'08 Results

[Harlowe]

Note: Most (all?) Christian denominations actually oppose IVF for a number of reasons, but tend to not make a big deal out of it because it's pretty awful publicity.

Dd

Actually not all, but the Catholic church definitely does - along with birth control.

They are much more comfortable picketing and demonizing abortions despite IVF being far, far higher on the "dead baby" scale.

Which is one of the reasons I find most of the moral outrage to be hypocritical at best. If they truly walked their talk, their focus would be there - where the vast majority are killed. They lobby against stem-cell research, but not the product of those cells to begin with. They seem to live in some state of denial that these are all coming from abortion clinics, when the vast majority are from fertility clinics - where they ARE discarded every day.

[Rsak]

The war is legally founded from a US perspective. You can argue international law if you want, but the congress approved the military action. Detaining and interrogating prisoners is also part of that approval. Specific actions should be reviewed and I do not argue against suits to verify the legality of the actions being done in Gitmo.

However stem cell is quite a bit different. Murder is illegal. A significant portion of the tax base find that these are lives and to destroy them would be murder. For the government to fund stem cells it is hypocritical in the application of murder. It is not equatable to Capital Punishment because there is no crime involved.

Moral judgments of the citizens should not considered in every case, but when it means you are asking them to assist in something that is illegal then it is a different matter.

[Harlowe]

How can it be different? The cells are ALREADY being destroyed. No one is stopping fertility clinics from disposing of them. Those arguing for stem-cell research would rather see them serve a greater good then just ending up in the waste bin.

[Lurker]

I think Rsak needs to research the legal definition of "murder" before he tries to boil this down to an issue of legality.

[Partha]

The war is legally founded from a US perspective. You can argue international law if you want, but the congress approved the military action.

Uh huh. Against the people who were responsible for 9/11 and the ones who gave them support - which Iraq didn't qualify as in either sense. Typical you forgot that part.

[Alluveal]

Choosing to enlist in the military means you support war, because the military exists to enact war. Therefore you are pro-war.

Choosing to buy a gun for self-defense means you support killing someone in defense, because guns bought for self-defense imply using the gun (deadly force) in the act of self defense. Therefore you are pro-homicide.

Choosing to to support abortion for others even if you don't choose it for yourself, means you are pro-abortion.

You can dance around the nuances all you like, but in the end, embrace your "choice", and live with it. Murder of an innocent is murder of an innocent. Compounded against that is the murder for convenience. Abortions occur because the the human life isn't "convienient" for the mother. That's fucking abhorrent.

In your "war" analogy, Harlowe.. no one is specifically targeting innocents. Deaths happen in a war, both intended and unintended. The unintended deaths are tragic, to be sure. But at least those people aren't targeted for death. They just happen. You can wail and moan against that all you want, but I don't see you pushing for the outlaw of highways and cars. They cause more deaths here than many other things, and they are just as unintentional as collateral deaths in a war.

However it helps some people sleep at night when they feed themselves with rationalizations, which are used very effectively as a bulwark against honesty and truth.

I'm not on a high horse. And I suggest you get off yours and look at the truth of the matter. Your argument is indefensible. And it's vacuous. And it's morally bankrupt.

You'd be better off saying (as some others here have) that a human being in its fetal stage has no rights to life. Has no rights whatsoever.

Do you have sufficient vacuum in your morality to make that statement?

An unwanted pregnancy is pretty inconvenient. A mugging, burglary, home invasion, etc is pretty inconvenient as well. Why do you get to conveniently kill the fucker who is climbing out your window with your X-Box but another woman is not allowed to terminate a pregnancy that will cost her hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next 18 plus years? If someone is going to do you harm do their motivations matter? As a citizen you would shoot a burglar who was breaking in to your home. As a soldier you would shoot another soldier who was defending his own home. That Somali or Iraqi certainly was not personally going to come to the US to do you or your loved ones harm. You can engage in hypocrisy and moral relativism just as much as anyone else.

I don't buy that scenario, Klast. Barring rape, a baby is produced by two consenting adults. I see that as a far different animal than a dude stealing your X-box.

[Lurker]

Choosing to enlist in the military means you support war, because the military exists to enact war. Therefore you are pro-war.

