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Iowa approves one of strictest abortion bills in US
The US state of Iowa has approved one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, banning most abortions once a foetal heartbeat is detected. Republican lawmakers, who control both chambers, passed the bill in back-to-back votes, sending it to the governor's desk to sign into law.
If [signed], the bill would ban most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Critics argue the bill makes having an abortion illegal before most women even realise they are pregnant.
[...] If [Governor Kim] Reynolds signs the bill into law, it will likely be challenged in court for possibly violating Roe v Wade, the US Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in 1973. [...] Some Republican lawmakers welcomed the challenge. "I would love for the United States Supreme Court to look at this bill and have this as a vehicle to overturn Roe v. Wade," Republican Senator Jake Chapman said.
Also at NPR, Reuters, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, and The Hill:
Nineteen states adopted a total of 63 restrictions to the procedure in 2017, which is the highest number of state laws on the issue since 2013, according to the Guttmacher Institute. State legislatures have proposed 15 bills that would ban abortions after 20 weeks and 11 bills that would ban abortions if the sole reason is a genetic anomaly like Down syndrome.
Related: Ohio Bill Would Ban Abortion when a Prenatal Test is Positive for Down Syndrome
These 9 Places in America Will Pay You to Move There
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @06:50PM (74 children)
Before you reply, go read the actual Roe v. Wade decision. This remains among the best SCOTUS rulings, it's very clear. Here is the primary holding, in full:
"A person may choose to have an abortion until a fetus becomes viable, based on the right to privacy contained in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Viability means the ability to live outside the womb, which usually happens between 24 and 28 weeks after conception."
Put differently, the mother's will overrules the fetus until the time when the fetus could survive without the mother. As medical technology advances that threshold has moved up a bit, probably 22-26 weeks for most centers.
It baffles me that conservatives line up against abortion, then can turn right around and with a straight face utter lines like "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." How does the mother's right to host or not host this life-changing ball of cells not lie solely in her court, until said ball of cells could make it on its own? It's so obvious that this should - indeed must - be the correct line in the sand. Any other position requires severe cognitive dissonance.
A fetus, before it is viable without the mother's support, is not a person. Full stop.
This bill tries to introduce a completely ridiculous new standard based on heart rate, spitting in the face of medical science and all existing case law. All the legislators of Iowa have done is cost the state a bunch of legal fees. Consider that the next time your representatives are up for election, Iowans.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @06:52PM (48 children)
By that logic, anybody who would die without help (somebody drowning in the pool, somebody on oxygen, you name it) is a non-person.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @07:06PM (6 children)
No, but thanks for trying.
Once born/viable, personage cannot be taken away. The discussion is when personage begins.
Are you male or female? Would you like to be told that a parasite cannot be removed from your body, despite being easily within the scope of medical ability and having major life-changing implications, because a legislature dominated by the opposite gender said so?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @07:12PM (4 children)
You're tying survivability to personhood, without rational basis. I'm pointing out that's an irrational and inconsistent opinion.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by fyngyrz on Thursday May 03 2018, @10:43PM (2 children)
Yes, that's basically what Roe v. Wade does.
Personally, I think the metric — the line in the sand — is probably best set as to when the fetus develops a nervous system with a brain. Not a heartbeat. It's our brain that (eventually) makes us people.
I laugh (sadly) at the "life begins at conception" advocates. A blade of grass is alive. It's not life that is, or should be, cherished, it's life with potential. You, a child, a fetus that's well on the way: sure. The grass, an apple seed, a human seed, a barely-differentiated clump of cells, no.
And quite aside from that:
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @11:00PM (1 child)
Nope. Development of a neural crest/tissue may seem reasonable to someone not well versed in human anatomy/embryology, but no. Also we can and do easily keep neurons alive in a petri dish for study, so I guess you'd also want to shut down all of those avenues of inquiry?
The actual neural development that happens in utero is really not very significant. Babies are born with a mostly undeveloped brain much smoother than their adult, actually functional brains. Also, the vast majority of the neurons aren't myelinated, nor have proper connections. Babies suck, sleep, pee, and poop. Newborns aren't just missing language, they're missing tremendous structural components crucial to becoming actual functional people. What I'm saying here, is that a brain doesn't make a person.
The key, though, is that they have the potential for all of this - and that they no longer require extreme measures of support from exactly one individual. You can hand a newborn to a different person for their care, and it will continue to develop.
