43

Terence

Some time has passed since that episode. She is no longer the "sex symbol" that she once was. Instead she is a lonely spinster,

Phone number?

44

"Whatever people say about America, it is still one of the most wonderful countries in the world, despite the politics, religion and everything else that goes on."

Even Chewbacca can see there's a problem.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Movies/10/13/citizen.wookiee.ap/index.html

45

Ken, Chris, Ja, Pro-woman . . .

Well done.

46

"One reason I wouldn't want to live in Iran is because I would not have the freedom to worship as I please and to bring my religion into the public square"

That's because they already have a religion in the public square, and they want to marginalize the others. Like evangelical Christians.

47

Can anyone take Rob Ryan seriously after that equivalence?

48

The verdict is in. Human life begins at conception. I find it ironic that we are wasting billions of dollars in the search for life in outer-space when a large segment of our society can't even recognize it in the womb.

The verdict is in! We only heard the opening arguments that asserted that something about DNA means human life must begin at fertilization. We never heard what that is or anything!

We might have had a serious discussion about the fact that
the people who describe themselves as "pro-choice" are also the most outspoken supporters of "selective reductions," human cloning, stem cell harvesting, "designer fetuses," organ harvesting, infanticide and partial birth abortion....

Don't you just hate it when the people you disagree with refuse to play the sterotyped part you assigned to them!

49

I surveyed this thread and re-read the insightful posts of Ken, Ja and Chris, I could see that they independently reached some of the same conclusions about other posts. To summarize, they politely said that the issues being discussed are too serious to waste their time in a comment box turned mosh pit.

Errr well sorry about that. I didn't realize this forum was beneath the dignity & prescious time of you and your insightful friends. Thank you dropping by and letting us know, though. I hope too much of your insite wasn't wasted in these comment boxes. I'd hate for you to go out in the world short on insight 'cause you spent it all here.

50

"Can anyone take Rob Ryan seriously after that equivalence?"

Jim, perhaps you missed Chris's comment, in which he compared Islamic fundamentalists to "materialist fundamentalists". My comment responds to that comparison. My comparison (not equivalence) is more valid than his.

By the way, whether or not you take me seriously matters not a straw to me. I just want to provide you some context in case you are a reasonable person.

51

http://mediamatters.org/items/200510140006

Read what these guy Neil Boortz says.

Then I'd like to take a quick straw poll.

1) Is Neil Boortz expressing a Christian sentiment?

2) Does Neil Boortz consider himself a Christian?

3) Will conservative Christians do anything about Neil Boortz?

I vote no and yes and no, respectively.

52

Boonton:

"I'm only vaguly familiar with Feminists for Life but if they are an honest organization then more power to them."

Subtext: "Honest" means that they accept abortion as the law of the land, and do nothing to stop it.

"With the Schiavo fiasco the pro-lifer(s) were caught in what can best be described as outright lies."

Subtext: I wonder who that could be?

"Another case is the charge that abortion causes a bunch of 'hidden conditions' like 'post abortion syndrome' or the charge that doctors do not fully inform their patients therefore the need for state 'informed consent laws'."

Subtext: Move along now . . . nothing happening here. Having a baby ripped out of the womb is natural. Why would anyone need to force abortionists to inform their patients of the risks involved in this honorable profession?

"As I pointed out to Terance, if these are true then all the pro-life movement has to do is find some women who had abortions and sue their doctors for malpractice using existing laws. Granted not all but enough to make an impression."

Subtext: The countless lawsuits filed against abortionists since 1972 didn't shut down the abortion industry because there weren't "enough to make an impression."

"I've argued that I think the pro-life movement has allowed itself to get hung up on legalisms."

Subtext: Which is precisely why I previously suggested "suing the doctors for malpractice."

"Victory is being measured not in reduced abortions but in assorted legal victories that may have nothing to do with abortion (more than a few pro-lifers seemed to act like the Clinton years were a decade of oppression...they were oblivious to the actual reduction in abortions that happened then)."

