I new I would have the spelling brought up, its all so predictable. As we say in Australia, I dont give a rat's.....



[This message has been edited by Paul White (edited 11-05-2004).]

[This message has been edited by Paul White (edited 11-05-2004).]

We should have emoticons on this site just, in case....

[This message has been edited by Paul White (edited 11-05-2004).]

[This message has been edited by Paul White (edited 11-05-2004).]

President Bush has been re-elected. Nearly half the country hates him.

In Illinois, where Bush lost....a fellow named Alan Keyes also lost. In fact, it was the biggest loss in the history of Illinois. All he came up with against Barack Obama was 27%. (That still was over 1.2 million votes.)

I met Keyes couple weeks ago at a rally on the southwest side of Chicago. He, along with about 300 other people, were demonstrating against 'Christ Hospital' because they do abortions there. Since Alan Keyes is black, he pressed the point that 1,500 African American children are aborted each day. Nearly 25% of the African American population has been de-populated because of abortion since Roe. He talks like a fiery preacher. People hate him for that, saying there is no place for a preacher in politics, and point out seperation of Church and state. Reading the constitution you'll see it doesn't read that way.

Obama, as well as John Kerry, go along with partial birth abortion. Keyes is vehemently against it.

Do you know what partial-birth abortion is? While the baby is being born...as late as 9 months... as long as the foot is still in the mother, (therefore, only partially born...partial-birth)...the doctor can take its life.

Morality in life and politics was the key to Alan Keyes agenda. It was on the mind of 80% of people coming out of the voting polls according to pollsters. Morality is a large subject.

No space or time here. I think people like Pat Robertson when he ran for President against old man Bush, got people thinking again about morality, 'family values', as Vice-President Dan Qualye got people thinking with that term. People like Ronald Reagan. People like John Adams. James Madison, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, etc etc.

Later....

Ok, let's start a new controversy. Those who are against "abortion", that seems to mean in any form or for any reason these days, sign up to adopt the un-aborted fetuses, who then become the next group of unwanted children that society must raise. Let's get this sign up list going now before the abortion laws can be changed to result in massive additional unwanted children growing up at society's expense and without the love of a nuturing parental experience. I have no arguement with that action. I have a feeling that the list will be quite short.

What I do object to is the use of the word "morality" or "moral" in regards to others who find themselves in a situation of a pregnacy that harms the mother's health, or that would bring into this world a truly unwanted child, who is then abandoned and put into foster homes or orphanages to be raised at the expense of others. Let those who would cast the first stone at such unforntunates instead sign up to be a nuturing and teaching parent by adopting the problem children that society doesn't want and provide the economic expense required for their rearing. That would truly be a "moral" thing to do.
I would challenge those who so easily speak of these "family values" and "moral issues" to take such action instead of just paying lip service to the problem and passing silent judgement on those who find themselves in less fortunate situations. I think that is a really "Pro-life" stance.

Someone will have to run the statistics on the number of unwanted children who will be available under this adobt a fetus program to see if there is enough signups to accommodate all who will need to be adopted and supported. That could be a really interesting analysis.

I couldn't have said it any better, patrask! I'm basically pro-choice, but in a somewhat limited capacity (cases of rape, incest, mother's health/life at stake). My problem lies in the women who seem to use it as a form of birth control - which I saw often when I worked in an abortion clinic many, many moons ago.

Stretching for a Bradbury link . . .

In tomorrow's child, they have a child born into another dimension and the "child" from the other dimension is born into this dimension. They have to learn to love the "other-dimensional" child (a blue pyramid, if I remember correctly) as harming it would cause harm to "their" child in the other dimension. Very cool story. Not about abortion, though, unless you really stretch it. But at least it's about children and birth and is tied to Bradbury.

I second patrask and Korby. Life is hard enough, without adding 1) being totally unwanted/unloved, and 2) perhaps possessing severe defects with which the birth family could not deal and no adoptive family would be willing to take on. Now that heroic fertility measures (septuplets, women giving birth to their own grandchildren, perhaps even cloning!) are being employed, the demand for adoption shrinks every day. Outlawing abortion would actually result in much higher death rates when taken into account the crimes the spawn set free upon the populace would commit, including school and workplace massacres, not to mention the terrible burden upon the already overcrowded prisons. As for a Bradbury connection, just file this under the heading of "speculative warnings" against future disasters! (By the way, DON'T ask Ray's opinion on this and other controversial topics--he refuses to discuss them.)