You cannot transplant a fetus into another womb. The owner of that womb has innate agency over it.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday May 05 2018, @10:18AM
I agree the owner of the womb has (okay, should have) innate agency over it. Always.
However, I go from "yeah, so what" to "oh, that's a damned shame" when you have a developing brain. That's what would stop me — assuming I had the choice — from going for an abortion.
I didn't mean to imply that anyone but the woman should be the one making that choice. I can see that it very much looks like I did. My bad. Tired writing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @02:06AM
I don't know about them, but I think the woman should be able to terminate the pregnancy at any point, since it's her body. Therefore, to me, Roe v. Wade is insufficient.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 05 2018, @05:18PM
Human fetuses aren't parasites. Babies even after born can't survive without someone else's help. Many adults can't survive without someone else's help.
Our tech is improving. What if the fetus or even fertilized egg could survive till full term in an artificial womb?
Thus saying the line should be drawn at birth or at viability is as arbitrary as drawing it at conception or heart beat.
As for those hypothetical scenarios about rescuing toddlers vs frozen embryos from a fire. The main reason why I'd rescue a toddler over the embryos is because I'd get in trouble with the other pesky humans if I don't. For example if one of the embryos was special in some way - special healing factor (not retarded), I would personally prefer to rescue the embryo over a typical mediocre toddler. And if it is a particularly annoying toddler I'd prefer to save a random non-special embryo.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by aristarchus on Thursday May 03 2018, @07:13PM (39 children)
You need to read Judith Jarvis Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion" [wikipedia.org], where the analogy is to someone kidnapped and forced to provide a direct transfusion to a "Famous Violinist" who is dying, for a period of nine months. This really is all about controlling women, involuntary servitude, procreative slavery. If you had to save someone from drowning for nine months, your point might have some relevance. A right to life is not absolute, and does not entail, for example, the sacrifice of the lives of others to save yours. Nice if they volunteer, but you cannot coerce this.
(Score: -1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @07:20PM (22 children)
The mother already volunteered to do so when she got pregnant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @07:21PM
lol!
(Score: 2, Troll) by aristarchus on Thursday May 03 2018, @07:38PM (1 child)
So did the "sperm donor"! I say we put it in him, instead! Men's Rights! (to pregnancy! Yeah!!!) In fact, maybe we should just put the developing human being in you, since we can't, in this particular instance we have before us, find said donor, and the fetus has an absolute right to life! Grab 'im, boys! Set up the Operating Theatre! We got a "live one"!!
Seriously, if we can be such with slavers and Incels and Trump Evangelical Demon Worshippers, this could be a basis for limiting abortion to a certain time frame. If a woman stays pregnant for months after learning she is pregnant, there is a tacit agreement and consent? So to change one's mind at the last minute, so to speak, might not be right. But retro-active abortion? I always say you should at least wait and see how the kid turns out, and don't make a rash decision, but instead decide whether to take them out when they are 18-19, and you find them in an alt-right march.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @08:10PM
Slam...slam...slam...
A slamming sound could be heard. Anyone who heard this sound would recognize it immediately; it was the sound of justice! As the man's clenched fist pummeled the woman's face, his tears grew larger. A crunching sound rang out, and the man stopped. "Finally", he thought to himself, wiping away his tears of joy, "Finally, I have shown them all their true place". The man, now liberated, stood up and left the alleyway, which contained a few dozen female corpses with their skulls caved in. Today, freedom defeated tyranny.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 03 2018, @09:44PM (18 children)
What if the mother didn't volunteer to get pregnant?
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @10:02PM (17 children)
Is there some kind of right to have sex without getting pregnant? Hint: there isn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @10:15PM (9 children)
You are correct, there is no such right. However that doesn't seem to much matter to rapists, and given that 20%+ of women have been raped at some point in their lives you should probably check your bullshit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @12:43AM (3 children)
20%... Your laughable statistic suggests you are transgender twit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @12:54AM
Since there's nothing wrong with being transgender, let's focus on the twit part. Better to be a twit than a worthless piece of shit like yourself.
