It is not at all surprising that public support for Roe v. Wade is typically rooted in a lack of knowledge.
Due to circumstances beyond our control, the term “September 11th” almost instantly became a household phrase. It represents a day of great tragedy and outrage wherein over 3,000 people were murdered at the hands of Islamic extremists who chose to callously sacrifice innocent human life to further a narrow and selfish political agenda.
But another date, January 22, which is not so well-known, signifies an equally outrageous and solemn occasion. January 22, 2008, marks the 35th anniversary of what is, unquestionably, one of the U.S. Supreme Court’s most highly controversial and divisive rulings in its 200-plus year history — Roe v. Wade.
The Roe decision, authored by Justice Harry Blackmun, found for the first time that the U.S. Constitution somehow guaranteed the phantom “right” for a mother to have the innocent child which grew within her summarily killed.
Since that time, what seems an endless string of misguided women and innocent children have been victimized by this much more subtle, yet equally deadly form of politically motivated violence. And those to blame are, once again, extremists with an almost religious zeal who callously “choose” to sacrifice innocent human life to further a narrow and selfish political agenda.
It’s not at all surprising that what public support there is for Roe v. Wade is typically rooted in a lack of knowledge. Ignorance is bliss, and blissful ignorance relative to Roe is by design. It’s intentionally fueled through obfuscation and disinformation, fostered by pro-abortion activists and other like-minded leftists. Polls show conclusively that the more people learn about Roe v. Wade, the less likely they are to support it.
And so, in an effort to help educate the public about Roe, members from a coalition of pro-family organizations are asking America the following question: “Do you really know Roe?”
Concerned Women for America (CWA), Focus on the Family, the Alliance Defense Fund and the Family Research Council have designed a website with a brief online questionnaire to test your knowledge about Roe v. Wade. It’s a Roe IQ test, and it can be taken in a few short minutes at RoeIQTest.com.
We’ve all heard the Biblical admonition, “A man reaps what he sows.” With Roe, we have reaped a culture of death. The human toll Roe has taken is unfathomable and will only increase until people take the time to learn the truth about this convoluted and lethal ruling.
The number of those slaughtered as a direct result of Roe far exceeds that of Americans killed in all U.S. wars combined. Yet, in this war — the war for our culture — it is innocent children whose bodies are strewn across the battle field, buried — unceremoniously — in mass graves behind the local Planned Parenthood.
Although we think of 1973 — the year Roe was decided — as relatively recent, there remained, even then, a raging debate over when life begins. To abortion proponents, the pre-born child was merely a “lifeless blob” or a “nonviable mass of tissue” that could be done away with at any time prior to birth without moral or legal implications.
To the pro-life side, human life begins at the moment of conception with all the associated legal and civil rights of personhood attached.
The Roe Court sided with the pro-abortionists.
But since that time, science and technology have proven pro-lifers right and the Roe Court wrong. Addressing that reality, CWA President Wendy Wright noted, “Technology and testimonies have splintered support for abortion, paving the way for more protection for women and unborn children.
“Advances in technology, particularly 3D and 4D ultrasound, provide a window into the womb, a picture that this is indeed a human being, not — as many abortion clinics tell unsuspecting women — a ‘blob of tissue.’ Whereas Roe claimed we do not know when life begins, ultrasounds show that it is clearly before birth.”
History has a way of repeating itself. The Roe decision was not the first time the U.S. Supreme Court has so disgraced our nation. Roe v. Wade represents the twin bookend to the Court’s shameful 1857 Dred Scott decision. In Dred Scott the Court absurdly held that African-American slaves, even if emancipated, were not fully persons and therefore could never be considered U.S. citizens. Likewise, Roe ruled that children in gestation are not fully persons and are therefore not entitled to their most basic civil right . . . life.
As with Dred Scott, Roe’s fate is inevitable. It’s just a matter of time. History will eventually judge Roe v. Wade every bit as harshly as it judged Dred Scott. But until that time, innocent children continue to die on a daily basis.
Knowledge is power, and as more people gain knowledge about Roe v. Wade, the less power the multi-billion dollar abortion industry maintains. Make no mistake — they’ll do anything and everything to keep that from happening.
But their ghoulish zeal betrays their true agenda. By any reasonable measure the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade is nothing to celebrate. It is a national day of mourning. The post-Roe highway is awash with the blood of countless innocents. And those who have lead these little lambs to the slaughter are responsible.
Even so, this will not stop the mainstream media, radical feminists and other pro-abortion Kool-Aid guzzlers on the Left from celebrating the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. They’ll break out the streamers and party hats and dance gleefully around the golden calf of euphemistic “choice.”
But power is there for the taking.
Please visit RoeIQTest.com before January 22 and answer the question, “Do you really know Roe,” for yourself. Then, when you see the Left celebrating Roe v. Wade and the culture of death it has spawned, you can rest assured that you refused to stay in the dark. You refused to remain powerless.
After all . . . isn’t it your choice?
Chasm:
First to respond to a general point you made, and then to respond to your comments directed to me.
“What I DON’T understand is, how does all of this jibe with your profession to ’smaller, less intrusive’ government?”
*** It is the legitimate role of the government to help provide for the safety and security of its people. This is why we have armies to defend against foreign invasion, and police forces to protect us internally. Protecting innocent human life in the womb from arbitrary elective abortion is a logical extension of this.
However, just as having a police force doesn’t permit the police to arbitrarily enter your home, and forces the courts to follow established rules of evidence when prosecuting law breakers, the Constitution does not permit the federal government to force women to give birth. We are not advocating a federal law against abortion. We are advocating that the bogus justification for allowing federal action regarding abortion be overturned, and this matter be returned to the states for 50 individual decisions. This is where the abortion decision belongs.
If the nation ever adopted a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion, then federal action would be permitted. Adopting this amendment would require a significant national consensus that doesn’t exist today. In the mean time, the decision to electively abort children should be returned to its proper venue where the people of this country, not the courts, decide the issue.
“But tell me, my friend, if your sister-in-laws’ doctors couldn’t give a % change of dying, how are they supposed to give a % chance of legality to the hospital lawyers?”
*** Life is infinitely more complicated than telling a woman you have a 73.2% chance of dying. There are medicines that have certain positive and negative effects. There are routines that can benefit the woman (complete bed rest, transfusions, etc.). There is constant monitoring of a variety of critical indicators (blood pressure, heart rate, etc.) for both her and her developing child.
