@ineth Similarly to pretend that a baby of x weeks is meaningfully morally different from a baby of x +n weeks is not a coherent philosophy - it's rationalization. If there is to be a limit to abortion, it's arbitrary in any case, at least until our science has advanced enough to make a logical definition.
I know someone who thinks that in the exact moment sperm unites with an egg a fully, completely human being has been created. And therefore abortion (no matter when it is done) is the very same as committing murder.
There are also people who think masturbation is a sin for largely the same reason.
The point is it's complicated, and even for the people who are pro-choice it's not cut-and-dry. Even for the women who have had abortions, it's not an easy decision. It's complicated, and framing it as murder (or citing non-existent statistics for practices that no one is advocating with any real sincerity) doesn't help anyone reach any sort of agreement on the subject.
For the record, Obama reached out to the Republican party early on. The notion that he could have worked with Republican politicians by reaching out to them does not square with the facts.
He brought multiple conservatives into his staff, and is the first president in American history to keep his predecessor's Secretary of Defense. That would be Robert Gates.
Rather than withdraw entirely from Iraq as many liberals wanted, Obama advocated a gradual withdrawal, a nod to the Republican party's desire to maintain a strong presence in Iraq to maintain stability.
He didn't roll back the Bush administration's surveillance policies, which many liberals felt was Orwellian and many conservatives felt was necessary for our national security.
His administration vetoed every UN resolution which criticized Israel. Even Bush did not go that far to support Israel. Obama also signed off on the biggest arms deal the U.S. has ever made with Israel.
Obama supported the stimulus package that was originally created by the Bush administration to address the incoming economic crisis. Yet another Republican policy that Obama gladly supported and defended long after it was passed.
And most famously of all, rather than push forward a single-payer health care system that liberals had wanted for years, Obama advocated a Republican-designed health care plan endorsed by Mitt Romney. That Republican-designed program was the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
Obama literally gave Republican politicians their own ideas back to them, and they castigated him for it. The Republican Party accused their own plan of being a radical socialist job-killing travesty.
They turned their back on their own ideas rather than work with Obama.
I forgot to mention: Obama nominated Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court, a man who was known as a centrist and was praised by both Republicans and Democrats, at least until Obama nominated him.
In terms of rhetoric, he has also scolded leftist activists for not being sufficiently open to compromise. He defended a Trump supporter when his audience booed the man. He has repeatedly touted America as the greatest country in the world, as many Republicans demanded of him. He also called for Americans to work with Trump after the election, despite all the conflict between the two men.
If he had no interest in working with Republicans, he wouldn't have done all these things. But he did.
When you cannot capture video of police activity without fear of being targeted for arrest by the police your civil liberties have already been restricted.
Or fear that the video will be confiscated. It is your property, they need a warrant to claim it.
When police departments drive around and are randomly scanning everyone's license plates, looking for open warrants, your civil liberties have already been restricted.
Agree, but the whole Open Warrant system is America is silly.
When two radicalized young men detonate explosive devices at the Boston Marathon, resulting in police ordering everyone to go inside and submit to house-to-house searches, your civil liberties have already been restricted. (If you didn't set off the devices you are innocent--in this instance the police presumed that everyone was guilty until they were proven to be innocent, which is the opposite of how our justice system is supposed to work.)
This is the one, I disagree with however. You have two armed and dangerous men not only setting off bombs in a high traffic area, but having a shoot out with police officers that puts the public at danger.
The house to house search was to make sure that the criminal was not hiding inside and taking hostages. It was a drastic safety measure that the police needed to take after a very drastic incident. It is not like they were going house to house searching for bomb making equipment or illegally stored fire arms or any other charge without a warrant.
For your consideration, the police ordering a mandatory evacuation of Calgary, Canada, during the 2013 flood. The Royal Canadian Military Police (RCMP) went door to door to make sure that everyone in the affected area had been removed. In doing so, they also searched the premises for any fire arms, removing them from the property with the intent of charging the home owners with improper storage of a fire arm when they returned. The police actively searched for these weapons and even broke proper storage locks to remove them from homes. That is having your civil liberties violated, regardless of the police claiming they were removing the guns so they don't end up in the hands of "looters."