Now, if you don't mind, please go play a nice game of hide and go fuck yourself. Thanks! :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @04:08AM
See thing is most rapes aren't the mugged in the street variety, most are a date that takes advantage and many women just bury it as a shameful event. I see what level of discourse you have, the "I only believe what is right, thus what is right is what I believe."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @10:37AM
Approx 20% of the world is muslim so thats probably a minimum
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday May 04 2018, @08:55AM (4 children)
It is not a given - citation please from a credible source.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @10:41AM (1 child)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/09/05/cdc-nearly-1-in-5-women-have-been-raped/?noredirect=on [washingtonpost.com]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday May 04 2018, @05:23PM
So the citation that you gave claims nearly 1 in 5 - which is a terrible state of affairs but is not 20%+. So the exaggeration of the original claim was for what reason? Why shouldn't the true figures be sufficient enough to make the argument?
Another response to my question gave the following as a cite: https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence [rainn.org] but that only goes as far as 1 in 6 women being raped. Now there is a 6% difference in those reports, so it seems to me that the figure might lie somewhere between the 2 values claimed. Again, this is an unacceptable figure of which any nation should be ashamed but even this figure would have been good enough to make the case. It does not require any fudging to make the argument more credible.
It hardly gives me any faith in the arguments that are presented if the argument is made with distorted figures. It does suggest that someone has another agenda to push when I see inaccurate claims being made.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @10:53AM (1 child)
[citation] https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence [rainn.org] [citation]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @11:30AM
I feel sick after reading that
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday May 03 2018, @10:16PM (2 children)
Care to explain further? I'm unsure what you're arguing. Are you saying that women get pregnant every time they have sex?
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Friday May 04 2018, @03:30PM (1 child)
no, the body has a way of shutting that stuff down [independent.co.uk]
...the more you know!
(sigh)
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Saturday May 05 2018, @09:53AM
Good lord.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @02:10AM (1 child)
There's also no right to reside in someone else's body against their will, even to keep yourself alive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @10:55AM
Most guys pull out when theyre done but this 'must keep it in her to keep myself alive' is new
some sort of movie plot perhaps?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 04 2018, @03:46AM (1 child)
What if the mother did not volunteer to have sex?
Is there some right to have sex even if she says "No"?
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @06:48PM
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/04/two-types-of-envy.html [overcomingbias.com]
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/opinion/incels-sex-robots-redistribution.html [nytimes.com]
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @07:24PM (4 children)
The mother already volunteered to do exactly that when she got pregnant. There being a point where it's too late to change your mind is not the same as slavery.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @07:27PM
*sigh* Very well...
lol!
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Thursday May 03 2018, @08:21PM (1 child)
So you are in favor of indentured servitude?
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @01:30AM
There's no need to bring taxes into this. Stay on topic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @08:54AM
Hey... Isn't it well known by now that women have a God-Given "right" to change their minds, no matter what they "agreed" to ?
You know playing around with this is like playing around with a pen on a contract. Sign it and you are committed.
Don't women recognize (what) a pen is ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @08:30PM (6 children)
It's all very simple. Pregnancy is a temporary condition. Aside from real medical issues, abortion is a cosmetic procedure. Laws and insurance rates should be adjusted accordingly.
Yes, until we can grow babies in the lab, women are slaves to biology. That's the only way to put it. The species doesn't survive any other way. Take the issue up with your favored deity.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by pe1rxq on Thursday May 03 2018, @08:48PM (3 children)
At 7 billion our species (and the world we live on) could use a few abortions....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @09:20AM
The real heart-breaker for me is unwanted babies. Especially unwanted drug babies or malformed babies.
Is it better to bring a child into being, unwanted, a ward of the state, or should I be given the authority to decide its fate?
None of the above appeals to me.
I would suggest women be careful playing around with the baby factory until they are sure they want one.
Unless they too want to be burdened with decisions like this.
Incidentally, I have seen my momma-cat make these very same decisions, and I believe the very same God that fomented my existence also fomented the existence of that cat... and that cat - by instinct - has to do what it has to do. Momma-cat has done some "heartless" things, but so will the hawk. Its nature.
There are many things beyond my wisdom or knowledge, and I must accept that. I am not judge, jury, and executioner over such things, neither do I want authority ( and the responsibility that comes with it) over it either.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday May 04 2018, @01:58PM (1 child)
A hilarious modern and hot New Right troll is to trigger Old Leftists who are fundamentally primarily racist anti-white haters, by pointing out blacks are far over twice as likely to abort than whites, so in an absolute sense abortion is quite a horrific slaughter of the innocents but in a relative racial sense, abortion laws are supporting the white race and genociding the black race. Meanwhile for a few decades abortion has been a sacrament of the weird progressive religion of leftism. And cognitive dissonance makes white-hating leftists absolutely blow their tops hyper triggered into insanity. And it really pisses off the Blacks because once again the Jews (as the Left) are screwing over the Blacks for the zillionth time.
