Pro-choice distortion

[Sparko]

And the other side gets a pass cause they don't believe the babies they are killing are human beings.

yep. How can you compromise with someone who wants to kill babies? The only thing you could do is allow them to kill babies, which they are already doing. So carp wants us to stop trying to prevent abortions and somehow that is supposed to stop abortions?

[Sparko]

Meanwhile in Alabama...

Alabama Senate passes near-total abortion ban

(CNN)Alabama sent the most restrictive abortion bill in the country to the governor's desk Tuesday night, with the state's Senate passing legislation that could punish doctors who perform abortions with life in prison.
The state's Republican backers have pushed the legislation, which amounts to a near-total ban on abortion in the state, forward with the express goal of overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case legalizing abortion. Alabama lawmakers join legislators in several other states in putting forth legislation to restrict abortion, such as Georgia's recent fetal heartbeat bill.
After more than four hours of debate, the Republican-led Senate voted 25-6 to pass HB 314, which would slap doctors with up to 99 years in prison for performing an abortion. The Alabama House passed the bill earlier this month.

The law only allows exceptions "to avoid a serious health risk to the unborn child's mother," for ectopic pregnancy and if the "unborn child has a lethal anomaly." Democrats re-introduced an amendment to exempt rape and incest victims, but the motion failed on an 11-21 vote.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/14/polit...ion/index.html

So it looks like not compromising on prolife values is working. All these states passing anti-abortion laws are in response to the pro-choice democrats trying to push through late term abortions and infanticide. The people have had enough of this genocide and are fighting back.

[tabibito]

After all is said and done, killing babies is what is happening. Explicitly crying "baby killer" doesn't cut through the vain philosophy that says otherwise, but it is the bottom line. Guiding people to understand that for themselves is an effective approach if they have been duped, but it has no impact (as far as I can tell) on people who advocate such things as partial birth abortions.

[carpedm9587]

yep. How can you compromise with someone who wants to kill babies? The only thing you could do is allow them to kill babies, which they are already doing. So carp wants us to stop trying to prevent abortions and somehow that is supposed to stop abortions?

No - Carpe wants both sides to abandon the "war" in favor of finding actual solutions. Compromise is always possible.

So try this. Forget abortion for a moment. You and your town are engaged in a struggle with a neighboring town. It has raged for 50 years. You have actually mostly been on the losing side of skirmishes, and your population is declining. You see them as the aggressor. They see you as the aggressor. You are confronted with two options:

Option 1) Continue to wage the war, decrying their "foulness" and maintaining the current rate of deaths indefinitely, with a significant possibility that you will lose outright.
Option 2) Sue for peace and seek to put a truce in place, knowing that this won't 100% eliminate the skirmishes, but it has the potential to reduce the carnage to perhaps a 10th of what it was.

Which would you prefer?

[carpedm9587]

Meanwhile in Alabama...

Alabama Senate passes near-total abortion ban

(CNN)Alabama sent the most restrictive abortion bill in the country to the governor's desk Tuesday night, with the state's Senate passing legislation that could punish doctors who perform abortions with life in prison.
The state's Republican backers have pushed the legislation, which amounts to a near-total ban on abortion in the state, forward with the express goal of overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case legalizing abortion. Alabama lawmakers join legislators in several other states in putting forth legislation to restrict abortion, such as Georgia's recent fetal heartbeat bill.
After more than four hours of debate, the Republican-led Senate voted 25-6 to pass HB 314, which would slap doctors with up to 99 years in prison for performing an abortion. The Alabama House passed the bill earlier this month.

The law only allows exceptions "to avoid a serious health risk to the unborn child's mother," for ectopic pregnancy and if the "unborn child has a lethal anomaly." Democrats re-introduced an amendment to exempt rape and incest victims, but the motion failed on an 11-21 vote.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/14/polit...ion/index.html

So it looks like not compromising on prolife values is working. All these states passing anti-abortion laws are in response to the pro-choice democrats trying to push through late term abortions and infanticide. The people have had enough of this genocide and are fighting back.

All of these bills are in response to a SCOTUS that now has five conservative justices on it, and a possibility of overturning Roe vs. Wade. However, even if that actually occurs - the success will be short-term. If Roe vs. Wade is overturned, first - abortions will simply go underground.

Then, the right will be swept out of office in large numbers and the Dems will retake a trifecta at the federal level. They will then likely pack the court, and then take those same laws back to SCOTUS to be overturned - producing a new Roe vs Wade. You will not be able to stop them because you won't have the numbers. Then you'll be right back where you started. Women are predominantly liberal-leaning. Young people are predominantly liberal-leaning. Independents are predominantly liberal-leaning.