My sister in law weighed all these ongoing factors — which couldn’t all be precisely quantified — and chose to go through with the pregnancy. Medically, legally and morally she could have aborted at any time following her 10th week, when the condition began to manifest itself. She didn’t do the morally correct thing by giving birth in this situation, any more than it would have been immoral to terminate in this situation. At best this is a morally neutral situation. When two lives are at risk of death, we can’t assign more value to one than another. It’s the woman’s right to choose her life. But this isn’t the case with the overwhelming majority of elective abortions. It isn’t a decision between two human lives at risk. The aborted baby poses no life/death risk to the woman. Aborting it because it’s unwanted, inconvenient, the woman couldn’t bear to put it up for adoption, etc, is immoral. An innocent human life is being taken arbitrarily and capriciously. Wanting an abortion to feel better mentally is not on par with needing an abortion to save one’s life.
As far as the lawyers go, looking at statistical probabilities to assign culpability in a court of law is not the issue. John Edwards built his career on convincing juries that certain medical practices lead to childhood autism. His claims — though supported with “statistics” — have proven to be bogus. I would hope that when deciding whether to kill a helpless, innocent human being or not we would do more than crunch a bunch of numbers, assign a percentage variable to the outcome, and kill everyone who falls below the cut off line. That’s the kind of mentality one usually assigns to Nazi medical practices.
“If there are no abortion clinics, and no doctors performing them as a matter of profession, only hospital surgeons and OBGYN’s in genuine medical emergencies will be allowed to perform them.”
*** You speak in absolutes. If RvW is overturned, the decision will return to the 50 states. As much as I wish it were otherwise, some states will undoubtedly permit abortion. So abortionists who want to practice their trade will find an outlet, even though they may have to relocate.
But in all seriousness, to suggest that we need to keep abortion active in all 50 states and kill 50 million-plus babies to date (and counting) so that physicians can practice their techniques for the rare medical emergency is kind of silly. If we can teach anatomy by dissecting virtual frogs so as not to upset the animal rights people, then surely we can find a way to adequately prepare our doctors without slaughtering millions of innocent human beings as “practice”.
“you don’t believe that every potential pregnancy complication with be scrutinized both medically and LEGALLY before any kind of action is allowed? Would you really want the question of legality be one more thing the doctors who were caring for your sister-in-law have to worry about?”
*** I believe that this WILL indeed be the case, and it’s a good thing. I believe that this will force the medical community to create specific objective standards for life-saving abortions, and not allow subjective (“I think her mental health will be better if we abort”) standards. These same objective standards exist for all emergency room decisions where a patient’s life is judged at risk. Our doctors (and lawyers) have no trouble deciding whether to amputate a limb of an unconscious person to save their life, remove the spleen of a gunshot victim to save their life, and the courts even require certain religious fundamentalists to allow their children to be operated on. If the courts can require a Jehovah’s Witness to give their child a life saving blood transfusion against their will, we can, as a society, figure out how to determine whether the life of a mother is truly at risk during pregnancy.
These aren’t puppies we’re euthanizing, or cancerous tumors we’re removing. They are human children developing inside the womb. Again, to repeat a point I made earlier, the issue is whether that “thing” being aborted is human or not. The problem many people have with looking at human life is that they focus on the surface issues only. It must meet certain subjective criteria before they will feel comfortable admitting (or become convinced, or be forced to concede) that it is indeed a human child. It must survive on its own outside the womb. It must have a brain instead of a brain stem. Its heart must be beating. It must pass through the birth canal. And so on, and so on. This is the same subjective nonsense that allowed people to look at the color of a man’s skin and say that “it” did not fit the definition of a “human.” Or make the same judgment based on religion, or national origin, or intelligence, or its expected or actual quality of life, or any other characteristic. It’s all nonsense. Rationalization disguised as objective analysis
When I look at a newborn baby girl I don’t see anything that resembles a thirty-year old woman. The head and limbs are not in the same size or proportion, and its body shape is completely different. It doesn’t communicate the same way, or have any appreciation at all for its surroundings. I’d be just as justified calling it “proto-Mary” as I would be to call the adult woman “Mary” if I based my criteria on the same distorted logic that abortionists use to distinguish between a 19- and 20-week old fetus.
“Creating human life” is just that. Creation does not mean that life can’t develop, and that in developing life cannot change appearance, often radically. A caterpillar bears no resemblance at all to a butterfly, but still represents the same life — just at a different stage in development. As 30-year old Mary continues to age (or “develop”) her external features and internal organs will change too. Change is what defines life. Without it we’re dead. So why should change be used to deny life to a developing human being, instead of indicate absolute proof of it?
You can take a trillion human sperm and a thousand human eggs and place them in two separate containers. As long as they do not mix, human life is impossible. But allow a single sperm and a single egg to unite inside a woman’s body, and human life has begun. One sentence, identifying the precise moment in time when the status of each constituent element fundamentally changes, is all that is needed to supplement this statement with the logic to support it. Find me the same parsimony in words to justify an elective abortion at week 19, 30, 22, 15, or any point in between, and I’ll support the wisdom of that choice instead of labeling it what it really is, a rationalization disguised as a thoughtful choice to advance a political agenda.
In the United States, 20 weeks represents the “magic” date that human life is assigned to the developing child. Why does 24 hours make such a difference either way in granting “human” status? Or even 4 hours? I can tell you exactly why one second matters in the view that life begins at the moment of conception.
Just to be perfectly clear about my last comments, the abortion decision should be a state legislative matter, not a Federal judicial matter.
Having said that, I believe that abortion kills innocent human life for the reasons I expressed. I would exercise my rights under the Constitution to influence policy at the State level to outlaw this practice. If enough people agree, elective abortions would become illegal except to save the life of a pregnant woman. If they don’t, abortion would continue in that state.
Your (and others’) arguments about allowing abortion would compete against mine (and others’) that oppose abortion. In the end the people would decide the issue, not the courts, the way all laws should be made.
Bombing abortion clinics and killing doctors is not justified for the reasons I expressed at length in my original paper on this subject.
No one is advocating that the Federal government outlaw abortion, except through a Constitutional amendment to that effect that must gain widespread popular support to be enacted. Abortion proponents have an equal opportunity to introduce an amendment permitting abortion and settling the issue in their favor. This is the way our Republic is supposed to function.