The Old Right was focused on "muh jesus" or "whatever supports Israel, our greatest ally" as exclusive priorities, so they were anti-abortion, but modern New Right is like "the left has killed three times as many supposedly leftist allied black babies as Hitler killed Jews despite the Old Right's opposition... just sayin maybe we should fight them on a different battle...".
Of course as black folks such as Kayne slowly escape the Democratic slave Plantation, this is probably going to tilt New Right perspectives as future right wing black leaders are not going to be amused at a genocide that has killed three times as many of their people as Hitler killed. The imaginary straw dog hollywood fiction anti-semite has always been Germanic, but the real world future concentration camp guards are probably going to be Black men wearing Nation of Islam uniforms.
I'm going to guess that as the left sunsets and melts down, its going to be a pretty uncomfortable position to be in, in near future decades.
I mean, regardless how much anyone likes or dislikes my political analysis above, its really not open to argument that in the boomer era abortion was all about leftists feeling good in the sexual revolution, but post-AIDS post-RedPill upcoming generations merely see racists genociding 20 million little black babies...
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @04:01PM
This is hilarious, VLM trying to play the race card. Go fuck yourself you racist douche.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @09:05PM
Right-o! I'll go ask KALI-ma, right away!!! Thanks for the suggestion!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @10:59AM
How the frick is 16+ years *temporary*?!?!?
Sure you can pass it off to someone else after it pops out but for most of us it goes on and on for years
(Score: 3, Insightful) by crafoo on Friday May 04 2018, @03:25AM (2 children)
>A right to life is not absolute, and does not entail, for example, the sacrifice of the lives of others to save yours.
Selective Service.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @04:15PM (1 child)
Should be abolished. And the government should have no power to conscript people at all, ever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @06:57PM
We're coming for your Capital Gains, Chuck! And then, may we 'ave your Liver?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @12:49PM
How is this about controlling women? They can keep their fucking legs closed. Nowhere is sex required for you to survive. If you don't want to be pregnant, don't fuck around.
I'm really getting sick of the retards in this thread. And just because I'm not even a nihilist I could allow a form of abortion once technology becomes available. We take your fucking uterus out and bring the baby to term outside "your body", and no you don't fucking get it back. You had a shot at being responsible with it, you are done.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday May 03 2018, @10:28PM
In space, no one can
hear you screambe a person?Is that what moon landing hoaxers really think? That's got to be the ultimate technicality! Because the astronauts were on oxygen and therefore not people when they visited, no person has actually visited the moon!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday May 03 2018, @07:54PM (18 children)
It doesn't baffle me in the slightest.
The first thing to note is that anti-abortion groups, and the people that support them, also regularly line up against measures that either don't affect abortions or actively prevent abortions, like:
- Comprehensive and scientifically accurate sex education in schools, where students are taught all about the birds and the bees and all the various birth control methods available to prevent pregnancy.
- Free and easy access to birth control. Otherwise known as "the vast majority of what Planned Parenthood actually does".
- As best as we can tell, free and easy access to pornography.
- Pretty much all sex acts that don't involve penises inside vaginas, including masturbation, anal and oral sex, and homosexual relations.
Another important barometer is whether the person in question opposes abortion in the case of medical necessity. If it's about preserving and promoting life, then they'll pick "baby dies" over "baby and mom both die". Currently, a little under half of people who say they are pro-life oppose abortion even if it will kill the mom and the baby to not have it. Which means that despite the rhetoric, this isn't about life, it's about something else.
And if you listen to the folks that oppose even medically necessary abortions for a while, it becomes abundantly clear what that "something else" really is: Opposition to the Sexual Revolution of the 1960's and the accompanying idea that sex purely for pleasure is morally acceptable. In this moral universe, sex for fun is always wrong, and unplanned pregnancy is about exposing and punishing women who have sex for fun. And no, her not consenting to the sex doesn't change anything in these people's minds, because to them the person who was raped is at least as responsible for the rape as the rapist.