So you will perhaps slow the carnage for a bit, but not all that significantly and not for very long. A decade, maybe. It will be your "First Manassas."

I guess you can pat yourself on the back for that.

[Sparko]

No - Carpe wants both sides to abandon the "war" in favor of finding actual solutions. Compromise is always possible.

So try this. Forget abortion for a moment. You and your town are engaged in a struggle with a neighboring town. It has raged for 50 years. You have actually mostly been on the losing side of skirmishes, and your population is declining. You see them as the aggressor. They see you as the aggressor. You are confronted with two options:

Option 1) Continue to wage the war, decrying their "foulness" and maintaining the current rate of deaths indefinitely, with a significant possibility that you will lose outright.
Option 2) Sue for peace and seek to put a truce in place, knowing that this won't 100% eliminate the skirmishes, but it has the potential to reduce the carnage to perhaps a 10th of what it was.

Which would you prefer?

The abortionists want to be able to kill babies in the womb.

They already have their way and are doing it.

We think the fetuses are human beings with rights. We want to stop the abortions.


Exactly what compromise could we give them since they already have their way and can abort babies at will legally?

[carpedm9587]

After all is said and done, killing babies is what is happening. Explicitly crying "baby killer" doesn't cut through the vain philosophy that says otherwise, but it is the bottom line. Guiding people to understand that for themselves is an effective approach if they have been duped, but it has no impact (as far as I can tell) on people who advocate such things as partial birth abortions.

There has been a lot of inaccurate hype about so-called "partial-birth abortions." It would behoove you to find out what is ACTUALLY in the laws, rather than the rabid hype that is coming from the right. They still go further than I want. I personally think any abortion is immoral unless it can be shown that the fetus cannot/will not survive and its presence will harm the woman. You should hear the reaction when I express THAT belief in a pro-choice venue.

[Sparko]

All of these bills are in response to a SCOTUS that now has five conservative justices on it, and a possibility of overturning Roe vs. Wade. However, even if that actually occurs - the success will be short-term. If Roe vs. Wade is overturned, first - abortions will simply go underground.

Then, the right will be swept out of office in large numbers and the Dems will retake a trifecta at the federal level. They will then likely pack the court, and then take those same laws back to SCOTUS to be overturned - producing a new Roe vs Wade. You will not be able to stop them because you won't have the numbers. Then you'll be right back where you started. Women are predominantly liberal-leaning. Young people are predominantly liberal-leaning. Independents are predominantly liberal-leaning.

So you will perhaps slow the carnage for a bit, but not all that significantly and not for very long. A decade, maybe. It will be your "First Manassas."

I guess you can pat yourself on the back for that.

How will they pack the court? Are they going to murder the sitting Justices they don't like?

[tabibito]

Carpedm seems to be advocating a non-confrontational education campaign - which is laudable. Problem is, once it moves to the public arena, confrontations are inevitable. I also have to wonder if that attitude is consistent. In the ordinary course, social ills don't get corrected without confrontation. Anti segregation (freedom riders), anti slavery, suffrage, anti child labour etc so forth and so on were not achieved without confrontation in the public arena.
I can't see anything to suggest that carpedm would say confrontations were a wrong by the advocates for change. And I'm reasonably confident that he would pin the blame for the conflict on those who wanted to continue the injustices.

[Mountain Man]

No - it is an explanation. They are doing what they think is right. You are doing what you think is right. At no point have I said "they are doing right." Nor have I suggested they should continue what they are doing. I have been clear: abortion is a travesty and should end. Life begins at conception/implantation. I don't know how much more clear I can be, despite your assertion that I never "take a stand."

The ability to see the argument from both sides is the first step to trying to find solutions. The ability to see that two sides could each be composed of good people trying to do what they think is right is another step. These are steps I have taken. I am inviting others - from both sides - to take the same steps. Then, maybe, the efforts can be shifted from "war" to "solutions."

Unfortunately, too many people seem to enjoy the "war" too much to see it end. So my success rate is low. I don't expect that to change here.

I'm curious what a pro-life argument would look like in the context of your "all morality is subjective; therefore, nothing is actually right or wrong" worldview. How would you go about convincing a pro-abortionist that he should change his subjective opinion on this issue?

[carpedm9587]

The abortionists want to be able to kill babies in the womb.

They already have their way and are doing it.

We think the fetuses are human beings with rights. We want to stop the abortions.

Exactly what compromise could we give them since they already have their way and can abort babies at will legally?

AFAICT, the conflict of rights will never be resolved. The only possible compromises have to be pre-pregnancy, to significantly reduce the incidence of unwanted pregnancies. Once the pregnancy occurs, the only approach I can think of is to use human psychology: carrying/placing has to be made more attractive than aborting, without triggering the law of unintended consequences.