Ya, Dr Jackson, thanks for the little mini-democracy lesson, excepting for one little thing: In the ‘American’ version of democracy, it isn’t supposed to look quite so much like ‘mob-rule.’ For instance, my state can’t just decide, through voting naturally, that people with darker skin have to become the lighter folks slaves.
For the exact same reason, actually, states can’t just vote on weather or not to make personal medical decisions for one-half the population. It’s called ‘Civil Rights,’ perhaps you’ve heard of it?
“For instance, my state can’t just decide, through voting naturally, that people with darker skin have to become the lighter folks slaves.”
*** Correct. Because we have a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMEND that prohibits this. And yet you don’t object to the fact that the courts can decide that a 19 week, 6 day, 23 hour, 59 second developing child is just a tumor, but at 20 weeks it magically turns into a human being?
I don’t underrstand why some comments appear immediately, and others are delayed. This was supposed to appear before my comment “Just to be clear …”
Chasm:
First to respond to a general point you made, and then to respond to your comments directed to me.
“What I DON’T understand is, how does all of this jibe with your profession to ’smaller, less intrusive’ government?”
*** It is the legitimate role of the government to help provide for the safety and security of its people. This is why we have armies to defend against foreign invasion, and police forces to protect us internally. Protecting innocent human life in the womb from arbitrary elective abortion is a logical extension of this.
However, just as having a police force doesn’t permit the police to arbitrarily enter your home, and forces the courts to follow established rules of evidence when prosecuting law breakers, the Constitution does not permit the federal government to force women to give birth. We are not advocating a federal law against abortion. We are advocating that the bogus justification for allowing federal action regarding abortion be overturned, and this matter be returned to the states for 50 individual decisions. This is where the abortion decision belongs.
If the nation ever adopted a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion, then federal action would be permitted. Adopting this amendment would require a significant national consensus that doesn’t exist today. In the mean time, the decision to electively abort children should be returned to its proper venue where the people of this country, not the courts, decide the issue.
“But tell me, my friend, if your sister-in-laws’ doctors couldn’t give a % change of dying, how are they supposed to give a % chance of legality to the hospital lawyers?”
*** Life is infinitely more complicated than telling a woman you have a 73.2% chance of dying. There are medicines that have certain positive and negative effects. There are routines that can benefit the woman (complete bed rest, transfusions, etc.). There is constant monitoring of a variety of critical indicators (blood pressure, heart rate, etc.) for both her and her developing child.
My sister in law weighed all these ongoing factors — which couldn’t all be precisely quantified — and chose to go through with the pregnancy. Medically, legally and morally she could have aborted at any time following her 10th week, when the condition began to manifest itself. She didn’t do the morally correct thing by giving birth in this situation, any more than it would have been immoral to terminate in this situation. At best this is a morally neutral situation. When two lives are at risk of death, we can’t assign more value to one than another. It’s the woman’s right to choose her life. But this isn’t the case with the overwhelming majority of elective abortions. It isn’t a decision between two human lives at risk. The aborted baby poses no life/death risk to the woman. Aborting it because it’s unwanted, inconvenient, the woman couldn’t bear to put it up for adoption, etc, is immoral. An innocent human life is being taken arbitrarily and capriciously. Wanting an abortion to feel better mentally is not on par with needing an abortion to save one’s life.
As far as the lawyers go, looking at statistical probabilities to assign culpability in a court of law is not the issue. John Edwards built his career on convincing juries that certain medical practices lead to childhood autism. His claims — though supported with “statistics” — have proven to be bogus. I would hope that when deciding whether to kill a helpless, innocent human being or not we would do more than crunch a bunch of numbers, assign a percentage variable to the outcome, and kill everyone who falls below the cut off line. That’s the kind of mentality one usually assigns to Nazi medical practices.
“If there are no abortion clinics, and no doctors performing them as a matter of profession, only hospital surgeons and OBGYN’s in genuine medical emergencies will be allowed to perform them.”
*** You speak in absolutes. If RvW is overturned, the decision will return to the 50 states. As much as I wish it were otherwise, some states will undoubtedly permit abortion. So abortionists who want to practice their trade will find an outlet, even though they may have to relocate.
But in all seriousness, to suggest that we need to keep abortion active in all 50 states and kill 50 million-plus babies to date (and counting) so that physicians can practice their techniques for the rare medical emergency is kind of silly. If we can teach anatomy by dissecting virtual frogs so as not to upset the animal rights people, then surely we can find a way to adequately prepare our doctors without slaughtering millions of innocent human beings as “practice”.
“you don’t believe that every potential pregnancy complication with be scrutinized both medically and LEGALLY before any kind of action is allowed? Would you really want the question of legality be one more thing the doctors who were caring for your sister-in-law have to worry about?”
*** I believe that this WILL indeed be the case, and it’s a good thing. I believe that this will force the medical community to create specific objective standards for life-saving abortions, and not allow subjective (“I think her mental health will be better if we abort”) standards. These same objective standards exist for all emergency room decisions where a patient’s life is judged at risk. Our doctors (and lawyers) have no trouble deciding whether to amputate a limb of an unconscious person to save their life, remove the spleen of a gunshot victim to save their life, and the courts even require certain religious fundamentalists to allow their children to be operated on. If the courts can require a Jehovah’s Witness to give their child a life saving blood transfusion against their will, we can, as a society, figure out how to determine whether the life of a mother is truly at risk during pregnancy.
These aren’t puppies we’re euthanizing, or cancerous tumors we’re removing. They are human children developing inside the womb. Again, to repeat a point I made earlier, the issue is whether that “thing” being aborted is human or not. The problem many people have with looking at human life is that they focus on the surface issues only. It must meet certain subjective criteria before they will feel comfortable admitting (or become convinced, or be forced to concede) that it is indeed a human child. It must survive on its own outside the womb. It must have a brain instead of a brain stem. Its heart must be beating. It must pass through the birth canal. And so on, and so on. This is the same subjective nonsense that allowed people to look at the color of a man’s skin and say that “it” did not fit the definition of a “human.” Or make the same judgment based on religion, or national origin, or intelligence, or its expected or actual quality of life, or any other characteristic. It’s all nonsense. Rationalization disguised as objective analysis
When I look at a newborn baby girl I don’t see anything that resembles a thirty-year old woman. The head and limbs are not in the same size or proportion, and its body shape is completely different. It doesn’t communicate the same way, or have any appreciation at all for its surroundings. I’d be just as justified calling it “proto-Mary” as I would be to call the adult woman “Mary” if I based my criteria on the same distorted logic that abortionists use to distinguish between a 19- and 20-week old fetus.