As for Roe v Wade, what they're planning on doing, and have already done a couple of times, is stand up before the Supreme Court and say "Roe v Wade should be overturned and no longer count as currently law. You did that to Plessy v Ferguson and Dred Scott v Sandford, you can do it to Roe v Wade." Because for these folks it isn't really about the law, it's about their personal religious morality, which to them is more important than the law.
One last point: Conservatives are not libertarians, as a general rule. They tend to support freedom for business, but have no problems with restrictions on individuals.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @09:35PM (4 children)
You mean like how they teach kids gender is a choice now a days? Fuck off. Yeah, the sex ed was just a start. A step towards total degeneracy we have today.
Tell a 30-something-dick-carousel-rider who hit the wall if it was fun, now that she decided to settle down and no respectable man will touch her. Oh what's that? There are no good men left? For shame skank, for shame.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @01:34AM (1 child)
Notice how they won't dare touch when the absolute latest the abortion should be legal. Instead, lets focus on the fraction of a percent edge case.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @02:13AM
The woman should be able to terminate the pregnancy at any point. There you go.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @11:05AM
Actually, at some schools they teach the kids how to have anal sex
https://www.infowars.com/chicago-schools-teaching-safe-anal-sex-to-5th-graders/ [infowars.com]
http://rightwingnews.com/culture/progress-schools-teaching-your-10-year-old-child-about-anal-sex/ [rightwingnews.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @07:01PM
Yeah! MAGAots! Next thing, they will being trying for force kids to learn that global warming is anthropmorphic, or that the earth is not flat! Once they get started with that Leftist "knowledge" and "science" shit, there is no stopping them!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @09:46PM (1 child)
Planned Parenthood talks about all sorts of services they offer, but women have gone in with hidden cameras and attempted to get those services. Typically they get referred to other providers. This is especially true if you are actually planning parenthood.
What little they bother to do is helping to pay the rent, and much of that funding is from the government in various ways. So yes, people are being taxed to pay for abortion, because money is fungible. Every dollar is as good as every other dollar for paying the electric bill.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @07:07PM
James O'Keefe is NOT a woman! You have been deceived by Project Veritas! How ironic, in fact so ironic as to be iridiumic!! (He does dress up nice, as a woman, for a right-wing nut-job! Alt-right, alt-gender, I always say!)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday May 03 2018, @10:23PM (3 children)
I should be able to mod this to +6 as it is one of the clearest explanations I have read of the US conservative christian mindset.
Thanks.
(Score: 5, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Friday May 04 2018, @02:42AM (2 children)
Thing is, it's not particularly Christian. In many respects it's the diametric opposite. There's no loving thy neighbor, no. Neighbors are enemies. It's extreme social conservatism, patriarchy, and it looks remarkably similar across cultures and religions. The defining characteristics are men of limited intelligence and imagination in control and women powerless. And men using this control to father lots and lots of children, the better to bury enemy cultures by sheer weight of numbers. "Go forth and multiply" is not a conscious plan, it's more of an instinct. To them, the world is a divinely created stage upon which this contest with other peoples takes place, and children, even their own, are cannon fodder for the religious war machine. They don't think about any of that much, they like to just rely on gut instincts. Thinking is hard work. The unstated and possibly even subconscoius goal is to make more babies than the enemies, and they're always trying to twist the laws that direction. That's how they can be opposed to abortion, but in favor of guns.
Afghanistan is a good example of this sort of society. Some try to prevent girls from getting an education, a very few going as far as to try to murder them just for going to school. On average, women have 8 children each, and half of them die of malnutrition, disease, fatal accidents through extreme recklessness and carelessness, or of plain murder before reaching adulthood. The deaths of the children who don't make it are shrugged off as "that's life" and as "must have displeased Allah".
The US has had this on much smaller scales. Every few years there's another crazy cult with the same dreary setup of an absolute dictator of a leader and a bunch of brainwashed, feeble minded, slavish followers. Peoples Temple. Branch Davidians, and Yearning for Zion to name just a few. The biggest may be the Mormons. Yearning for Zion was one of the more nakedly obvious. The leader and his inner circle ran their organization as basically a personal harem for themselves. Teenage boys were kicked out, and teenage girls were forced to marry one of the elders who would then impregnate them as quickly as possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @12:51PM
And they call me fucking crazy. Yes, trying to keep people from murdering their children is like keeping women from learning their ABC's. Give me a fucking break clown-brain.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 05 2018, @05:29PM
Depending on the Christian beliefs it might be more logical to save the baby and let the Christian mother die.