Subtext: The Clinton formula for "victory": Twice veto the ban on partial birth abortions. Campaign at GNARL. Use statistics like a drunkard uses a lamp post -- that is for support rather than illumination.

"Abortion has NEVER been treated equal to murder or homicide historically. Historically in the US abortion was legal until 'quickening' (when the baby's movements can first be felt, believed by some early Christians to be the moment when the soul is made or implanted). It was outlawed later on for safety reasons (as the medical profession became more powerful they lobbied for restrictions on non-doctors such as midwifes and such)."

Subtext: Roe only re-affirmed the statues quo in this country, because it was NEVER illegal. In fact, the decision was not even that "controversial."

"Overturning Roe bring up a lot of thorny issues that its critics almost always dodge. Roe is built upon a constitutional right to privacy. If you hold no such thing exists you open up a true 'Brave New World' where people's bodies basically serve the gov't's desires."

Subtext: The words "privacy," and "choice" are never found in the Constitution, but the gods in black robes have given the decree. Henceforth, "privacy" means the right to destroy another human being and "choice" means that "Big Brother" can't lift a finger to stop you.

"I've asked before if a gov't can outlaw abortion then why can't it mandate abortion?"

Subtext: It follows that if the govt can outlaw murder, theft, rape and extortion, then why can't it mandate murder, rape, theft and extortion?
What would become of our Constitutional right to "privacy" and "choice" if we allowed the govt. to make these personal decisions?

"You may think that would never happen but can you be so sure? China already pushes (and forces in some case) abortion."

Subtext: The Chinese Communist govt. never outlawed abortion and they went down the slippery slope to forced abortions. Therefore, we shouldn't outlaw abortion either -- or else we could end up like them! History always repeats itself.

"The idea that abortion may be good social policy is 'in the air', see the recent comments by Bill Bennett & the 'Freakonomics' hypothesis regarding abortion and crime."

Subtext: When Bennett prefaced his hypothetical statement by saying that the whole idea was "morally repugnant," he really meant that it was "a good social policy" -- wink, wink. And although he spoke out against the 10,000,000 black abortions in the US, he is the one with a racist policy, not the pro-aborts who condoned it.

"Unlike laws against homicide abortion is unique in the sense that it is basically mandating by force of law that a person use their body for another....use their body in a very intimate way.

Subtext: The problem has nothing to do with irresponsible sex. The problem is "the man" forcing his "intimacy" on women by forcing them to carry their babies to term.

"If I happened to have a rare blood type I could refuse to donate blood on religious or other grounds. I don't believe the gov't could force me to donate even if my refusal ended up costing someone their life. Yet this imposition is trivial when compared to carrying a child for 9 months."

Subtext: And it doesn't end there. Big Brother would then force you to allow these kids to mooch off you for the rest of your life -- or at least until they are eighteen.

"There is a clear difference between the abortion rate and whether or not abortion is legal. There have been countries that had high abortion rates that actually dropped when abortion laws were liberalized.

Subtext: Just look at China, Russia, Japan where the average woman has several abortions. Just imagine how many more there would be if it weren't their number one form of birth control.

"It is possible to imagine plausible sceneros where criminaling abortion can actually cause a long run increase in abortion. I have no doubt, though, that if Roe is overturned and harsh laws are enacted many will call it a day and go home feeling they achieved victory oblivious to whether they actually did anything good."

Subtext: "Criminaling" abortion will only get it out of the strip malls where it belongs and in to the back allies where it would flourish even more.

"On the other hand, imagine an alternate universe where the pro-life movement accepted Roe more or less but tried to find ways to decrease abortion as their priority."

Subtext: In this "alternate universe," it's actually the pro-lifers who run the thousands of crisis pregnancy centers across the country that help women bring their babies to term -- not in the real world where the women with pixies do it.

"I think this would have meant a less polarized debate (one of the problems with abortion is that it is almost always an 'all or nothing' argument....) and it would have made the pro-life movement less a special interest group of the Republican Party. It would have meant more coorperative work with liberals to find ways to actually decrease abortion as a choice."

