fast

BolshyFaker,

I have been trying to respond to the things you have said. You have touched on some things that go to the heart of the issue, and no matter how I try to what I want, I can't get it to come out right.

I will say that it’s difficult sometimes to push aside how I feel on an issue and vote to contrary.

Thank you for that post

fast

Yeah, I was hoping it was something like that.

Yeah, I guess I do focus on them too much. But, I needed to figure out not only where I stand on the issue but where they stand as well. Rather, how do I stand in comparison to them.

I suppose if someone was to list me on that chart, then I would have a check and not an X.

Karalora

fast, if your primary concern is reducing the number of abortions that occur, you should endorse candidates who support measures that have actually been demonstrated to reduce abortions. According to this Guttmacher Institute study, bans on abortion do not reduce the rate of abortion, but easy access to contraceptive birth control, comprehensive sex education for minors, financial assistance for poor families, etc. do.

fast

In a strange sort of way, that is actually reassuring--at least on one level.

I guess my focus should be on the government and what I think they ought to be allowed to do. I need to separate how I feel on issues from what government actions would make for a better world.

There are many things that I do not support; however, I find that I am opposed to the prohibition of many of those things. Being in that situation feels strange. It's kind of like a "who's side am I on anyway" kind of feeling.

fast

Abortion is an issue, a political issue, and it's an issue that I sometimes think about but can never really get a good handle on. On the one hand, I seem to be against it, and on the other hand, I seem to be pro-choice, and it was difficult for me to figure out where I actually stood.

Given that tension between how I personally feel and how much authority I think the government should have over our actions, I found it difficult to truly figure out whether or not I should have a green check mark or a red X as shown in the table.

I suspect that I would have a green check mark.

xunzian

Given the conflict that you feel, it makes sense to be pro-choice. Pro-choice means just that, a choice -- it isn't like abortion will be mandated. That means that if you are overall opposed to abortion, then you won't have to get one but should certain situations arise, you (or your loved ones) would have that option available.

The tricky part is that you have to trust in the judgment of others to exercise that choice for themselves. Abortion is never an easy decision and no one undertakes an abortion lightly. So, while you might not fully understand why they made that decision, I think it is easy to empathize with a fellow human being in a tough situation and trust that they are making the right choice for themselves.

fast

Being pro-choice while believing that abortion is wrong seems to have some moral implications, but I'm not sure what those implications are. Yes, I would like a loved one to have the legal opportunity to have a significant say in the choice she mostly makes for herself (very much so), but the moral implication seems to be that a person would then have the legal right to do what's wrong.

I don't think that my believing it is wrong is "my morality." If it's wrong, then it's wrong. I do not adhere to people's sense of subjective morality. But, that's another issue for a different thread in a different forum.

I do appreciate the assistance everyone has given so far, and I'm tending to think that my political position (the subject of this thread) is more so pro-choice than "pro-life”.

Perhaps an unborn fetus does have some kind of natural right to life, but this political issue (I think) isn't framed that way; instead, it's about a legal right to life, so even if an implication of me thinking abortion is wrong is that I think that an unborn fetus has some natural right to life, then that doesn't address the political issue as to whether or not an unborn fetus ought to have the legal right to life.

I don't quite respect that common view to the degree that so many people have adopted. I think the adult (just like the child) is very much in need of guidance, and sometimes it takes a strong, caring person to push people in the right direction. In other words, I take a more paternal stance; however, and despite that, I nevertheless feel it better to side with the pro-choice stance regardless of my personal feelings.

Because abortion is wrong, I think it would make for a better world that no one found themselves in the predicament of feeling the need to abort an unborn fetus. We don't live in such an ideal world, yet tough personal decisions still have to be made, and though I may be against abortion (because it is wrong), I nevertheless believe that the path towards a better world is not necessarily by stripping people of their natural right to act of their own accord in such decisions as this.

So, I guess to that end, if I have to choose between the two camps of 1) pro-choice and 2) pro-life, then I choose camp 1--even though I clearly am pro-life.

An interesting implication I think I'm starting to gather is that pro-choicers are not necessarily against life, and pro-lifers are against choice.

Koyaanisqatsi

You attributed what I said to Toto btw.

My point was to the political argument of abortion. The only way you can claim that a fetus has rights (thereby justifying the intrusion of the Federal Government in passing a Federal law) is to define it as a person (aka, "citizen").

We have laws against abusing pets (not "animals") because they have been defined legally as "property," but the legal argument isn't predicated on whether or not the pet has any rights to the best of my knowledge. There is no law, for example, against abusing a raccoon that I know of (other than local sex laws, I guess, but that's not to protect the "rights" of the raccoon, that's to punish the sick fucks that are sexually abusing a raccoon).

Thus, to argue that the Federal Government must intercede and pass a Federal law prohibiting abortions is to argue that the fetus is legally defined as a person and can therefore be afforded the protective rights of a Federal mandate.

This is primarily why the Supreme Court (sometimes by a slim margin) has always bounced such cases back to the State level. Because it's not a Federal issue until such time as it can be effectively argued that a fetus can be legally defined as a person, thereby affording it full Federal rights under the Constitution.

You're not protected under the Constitution if you're not first legally defined as a person (aka, "citizen"). Slaves, for example, were not legally defined as people; they were defined as property. As such, they were not legally recognized as citizens (i.e., they couldn't vote; had no rights; but they sure as shit could be drafted; etc). Then they got defined as 2/3 of a person, or some such unbelievable nonsense. It wasn't until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (one year before I was born ) that finally (if defacto) defined American Africans (and their descendants) as equal to whites (aka, "people" in the legal sense) and therefore afforded equal rights under the Constitution.

Similar deal with women.

It's a legal definition; not a humanitarian one and as such it affords equal rights and therefore equal protection under the Constitution, so if "pro-lifers" want a Federal mandate, they have no choice but to argue that a fetus is legally defined as a person and therefore afforded the rights under the Constitution.

Jolly_Penguin

These measures don't conflict. I see no reason why we can't have all of them in place. If the unborn entity is our equal and thus killing it tantamount to murder*, then I'm not sure it matters what statistics say about if it reduces abortions or not. We don't have such discussions about hitmen or for people who snap and kill people in moments of rage.

* - If it isn't then this is strictly a personal issue for the woman and none of the public's business.

fast

Let us suppose, and let us assume (for the sake of my question) that an unborn fetus is technically a person, and let us further juxtapose that the killing of people is wrong and therefore the bases of abortion being illegal.

To those that are pro-choice, I would then ask, may the killing of certain people (unborn and developed fetuses in this case) be an exception and thus exempt from legal protection because of the physical attachment of the person growing in the mother?

In other words, if a fetus is a person, and if all people are protected by the law, then would it be a law worthy of changing? I figure if justly being pro-choice withstands morals, then so too should it withstand legality. In other words (again), so what if a fetus is judged to be a person! That would only mean that they are protected by a law that needs to be changed.