For example if you believe that not all babies go to heaven if they die but all Christians go to heaven if they die. Then logically the baby takes priority over a Christian mother.
BUT if all babies go to heaven if they die then if we want more people in heaven we should be aborting more babies before they become adults on Earth. Maybe even producing more babies for that purpose - send thousands or even millions to heaven then ask for forgiveness and it's a win-win for everyone right?
So which is it? ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @11:26PM (4 children)
You say "it's about their personal religious morality", but that misses the point. It's about God's universal morality. These people don't have a choice, and neither do you: the morals apply to everybody. It doesn't matter if you object to God's will or even if you deny God's existence. The morals are universal.
(Score: 4, Informative) by NotSanguine on Thursday May 03 2018, @11:40PM (1 child)
I hope you and your imaginary sky daddy will be very happy together.
And no, you've just mistaken your trained-in prejudices for the laws of nature.
Educate yourself or remain forever ignorant.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @01:32AM
Oh, bless your heart.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday May 04 2018, @02:49AM (1 child)
No it isn't.
Even if you accept the Bible as God's word, there's a lot of stuff that modern-day Christians make a big deal about which have dubious-at-best Biblical basis (e.g. prosperity gospel). Which means that some individual human's interpretation is involved, and they're describing as "God's universal morality" stuff that God didn't actually put in the instruction manual.
Furthermore, the people who like to talk about God's universal morality do an awful lot of picking and choosing about which rules they're going to follow or care about. For instance, I live not too far from where the "King of Kings" statue used to be, which could certainly be seen as one of those graven images specifically banned in the 10 Commandments. Said statue was destroyed by a bolt of lightning - can you get more "hand-of-God" than that? Without wasting a moment, the church started raising money for, and built, a second giant statue. I kind of wanted to sneak in a radio mike tuned to the same frequency as the preacher, wait for the pastor to start talking about the need for a new giant statue and say in a loud booming voice over the PA system "How did you not get the message the first time?!? I thought I was pretty clear!"
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @09:27AM
Now, THAT, just might bring me back into the Church! ( Well, for at least one visit! ).
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday May 04 2018, @02:55PM (1 child)
I'm a New Right guy not an Old Right guy so I don't agree with many aspects of Old Right thinking. However I know boomer RINOs purty well, so I can intelligently comment on your claims about my Old Right cousins:
Basically we as a culture already have everything demanded on your list, to a rational minimum if not far to excess, so pushing hard for even more seems pointless to the Old Right and New Right. Left wing ranting about birth control being unavailable sounds as comedic as voting ID laws causing massive disenfranchisement of non-whites, highly ridiculous and unlikely straw dogging and race baiting rabble rousing. Its the same argument about a unrelated topic. Until every day we have police force a pack of condoms into every hand of every child at gunpoint with summary execution of those who won't accept, we'll have endless left wing claims that its simply scientifically proven impossible to obtain birth control and its so much work and nobody should be expected to put any effort into anything and we just need ever more programs and liberal arts grads to staff them, and its such a crisis we have to worry about, blah blah blah. Obtaining a condom is a rounding error for men compared to the willpower, money, and time required to get laid, amid a lot of straw dogs about imaginary victims and much like gun control no amount of regulation and expense is too much to save even one life blah blah. Its all kinda tired and old and not a modern outlook on life. Its not really a specific topic to argue against; its a legacy 60s hippie style of argument that is fought against as a class of argument, such that the facts of birth control don't matter to the debate, the problem is the philosophy behind the argument itself is unappealing and tired legacy arguments. If you take away the style of argument thats being opposed, there really isn't much of a point left. What is being fought against is kinda the left wing equivalent of the really old right doctrine of "total war". Much like its not possible even in theory to ever "win" the war on drugs, its not possible even in theory to "win" the war against sexual morality. I'm further not entirely clear why we "need" to win a war against sexual morality, how shitty of a world would it be to live in if we won that war? Other than pissing off the Old Right Christians the war against sexual morality doesn't seem like a useful goal to aspire to. A crazy alternative history world where leftists won everything they want, sounds like a great place to be a refugee from, or to write a dystopian novel about, but nobody would want to live there; so whats the point of the endless push?