“Creating human life” is just that. Creation does not mean that life can’t develop, and that in developing life cannot change appearance, often radically. A caterpillar bears no resemblance at all to a butterfly, but still represents the same life — just at a different stage in development. As 30-year old Mary continues to age (or “develop”) her external features and internal organs will change too. Change is what defines life. Without it we’re dead. So why should change be used to deny life to a developing human being, instead of indicate absolute proof of it?
You can take a trillion human sperm and a thousand human eggs and place them in two separate containers. As long as they do not mix, human life is impossible. But allow a single sperm and a single egg to unite inside a woman’s body, and human life has begun. One sentence, identifying the precise moment in time when the status of each constituent element fundamentally changes, is all that is needed to supplement this statement with the logic to support it. Find me the same parsimony in words to justify an elective abortion at week 19, 30, 22, 15, or any point in between, and I’ll support the wisdom of that choice instead of labeling it what it really is, a rationalization disguised as a thoughtful choice to advance a political agenda.
In the United States, 20 weeks represents the “magic” date that human life is assigned to the developing child. Why does 24 hours make such a difference either way in granting “human” status? Or even 4 hours? I can tell you exactly why one second matters in the view that life begins at the moment of conception.
And, aborting a baby for anything other than the life of the mother being in danger is not a “personal medical decision”. It’s a choice based on other factors (inconvenience of the pregnancy, a desire for a higher standard of living; in fact no reason is needed at all to end that human life.)
The proponents of abortion can only make their case by appealing to hypothetical, hyperbolic fears (the state will now require pregnancy licenses, etc.). They always equate elective abortion with medical necessity, when no such necessity routinely exists. They absolutely will not state how they conclude that a 19 week, 6 day, 23 hour, 59 second fetus is not human, but a 20 week old fetus is, other than to say it seems like a reasonable political compromise.
They constantly talk about how much they care about the lives of innocent people (women) who the state is forcing to do something against their will, or how horrible it is to treat certain people (slaves) like inferior human beings. But they absolutely refuse to consider that we’ve killed 50 million innocent babies in this country alone through elective abortions.
Their position is based on personal feelings devoid of science, and political agendas. And yet they feel compelled to lecture us about “Civil Rights” and mob rule.
Chasm: I’ve responded to your points in comments 50 and 51, but it’s still hung up in the filter.
Sure, Chasm, keep avoiding the issue. Keep thowing out spectres of eeeevil conservatives wanting to regulate your sex life (uninteresting as it probably is). Your rhetoric is so over the top that you’re probably making Negibozu envious. “Personal medical decisions?” THAT’S what we’re talking about? Really? Personal medical decisions that involve the death of a baby, but hey, as long as it’s PERSONAL.
“Heck, if MM were elected governor of MoutanManTopia he’d make sure outlawing condoms, adultery and women’s pants was made part of his oath of office.” Total and complete tripe. Typical leftist nonsense. Attack the person when all else fails.
Ok, ok, I admit it. Gotta come clean. We conservatives have a secret agenda. We want to regulate sex, yessir. The fact that millions of babies are dying, well, that’s only a smoke screen. Theocracy, baby, that’s where it’s at. Gotta drain all the fun out of life. That’s our goal.
Yup, we conservatives want to rule your life. We want to take tax money and spend it on programs that implement our social vision for America. We have a bunch of pet projects that just need your money to get going. We have a lot to say about marriage, gays, rules for the workplace, and how you live your life.
Oh. Wait. That’s leftists who want to do that. Sorrry about that.
Perhaps it should be left up to the States. We might as well let the South succeed and create their own little theocracy and let them be ruled by the bible. Stop trying to take the rights of people away in order to save some fetuses.
An unwanted pregnancy is just that – unwanted.
Conservatives using tax money to control the social lives of Americans? Sounds quite petty compared to liberals trying to use that money to improve the lives of every one of the citizens. Conservative morals are so backwards it’s not even funny sometimes. Here in North Carolina, out Governor created a plan to allow out of state teachers to teach here (we’ve been having a teacher shortage) without having to get certified by North Carolina standards. That bill was shot down by conservatives claiming that it would lower our standard of teachers. Kind of ironic that we (and the rest of the South) are a concentration of the worst education in this entire country.
Maybe I’d just be better off moving up North where the people are backwards, have a higher standard of living, higher literacy rate, and just about higher everything else instead of trying to bring the great benefits of American life to the rest of the country. Go ahead conservatives, claim that you stand for freedom when all you want to do is take it away.
Negibozu: There are a lot of people willing to help you pack. Just let us know where and when.
Phil, I believe by your comment that you just indicated that Negibozu is unwanted. By his own logic, he is now eligible for a late-term abortion. Very late term. Perhaps we can find a doctor that respects our privacy to undertake this personal medical decision.
I knew someone would take the bait I threw out, and it was GreginNY when he said he “wondered how many ‘leftists’ support sedonaman’s list he posted above, and … What he doesn’t realize is that virtually nobody believes everything on his frightening list of leftists beliefs.”
I never said every liberal/Leftist believed everything on the list, but every one of the items is supported (or not opposed) by liberal/Leftist thought. How do I know? Because they have done a very good job telling us so. He then confirms my list as being at least Leftist when he says, “Sedonman is right. He never [heard] a description of leftists’ beliefs put any better.” He also concedes the list is “frightening”.
Liberals are the ones who have been “duped”, as GreginNY puts it. They have fallen for the Big Lie, which is that evil doesn’t exist. This is the essence of moral relativism, Nietzscheism, and polylogism (to name a few liberal “isms”) which all maintain that, since everyone has his own truth, morality is internal to the individual and therefore relative to the individual.
Nietzsche, for example, claimed that the individual human will is the highest and best value, and asserts that the individual will is sovereign and the arbiter of all value. Within a liberal/Leftist society, all individual human wills are considered of equal value, validity, and worth; and there is no principle [e.g., God] by which to discern among them. When individual human wills conflict, society is then a contest of a will to power, of asserting one’s preferences over those of others. It is also known as “might makes right”. This is the liberal/Leftist society. In such a society, human life is NOT sacrosanct; the human WILL is sacrosanct. Abortion policy is the perfect expression of this principle. Therefore, if I have the lungpower to ram a legal interpretation through the courts that said society would be better off if “society-destroyers” (i.e., liberal Leftists) are dead, then I’m right because my will prevailed.
