Planned Parenthood Director Resigns After Watching Abortion Ultrasound

[pyld]

Further you are assuming that there must be a wall between the church and the state. That is not what the 1A says. That is not the intent of the 1A.

Here we will go beyond civil discourse and into vehement disagreement. It's cut and dry:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There is no ambiguity there. It was written by guys lead by Deists--it absolutely intents (wisely so) to divorce government from religion.

[Carnes]

Here we will go beyond civil discourse and into vehement disagreement. It's cut and dry:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There is no ambiguity there. It was written by guys lead by Deists--it absolutely intents (wisely so) to divorce government from religion.

Why did you not also bold the part that says, "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof?"

This is way off topic, but if a person is forced to contribute money to an education system, but the person would prefer to send their child to a religious/private school, I see nothing wrong with the .gov returning their $$$ to them and allowing them to spend it on quality education as they see fit. If education is public, why would the government prohibit you from getting a religious education? If the government forces you to pay into a non-religious system, shouldn't they let you get your money back so you can use a religious system if you choose to? Otherwise, it would seem that the government is prohibiting a religious education.

Really, if I had my way education would not be a public institution at all. Being that education is such an important part of a quality society, I would be okay with letting the government mandate that a standard of education be achieved, and possibly arranging a program to give citizens money that they can use to help pay for their childrens education.

Regardless, education should be a free market enterprise... You should see commercials on TV trying to get you to send your kids to one school or another because they are competing to be the best... they should compete to earn your business. As it stands now, the vast majority of schools are merely competing to barely get over a bar of minimum standards that is getting lower and lower.


But back to the Original Post/Topic...

So, it seems like no one wants the .gov in their wives vag?

Don't you think it would be cool if there were a government inspector peering into your significant others nether regions in order to determine the day of conception so that they can levy a fine on you because the woman did not know she was pregnant for two months, but you were legally bound to notify the 'authorities' within two weeks of conception?

Registering guns is considered a crime against humanity around here... But there are people here fighting to promote an environment where women would be required to 'register' their zygotes.

[unloved]

Registering guns is considered a crime against humanity around here... But there are people here fighting to promote an environment where women would be required to 'register' their zygotes.

When we're talkin' guns, everyone around here is a patriot of the "Give me liberty, or give me death." type. On other issues? Nah, not so much.

[Corn Flake]

As it stands now, the government can recognize the existance of a life and protect it when it gets a birth certificate. If the government has to recognize life at conception, that means that people would have to be issued conception certificates. Can you imagine the problems in trying to enforce people getting conception certificates in a timely manner. Do you give the mother a fine if the fetus is found to be more than 2 weeks old before she applies for the conception certificate?

Nonsense. Why would you need a conception certificate? Right now, if a woman delivers a baby in a bathroom, tosses the baby in a trash bag, and dumps the body in a dumpster, she will be charged with murder, even though the baby never was registered. Same thing if you kill an illegal alien. You get charged with murder even though they might not have a birth certificate.

If the government is tasked with protecting the rights of a fetus immediately after conception, who is going to investigate circumstances surrounding miscarriage? You do realize that any woman who has a miscarriage would be subject to homicide and/or murder charges, right? If your wife has a miscarriage, do you want an investigator to tell a jury that she was not living a healthy enough lifestyle, and that resulted in the negligent homicide of the 'human being' that was inside her?

More nonsense. A miscarriage is the natural dead of a baby. There would be no criminal investigation the same way that there is no criminal investigation when somebody dies of a heart attack or a stroke.

So, it seems like no one wants the .gov in their wives vag?

Don't you think it would be cool if there were a government inspector peering into your significant others nether regions in order to determine the day of conception so that they can levy a fine on you because the woman did not know she was pregnant for two months, but you were legally bound to notify the 'authorities' within two weeks of conception?

Registering guns is considered a crime against humanity around here... But there are people here fighting to promote an environment where women would be required to 'register' their zygotes.

Did I miss something? Nobody is talking about registering anything.

[Carnes]

Nonsense. Why would you need a conception certificate? Right now, if a woman delivers a baby in a bathroom, tosses the baby in a trash bag, and dumps the body in a dumpster, she will be charged with murder, even though the baby never was registered. Same thing if you kill an illegal alien. You get charged with murder even though they might not have a birth certificate.

Nonsense?

The only way the mother will get charged is if there is a witness to the crime.

If all abortion were made illegal the percentage of babies being found in dumpsters would be likely to rise by hundreds of percentage points. Mothers will still kill their children if they feel it necessary, whether it is legal or not.

If there is a sharp rise in the number of murdered babies found dead in dumpsters what do you think the government would do to track it? Something would need to be done to fix the problem.

Birth certificates give the government a tremendous ability to keep track of people from the moment that the government can accept some amount of responsibility for them. If the government starts trying to take responsibility for individuals at a time before birth, it seems logical that they would desire to use similar means to keep track of them.

But perhaps the .gov would pursue a different approach to ensure their ability to protect the fetus... What approaches do you think the government could take to that end? We are assuming that the government has been given the authority to protect the rights of a zygote/fetus from the moment of conception...

More nonsense. A miscarriage is the natural dead of a baby. There would be no criminal investigation the same way that there is no criminal investigation when somebody dies of a heart attack or a stroke.

Oh, but there is an investigation anytime someone dies. If the doctor says that the person died of natural causes, that is usually enough to close the case before anyone even knows about it.

In a culture where the legislature wants to tax soda because it is bad for you, and cigarettes are taxed into oblivion, do you really want these people to have any ability to determine whether or not the mother was negligent while she was with child?