What are the details? I have absolutely no idea. If I had such a solution, I'd probably be a rich man (or a famous one). It will take people from both sides working together to conceive of these and implement them. So long as it is one side - it will be viewed with suspicion by the other side.

But so long as people are busily "waging the war," that is not happening.

Perhaps I am not being clear about what I mean by "stop waging the war." I am not suggesting the right close their crisis pregnancy centers. I am not suggesting the right embrace abortion. I am suggesting the right put down its inflammatory language and assumptions that the other side is "bad." Stop using "abortion mill" and skewing data and testing people's words to make them sound horrible. Recognize that BOTH sides are engaging in an intellectually dishonest war of words and commit to stopping your own contribution to it. Dial down the rhetoric. Look for ways to engage, discuss, and seek solutions. Communicate that the rights of a woman are also important to you, instead of focusing just on the child.

The right has the harder row to hoe in this - because you see the fetus as a child (as do I) and they do not. So your acknowledgement that a woman has rights that must also be respected won't be reciprocated because they do not believe it is a child with rights to be respected. Since you cannot agree on that, set it aside. Leave it "agree to disagree" and approach it from "avoid unwanted pregnancies. That is something both sides could agree on.

[carpedm9587]

How will they pack the court? Are they going to murder the sitting Justices they don't like?

No. They simply have to add two justices.

The number of justices on the court is not fixed in the constitution. It has changed a few times in history.

[carpedm9587]

Carpedm seems to be advocating a non-confrontational education campaign - which is laudable. Problem is, once it moves to the public arena, confrontations are inevitable. I also have to wonder if that attitude is consistent. In the ordinary course, social ills don't get corrected without confrontation. Anti segregation (freedom riders), anti slavery, suffrage, anti child labour etc so forth and so on were not achieved without confrontation in the public arena.
I can't see anything to suggest that carpedm would say confrontations were a wrong by the advocates for change. And I'm reasonably confident that he would pin the blame for the conflict on those who wanted to continue the injustices.

Yes, I would - but there are two injustices at work here:

1) abortion itself.
2) those on both sides who inflame the confrontation with intellectually dishonest rhetoric. This is the rhetoric I regularly point out from each side. It is (I believe) what CP is finding to be "fanning the flames." But you cannot convince people to dial down the rhetoric if you don't point out the rhetoric you are asking them to dial down.

Confrontation in this issue is inevitable. But the confrontation does not have to take the form it is currently taking.

[Mountain Man]

No - Carpe wants both sides to abandon the "war" in favor of finding actual solutions. Compromise is always possible.

So try this. Forget abortion for a moment. You and your town are engaged in a struggle with a neighboring town. It has raged for 50 years. You have actually mostly been on the losing side of skirmishes, and your population is declining. You see them as the aggressor. They see you as the aggressor. You are confronted with two options:

Option 1) Continue to wage the war, decrying their "foulness" and maintaining the current rate of deaths indefinitely, with a significant possibility that you will lose outright.
Option 2) Sue for peace and seek to put a truce in place, knowing that this won't 100% eliminate the skirmishes, but it has the potential to reduce the carnage to perhaps a 10th of what it was.

Which would you prefer?

Nazis sincerely believe that the Jewish race is sub-human and should be eliminated for the good of mankind. You sincerely believe that all men are created equal have an inherent right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

How would you comprise between these diametrically opposed ideas?

[carpedm9587]

I'm curious what a pro-life argument would look like in the context of your "all morality is subjective; therefore, nothing is actually right or wrong" worldview. How would you go about convincing a pro-abortionist that he should change his subjective opinion on this issue?

I would't. A pro-choice person can only BE a pro-choice person if they do not believe the fetus is an independent human being. The moment they see it as a human being - their pro-choice stance collapses. Despite all of the accusations from the right, I don't know a single person on the left that seriously questions their position on "when life begins." I'm sure some exist, but every single person I know is, AFAICT, not being disingenuous. They don't hold the position so they can have an abortion. They don't hold the position so they can claim "woman's rights." They hold the position - and the rest follows from it. Despite Tab's statement, most of these people have not been "deceived." They simply use different criteria to determine when life begins. The current abortion conundrum is a comparatively new thing. For much of human history, the dominant position was that life began at "quickening," so there has long been a point, somewhere between conception and birth, that was the "here it begins" mark.

The morality of taking a life is not something we believe differently. The right of an adult person to make their own medical decisions is not something we believe differently. The core difference is "when a human life begins." That is a scientific/philosophical question that will NOT be resolved. It hasn't for 50 years, and I have no basis for thinking it will be in the next 50 years.

So my starting place is to accept this reality - and ask "what can we do in light of this reality?"