Polylogism (lit., “many logics”) is another. Polylogism doesn’t claim that different individuals or different societies have different methods of finding truth, but that each one can have its own “truth” – “What’s true for you might not be true for me” means that we can disagree and both be right, which is absurd on its face because if two statements contradict each other, at least one of them is wrong. Polylogism therefore claims that there are no universal truths, which is a failure to live up to its own claim to be a universal truth itself.
What this all means is that according to the liberal/Leftist, there are no moral truths because if there were, those who held them would be right, whereas those who didn’t would be wrong, and thus unequal, which is not allowed. Since moral truths don’t exist, reason cannot ascertain any, as the Declaration of Independence claims to; then the liberals’ own claims collapse. How can your “right to choose” be denied if you don’t have any rights to begin with?
Also, there is plenty of evidence the proponents don’t even believe their own propaganda. If the aborted baby in Nurse Shafer’s testimony above was not a baby, but just a blob, a tumor, why did the doctor let the mother see it? Why did they have to clean it up and wrap it in a blanket? These acts speak volumes about the admission by the abortionist of the humanity of the baby.
Another thing. People naturally seek out that which is good and try to avoid doing evil. Therefore, evil must be presented as a good. Who can argue with “freedom” or “choice”? If abortion involved nothing more morally than choosing Coke over Pepsi, its proponents wouldn’t have to craft exotic arguments to sell it to the naïve and gullible. How many women would “choose” abortion if, rather than being called a woman’s “freedom to choose”, it was called what it is: a method of birth control, of racial/sex selection, and/or of culling out the weak, an admission that the individual is a slave to his/her passions and ultimately the state that funds it, and at the bottom, anti-family?
P.S. Mountain Man: Alright!
Negibozu,
You said: “I personally feel that by the 3rd trimester the baby has formed quite a bit and is actually open to fair debate as to if it can be considered a real baby and abortion considered an inhumane act. However, legally people shouldn’t be restricted at all, but I personally am against it. As for the distinctions, have you seen the difference in a 2nd and 3rd trimester baby? Once again, I’m not an advocate of women going out and getting abortions, the government just doesn’t have the right to restrict people from doing it.”
Have you seen a baby terminated in the first trimester? I have. She was my child at the end of her first trimester. My wife began hemorrhaging, so the doctor persuaded us the baby wouldn’t survive and was already dying. She said my wife’s life was at risk if we persisted in saving the baby (one of the rare cases in which a mother’s life really is at risk). It was it a bitter pill for both of us, yet neither of us thought to question the prevailing ‘wisdom’ of abortion or ask if all had been done that could be done. I believed I was doing a noble and selfless thing; supporting my wife in her time of need and respecting ‘her right’ to decide this matter unhindered by my ‘selfish’ desire to save my child. That was back when I was still in bondage to the ‘darkside’ (aka, liberalism). So, when the doctor asked her (and only her) what she wanted done, I stood mute until my wife asked my opinion. To my shame and remorse, I consented. I told her it was okay and I’d stand by her ‘choice’. The doctor first made sure the baby was dead, then, as I stood holding my wife’s hand, our daughter was scraped out and placed in a steel tray. Mercifully, my wife was drugged beyond knowing – would that I had also. I had only the barest glimpse before a lid was put on the tray and she was whisked away for disposal. That was all I needed to convince me this had been a person and not a fetus, and I had played a role in her death.
I didn’t sort all that out then and there, only much later. I could claim I was young and ignorant, but that would be cheating. I knew in my heart it was wrong, wanted to do more for my child, yet consented anyway. “Evil happens when good men do nothing”. What we ‘know-in-our-hearts-to-be-true’ is merely a euphemism for that part of our brains representing moral-judgment. I have had many doubts since that time and got a second chance to be a father. I don’t know if that doctor was right in protecting my wife’s life over that of ‘a mere fetus’, I don’t really know how much ‘at risk’ she really was and have only the doctor’s opinion of it. But, I do know that doctor viewed the matter as a single-option scenario – one in which a ‘fetus’ has no rights and fathers have no say. She was a true believer in the cult of abortion, and saw her action as the only conceivable course. I didn’t realize then just how much she steered our decision. Yet, she could not have done that had we not also been willing. You say you ‘feel’ no remorse toward a 1st trimester fetus and ‘feel’ a woman’s ‘right’ over her body trumps the life of her child. Fortunately, I feel enough remorse for both of us and pray you never get the same ‘opportunity’.
What if, instead, I say to you: I ‘feel’ toward late 3rd trimester fetuses as you feel toward 1st trimester; and declare it my ‘superior judgment’ that last minute abortions are okay. There is little to distinguish, then, between your cutoff and mine. Yet, will you not then chastise me for playing god with someone else’s life? How about 10-minutes post-birth? Is that okay? Surely, a child that young can have no feeling in the matter, either way and how much difference can there be between fetus in or out of the womb separated by a mere 10-minutes? How about 6-months post birth, before the child has any sense of ‘self’ and is incapable of feeding herself. All these are arbitrary criteria. They have in common the child is no position to plead for itself or defend itself as human. These were the same arguments used in killing Terry Schiavo and other PVS patients. So, following your reasoning, any one of these is an equally acceptable cutoff for viability + humanity.
Phillip is correct that conception is the unambiguous exception to the rule. Whether it represents the true starting point of humanity may be debatable to some. Yet, it has the virtue even a secularist can safely say that: before conception, there is no person and no life; whereas, after conception: it certainly is life and could very well be a person. Since you don’t know and you can’t prove otherwise, why should your judgment that 1st trimester abortion is okay be used as the standard? The same can be said of five judges setting themselves up to play god.
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Next, you said: “The problem here is that you’re arguing United States law when nearly every person that is pro-life bases their arguments on what they feel is morally right. Roe v. Wade made it so the states couldn’t deny the rights of women to get a potentially life-saving abortion.”
With this statement you destroy your own argument. Less than 1% of women who get an abortion have been raped or need it to save their lives; plus, Roe v. Wade is not United States law. Indeed, it is not any law. It is the baseless judgment of five out of nine judges regarding the Constitutionality of state laws. If false, then those five exceeded their power of law-review by, instead, making law that is not theirs to make. Laws are made by legislatures, not judges; and, as such, the fact that Roe struck down a number of state laws does not create new law. What it should have done is refer the matter back to the states to be reformulated into a law that would either pass muster or effectively challenge a judicial right to make law. Unfortunately, Congress and the states are little interested in challenging the courts (except when elections hang in the balance).