Balancing public safety and a person's liberty can be a tricky balancing act, and I personally would rather it sway to safety than liberty
When local government coordinates with corporate interests and buys out your property for a sports stadium or retail development, misusing eminent domain, your civil liberties have already been restricted.
Both of those can be considered economic gain however, since the property is being used to employ those in the community and foster trade/tourism to the region, which is, fair game when eminent domains are concerned.
A property owners best proposition in this case is to actually get the public on its side of keeping the land as is and to find an alternative site for the proposed building(s). However, most of the time, it is the property owner attempting to milk corporations for a higher payout than what the land is actually worth in its current state that leads to an impasse and the local government getting involved.
there's plenty of fundamental disagreement about when a fetus becomes a separate living thing, and that disagreement will likely never be resolved fully
There is certainly a margin for legitimate disagreement, but the "just a cluster of cells, until birth" line taken by the Democratic Party, is clearly insincere.
To pretend that a baby shortly before birth is meaningfully morally different from a baby shortly after birth, is not a coherent philosophy - it's a rationalization.
But fine, I'll drop the topic - let me just note that I get the impression that the liberal left in most other democratic countries is much more moderate on this topic (focusing on removing hurdles for early-term abortions, but not advocating for late-term and cruel methods), and it's only the US where one of the major political party is led by absolute abortion extremists who want abortions to be legal at any stage for any reason using any method.
(Not to mention the whole enrichment scheme they've got going on where the Democratic Party passes and protects large-scale tax payer funding for Planned Parenthood, and Planned Parenthood in turn gives large campaign donations to the Democratic Party.)
Planned Parenthood is also the only outlet for many low income women to get birth control, which (shock!) prevents abortions from even needing to take place. If you want to talk about liberal extremism on abortion, let's talk about the large contingent on the right who are not only opposed to abortion, but birth control as well. At which point they reveal their "saving babies" argument as utterly disingenuous. The anti-abortion movement in America is as much about punishing unwed women for having sex as anything else.
there's plenty of fundamental disagreement about when a fetus becomes a separate living thing, and that disagreement will likely never be resolved fully
There is certainly a margin for legitimate disagreement, but the "just a cluster of cells, until birth" line taken by the Democratic Party, is clearly insincere.
To pretend that a baby shortly before birth is meaningfully morally different from a baby shortly after birth, is not a coherent philosophy - it's a rationalization.
But fine, I'll drop the topic - let me just note that I get the impression that the liberal left in most other democratic countries is much more moderate on this topic (focusing on removing hurdles for early-term abortions, but not advocating for late-term and cruel methods), and it's only the US where one of the major political party is led by absolute abortion extremists who want abortions to be legal at any stage for any reason using any method.
(Not to mention the whole enrichment scheme they've got going on where the Democratic Party passes and protects large-scale tax payer funding for Planned Parenthood, and Planned Parenthood in turn gives large campaign donations to the Democratic Party.)
Planned Parenthood is also the only outlet for many low income women to get birth control, which (shock!) prevents abortions from even needing to take place. If you want to talk about liberal extremism on abortion, let's talk about the large contingent on the right who are not only opposed to abortion, but birth control as well. At which point they reveal their "saving babies" argument as utterly disingenuous. The anti-abortion movement in America is as much about punishing unwed women for having sex as anything else.
Birth control promotes irresponsibility. If you're not ready to face the consequences of your actions, don't have sex. That's where most of the right's argument against birth control stems from. Personal responsibility is a major tenant for the right.
The irony, there, is that using birth control requires responsibility. And advocating for total abstinence in lieu of birth control leaves a lot of people without the education to avoid those consequences.
The irony, there, is that using birth control requires responsibility. And advocating for total abstinence in lieu of birth control leaves a lot of people without the education to avoid those consequences.
What education to avoid the consequences? Knowing that sex makes babies?
there's plenty of fundamental disagreement about when a fetus becomes a separate living thing, and that disagreement will likely never be resolved fully
There is certainly a margin for legitimate disagreement, but the "just a cluster of cells, until birth" line taken by the Democratic Party, is clearly insincere.
To pretend that a baby shortly before birth is meaningfully morally different from a baby shortly after birth, is not a coherent philosophy - it's a rationalization.