Subtext: If we could all just get along and agree on a few minor points (like abortion is okay), then we can help one another attain our goals.

"Instead today we get the harsh option. Either we must be totally indifferent to abortion if we take the left side or we must be indifferent to the plight of desperate women in desperate situations."

Subtext: If the pro-lifers who ran the crisis pregnancy centers really cared more about "desperate women," then the pro-abortion left might care more about the sanctity of human life.

"We must excuse their problems as a 'consquence' of their 'choices' to be dealt with only by private charity....yet we advocate that the government mandate that they 'donate' their bodies to someone else without the right to say no nor demand compensation."

Subtext: Mothers should have a meter attached to their blood and oxygen and if they can't come to terms on a fair "compensation"
(blond hair, blue eyes, $1000 a month) then the government has no right to enforce the contract. We could do away with private charities if only we increased the welfare bureaucracy.

"If the gov't demanded that someone allow the police to park their police car in their back yards he would have a right to demand money from the gov't and conservatives would be on his side."

Subtext: In this parable the police car is Big Brothers baby. The back yard is the womb. Conservatives should support a women's right to either charge for that parking space, or have the car towed away.

End of dicussion

53

What an amazing distortion of the language and knowledge of biology that we have! What an amazing set of scare-mongering! (for example, exactly when did organ-harvesting from fetuses become legal? I must have missed that one.) What an amazing abuse of logic! In short, this is a manipulative screed worthy of Goebbels.

Do all of us Christians a favor, OK? Shut up. You make us look like a bunch of rabid flat-earth loonies screaming that the sky is falling. Guess what? It's not the year 100 AD and the Romans aren't in charge.

54

"What an amazing distortion of the language and knowledge of biology that we have! What an amazing set of scare-mongering! (for example, exactly when did organ-harvesting from fetuses become legal? I must have missed that one.) What an amazing abuse of logic! In short, this is a manipulative screed worthy of Goebbels."

This is only a few paragraphs of a lengthy article on organ harvesting. If you want the whole article, I will send it.

-------------------------------------------------

Along with its fetal-tissue harvesting, AGF also handles adult tissue. According to Bardsley, this is their main business, and they handle "only about five to 10 fetal-tissue procedures a week from two different clinics." AGF charges a flat fee of as much as $280 per specimen or individual body part. According to tax records provided to Insight by Bardsley, AGF's gross income has increased from a little more than $180,000 in 1994 to $2 million in 1998.

While AGF charges for "services" per specimen, competitor Opening Lines, a company that handles only fetal tissue, was unavailable for comment. According to a fee schedule provided to the pro-life organization Life Dynamics Inc., of Denton, Texas, Opening Lines does not confuse its customers by using the word " specimen" but openly lists charges by the body part. For instance, it may charge as little as $150 for the retrieval of a liver or $500 for a trunk (with or without limbs); a spinal cord goes for $325.

The sale of "services" in the acquisition of body parts exploded after President Clinton signed the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act of 1993, effectively lifting the moratorium on federally funded research involving transplantation of fetal tissue from spontaneous or induced abortions. The taxpayer-funded legislation specifically allows for "research on the transplantation of human fetal tissue for therapeutic purposes." Since then, a rare breed of entrepreneurs have battled for a foothold in the newly created market of organ harvesting.

Company pamphlets and paraphernalia from Opening Lines, for example, boast that it is their "goal to offer you and your staff the highest quality, most affordable and freshest tissue prepared to your specifications and delivered in the quantities you need when you need it." Their advertisements add such sales puffery as: "Our specimens vary widely in range including but not limited to those listed below: liver, spleen, pancreas, intestines, kidney, brain, lungs and heart block, spinal column and many more with appropriate discounts that apply if specimen is significantly fragmented." A veritable smorgasbord of human body parts is on the menu, and the researcher need only order what he or she wants.