Mr. D: The powerful part of the story is the true feeling of the unremittingly love RB transfers in his writing - from the parents to the blue triangle child. They went to the child's dimension as I remember.

This story for some reason seemed somehow unBradburian to me. I couldn't put my finger on it. Very unique. Somewhat like... who?

Nard,
One correction: (It's even worse than you described) In a Partial Birth Abortion, it's the last 2 or 3 inches of the head that remain in the birth canal, and the baby's brain is removed through a scissor incision at the base of the skull.
What I don't get is, if an unborn child is "an unviable fetal mass" or whatever; why is Peterson on trial for TWO murders, and why can a mother who drinks during pregnancy be sued for child abuse after its birth?
By the way, I think Alan Keyes is one of the most articulate, educated, and talented orators to appear in the last several decades. Years ago, he gave an impassioned anti-abortion speech before congress (I think) that, when broadcast over the radio, had listeners who were driving pulling off the road - some in order to listen without distraction, others because they were weeping too much to be able to drive!

Well, the door is open so I might as well walk through. . .

First of all, full disclosure: my wife and I are the proud adoptive parents of two angels. So you might guess where I�ll be coming down on this issue. To be frank, though, my opinion was shaped before we went through the infertility process; the adoption process merely served to cement it into place.

So let me address Dandelion�s assertion first: I know of no evidence to prove that with the increase in the miracles available for the treatment of infertility there is a corresponding decrease in the rates of adoption. As couples wait until they�re older to have children, the rate of infertility increases. And, as a couple ages, fewer of the infertility treatments available prove successful. Thus, there are more infertile couples than ever before and more infertile couples finding success with their treatment but that doesn�t necessarily translate into fewer couples available for adoption. In fact, the competition for adoption is intense, with many couples looking outside of the country to find children. So the problem isn�t there are too many children available for adoption. The problem is there are too few. With stricter restrictions on abortion, babies who are born who might�ve been aborted will almost certainly find a loving home. Patrask jangles a nerve, too, when he makes the argument that if we pro-lifers are to have our view, we should sign up to adopt these unwanted children. Believe me, we are signed up, and waiting anxiously.

But is that really an argument he wants to make? (Dandelion makes a similar argument.) Should babies be born only to couples, or mothers, who want them? Ideally, that should be so, but we know that doesn�t always happen. Still, let�s take that as our gauge for who should be allowed to be born and who shouldn�t. What makes for an unwanted child? The circumstances of his conception? The potential, or lack of potential, for future family life? Her physical perfection? It seems to me there are a wide variety of factors to be considered and if the bar was raised high enough, there would be ample justification to abort any baby and not one of us would have been born. Going down that path leads, I think, to a pursuit of a superior race, like the Nazis believed. Only those who can meet a certain criteria will be born.

The law currently recognizes that a fetus has no rights, or rights that are junior to its mother, until a certain point his gestation. I disagree with that � I�m one of those hardliners who believe that life, and, thus, those inalienable rights our Creator gave us, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness � but I�ll go along with it to make this point: why does a fetus gain rights at an arbitrary point in time? Why does she have no rights yesterday but has rights today? Yes, I know, the rule that outlaws all abortions at a certain time was a compromise but like most compromises it succeeds in dissatisfying both sides. It doesn�t quite make sense, either.

What about outlawing all abortions except for cases of incest or rape or the life of the mother? I�ll address the last case in the next paragraph but permit me take on the first two instances now. Why should the circumstances of your conception rule whether you should be permitted to live? The fetus has no say in its conception; it seems grossly unfair to terminate life of a fetus simply because the circumstances of his conception were less than ideal. It�s not my intent to lessen the horrors of rape or incest. Indeed, those are horrible occurrences. But they are horrible occurrences for the mother; those incidents have little bearing on the fetus herself. (Yes, yes, I know all about healthy babies and incest. But you might be surprised how many healthy children have been born to incestuous couples. Incest is not a guarantee of birth defects any more than drug or alcohol abuse by the mother. There are plenty of exceptions to these rules, albeit, the numbers are small. But the fact the numbers are small tells me there is always room for hope.) Yes, the mother might have a difficult time coping with the circumstances that resulted in the conception of her child but God burdens us with difficult times that are overcome all the time. I dare say that being aborted is much harder to overcome that coping with an incident of rape or incest, as horrible as those occurrences are.