But fine, I'll drop the topic - let me just note that I get the impression that the liberal left in most other democratic countries is much more moderate on this topic (focusing on removing hurdles for early-term abortions, but not advocating for late-term and cruel methods), and it's only the US where one of the major political party is led by absolute abortion extremists who want abortions to be legal at any stage for any reason using any method.
(Not to mention the whole enrichment scheme they've got going on where the Democratic Party passes and protects large-scale tax payer funding for Planned Parenthood, and Planned Parenthood in turn gives large campaign donations to the Democratic Party.)
Planned Parenthood is also the only outlet for many low income women to get birth control, which (shock!) prevents abortions from even needing to take place. If you want to talk about liberal extremism on abortion, let's talk about the large contingent on the right who are not only opposed to abortion, but birth control as well. At which point they reveal their "saving babies" argument as utterly disingenuous. The anti-abortion movement in America is as much about punishing unwed women for having sex as anything else.
there's plenty of fundamental disagreement about when a fetus becomes a separate living thing, and that disagreement will likely never be resolved fully
There is certainly a margin for legitimate disagreement, but the "just a cluster of cells, until birth" line taken by the Democratic Party, is clearly insincere.
To pretend that a baby shortly before birth is meaningfully morally different from a baby shortly after birth, is not a coherent philosophy - it's a rationalization.
But fine, I'll drop the topic - let me just note that I get the impression that the liberal left in most other democratic countries is much more moderate on this topic (focusing on removing hurdles for early-term abortions, but not advocating for late-term and cruel methods), and it's only the US where one of the major political party is led by absolute abortion extremists who want abortions to be legal at any stage for any reason using any method.
(Not to mention the whole enrichment scheme they've got going on where the Democratic Party passes and protects large-scale tax payer funding for Planned Parenthood, and Planned Parenthood in turn gives large campaign donations to the Democratic Party.)
Planned Parenthood is also the only outlet for many low income women to get birth control, which (shock!) prevents abortions from even needing to take place. If you want to talk about liberal extremism on abortion, let's talk about the large contingent on the right who are not only opposed to abortion, but birth control as well. At which point they reveal their "saving babies" argument as utterly disingenuous. The anti-abortion movement in America is as much about punishing unwed women for having sex as anything else.
Birth control promotes irresponsibility. If you're not ready to face the consequences of your actions, don't have sex. That's where most of the right's argument against birth control stems from. Personal responsibility is a major tenant for the right.
The irony, there, is that using birth control requires responsibility. And advocating for total abstinence in lieu of birth control leaves a lot of people without the education to avoid those consequences.
What education to avoid the consequences? Knowing that sex makes babies?
Knowing that sex makes babies, and which precautions are effective if you're going to have sex anyway.
If you only teach abstinence, at some point your students (or your children) are going to have sex, and they're not going to know how to prevent the transmission of STDs or unwanted pregnancy. It's no coincidence that states with abstinence-only sex ed have higher rates of teen pregnancy: teenagers are going to have sex, and not telling them how to not let it ruin their lives is an ineffective way to protect them.
The conservative right may think that it's just a reason to not have sex until you're ready, but the result is a lot of teenagers getting pregnant when they didn't want to, because no one ever told them there was a way to do the thing they wanted to do and not get pregnant.
To say nothing of the fact that "I was irresponsible" should not result in the punishment of "I now am responsible for raising another human being." To the irresponsible teen, the only way forward may be to seek an abortion--which the conservative right also wants to be illegal.
So you have a lot of irresponsible children being forced to have children of their own, at a point in their lives where they're not equipped (educationally or financially) to take care of those children, which in turn does a disservice to those children.
If birth control is available, women will have sex without suffering many consequences.
If birth control is unavailable, women will have sex and suffer many consequences.
When it comes to public policy, we cannot base our decisions on what people should do. We must base our decisions on what people WILL do. And people will have sex, like it or not.
It would be great if people always made the right decisions and didn't get in trouble. But that's not the world we live in. We live in a world where people have sex even when they don't want kids or can't care for them.