How profitable is all of this? The consulting firm of Frost and Sullivan recently reported that "the worldwide market for cell lines and tissue cultures brought in nearly $428 million in corporate revenues in 1996. It further predicts that between now and 2003, the market will grow at an average annual rate of 13.5 percent and, by 2002, will be worth nearly $1 billion." That does not include profits from patents and products that come from tissue research.

The National Institutes of Health provides nearly $19 million in grants and awards for fetal-tissue research, an amount that many in the scientific community consider budget dust compared with the $15.6 billion total 1999 appropriations. Of the $19 million, $2 million goes directly to research that is connected with fetal-tissue transplantation.

55

Wormboy;

Here is the entire article.

http://www.nrlc.org/Baby_Parts/omeara.html

56

Personally, I feel that being human means being aware of one's self. Since I don't have any memories until I was maybe 2 years of age, I don't think I would have minded all too much had an abortion taken place. I mean, if I do have a soul like you christian folk belive all humans do, then I'd just go back to wherever it was I came from. Not a bad choice, considering the alternative of a soul being born into an abusive, poor, or retarded life. And as for the athiest belief that humans are simply extremely large nanotech machines, when was the last time you euthanised your computer? If we draw the difference between a computer and a human by the fact that a human is aware of its existance, then perhaps a fetus should become a human at 2 years of age...when its capable of long term thought. I mean, we have no problem slaughtering cattle, and cattle DO HAVE LONG TERM MEMORIES AND COMPLEX THOUGHT; cows have much more awareness of their existance than a newborn. Perhaps cows are more human than newborn babies!! The radical right wing agenda to bad abortion is intrusive; the government cannot have the right to interfere in the planning of a family - to do so would be absurd. Yet I smile at their hypocracy - republican big whigs have no problem with society slaughtering cattle in ways not unlike the beheadings we see in Iraq, yet to abort a 3 week old fetus is sinful! Shame...utter shame...

57

Folks there is one thing that must be remembered here; God doesn't make mistakes never has never will. Jeremiah 29:11 life starts when He creates it. He created us in His image! Who are we to take life or death into our hands?
LDS

58

Terence, do you know where I can buy ten gallons of fresh monkey urine?

59

Subtext: The countless lawsuits filed against abortionists since 1972 didn't shut down the abortion industry because there weren't "enough to make an impression."

That's strange, last time I mentioned this idea Terry told us that abortion doctors couldn't be sued thru malpractice laws. Now he tells us not only can they but they have been numerous times....yet for mysterious reasons abortion doctors remain immune to malpractice suits (note that Terry can't even tell us if the doctors won the suits filed against them or if they lost and had to pay out but continue anyway).

Subtext: Which is precisely why I previously suggested "suing the doctors for malpractice."

I didn't suggest suing doctors for malpractice as an alternative to 'legalistic pro-lifism'. I suggested as a method to call the bluff of the dishonesty routinely practiced by more than a few pro-life organizations. I also suggested it as common sense. 'Informed consenst' is already required of doctors, why is it necessary to pass a special law when the procedure is abortion but not breast implants, cosemetic surgery, and any number of elective procedures that have risks and side effects?

Subtext: The Clinton formula for "victory": Twice veto the ban on partial birth abortions. Campaign at GNARL. Use statistics like a drunkard uses a lamp post -- that is for support rather than illumination.

Interesting comment there. Vetoing the ban on partial birth abortions must make the Clinton years a decade of defeat for the pro-life movement despite the fact that even the most vocal about partial birth abortion concede that nearly all abortions happen in the first trimester. Yet victory isn't measured in a decrease in those types of abortions (which even a few percentage points of decline would translate into tens of thousands fewer abortions) but in whether a particular law was successfully passed....and not even a law to outlaw abortion but just one particular abortion procedure!

Subtext: The words "privacy," and "choice" are never found in the Constitution, but the gods in black robes have given the decree. Henceforth, "privacy" means the right to destroy another human being and "choice" means that "Big Brother" can't lift a finger to stop you.