So what about when the mother�s life is in danger? With the miracles of modern medicine, those incidents are becoming fewer and fewer but I�ll grant they still occur often enough to warrant some kind of exception. Since I claim that a fetus� rights begin at conception, it stands to reason that he can only be deprived of his right life to life through due process. That is, a court hearing. Certainly, I wouldn�t want to be the judge in cases like these but at least the fetus would have a fair hearing before losing her life. We grant that process to hardcore killers; it�s the least we could do for the unborn.

Now, my arguments fall apart under court rulings. Fair enough for me, I suppose, but terribly unfair for the unborn. And as technology progresses, as we learn more about the unborn, as we�re able to look into the womb and track the growth of a fetus with greater detail, and even perform complicated surgery in utero, I think the time will come when we determine that the rights of the unborn begin far closer to conception than we currently believe. And that�s a good thing.

Sorry to carry on. I�d vowed after the �Moore wars� of this summer to keep as silent as possible on these kinds of issues but this one is too important to remain on the sidelines.

Best,

Pete

Pete,
Huzzah! Well said and well done.

quote:

Originally posted by pterran:
Going down that path leads, I think, to a pursuit of a superior race, like the Nazis believed. Only those who can meet a certain criteria will be born.

I think you're missing a point in your argument here -- in a society determined by fascist ideology, I guess neither the mother nor the unborn child had any share whatsoever in the decision of a child's life or death. The authorities would take that issue out of their hands: If a child fulfills certain criteria, it will be born -- if not, it will be aborted (even if the mother would want it to live).

I'll make no bones about it:
People who think an unborn child is something to obliterate, is not confused or missing something upstairs, but fundamentally broken. Yet, we are all broken in one way or another.

I can't seem to get beyond certain failures in my own life that have the only purpose but to thwart my understanding of myself. And it causes me pain, great pain, and terrible emotional distress, and great sadness and despair. But I got ahead into its fatal suffocation thinking nothing of it all the while. I am crazy, or broken?

I heard a woman on radio crying about her weaknesses, and how it had devastated her. Her voice trembled. The emotions she released into the airwaves as she described her affliction can only be described as horrible to listen to. I could not pull myself away from the radio. For what could this be about? Well, it was her inability to pass by a bakery shop. She was so overweight. And she knew, she couldn't do it by herself, tear herself away from the stares of those cookies. She had to go in an devour whatever she could afford.

I learned then that ALL addictions are the SAME. Only the object is diffferent. The inability to see life in the womb is a failure of a person to be human. They just can't seem to see it any other way. Broken? Yes! Fixable? Always.

I stole my own daughter away from an abortion clinic by a mother who was too distressed with the pregnancy. My daughter is now grown with 3 children of her own. This argument that there will be no one to take care of them is absurd. You are a realist to such an extreme, that your reality has hung you outdoors for the jackals to eat. You have caged the future of the unborn in some insidious design of your own mind that prevents any logic happiness or joy for their future. Like an addict who will NOT give in to reason. No prison is too dark for your kind.

As long as there is freedom in this country, there will be those who seek freedom to quiet the unborn, and those who shout for life.

Braling II,

Thank you for your kindness.

Menes,

Good point about fascist society. Perhaps I over-reached to make my point. In our free society, however, I see little difference in arguing a mother or couple might choose abortion because the conception, or subsequent birth, of a fetus fails to meet certain criteria is different than a government making that decision. The concept remains the same.

Nard,

"Broken? Yes! Fixable? Always."

Amen.

Pete

I am loathe to jump into this conversation about abortion as I do not feel this is the place for it, but I must clarify one point about something you said, Nard. Alan Keyes came out almost a week ago and admitted that his statistics on African-American abortion rates were incorrect, and very much inflated. Of course he did not word it that way, and in fact said that he had been "misled." From what I heard coming out of that man's mouth, he was "misled" on many topics. And that's the kindest way I could describe that nut job.