This isn't the product of our modern culture. Even the Puritans, famous for their emphasis on chastity, often had premarital sex. This is the product of our libido. Our libido isn't going away, and thousands of years of experience have shown that trying to suppress it for long periods has mixed results at best.
If you want to decrease abortion and make people take responsibility for their lives, the best way to do it is through education, persuasion, and investment in young people's future careers. Young, educated people who have big plans and are looking forward to their future careers are usually the last people to derail it with an accidental pregnancy.
If you're trying to stop abortion by closing down clinics or banning the operation itself, you are acting far too late.
People will have sex. If they can't do it safely, they'll do it unsafely.
Let's also not forget that when women have unwed sex, more often than not they're having it with men who are also having unwed sex--but when we talk about punishments or just desserts, we usually talk about them in context of punishing women for having sex.
But when men brag about sexual assault (Sorry, Mr. President-Elect), we excuse it by calling it locker room talk, or by saying "boys will be boys".
There is no punishment for a teenage boy who has sex with a teenage girl and gets her pregnant. We don't expect the teenage boy to suddenly be a father to this child and provide for its care. Abstinence-only education doesn't prevent teen pregnancies, but it does disproportionately impact women over men.
There is no punishment for a teenage boy who has sex with a teenage girl and gets her pregnant. We don't expect the teenage boy to suddenly be a father to this child and provide for its care. Abstinence-only education doesn't prevent teen pregnancies, but it does disproportionately impact women over men.
This is completely baseless speculation. There are laws and fines in place for anyone who is found to have sex under the age of consent in several states, even applying to teenagers of both sexes (the law doesn't discriminate here). You're forgetting that both parties have a role in sex, not just the male. The female is also responsible - except in the case of rape, which is also punishable by law, as you know. You're also forgetting to mention all the financial help the mothers get from the state, welfare, etc, simply for having a child, which men do not get in any way whatsoever, many of them being forced to pay child support. So no, there are many many things in place to punish men who desert a woman they got pregnant, to ignore that is simply misrepresenting your case.
Yes, men can't get pregnant, that's just a biological fact. This isn't discrimination, it's nature. Thankfully for liberals there are no consequences regardless, since you can just get an abortion or take a pill to make all your problems go away. What a wonderful society we live in where we don't have to take responsibility for our actions.
Everyone in the US right now is either smug as hell or visibly upset.
Put me in the former camp. It's only been close to a week and the amount of whining here and abroad is already truly spectacular. It's even better than Brexit. 2016 is awesome.
Balancing public safety and a person's liberty can be a tricky balancing act, and I personally would rather it sway to safety than liberty
Meanwhile, I err on the side of liberty over safety. Benjamin Franklin agreed with me when he said, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Both of those can be considered economic gain however, since the property is being used to employ those in the community and foster trade/tourism to the region, which is, fair game when eminent domains are concerned.
I concur with the dissenting opinions in Kelo v City of New London 545 U. S. 469 (2005), which concludes that misuse of eminent domain results in a "reverse Robin Hood" scenario--taking property from a private citizen and essentially giving it to those with more money and/or political influence. Sure, the city won that case in a 5-4 decision but in this case the Supreme Court's majority opinion is incorrect.
Incidentally, in this particular case the developer was never able to obtain the necessary financing and so the property sat vacant. As of 2014, apparently the latest updates to the article, the property is *still* vacant and the developer has to pay only $1 per year for the privilege of owning the land.
Everyone in the US right now is either smug as hell or visibly upset.
Incorrect. I am neither smug nor upset. I did not vote for Trump and my candidate--Johnson--did not win. All I did was sigh, shrug my shoulders, and wonder when the rest of my fellow citizens are going to wake up and figure out that neither Republicans nor Democrats care about them any more.
I know someone who thinks that in the exact moment sperm unites with an egg a fully, completely human being has been created. And therefore abortion (no matter when it is done) is the very same as committing murder.
And that is why it's difficult (and problematic) to discuss--because not everyone agrees on the founding principles of that discussion.
If you believe that a zygote is a separate human being, how can you have a rational, reasoned debate with someone who believes that it's not a separate human being until the umbilical cord is cut?
And if you believe that a woman's right to autonomy over her own body trumps the rights of a zygote, how can you have a reasoned debate with someone who believes the zygote's rights are more important than the woman carrying them?