There is no federal abortion law, but there are abortion laws in all 50 states, more or less, conforming to Roe. State laws based on Roe depend on Roe for their legitimacy, but only post-decision, thereby creating an after the fact basis for Roe. That is about as circular and unprecedented a situation as we’ve ever had in lawmaking. Roe cannot and does not create a right of women to have an abortion; it speciously denies states a power to prevent abortion. Federal laws relating to Roe pertain only to funding ‘medically necessary procedures’ and protecting clinics from violence. Abortion taps into Medicaid for its funding like some vampire on steroids. Medicaid was amended post-Roe to include coverage, but does not in and of itself create an abortion right. The Hyde amendment was passed in 1993 placing some limitations on funding abortion because of the clear abuses to which Medicaid was put. The Supreme Court has so far upheld Hyde.
Another question is: why do you think it should be argued without regard to emotion and/or morality? You say pro-lifers base our arguments on what we ‘feel’ is morally right. Okay, let’s explore that. Moral judgment is inherently based as much on what we feel as what we know to be true. Were it were otherwise, dominant groups could easily construct justifications logically sufficient to terminate those they dislike or are ‘inconvenient’. Suppose we decide those with names sounding like ‘negro’ are intolerable in our PC society, and ought to be euthanized on demand; that it is every person’s right to rid ourselves of the ‘burden’ of persons with N-word-like names. Just to pile it on, let’s further say we ‘know’ anyone with such a name can’t possibly be evolved enough to have a conscious; therefore, it isn’t really killing. The notion of ‘a woman’s right to her body inclusive of her live fetus’ is a such an emotional argument, also unsupported sufficient for depriving one human in deference to another. Therefore we can say abortion-advocates are as, if not more, guilty of making emotional and moralistic arguments.
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A woman does have some rights. She has a right to preserve her own life, and there are substantial arguments for terminating her child should he/she threaten her life. There is even a substantial argument for protecting a mother’s health – ‘if’ the threat is sufficiently immanent and severe. Beyond that, she has no demonstrable right over the life and termination of another human being, even if that life is burdensome. Consider: my wife and son are dependent on me and, therefore, a burden. Plus, they are incapable of surviving independent of me because they are in some way incapacitated. Should not I then, by the same reasoning used in defending abortion, have a say in ridding myself of them even if the only way I can accomplish that is by killing? Wouldn’t I be within my rights just as much as some woman who says she isn’t ready for the responsibility of a child? If you are going to accuse us of emotional baggage, then you must acknowledge this emotional baggage in your own camp.
No one here is saying the dilemma of pregnant women is a simple matter. No one here is saying there is no room for some latitude in extreme cases. And, no one here is appealing purely to emotion or morality. A lot of what we have laid down (that you neither address nor acknowledge) is cold, hard facts. We engage in this argument somewhat emotionally (as I did at the beginning of this post) because there is no separating the cold facts of abortion from their impacts. We bring morality into the argument because this is, to both sides, inescapably about morality – yours and ours.
Abortion touches the lives of everyone now, with none of us immune to its corrosive effects. Abortion’s advocates force on us a conundrum many ‘feel’ unbearable. It is not the will of the people as portrayed in the media; with the result the greater mass feel resentment. Our nation is increasingly and destructively polarized, with no useful objective met to justify such division. Our pockets are picked to pay for procedures that are reprehensible. Abortion has not lived up to its promises and has spawned new problems in its wake. 40-million+ children have, so far, been terminated with the effect our youth see themselves as victims and ‘survivors’ of our indifference; an indifference they give back in spades. Abortion clinics have become so profitable and their lobbying so strident as should be suspect even to diehards. Societal problems abound, including: strong evidence of child-abuse and neglect among to those addicted to abortion (as a substitute for contraception), difficulty bonding with later children, the socially condoned behavior of families and boyfriends who push girls into aborting, and the institution of marriage is seriously weakened (relationships once held untouchable by outsiders are superseded by ‘state interests’). Many women who abort later struggle with the emotional aftermath of that ‘choice’; with few stepping forward to help deal with their suffering (certainly, no abortion advocates do). But, hey, I guess that’s just more of us getting all emotional over it and acting morally superior.
Bob. That was an incredibly moving account, and I thank you for sharing that with all of us. People tend to discuss issues academically, judging their efforts by how many debating points they score. In doing this they lose site of the fact that these are real issues involving real people, with real consequences attached to an action. When innocent human life is involved, I’ve always found it best to err on the side of protecting that innocent life (which includes recognizing its humanity); a point that you’ve made more eloquently than I ever could.
Negibozu,
Your BS claim about human rights pales in light of your rhetoric. That a mother’s not wanting a baby takes priority over the baby’s right to life makes all of your claims about liberals “wanting to improve the quality of life of everyone” seem really stupid.
What’s backwards is being for the destruction of innocent life…but then claiming people have a right to free health care or other such nonsense.
If you do not have a right to life (as you have made it clear we don’t), then you have no rights period.
WolvenBear, et al:
A Democrat acquaintence just the other day told me she’s against Bush and Republicans in general because “this country is not about killing people”!
I kid you not.
sedonaman,
They aren’t being inconsistent in their own bizarre worlds of rationalization because:
1) The unborn aren’t “human”
2) Oh, they might be human, but there is a greater good that we have to concern ourselves with as a society. Besides, they feel bad about taking the life – you can be assured of this because they say things like “nobody is for abortion…it is always an agonizing decision.” This display of emotion absolves them because their God primarily adjudicates based on feeling, not actions and choices. We are regularly reminded to “judge not, lest ye be judged” so apparently there is no action a person can take that would allow us to discern between right and wrong — unless of course that action is to restrict abortion in any way. Then we are allowed to judge most harshly.
3) Individual rights to privacy and convenience and “reproductive freedom” are at stake, and lives may have to be lost in this “war” against such sacred principles
4) The planet is being raped by gross overpopulation and selfish carbon footprint growth. They have a planet to save and lives must be sacrificed in the process by keeping population in check. Surely the most compassionate time to end that life is “before it exits the womb.”
