While our various elected officials and candidates grandstand their commitment to “life” by rallying with groups who seek to ban abortion, the Pew Research Center notes that the majority of Americans, including majorities of a majority of surveyed religious groups, support women’s right to autonomy made legal by Roe v. Wade 45 years ago today:
Support the majority—support Planned Parenthood, women’s access to health care, and women’s right to control their bodies as equal citizens under law.
That’s a large percentage of Americans who support individual liberty and limited government. The pro-government forces are losing. Choose Freedom
See? Just like the majority of Americans, I’m still a real conservative.
Or should I say that we liberals believe in maximum liberty and less government in our pants?
Interesting article. It almost seems like some of these people have opinions that differ from what their god tells them to have. Now, I admit I don’t remember exactly what it is like to believe in a specific god, but if I really, truly believed a particular god created the whole universe, and then commissioned the writing of a book I was supposed to use as a life manual, I would not have the fortitude to have independent thoughts from that god. I mean, it’s god, right? I guess maybe people don’t believe everything their god says…? Interesting.
On a lighter note, I may be late to the party, but this article introduced me to the term Unitarian Universalist. I googled around for a minute. They don’t seem as crazy as most of the rest of the list. I mean, still probably crazy, just less crazy.
A plurality of Catholics have unorthodox views – like Ryan.
Articulate ‘stable genius’ rambling on at the Pro-Life rally this past Friday, “Right now in a number of states, the laws allow a baby to be born from his or her mother’s womb into the ninth month. It is wrong, it has to change.
Cory,
Please explain to me how California will charge a person that kills a pregnant woman with a double homicide, but yet still allow a woman to kill their own child?
Your contention is wrong, Jason. Women have the right to end their own pregnancies. No one else has a right to either end a woman’s pregnancy or force a woman to become or remain pregnant.
Cory,
You didn’t answer my question. I didn’t contend anything. I told you the current law.
California has all sorts of wacky laws with interesting or counter-intuitive results. So does South Dakota. So does every other state. Laws are wacky because people make laws and people are wacky. Morals are fluid and large groups of people can be talked into just about anything if the speaker is charismatic enough.
It sounds like Jason thinks a mother voluntarily terminating her pregnancy is just as bad as a stranger terminating it for her without her consent. I’m sure lots of people agree with him, but apparently the majority of the people of California feel differently.
South Dakota lets people get drunk and drive with their kids in the car, over and over again, and then when they get caught they get a fine or probation, and then we lock people in cages for smoking joints. South Dakota lets violent criminals out on the street because our jails and prisons are so full of nonviolent drug addicts that we don’t have room to keep the angry crazies under wraps. South Dakota politicians waste their time and our money on things like the state seal, our imaginary militia, and interest rate caps. Explain that “local” stuff, and then we can work on California’s definition of murder.
Jason, I answered it, as does Ryan, with the explanation of the moral inequivalency of the hypotheticals you cite.
Ryan and Cory,
The majority of States have the same murder law as does California when it comes to unborn humans.
The science says it’s an unborn human. Please try to refute the science.
Nope, don’t have to. Neither you nor any state views abortion as murder, because neither you nor any state proposes putting women in prison for life or in the electric chair for having an abortion. Everyone recognizes abortion is not murder. The actions are morally inequivalent because of the unique moral nature of pregnancy and the competing/compelling value of women’s bodily autonomy.
57% of Americans are right. Roe v. Wade is right. Neither Jason nor I nor Donald Trump has any right to decide a woman’s fate for her.
Cory,
Why don’t you be honest and say you can’t refute the science.
http://jobsanger.blogspot.com/2018/01/surprise-more-guns-does-not-mean-more.html
Stanford researcher claims to show how more guns equals more violence.
Nobody needs to refute any science because science isn’t making any arguments. If a person walks into my house and points a gun at me, I have the right to end that person’s life. Science says when I put my deer rifle to that person’s head and pull the trigger, he will cease to live. He will have been killed. He is scientifically not alive anymore, and never will be again. Science says those things. Humans say that I had the right to do it. Just like abortion, Jason. You can think that science is on your side and that science calls abortion murder, but science doesn’t speak. American humans have said that a pregnant woman has the right to decide whether or not she hosts a fetus in her body. You don’t have to agree with it, but your opinion on the issue is irrelevant to 100% of people who aren’t you.
Nicely put Ryan! Human being or not, no entity has the legal right to use a woman’s body against her will. The “science” argument is an effort to ignore that controlling point – living women are human beings who, in America, just like men, have the right to decide who or what can use their bodies.
Also the “science” argument has a short memory – For many years America enforced laws that gave a favored group (wealthy white men) the legal right to force other humans (slaves and women in general) to submit their bodies to the needs of the favored group. Then we had a civil war and the law changed for slaves. Fast forward another 100 years or so and the laws began changing for women – they gained property rights, they got the right to vote, marital rape was finally outlawed and they gained the right to make family planning decisions for themselves. “Science” makes no argument that we, as a people, should go backward and start favoring one group by forcing women to submit their bodies the the needs of the favored group.
Cory writes:
I’ve been challenging you since June of 2016 to provide a logical basis for that claim, Cory, but you never have, because there isn’t one. There’s no inherent contradiction in opposing government punishment for a wrongful act:
https://dakotafreepress.com/2016/12/15/abortion-doesnt-hurt-mental-health-denying-abortion-does-briefly/#comment-67432
You keep suggesting there is though, over and over and over, as if you think you can make the claim true merely by repeating it ad nauseum.
Kurt, let me try.
Premises:
(1) Murder is defined by statute.
(2) Our murder statute directs that people who are convicted of murder must go to prison for life, or be executed.
(3) Our state statutes do not classify abortion as murder.
(4) Kurt has said that a woman who has an abortion should not go to prison for life or be executed.
Based on these factual premises, one must conclude that Cory’s statement is a logically correct conclusion:
Therefore, “Neither you [Kurt] nor any state [with the same definition of murder and corresponding punishment] views abortion as murder.”
Now, you might criticize Cory’s opinions, but this particular statement seems to be compelled under factual premises that we can all agree upon and as such is not an opinion but a logical fact. What am I missing?
It looks to me like you simply want to change our statutory definition of murder and change the statutory punishment for murder. But your argument that Cory’s conclusion is illogical seems incorrect and illogical with “itsownself” (thanks Juanita Jean & mfi!).
And Kurt, I looked back at the links and article you referenced and found absolutely no support for the contention that Cory’s conclusion is illogical. As best I can tell your argument and the arguments referenced in your linked articles fall into the category of a “wish sandwich” (thanks Blues Bros!) rather than in the laws of logic based upon accurate factual premises.
I am being honest, Jason. As Ryan says, I don’t have to argue your attempt to distract us with “science”. I make the overriding moral and political point. Abortion is not murder. No one really thinks it is. We don’t tackle murder with billboards and waiting periods. We respond to murder by arresting, convicting, and sometimes executing murderers.
57% of Americans support leaving it up to women to control and, if they wish, end their pregnancies. No man and thus no government has the right to make that decision for a woman.