More musings for those with an open mind--if your mind is already settled on this topic, the next few paragraphs will probably only upset you, so I don't recommend reading them.
(I do want to clarify this, though: that abortion does not involve killing the fetus; it removes the fetus from the womb before it is ready to survive outside the womb, but there is no part of the abortion procedure that involves killing the fetus itself. Yes, removing the fetus from the womb results in the fetal cells dying, but the procedure itself does not require that death.
Once the fetus reaches the point of viability, the procedure changes, as does the term to describe it: it's called Late Termination of Pregnancy, and even that does not feature any procedural requirements to kill the fetus. Partial birth abortion is not a required procedure, and it is not a procedure that pro-choice people ever advocate.
Point being: there is a theoretical medical possibility that we might someday discover a way to safely remove the zygote or fetus from the womb in a way that doesn't jeopardize the fetus's development and allows the woman to avoid the dangers of pregnancy if she is not financially, emotionally, or physically able to endure them. That, to me, seems like a worthy pursuit for anyone who falls on the Pro-Life side of the spectrum.)
So anyway back to politicians and off of sex (sorry)
Obama is a very centrist politician and his agendas should have been attractive to Republicans willing to compromise but compromise with Obama they would not.
Obamas policies were mostly establishment policies favorable to big business, big banking, etc. His designated successor Hillary Clinton also represented more establishment policies especially in regards to business. A lot of people were willing to overlook Trumps horrible traits (some favored him because of those traits as well) because the new york billionaire pretended he cared about the working class. In four years it will be painfully obvious that those voters were duped.
The left will likely put forward a more progressive candidate that will actually help the common man. The dems used to be the party of the unions, and working class but past 20 years they kind of lost sight of that by paying more attention to the donors than to the people.
The pro-life position, as I understand it, is that a woman's right to choose, if existent, does not override the child's right to live. The pro-life position does NOT say women deserve to suffer for getting knocked up.
But I'm hearing a different idea from some forumites in this thread: the idea that people should not be given an easy way out of a bad situation, because it conflics with personal responsibility. If you do something wrong, you shouldn't try to reverse it; you should just deal with the consequences.
In this argument... the child doesn't even get mentioned.
And that is why it's difficult (and problematic) to discuss--because not everyone agrees on the founding principles of that discussion.
This is what makes it a controversy. It is no different from any other controversy in that respect, if you ask me. The thing that makes a controversy a controversy is people disagreeing. Be the disagreement on facts or opinions does it really matter so much in the end? People will argue with the same passion in both cases.
I have very personal reasons for hating abortion. Most of these start with the eugenics factor. I can't stand eugenics. Considering that I have a mental "disability" it should be pretty apparent why. Eugenics believes that people like me are inferior to neurotypicals. There is no way around this fact; eugenics has as a goal to breed imperfections such as my "disease" out of society. I may be different from the norm but I happen to actually LIKE it that way, thank you very much! To link this back to abortion, science will one day be able to detect my condition in the unborn (if it can't already) and then people like me will be aborted to save the parents a challenging child or whatever. Regardless of the reasons behind it, I despise eugenics and its friends like abortion for wanting to get rid of people like me.
This is very personal to me because of my condition so I felt the need to at least say something. I don't normally come here because political and moral controversy drives me nuts. I only came because of reported posts and my moderator duties. I felt I had to say something about what I saw so you will have to forgive me for extending this tired sex politics debate here. I will likely not come back here any time soon so do not be surprised if I do not reply to any reactions you may have to my beliefs...
The pro-life position, as I understand it, is that a woman's right to choose, if existent, does not override the child's right to live. The pro-life position does NOT say women deserve to suffer for getting knocked up.
But I'm hearing a different idea from some forumites in this thread: the idea that people should not be given an easy way out of a bad situation, because it conflics with personal responsibility. If you do something wrong, you shouldn't try to reverse it; you should just deal with the consequences.
In this argument... the child doesn't even get mentioned.
Because, as I said earlier today, it isn't about children. The same people who want to force women to have babies are against every single social program that could conceivably help a child or low-income mother. It's about PUNISHING WOMEN.