Welcome to the tortured reasoning that is modern liberalism.
Steve Sabin:
Rationalization is right because liberal/Leftist ideas are self-contradictory. As I indicated, only their obsession with death and communism could be the prime mover of such dementia.
Birth control (again, using privacy as the excuse) and sex education (abstinence not an option) were touted as THE solution to unwanted pregnancies. When the number of unwanted pregnancies exploded as a result, they said abortion would solve that problem. Then some aborted babies survived the abortion process, and doctors had to resort to strangulation. When that was deemed infanticide, they were faced with the specter of lawsuits because the “mother” (a gross distortion of the word, BTW) suffered undue anguish. (How this suffering is possible without the “mother” knowing the fetus was a baby is never explained. To be consistent, they would have to believe one feels anguish at the “loss” of a cancerous tumor. Of course, there are those who do not feel anguish, and some of their babies end up in dumpsters. I never heard of a baby, alive or dead, found in a dumpster who was left like just so much trash for the next pick-up – another testament to the widespread belief in the humanity of the fetus. To recognize this is to recognize that it shares our human dignity, and as such comes under the protection of the Golden Rule. What all this means is that it can’t be denied what it needs to survive that were provided to the advocates of abortion when they were in the womb.)
Doctors then developed partial birth abortion to make sure the “mother” got what she came in for: a dead baby, and that’s where we are today.
But abortion is a problem that won’t go away because thinking that the number of unwanted pregnancies can be reduced by increasing peoples’ sex consciousness is like thinking alcoholism can be cured by sending alcoholics to the bars.
When you look at this whole sordid history of the sexual revolution, you come to only one inescapable conclusion – some great evil force has to be at work.
Phillip,
Thank you for the kindness. I hesitate to lay bare my soul; but, too often, we talk about abortion in the abstract, as though it applies only to strangers. The shear number of abortions performed persuades me it is statistically improbable many in this country can have escaped contact with it even if they don’t realize, admit, or talk about it. Not talking about it leaves the impression abortion affects only the poor, the terminally stupid, and victims of rape. It gives the impression we are discussing opinion more than fact. Those, in turn, reinforce the notion only women are affected; and men should, therefore, butt-out. It is too easy deflecting an abstract and harder glossing over direct evidence. It serves the abortion-lobby’s purpose to keep abortion as impersonal and sanitary as possible, without any negatives that might disturb wobbly support. So, not talking about it plays into their hands. I tell my story and encourage others to do the same, therefore, as the surest means of putting the lie to abortion.
I am sure you too must have some relative or friend with direct experience of abortion. Their experience is, in some part, yours also; and you also must have felt damaged by it (even if you haven’t put it together). Understandably, you’d be reluctant to speak of an experience belonging, properly, to someone else. I spoke of just one encounter I’ve had with abortion, but it was not my only experience of abortion – only the most direct. Abortion is so ubiquitous in our culture that those immersed in the abortion-mentality see it as a convenience or escape hatch. That greatly increases the chance we will be involved also, regardless of values or distance.
It was not all that long ago I was telling myself the same convenient fibs as Negibozu, so I can’t criticize him too harshly. I know many like him and they are not evil or heartless, just intellectually sloppy. He has built a house-of-cards and defends it frantically. The abortion mantra includes some convenient lies; lies covering a whole nest of sins. If they have aborted a child, it salves a guilty conscience. If they make a living from abortion, they have even more to hide. And, if they have done neither but are, for other causes, dedicated liberals, they feel an obligation to defend fellow liberals and all things branded ‘liberal’. The weird thing is a guilty conscience rarely admits to guilt. Instead, it builds a wall of justification that gets harder and harder to maintain. I hope by relating my own mistake, remorse, and growth to persuade them this is not only wrong – it is absurdly illiberal. Forget the political labels for a moment. Our ideas should do less harm than good, regardless of ideology. Where they don’t, we should abandon them because moronically defending an indefensible makes us ‘the bad guys’. Come away from the dark-side, Negibozu, at least on this one thing. I promise you won’t regret it.
As I have written before, if you have to ask if it is wrong (sin) then it is. Abortion is wrong.
Bob: Fortunately I’ve never dealt with the elective abortion issue personally. But I know several people who have, and the experience still haunts them to this day. Regardless of whatever rationalizations they employed at the time to “get rid of the problem”, it became all too apparent afterwards that it was an innocent human life they just destroyed.
I believe that we all innately understand right and wrong through a common God-given moral code that is expressed succinctly as “it is immoral to deliberately harm an innocent human life”. The developing baby that was electively aborted did not commit a crime for which it was being punished, which in certain cases could logically involve the death penalty. It wasn’t fighting in a war, which might cause it to kill or be killed. It simply existed … inconveniently.
We can rationalize away and/or suppress this moral code to allow an immoral action to take place. But once that person confronts the fact of what they did — kill an innocent human life for convenience, as opposed to remove a “growth” — there’s no escaping the truth.
All this is even more apparent when someone like your family still evaluates an action that was said to be medically necessary. You still searched your own heart to determine if that was indeed the case, or something else (the doctor’s agenda, a convenient decision after all, etc.). The case you described with your wife was not as clear cut as most abortions in this country are, where there is no true medical reason. And yet you still agonize over this experience. I can only imagine what goes through the mind of a woman who terminated a perfectly healthy baby that was simply unwanted, with no life-threatening mitigating factors involved.
You are right about Negibozu and the vast majority of other elective abortion proponents I’ve come across. They are not “evil”, just intellectually sloppy. Or more accurately, they have elevated a political agenda over a moral one, and put more effort into protecting that agenda than they do recognizing and protecting innocent human life.
Negibozu said: “The courts can pretty much do *ANYTHING* to ensure the wellbeing of the people, 9th and 14th amendment. The constitution is over 200 years old, you can not possibly expect such an old document to be able to solve all of our problems today, that is why we have the judicial branch to ensure that laws passed follow the constitution.”
Have you bothered to read and comprehend these amendments, have you analyzed them in their historical context, or are you just taking someone else’s word for it?
Amendment 9 (1787, Rights not Listed): “The enumeration (listing by number) of certain rights in the Constitution does not mean these are the only rights the people have. To list all the many rights the people of the United States simply take for granted would be impossible, but every citizen should be aware that he has these rights in order to protect them.”