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the Defendant was seen on video drinking a Coca Cola... As we all know, Soda is bad for the body and is not a healthy beverage. It is clear that the so-called 'mother' was not trying to create an environment that would be suitable for her unborn child to develop in. Her gross negligence is what led to the miscarriage... The mother did not want the child, and since she had no other choice, she successfully drowned her child in soda-pop... I recommend the maximum sentence, your Honor."

Oh, but I guess nothing like that could ever happen... When we trust our government with massive power and responsibility, things always work out for the best.

Did I miss something? Nobody is talking about registering anything.

Well, I admit that I am not psychic, so I don't know exactly what the outcome would be, but I am very, very skeptical about giving the government the responsibility of protecting the rights of the fetus from the moment of conception on... And more importantly I am terrified by the idea of giving them the power to protect those rights.

I chose 'registration' as an example to illustrate the kind of authority we would be giving the government if we asked them to protect the rights of human life from the moment of conception on. I'm curious to think about what other heinous and intrusive acts they could perpetrate to that end... But, I don't really like to think about it.

[MostlyHarmless]

More nonsense. A miscarriage is the natural dead of a baby. There would be no criminal investigation the same way that there is no criminal investigation when somebody dies of a heart attack or a stroke.

That one may be a natural cause, but there is another problem that the pro-life hardliners tend to forget. Recognizing and protecting the embryo as human life right after conception could backlash against tens of thousands of happy, child raising IV parents.

According to this article in the NY Times, there are some estimated 400,000 frozen embryos in the United States. They are the eggs that where fertilized in excess and never got used/implanted because the procedure was successful and the parents decided not to have any more children. If we now make those embryos protected human lives, there would be a legal problem with discarding them. Discarding them would certainly not count as "natural" cause of death, would it? And what about those that get discarded right away, like those with an odd cell count? Is each of them a murdered human life?

Or are we to treat this special case of IV embryos different and define that only an embryo successfully implanted in the placenta should be considered protected human life? It could be argued that the death of an embryo that was IV fertilized and failed to implant isn't "natural" either, so I see that definition as the only safe one.

But then again, if we create that special case for (frozen) IV embryos, then there is zero reason not to use that half a million unwanted embryos and all those odd cell count ones for embryonic stem cell research. After all, we just declared them not to be protected human life. Can you imagine the outcry of the pro-lifers about that? And BTW, this just took away all their arguments against Plan-B or similar morning-after pills ... I don't think they will like it.


Jan

[adymond]

Here we will go beyond civil discourse and into vehement disagreement. It's cut and dry:



There is no ambiguity there. It was written by guys lead by Deists--it absolutely intents (wisely so) to divorce government from religion.

No you are trying to interpret the 1A to say something it is not. The government can not in any way establish a religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof. It is cut and dry. That does not in any way mean we need a government free of religion.

[ScaredOnce]

That one may be a natural cause, but there is another problem that the pro-life hardliners tend to forget. Recognizing and protecting the embryo as human life right after conception could backlash against tens of thousands of happy, child raising IV parents.

According to this article in the NY Times, there are some estimated 400,000 frozen embryos in the United States. They are the eggs that where fertilized in excess and never got used/implanted because the procedure was successful and the parents decided not to have any more children. If we now make those embryos protected human lives, there would be a legal problem with discarding them. Discarding them would certainly not count as "natural" cause of death, would it? And what about those that get discarded right away, like those with an odd cell count? Is each of them a murdered human life?

Or are we to treat this special case of IV embryos different and define that only an embryo successfully implanted in the placenta should be considered protected human life? It could be argued that the death of an embryo that was IV fertilized and failed to implant isn't "natural" either, so I see that definition as the only safe one.

But then again, if we create that special case for (frozen) IV embryos, then there is zero reason not to use that half a million unwanted embryos and all those odd cell count ones for embryonic stem cell research. After all, we just declared them not to be protected human life. Can you imagine the outcry of the pro-lifers about that? And BTW, this just took away all their arguments against Plan-B or similar morning-after pills ... I don't think they will like it.


Jan

Well, surely then no one would have a problem using the embryos for stem cell applications, right? I mean, if we really, unfortunately, went down the slippery slope... Wouldn't we eventually find that gametes are "life" too? It's half a life then? (keeping religious constructs out, though some prohibit the casual waste of male gametes as well...)

No more pearl necklaces...

[MostlyHarmless]

keeping religious constructs out

You have to keep religion itself out, or you will find much more information that may surprise some. Like that the percentages how abortions in the US distribute over religious affiliation have a strong correlation to how religions are distributed over the population. I saw somewhere that about 70% of all abortions are had by Protestants and Catholics together. Combined with the fact that over 40% of all women in the US will have at least one abortion by the age of 45 (that was the most disturbing number to me), what does that tell us? That half of Christianity in the US thinks that God doesn't mind abortion, or that they don't give a wet fart about God's wishes? I'm not Christian, so I'm not qualified to even take a guess, but it's got to be one or the other.

And no, it's not the poor suckers at the bottom of the food chain. The 50/50 split of abortions is somewhere around $30K household income; which is, if I recall correctly, darn close to the median, isn't it?

Seems to me that the abortion statistic numbers support my theory that neither faith nor income have much to do with the development of the moral concept that abortion should be avoided.


Jan

[Carnes]

You have to keep religion itself out, or you will find much more information that may surprise some.

Nah, bringing religion into it is very interesting in regard to life beginning at conception.

Just the other day I was at a funeral that was being held for a 6wk old miscarriage. I was discussing the merits of life starting at conception, and I was told that since life starts at conception that the church is going to start preforming prenatal baptisms. I guess a little ingenuity, some holy water and a douche applicator can do a lot of good for the souls of the unborn. No more need to risk the soul of that newly created life to eternal damnation when it can be saved as early as minutes after conception. What'll they think of next?