@Tresset: Whenever you do get back, please know that eugenics is already vastly unpopular in the US (and I think almost everywhere else in the modern world), and pro-choice people have no relationship with eugenics. The idea of killing people based on mental illnesses enjoys virtually zero support among policy makers in general.
It's true that the Nazis would have gladly aborted you and me both if they could (and perhaps I'm biased here, but I would be very much opposed to that). But that doesn't mean abortion by other people, in another time, in another country, has the same motives or moral character.
The pro-choice position is not based on the idea that fetuses should be aborted--it's never been about that. It's the idea that a woman should not have to bear a child she does not want or cannot provide for, nor should a child have to grow up in a home where its parents did not want or cannot provide for it. Having children is a huge responsibility that should only be undertaken if and when the parent(s) can properly care for it.
In all honesty, if my mother didn't want me, I wouldn't judge her for aborting the pregnancy. I couldn't very well tell her that my decision was more important than hers; she doesn't owe me anything. I owe HER everything.
Lucky for me, she wanted a second child. In fact, she got exactly what she hoped for: two blonde-haired, blue-eyed boys who loved the absolute crap out of her.
I don't have horse in that particular race one way or another. I got a non-reversible vasectomy at the age of 25--all responsible males should have a reversible one by the age of 21, in my opinion--so there was never any risk associated with me.
A woman goes in to have one for whatever reason...that is between her, her doctor, and the prospective father. If she is coming in for her third, or fourth, or fifth....that is a problem which needs to be addressed as she has clearly demonstrated that she does not wish to bear children. Some sort of long-term patch, tubal ligation, hysterectomy--all are viable options from which she may choose.
Anyway....like I said I took care of that problem from my side a long time ago.
Comments
The point is it's complicated, and even for the people who are pro-choice it's not cut-and-dry. Even for the women who have had abortions, it's not an easy decision. It's complicated, and framing it as murder (or citing non-existent statistics for practices that no one is advocating with any real sincerity) doesn't help anyone reach any sort of agreement on the subject.
Which is why I say let's not discuss it here.
He brought multiple conservatives into his staff, and is the first president in American history to keep his predecessor's Secretary of Defense. That would be Robert Gates.
Rather than withdraw entirely from Iraq as many liberals wanted, Obama advocated a gradual withdrawal, a nod to the Republican party's desire to maintain a strong presence in Iraq to maintain stability.
He didn't roll back the Bush administration's surveillance policies, which many liberals felt was Orwellian and many conservatives felt was necessary for our national security.
His administration vetoed every UN resolution which criticized Israel. Even Bush did not go that far to support Israel. Obama also signed off on the biggest arms deal the U.S. has ever made with Israel.
Obama supported the stimulus package that was originally created by the Bush administration to address the incoming economic crisis. Yet another Republican policy that Obama gladly supported and defended long after it was passed.
And most famously of all, rather than push forward a single-payer health care system that liberals had wanted for years, Obama advocated a Republican-designed health care plan endorsed by Mitt Romney. That Republican-designed program was the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
Obama literally gave Republican politicians their own ideas back to them, and they castigated him for it. The Republican Party accused their own plan of being a radical socialist job-killing travesty.
They turned their back on their own ideas rather than work with Obama.
In terms of rhetoric, he has also scolded leftist activists for not being sufficiently open to compromise. He defended a Trump supporter when his audience booed the man. He has repeatedly touted America as the greatest country in the world, as many Republicans demanded of him. He also called for Americans to work with Trump after the election, despite all the conflict between the two men.
If he had no interest in working with Republicans, he wouldn't have done all these things. But he did.
This is the one, I disagree with however. You have two armed and dangerous men not only setting off bombs in a high traffic area, but having a shoot out with police officers that puts the public at danger.
The house to house search was to make sure that the criminal was not hiding inside and taking hostages. It was a drastic safety measure that the police needed to take after a very drastic incident. It is not like they were going house to house searching for bomb making equipment or illegally stored fire arms or any other charge without a warrant.