Amendment 14 (1868, Citizens’ Rights):
“Section 1 – All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
The remaining sections are punitive means used in enforcing Section 1; i.e., reducing the Congressional representation of states refusing to comply, excluding former rebels from holding office, and a refusal to pay off Confederate war debts leaving the south impotent for generations.
Understanding the history of this amendment is critical to understanding the difficulties it presents.
First are the amendment’s context and limits of that context. The 14th amendment was crafted with a specific object of disrupting the operation of state governments where they interfered with the Republican program. To accomplish that, they created a new and loyal voting block of freed-slaves by making them citizens entitled to all the same rights, privileges, and protections. The amendment was intended as a complement and buttress to the 13th Amendment (which freed the slaves) and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (conferred legal-equality other than voting; also unconstitutional). The radicals hoped, thereby, to make the Civil Rights Act constitutional retroactively. One thing it did not do (unintended) is confer citizenship on just anyone, as established by ‘United States v. Kim Wong Ark’ in 1898 (in which members of indigenous tribes retain a separate identity and are excluded as ‘non-citizens’. Until ‘Ark’, Mexicans, Chinese and their offspring were not given automatic citizenship. Therefore, the 14th Amendment was a special case conferring citizen status on ex-slaves, and on them only. Due process of law and equal protection were guaranteed to citizen and non-citizen alike, but this still did not confer citizenship to just anyone and does nothing to create or validate novel rights. Only the 9th Amendment has any potential to do that (will look at separately).
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Second is the question of legitimacy. It was passed by a radical-Republican Congress, over the objections of then President Andrew Johnson; and only after excluding southern and Democrat representation. Critics maintain it was passed illegally and un-Constitutionally (see http://www.14th-amendment.com/introduction.htm). The 14th Amendment was drafted a full three years after the Civil War at a time most of the southern states had some Congressional representation. When the initial attempt to pass the amendment failed, the radicals took heavy-handed measures to ensure it would pass a second time, including: refusing to seat southern representatives in accordance with Lincoln’s ‘Ten-Percent Plan’, the impeachment of Johnson, barring southern provisional government participation in ratification, passage of the punitive ‘Reconstruction’ acts, and forced incorporation of the amendment into re-drafted state constitutions. These changes violated the conditions on which peace had been settled; and continue to be a sore point among southerners. It also violates the free exercise of states in formulating constitutions.
Third is the matter of these ‘un-enumerated’ rights, their number, identity, function, and legitimacy. Anything can be declared a right. But, declaring a thing is a right does not make it one. Rights can be subdivided into natural rights and derivative rights. A natural right exists with or without laws to govern their operation. A derivative right does not exist in nature, but is crucial to the operation of a free society. These are also referred to as civil or political rights because they have no meaning outside civic interaction. For example, the right of every person to the preservation of his/her own life is a natural right, whereas trial by jury is a derivative or ‘created’ right critical to self-defense in civil society. The 9th Amendment recognizes additional rights exist beyond those enumerated, but does not provide a means of creating any new ones. It speaks only to rights that U.S. citizens possessed and recognized at the time of writing (both enumerated and un-enumerated), and ‘taken for granted’. No one can claim abortion was a right anyone of that time would have recognized, taken for granted, or even envisioned.
Finally, Negibozu says our Constitution ‘is over 200-years old and we can’t expect it to solve all our problems’. No, we don’t and it was never intended to solve all our problems. It was intended we’d solve most of the day-to-day stuff ourselves without recourse to government, we’d address local matters locally, and use the Constitution sparingly to address truly national problems. In the case of abortion, there are at least two perfectly good means within the Constitution that don’t involve tearing the country apart. First is to leave it to the states to sort out as was already happening prior to Roe, with a trend toward some accommodation in cases of rape and protecting women. The other method is a Constitutional amendment. But, once again, radicals decided the people and states were ‘not to be trusted to do the right thing’. So, they did what radicals always do. They robbed us of our ‘choice’ in the matter. Negibozu’s remark “The courts can pretty much do *ANYTHING* to ensure the wellbeing of the people” is exactly the problem. The courts CAN do pretty much anything they want; and, in the case of abortion, have destroyed the wellbeing of over 40-million souls. She thinks this deadly meddling is enshrined in the 9th and 14th Amendments, but has been going on almost since day one.
Negibozu is concerned, if left to the states, some states won’t allow abortions. So what? I rather suspect that the minute Roe is struck down, legislation will be passed in every state protecting vestiges of it. If your state doesn’t allow abortion, it is a quick plane or train ride to some blue-state that does. We can be pretty sure most states will allow abortion to save lives and in rape cases. For many years to come, in a post-Roe environment, public opinion in blue-states will continue to favor abortion even in cases of no risk to the mother. What our grandchildren do will be up to them. Your only real gripe is that a Roe upset might affect abortion-on-demand-at-taxpayer-expense. The rest is smokescreen.
Bob Stapler:
Negibozo said: “The courts can pretty much do *ANYTHING* to ensure the wellbeing of the people…”
Who says they will (or even want to) “ensure the wellbeing of the people”? It’s still a 5-4 liberal court (Republican nomination of Souter, et al, notwithstanding). What amazes me is that the liberals will not admit that someday the monster they created might turn against them.
Sedonaman,
That is a distinct possibility.
from post 25:
“Okay then. The Right to Choose is a man-made right, and has absolutely nothing to do with morality.”
WHAT? I guess you were away when the definition of morality was given. Morality in a nutshell is “how to live.”
I support abortion, no questions asked. Medical, economic, health, just not in the mood to raise a kid – whatever. It’s nobody’s business but the woman’s. If the potential father cares enough to get involved in the discussion, then it’s something they need to agree on, say, before they have sex.
Bringing a child into the world is a huge responsibility, even if you decide to give it up for adoption.
That decision must rest with the woman who is to carry the fetus, give birth to it and make the decision on whether to keep it. It is not for lawmakers to haggle over which agency gets to decide.
No matter what is decided about when life begins, the issue is actually, “When should rights begin?” If the unborn have rights, then the living do not. It’s as simple as that.
You can only have the right to decide what you do with YOUR body, not with mine.
What happened to my other comment to this thread?
The outrage some of you express at the aborted millions – could you spare some of that for the rights of the living that are being routinely abridged? If you hold the idea that abortion is wrong, that’s your belief. You can govern your life with that belief. Can you keep yourselves busy with your own lives, and stay out of the lives of those who do not wish to bring a child into the world? It’s none of your business, frankly.