As for why the Old Right believes certain non-rational things, its no different than Old Left Jewish Dietary Purity Laws or any other religious issue. They didn't get those cultural lifestyle outlooks by calm rational academic philosophical debate as grown adults consciously deciding the right way to live, and you're not going to talk them out of their belief in a rational manner. Find me a leftist who was keeping Kosher twitter posting or Kosher diet or Kosher community participation guidelines who was talked out of it in a calm rational academic philosophical manner, LOL good luck. If you're anti-Christian, in opposition to the beliefs and lifestyles of Christians, then actively and consciously be anti-Christian, don't be deeply closeted talking endlessly about how the Bible's calculated value for pi is wrong past the first digit of rounding in the writing about the dimensions of some round biblical thingie so THAT is we have to keep the ten commandments out of school because it would be awful to bring up a generation thinking pi is about three instead of the far more accurate fractional numerical representations of that irrational number. None of that angels dancing on head of pin stuff is convincing to anyone on either side. Christians will support Christian thought, people who don't care are mostly chill about living under Christian dominated areas, and anti-Christians are closeted and won't admit it instead producing vast bowls of word salad that convince nobody on either side. A long academic screed about abortion is like a long academic screed about why Jesus did (or did not) die for your sins or bacon is or is not kosher, nobody who agrees or disagrees has ever changed their mind because the sophistry was so well written or repeated enough times. Essentially most of the arguments boil down to "I'm not Christian so I'll make fun of weird corners of Christian thought", naturally the Old Right Christians are not going to respond favorably. Not being honest is a weak way to argue. Its like people who don't like black men shooting people fighting for control of the guns, as if the guns are the problem, because they don't think black-control will market as well as gun-control, but too many people see thru it and find the argument very unconvincing.
Old Right was wedded at the hip to evangelicals and neocons. New Right are mostly refugees from the capital L Libertarian party turning hard left, and as such are generally fairly socially libertarian. Generally speaking Old Right is dying out with the boomers and New Right is ascendent with Gen-X and younger so that statement will likely look really bizarre in a decade or two, when President Richard Spencer legalizes weed or replaces the Federal Reserve with bitcoin or whatever. Also Conservative in the sense of keeping society on the same path its been on since long before they were born, does not describe New Right who see 60s Old Left as hyper conservative and "the man" and demanding hyper conformist behavior and speech, whereas New Right is the rebels who want to change everything. Consider Hillary and her picture perfect 1975 campaign failing in 2016 because 2016 isn't 1975 anymore so a paleo-conservative 60s hippie simply had no chance in 2016, of course Hillary lost, it hadn't been 1975 in about 41 years at that time. Which side is getting trash talked by the conservative legacy cultural leaders in media and politics.. As a hint "the establishment" at CNN or NYT or the Post or Twitter or any of the online censors are not trash talking the old or new left... All the cool rebelious kids (and Kayne) are on the new right. In that way Hillary and her weird alliance with globalist business makes sense, leftism IS the new conservatism, its the new right who are the radicals. Making the statement look even weirder as USA politics continues its great realignment.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday May 04 2018, @03:05PM
Posted to edit that there is a specific name for that style of argument "tactical nihilism" where we MUST destroy society in order to save society.
There are entire reams of leftist thought on numerous topics that get written off by the Old Right and New Right as yeah yeah whatever nice argument "proving" civilization was a terrible idea and totally proving its impossible, therefore we must get rid of it and stamp out any semblance of civilization, and the response being something like I'd rather live in civilization so nice argument but oh well.
Its like taking a print out of that scientific paper that proved given simplified obsolete fluid dynamics equations, honeybees are unable to fly, then walking up to an active honeybee hive full of happy and busily working bees, and screaming that paper over at over at the bees as loud as possible from every form of media imaginable then being surprised the bees don't magically fall out of the sky, or the bees don't feel really bad about the proven facts of the argument, or really have much of any reaction other than "they crazy" and "I'm not electing that character as our next queen, no way" "sorry busy running civilization over here plz be quiet and get out of the way with your parodies".