For your consideration, the police ordering a mandatory evacuation of Calgary, Canada, during the 2013 flood. The Royal Canadian Military Police (RCMP) went door to door to make sure that everyone in the affected area had been removed. In doing so, they also searched the premises for any fire arms, removing them from the property with the intent of charging the home owners with improper storage of a fire arm when they returned. The police actively searched for these weapons and even broke proper storage locks to remove them from homes. That is having your civil liberties violated, regardless of the police claiming they were removing the guns so they don't end up in the hands of "looters."
Balancing public safety and a person's liberty can be a tricky balancing act, and I personally would rather it sway to safety than liberty Both of those can be considered economic gain however, since the property is being used to employ those in the community and foster trade/tourism to the region, which is, fair game when eminent domains are concerned.
A property owners best proposition in this case is to actually get the public on its side of keeping the land as is and to find an alternative site for the proposed building(s). However, most of the time, it is the property owner attempting to milk corporations for a higher payout than what the land is actually worth in its current state that leads to an impasse and the local government getting involved.
If you only teach abstinence, at some point your students (or your children) are going to have sex, and they're not going to know how to prevent the transmission of STDs or unwanted pregnancy. It's no coincidence that states with abstinence-only sex ed have higher rates of teen pregnancy: teenagers are going to have sex, and not telling them how to not let it ruin their lives is an ineffective way to protect them.
The conservative right may think that it's just a reason to not have sex until you're ready, but the result is a lot of teenagers getting pregnant when they didn't want to, because no one ever told them there was a way to do the thing they wanted to do and not get pregnant.
To say nothing of the fact that "I was irresponsible" should not result in the punishment of "I now am responsible for raising another human being." To the irresponsible teen, the only way forward may be to seek an abortion--which the conservative right also wants to be illegal.
So you have a lot of irresponsible children being forced to have children of their own, at a point in their lives where they're not equipped (educationally or financially) to take care of those children, which in turn does a disservice to those children.
If birth control is unavailable, women will have sex and suffer many consequences.
When it comes to public policy, we cannot base our decisions on what people should do. We must base our decisions on what people WILL do. And people will have sex, like it or not.
It would be great if people always made the right decisions and didn't get in trouble. But that's not the world we live in. We live in a world where people have sex even when they don't want kids or can't care for them.
This isn't the product of our modern culture. Even the Puritans, famous for their emphasis on chastity, often had premarital sex. This is the product of our libido. Our libido isn't going away, and thousands of years of experience have shown that trying to suppress it for long periods has mixed results at best.
If you want to decrease abortion and make people take responsibility for their lives, the best way to do it is through education, persuasion, and investment in young people's future careers. Young, educated people who have big plans and are looking forward to their future careers are usually the last people to derail it with an accidental pregnancy.
If you're trying to stop abortion by closing down clinics or banning the operation itself, you are acting far too late.
People will have sex. If they can't do it safely, they'll do it unsafely.
But when men brag about sexual assault (Sorry, Mr. President-Elect), we excuse it by calling it locker room talk, or by saying "boys will be boys".
There is no punishment for a teenage boy who has sex with a teenage girl and gets her pregnant. We don't expect the teenage boy to suddenly be a father to this child and provide for its care. Abstinence-only education doesn't prevent teen pregnancies, but it does disproportionately impact women over men.
Yes, men can't get pregnant, that's just a biological fact. This isn't discrimination, it's nature. Thankfully for liberals there are no consequences regardless, since you can just get an abortion or take a pill to make all your problems go away. What a wonderful society we live in where we don't have to take responsibility for our actions.
Video removed by moderator.
Incidentally, in this particular case the developer was never able to obtain the necessary financing and so the property sat vacant. As of 2014, apparently the latest updates to the article, the property is *still* vacant and the developer has to pay only $1 per year for the privilege of owning the land. Incorrect. I am neither smug nor upset. I did not vote for Trump and my candidate--Johnson--did not win. All I did was sigh, shrug my shoulders, and wonder when the rest of my fellow citizens are going to wake up and figure out that neither Republicans nor Democrats care about them any more.
If you believe that a zygote is a separate human being, how can you have a rational, reasoned debate with someone who believes that it's not a separate human being until the umbilical cord is cut?
And if you believe that a woman's right to autonomy over her own body trumps the rights of a zygote, how can you have a reasoned debate with someone who believes the zygote's rights are more important than the woman carrying them?