If you're going to be serious about this discussion please do so. If you'are going to deny a right to privacy in the constitution then deal with the implications that I raised. If you accept a right to privacy then a case needs to be built for limiting it.

Subtext: It follows that if the govt can outlaw murder, theft, rape and extortion, then why can't it mandate murder, rape, theft and extortion? What would become of our Constitutional right to "privacy" and "choice" if we allowed the govt. to make these personal decisions?

As I pointed out none of the things you oulaw require any positive action on my part. There being a law against murdering you doesn't require me to do anything for you. It doesn't require me to talk to you, to like you, to respond to your posts, nothing. In a similar manner if your life depended upon my body, say I had a rare type of blood and you needed a transfusion or my bone marrow was the only match there and I refused I could not be charged with murder. In fact I'm not even sure I could be considered morally guilty of murder in traditional Christian theology.

Subtext: When Bennett prefaced his hypothetical statement by saying that the whole idea was "morally repugnant," he really meant that it was "a good social policy" -- wink, wink. And although he spoke out against the 10,000,000 black abortions in the US, he is the one with a racist policy, not the pro-aborts who condoned it.

Again I was speaking to whether you could trust the gov't with the power to control abortion over women. I pointed out that the power to forbid abortion carries with it the implication the power to mandate abortion. I explicitly stated that this is not thinkable in today's political climate but things change faster than one thinks. No doubt a politically aware person in 1910 would have ever imagined a President from Texas would have appointed a black woman to be head of foreign policy...for example.

Is it impossible to imagine some future gov't might want to force certain people to have abortions when we know in the US itself there was once laws to forcibly sterilize 'undesirable' people? My point about Bennett was not that he wanted to mandate abortions but that his statement is evidence that the seeds of the idea are there if you bothered to look. Whether they ever grow into anything only the future can tell. Instead, though, you continue your addiction to rank dishonesty (see how just accepting lies feeds upon itself, you accept lies in the name of what you think is a worthy cause like Schiavo or abortion and you just can't stop using them everywhere else!) by pretending I was saying Bennett was trying to mandate abortion.

Subtext: The problem has nothing to do with irresponsible sex. The problem is "the man" forcing his "intimacy" on women by forcing them to carry their babies to term.

As I pointed out if you're going to allege that sex is equilivant to 'consent' to carry a pregnancy to term then you're painting yourself into a box where underage girls and victims of rape can legally have abortions. After all the reason it's called statutory rape is not that there wasn't consent but because teens are not able to legally consent to sex.

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Subtext: Mothers should have a meter attached to their blood and oxygen and if they can't come to terms on a fair "compensation" (blond hair, blue eyes, $1000 a month) then the government has no right to enforce the contract. We could do away with private charities if only we increased the welfare bureaucracy.

Terrance is touching upon an interesting point yet his arrogance won't let him engage anyone in productive conversation.

We have already touched upon the fact that simply denying someone access to your body is not murder even if their life depends on it (otherwise anyone who refuses to donate a kidney, blood, bone marrow etc. can be considered a killer). How is this situation different when it comes to abortion?

Well Terrance's argument appears to be that by having sex the woman consented to the consequences which means 9 months of pregnancy. Of course, he probably doesn't mean this because a logical conclusion of that assertion is that abortion would be legal for underage girls and rape victims. Why? Because if 16, 17 year olds can't consent to sex under the law then they can't consent to the consquences of it either. I think some conservatives would be happy to live with this state of affairs....leaving abortion legal only for teens and victims. They probably would adopt a Bennett-style rationalization that such abortions are tolerable since they would keep down the out of wedlock birth rate, welfare rolls, and so on.

Terrance, though, would most likely not be willing to settle there. So if you take it a step more and seek to outlaw abortion even when it comes to rape and teens then you can't really blame 'irresponsible sex'. (Anyway Equal Protection pretty much would prohibit any attempt to punish 'irresponsible sex' with laws that effect only one gender).