Choosing to buy a gun for self-defense means you support killing someone in defense, because guns bought for self-defense imply using the gun (deadly force) in the act of self defense. Therefore you are pro-homicide.

Choosing to to support abortion for others even if you don't choose it for yourself, means you are pro-abortion.

You can dance around the nuances all you like, but in the end, embrace your "choice", and live with it. Murder of an innocent is murder of an innocent. Compounded against that is the murder for convenience. Abortions occur because the the human life isn't "convienient" for the mother. That's fucking abhorrent.

In your "war" analogy, Harlowe.. no one is specifically targeting innocents. Deaths happen in a war, both intended and unintended. The unintended deaths are tragic, to be sure. But at least those people aren't targeted for death. They just happen. You can wail and moan against that all you want, but I don't see you pushing for the outlaw of highways and cars. They cause more deaths here than many other things, and they are just as unintentional as collateral deaths in a war.

However it helps some people sleep at night when they feed themselves with rationalizations, which are used very effectively as a bulwark against honesty and truth.

I'm not on a high horse. And I suggest you get off yours and look at the truth of the matter. Your argument is indefensible. And it's vacuous. And it's morally bankrupt.

You'd be better off saying (as some others here have) that a human being in its fetal stage has no rights to life. Has no rights whatsoever.

Do you have sufficient vacuum in your morality to make that statement?

An unwanted pregnancy is pretty inconvenient. A mugging, burglary, home invasion, etc is pretty inconvenient as well. Why do you get to conveniently kill the fucker who is climbing out your window with your X-Box but another woman is not allowed to terminate a pregnancy that will cost her hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next 18 plus years? If someone is going to do you harm do their motivations matter? As a citizen you would shoot a burglar who was breaking in to your home. As a soldier you would shoot another soldier who was defending his own home. That Somali or Iraqi certainly was not personally going to come to the US to do you or your loved ones harm. You can engage in hypocrisy and moral relativism just as much as anyone else.

I don't buy that scenario, Klast. Barring rape, a baby is produced by two consenting adults. I see that as a far different animal than a dude stealing your X-box.

Did you need to quote all that dialog just to make that comment?

[Harlowe]

The war is legally founded from a US perspective. You can argue international law if you want, but the congress approved the military action.

Since when are we arguing legalities? The war was legal, so are abortions. If we are talking legalities, the story ends there. If we are arguing morality over legalities, whether the US approved of the war or not - morally it's murdering. Murder is murder. You can attempt to rationalize it all you like in whatever circumstances are palatable to you, but it is what it is. I just don't believe you can argue that abortion is wrong and should be outlawed because it's murder, while making exceptions or ignoring IVF, birth-control, War, or any number of choices we or our government makes that directly affect the life and death of others.

These are all unfortunate situations that are not entered into lightly. Trying to claim any moral high ground is beyond ridiculous to me. If people have better access to birth control & better sex education, we can come closer to achieving a goal much like Clinton professed, that abortions "should be safe, legal and rare".

I don't see women losing their reproductive rights anytime soon. I'm hoping there will come a time when the science enables us to turn reproduction on and off - so it can be turned off at birth and turned on when a woman is ready. At that point, there would be no reason for abortion other than the woman's life is at risk.

I don't buy that scenario, Klast. Barring rape, a baby is produced by two consenting adults. I see that as a far different animal than a dude stealing your X-box.

It's not really different. Besides many of the unwanted pregnancies are between very young adults & teens not exactly mature consenting adults. Looking at the statistics more than half are 24 & under (20% of them are between 15 & 19) & the majority are from metro areas and are low-income. Now if we can better deal with those demographics in education, birth control and outreach we can have a profound impact on the number of abortions.

[Alluveal]

Did you need to quote all that dialog just to make that comment?

YES!

[Alluveal]

I get where you are coming from, but I also think that when two people are consenting to have sex, that's different from a guy who breaks in (without your consent) and you are given the right to shoot his ass.

I realize the age demographic plays a part, but I just thought the analogy was thin. The war/invitro stuff was far more compelling to me.

[Rsak]

Harlowe,

Its a difference between forced medical experiments that results in the death of the subject and something dying naturally.


Partha,

You realize there were two different acts passed by congress, or did you conveniently forget that part?

[Lurker]

I don't follow either point. Can you elaborate?