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Friday May 04 2018, @02:50AM (4 children)
Before you do that, try actually reading the Constitution those Justices swore to uphold and defend. You will find not a single words in it about abortion, childbirth, medicine, when life begins, etc. Since none of those things are there and the 9th and 10th Amendments are most certainly still there they had zero lawful authority to have any opinion at all on the subject, it being one of the wide areas of authority reserved to the States. This means some States may enact laws on the subject you don't like, others may enact laws I don't like. And that is OK.
There is also no "Right to Privacy" emanating from some hitherto unseen penumbra of the 14th Amendment, so that too is currently an area of the law reserved to the States to deal with as they see fit until such time as the Constitution is lawfully amended by one of the two methods contained within itself.
She does. If you want to allow abortion in the first month or so after a rape I think you could easily build a 2/3 majority to amend the Constitution if some States went so far as forbid it in such a case and also forbid the morning after pill. What do you think sex is? Do you get Discovery Channel where you live? Ever heard that song by the Bloodhound Gang? When you engage in a procreative act, procreation is not an expected result. Women should not be infantalized and allowed to avoid responsibility for their actions.
As for the usual canard trotted out at this point in most of these debates (and I see in full swing elsewhere in this thread) that since only women get pregnant only women should have a voice in the debate, fuck that idiocy. Gestation only takes nine months but raising a child to maturity takes 18-21 years and men are legally co-equally liable for all of that period. So explain again why men's "choice" ends at orgasm? At the same time women can choose to either have "her" baby and extract resources from the father for decades, while at the same time explaining how he has zero say in whether she keeps "her" baby. It is only "their" baby for the few minutes in the courthouse every year or so while child support is being adjusted. So no, unless men can lalso egally "abort" their responsibilities (meaning the mother could either actually abort or carry on knowing she would be solely responsible for support) they have an equal say in abortion in both the individual case and the subject as public policy because they ARE equally involved.
That doesn't appear to be hard, baffling you. Lemme give some clues. Conservatives != Libertarians. Conservatives believe in moral order beyond "let the market sort it out" which is what distinguishes them from Libertarians. Second, you are assuming your view of abortion is universally held to be true, that a baby in the womb is only a clump of tissue. If one believes it is a developing child, murder is wrong and it is perfectly consistent with limited government to ask it to enforce the prohibitions on murder. That is in fact the crux of the entire debate.
Both sides use language to try to short circuit that debate by attempting to persuade the undecided public to adopt their preferred terminology. As soon as one accepts the "Pro Choice" language the conclusion becomes obvious. To be subject to a "choice" it can't be a baby's life under debate, right? Nobody would seriously have the balls (ok, there are a few... Singer for one) to stand up and say women should have the right to kill their children. Just wouldn't happen, political suicide. Of course if one is paying attention there is another assumption packed in the term the supporters hope you don't notice. Women can only have a "right to choose" if we are all in agreement that it isn't an important choice.
Equally the "Pro Life" term is loaded with a conclusion, to accept it also ends the debate. Nobody is going to agree with that terminology, that "Life" is what is being debated, and say "Screw it, so it is alive. Kill it anyway!" Once you accept the language, the conclusion comes packed quietly along with it.
So avoid both if you want to debate it honestly you have to just say it is the Abortion debate. Or a debate about when life begins for purposes of making law. Religions differ on the point and we can't just pick one and impose it so there has to be a line picked that we can politically agree on enough to move on to another issue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @11:34AM (3 children)
If you want to allow abortion in the first month or so after a rape
Remind me, how long does it take for a woman to tell she is pregnant?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @07:18PM (1 child)
jmorris does not know any women. His entire post is based on hearsay. And you know what they say about her-say, constitutionally?
(Score: 2) by Tara Li on Wednesday May 09 2018, @07:45PM
10 days to 3 weeks, according to the makers of pregnancy tests.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday May 05 2018, @03:57AM
One presumes that if a woman is raped she knows sex happened and if she has watched TV or attended a government school she knows how babies get made so is fully aware of the possibility of pregnancy. Lets try to give women a little credit for having a brain, K? So step one is the morning after pill, that should be automatically offered at the same time the rape kit is being processed, just put the pill in the kits and be done. Step two is carefully watching for pregnancy, even those $1 tests can spot it pretty early now and providing a rape victim actual medical assistance to quickly identify and fix the problem would be something I'd support. So lets just take those canards off the table, rape and life of the mother are perfectly acceptable exceptions for most people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @10:35AM
Great. The fetus can be transferred to someone else if the courts really want it to live.