More musings for those with an open mind--if your mind is already settled on this topic, the next few paragraphs will probably only upset you, so I don't recommend reading them.
Once the fetus reaches the point of viability, the procedure changes, as does the term to describe it: it's called Late Termination of Pregnancy, and even that does not feature any procedural requirements to kill the fetus. Partial birth abortion is not a required procedure, and it is not a procedure that pro-choice people ever advocate.
Point being: there is a theoretical medical possibility that we might someday discover a way to safely remove the zygote or fetus from the womb in a way that doesn't jeopardize the fetus's development and allows the woman to avoid the dangers of pregnancy if she is not financially, emotionally, or physically able to endure them. That, to me, seems like a worthy pursuit for anyone who falls on the Pro-Life side of the spectrum.)
Obama is a very centrist politician and his agendas should have been attractive to Republicans willing to compromise but compromise with Obama they would not.
Obamas policies were mostly establishment policies favorable to big business, big banking, etc. His designated successor Hillary Clinton also represented more establishment policies especially in regards to business. A lot of people were willing to overlook Trumps horrible traits (some favored him because of those traits as well) because the new york billionaire pretended he cared about the working class. In four years it will be painfully obvious that those voters were duped.
The left will likely put forward a more progressive candidate that will actually help the common man. The dems used to be the party of the unions, and working class but past 20 years they kind of lost sight of that by paying more attention to the donors than to the people.
But I'm hearing a different idea from some forumites in this thread: the idea that people should not be given an easy way out of a bad situation, because it conflics with personal responsibility. If you do something wrong, you shouldn't try to reverse it; you should just deal with the consequences.
In this argument... the child doesn't even get mentioned.
This is what makes it a controversy. It is no different from any other controversy in that respect, if you ask me. The thing that makes a controversy a controversy is people disagreeing. Be the disagreement on facts or opinions does it really matter so much in the end? People will argue with the same passion in both cases.
I have very personal reasons for hating abortion. Most of these start with the eugenics factor. I can't stand eugenics. Considering that I have a mental "disability" it should be pretty apparent why. Eugenics believes that people like me are inferior to neurotypicals. There is no way around this fact; eugenics has as a goal to breed imperfections such as my "disease" out of society. I may be different from the norm but I happen to actually LIKE it that way, thank you very much! To link this back to abortion, science will one day be able to detect my condition in the unborn (if it can't already) and then people like me will be aborted to save the parents a challenging child or whatever. Regardless of the reasons behind it, I despise eugenics and its friends like abortion for wanting to get rid of people like me.
This is very personal to me because of my condition so I felt the need to at least say something. I don't normally come here because political and moral controversy drives me nuts. I only came because of reported posts and my moderator duties. I felt I had to say something about what I saw so you will have to forgive me for extending this tired sex politics debate here. I will likely not come back here any time soon so do not be surprised if I do not reply to any reactions you may have to my beliefs...
It's true that the Nazis would have gladly aborted you and me both if they could (and perhaps I'm biased here, but I would be very much opposed to that). But that doesn't mean abortion by other people, in another time, in another country, has the same motives or moral character.
The pro-choice position is not based on the idea that fetuses should be aborted--it's never been about that. It's the idea that a woman should not have to bear a child she does not want or cannot provide for, nor should a child have to grow up in a home where its parents did not want or cannot provide for it. Having children is a huge responsibility that should only be undertaken if and when the parent(s) can properly care for it.
In all honesty, if my mother didn't want me, I wouldn't judge her for aborting the pregnancy. I couldn't very well tell her that my decision was more important than hers; she doesn't owe me anything. I owe HER everything.
Lucky for me, she wanted a second child. In fact, she got exactly what she hoped for: two blonde-haired, blue-eyed boys who loved the absolute crap out of her.
A woman goes in to have one for whatever reason...that is between her, her doctor, and the prospective father. If she is coming in for her third, or fourth, or fifth....that is a problem which needs to be addressed as she has clearly demonstrated that she does not wish to bear children. Some sort of long-term patch, tubal ligation, hysterectomy--all are viable options from which she may choose.
Anyway....like I said I took care of that problem from my side a long time ago.