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I think Klast is onto something about moral codes. Most of us are moral relativists, even if we claim otherwise. Life is too dynamic for a one-size-fits-all, rigid moral code. And I would further contend that if you look at history you'll see that moral absolutism has caused far more pain and sufferering than moral relativisim.

And Harlowe's quote of Clinton hit on my feelings about all forms of taking life. It should be rare. It should be the exception and not the rule. I don't believe that any life should be casually disposed of, whether it's a fetus or a village in a foreign country. The cost of that should be weighed, and it should be felt. I would even take that a step further and say that goes for all forms of life. Every day millions of unwanted pets: cats, dogs, hamsters, etc. are killed and few people give it a millisecond of thought.

So it's not so much the killing that bothers me, it's the casual way in which it's normally done. We push a button and the condemned criminal goes away. We push a button and that village in Afghanistan goes away. We try to insulate ourselves from our own dirty business, and become less human in the process.

[Ddrak]

The war is legally founded from a US perspective. You can argue international law if you want, but the congress approved the military action. Detaining and interrogating prisoners is also part of that approval. Specific actions should be reviewed and I do not argue against suits to verify the legality of the actions being done in Gitmo.

However stem cell is quite a bit different. Murder is illegal. A significant portion of the tax base find that these are lives and to destroy them would be murder. For the government to fund stem cells it is hypocritical in the application of murder. It is not equatable to Capital Punishment because there is no crime involved.

Moral judgments of the citizens should not considered in every case, but when it means you are asking them to assist in something that is illegal then it is a different matter.

When did embryonic stem cell research become illegal? For that matter, when did the killing of excess embryos from IVF programs become illegal? There's a bunch of medical research facilities and IVF clinics who would be terribly interested to know they are criminals.

Obviously there shouldn't be federal funding for illegal acts, but given that there's nothing illegal about stem cell research or IVF then it's absolutely in the same category as any other legal act which is morally objectionable to a portion of the population - be it a war, interrogations, executions, warrantless wiretaps or Sunday liquor trading.

Dd

[Harlowe]

Its a difference between forced medical experiments that results in the death of the subject and something dying naturally.

There isn't anything natural about how fertility clinics dispose of it. It's "disposed".

And well said Freecare, I agree with you 100%. I found this part especially on the mark...

So it's not so much the killing that bothers me, it's the casual way in which it's normally done. We push a button and the condemned criminal goes away. We push a button and that village in Afghanistan goes away. We try to insulate ourselves from our own dirty business, and become less human in the process.

[Select]

Harlowe, you must be forgetting who you're talking to. He doesn't process information like the rest of us.

[Kulaf]

The war is legally founded from a US perspective. You can argue international law if you want, but the congress approved the military action.

Uh huh. Against the people who were responsible for 9/11 and the ones who gave them support - which Iraq didn't qualify as in either sense. Typical you forgot that part.

Well someone certainly forgot something......and I think it was you:

http://www.c-span.org/resources/pdf/hjres114.pdf

Of course in Parth-land Bush just unilaterally attacked Iraq.....yeah that's it.....that's the ticket.

[Ddrak]

Well someone certainly forgot something......and I think it was you:

http://www.c-span.org/resources/pdf/hjres114.pdf

Of course in Parth-land Bush just unilaterally attacked Iraq.....yeah that's it.....that's the ticket.

Interestingly enough, Sec 3 (b) wasn't properly complied with if you view it in the strict literal sense. The President never made any determination on the two points he was required to. He actually cited the preamble to the joint resolution as a "determination" when it was no such thing - preambles mean precisely nothing aside from setting context for a bill if the language is ambiguous.

So, if anyone was to actually care enough to take it to court then they would have a marginal case that the war actually is illegal because the AUMF was never properly complied with by the Executive. Of course, in such a case I would expect Congress to quickly fix things retroactively because the whole thing would devolve into a complete mess.

Dd

[Kulaf]

It was complied with. It may not have been proven accurate in hindsight but the intel at the time made the case. The President would have briefed Congress prior to any attack and if they were not satisfied they certainly never said anything at the time.

[Ddrak]

It was complied with. It may not have been proven accurate in hindsight but the intel at the time made the case. The President would have briefed Congress prior to any attack and if they were not satisfied they certainly never said anything at the time.

He didn't brief congress before the attack at all.

Dd