In effect what is being advocated is that individuals are forced to help out other individuals. This isn't all that radical in modern societies. Every penny that is taxed away to go to Medicare/Medicaid or your parents' social security checks is effectively the same thing. What is radical is that the gov't is putting nearly the entire burden of caring for one individual (the unborn child) on the one person who is the least capable of bearing it (the woman in a situation where she wants an abortion). In effect we are putting the draft back in place but taking the weakest members and giving them nothing in return except negative judgement and blame.

Of course in an alternate universe the incentive would be to share that burden somehow since the woman would always have the final say and be able to legally get the abortion...hence the name of the game would be to make it easier for her to choose not to get one. Today Medicaid would pick up the cost of having the baby automatically (pregnant women without means are automatically entitled to Medicaid). Perhaps in the alternative universe pro-lifers would demand something like a flat $5000 bounty to any woman who gives birth to a child. $5000 is less than someone would earn at a min. wage job in 9 months so it's not like it is sensible to get pregnant just for the money but it would certainly make it harder to choose abortion in many circumstances.

Now the conservatives would line up against such an idea. They would rightly fear an explosion in out of wedlock births, increased welfare rolls, more babies going into the adoption que, the social changes that would be wrought by so many babies growing up as 'bounty babies', not to mention the increased public spending & taxes this would entail.

But if Terrance wants to chide us for the materialistic ease that abortion creates (fewer on welfare, more access to material for scientific experiments etc.) isn't it logical for him to accept the costs of getting rid of abortion? Wouldn't he and other pro-lifers have to say such costs are worth it in a society that can afford to spend over $150,000 per person caught in a flood or a similar amount to victims of 9/11?

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From the perspective of a die-hard pro-lifer, $150,000 is a steal! After all, according to these folks, the value of an innocent human life is incalculably large (at least when the innocent human life is a fetus or invalid and a naturalized US citizen).

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From the perspective of a die-hard pro-lifer, $150,000 is a steal! After all, according to these folks, the value of an innocent human life is incalculably large (at least when the innocent human life is a fetus or invalid and a naturalized US citizen).

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Ahhhh Larry you show why a degree in economics is more useful than one in science! The price you should pay is not what something is worth to you but what the market price is. The insulin may be priceless to the diabetic but she isn't going to pay a penny more than Wal-Mart's low price for it! Getting a woman to decide against abortion may be worth $10M to a pro-lifer but if all it takes is $5,000 then so much the better!

64

Hmm.

Maybe women who are contemplating abortions should auction their "choice" to the highest bidder on eBay, the way that some people auction off the right to name a building. Women could set their reserve prices at the level which would persuade them to carry the baby to term. That might allow us to determine the market value of an unwanted unborn human.

65

Does someone here need to have a blood test taken?

66

So the latest news is that they have found a way to take stem cells from mice embryos without destroying the original embryo. Here's my layman's reading of what they are talking about. Right now with humans you have a fertilized egg, which is one cell. It divides into two, then four, then eight cells. At the 8 cell point they can take one cell out.

This is a bit confusing but from the NY Times article it seemed like this is done at fertility clinics. They take out one cell, test it for defects and if it is good implant it. What it seems like they can do instead is let that 8th cell divide a few times then use it for stem cells (plus testing). The original 7 remaining cells keep going on their way and as far as anyone can tell there's no effect on children born. Losing that one cell when you only have 8 is no different then losing one cell when you have 800 billion+.

What else is odd for the 'fertilization = human beign = human soul' POV is that if you let that removed 8th cell keep dividing & implant it it would keep going and make a baby 9 months later....an identical twin of the original. Does this mean removing a cell at the 8 cell point is creating a new human life? If so what about 16 cells? 32? Since Terrence has assured us the science of DNA has answered these questions beyond doubt I don't see why he shouldn't have the answers.

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The thread that started this controversy concerned the cavalier way in which two people discussed abortion and the pathologies of "selective reductions," "designer fetuses," "organ harvesting" and infanticide. The initial response was one of denial, outrage and righteous indignation -- as if these abominations were just as fictional as the characters in the dialog. But as the thread continued it became obvious that some of the comments represented an even more debased view of human life than the the original dialog. Below are randomly selected quotes of five individuals. If they represent the views and opinions of the average pro-abortion advocate, then indeed our society has sunk to even farther depths of moral decay than that of Brave New World.

"Why rant and rave at fictional sterotypical characters here?"

"It's just a story, Terence. Joe made it up."

"What an amazing distortion of the language and knowledge of biology that we have! What an amazing set of scare-mongering! (for example, exactly when did organ-harvesting from fetuses become legal? I must have missed that one.) What an amazing abuse of logic! In short, this is a manipulative screed worthy of Goebbels."

{[Company pamphlets and paraphernalia from Opening Lines, for example, boast that it is their "goal to offer you and your staff the highest quality, most affordable and freshest tissue prepared to your specifications and delivered in the quantities you need when you need it." Their advertisements add such sales puffery as: "Our specimens vary widely in range including but not limited to those listed below: liver, spleen, pancreas, intestines, kidney, brain, lungs and heart block, spinal column and many more with appropriate discounts that apply if specimen is significantly fragmented." A veritable smorgasbord of human body parts is on the menu, and the researcher need only order what he or she wants.}}

"Since I don't have any memories until I was maybe 2 years of age, I don't think I would have minded all too much had an abortion taken place."

"If we draw the difference between a computer and a human by the fact that a human is aware of its existance, then perhaps a fetus should become a human at 2 years of age...when its capable of long term thought." I mean, we have no problem slaughtering cattle . . . "

"Perhaps cows are more human than newborn babies!!"

"From the perspective of a die-hard pro-lifer, $150,000 is a steal! After all, according to these folks, the value of an innocent human life is incalculably large (at least when the innocent human life is a fetus or invalid and a naturalized US citizen)."

"Ahhhh Larry you show why a degree in economics is more useful than one in science! The price you should pay is not what something is worth to you but what the market price is."

"Maybe women who are contemplating abortions should auction their "choice" to the highest bidder on eBay, the way that some people auction off the right to name a building. Women could set their reserve prices at the level which would persuade them to carry the baby to term. That might allow us to determine the market value of an unwanted unborn human."

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Actually I don't think you even read Brave New World Terence. If you did you'll note that the theme of Huxley's world was one where humans lived in a constant state of manufactured happiness supplied by drugs, entertainment, consumption, and conditioning from birth. The various artifical forms of conception & childrearing was secondary to the main theme of happiness becoming society's overall goal.

Anyway, the fact is serious discussions of life and death often entail distancing yourself from the object. Doctors talk about patients like mechanics talk about cars in order to be objective. I talk about the economics of abortion as a choice but pretending there is no economics behind it is pure folly. We spend something like $200K for every person who lost a family member in 9/11. The economics of the situation call us to note that each person who received that bounty 'cost' us 200 lives that could have been saved with $1,000 wisely spent.

69

I'll also note that you've dodged the many serious efforts of pro-choicers to engage you in honest debate about this issue.

70

chirp chirp

71

Actually I don't think you even read Brave New World Terence. If you did you'll note that the theme of Huxley's world was one where humans lived in a constant state of manufactured happiness supplied by drugs, entertainment, consumption, and conditioning from birth. The various artifical forms of conception & childrearing was secondary to the main theme of happiness becoming society's overall goal.

1) Which could be done much easier by implanting a droud into the pleasure center of the brain and trickling in the current. Result: Constant, unending, total Happiness!

("HAPPY! HAPPY! JOY! JOY! HAPPY! HAPPY! JOY! JOY! HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY JOY!" -- At least as long as you live.) Which brings us to:

2) Remember the parable of the Bigger Barns in Luke? I read it as Jesus saying "He who dies with the most toys IS STILL DEAD."