Author Topic: Do You Support The Death Penalty?  (Read 166169 times)

injest

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #120 on: October 21, 2007, 07:13:19 am »
Yes, we have this rosy view of childbirth. That every woman looking for an abortion is a selfish white woman with resources....and if carried to term the child will be born perfect and white and cute and there would be a line of loving parents BEGGING to adopt it.

The reality is different. Sure there are a bunch of couples out there looking for babies...but they don't want a handicapped, mentally challenged child. Or a crack baby.

And how many of these people that are so concerned about abortioin have adopted the children that are already here?

And suppose we do require all these aborted babies to be born? Typically the Pro Lifer's are Republicans (who are against social programs) sooo....what happens to the babies? Are we going to force poor women to surrender their babies or should we let them starve? Otherwise we are going to have to supplement their families...


Offline delalluvia

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #121 on: October 21, 2007, 01:33:43 pm »
Yes, we have this rosy view of childbirth. That every woman looking for an abortion is a selfish white woman with resources....and if carried to term the child will be born perfect and white and cute and there would be a line of loving parents BEGGING to adopt it.

The reality is different. Sure there are a bunch of couples out there looking for babies...but they don't want a handicapped, mentally challenged child. Or a crack baby.

Or an older child or an ethnic child for the most part.

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And how many of these people that are so concerned about abortioin have adopted the children that are already here?

And suppose we do require all these aborted babies to be born? Typically the Pro Lifer's are Republicans (who are against social programs) sooo....what happens to the babies? Are we going to force poor women to surrender their babies or should we let them starve? Otherwise we are going to have to supplement their families...

And here is where the judging and gender-bias comes in, Jess.

When I and a friend were debating the abortion issue with my two male Right Wing friends, one Born Again, the other giving lip-service to his religious beliefs, my friend said,

"OK, so you don't support sex education, Planned Parenthood Clinics or any social programs that help parentless children/unwed mothers, but you're all for forcing me to have this child (hypothetically) and me picking up the bill for it even if I don't want it.  What was I supposed to do?"

His answer?

Well, as a single, unwed adult/near adult woman, she was NOT supposed to be having sex in the first place.  She was supposed to be 'waiting' to be made an honest woman, guarding her virginity like an Old Testament heroine, waiting for the 'right' man.  And if he didn't show up?  Oh, well, too bad for you, be celibate your whole life.

This is also why my Born Again friend was all for letting AIDs take its course.  After all, if these gay men weren't having promiscuous 'wrong' sex, the plague would have never spread.  If they're gay and know they have the 'wrong' tendencies, they too should have remained celibate.  >:( >:( >:(

Yeah, he's a fucking idiot now that he's sown his wild oats without mishap and then was Born Again, safely married with children and can now condemn others for doing what he did. Do as I say, not as I do.

Abstinence is a solution, to be sure.  However, it's a completely impractical one.  NO one, is going to abstain for very long unless they have other goals in life.  When the new Pope was being installed, I think someone on this board or I read it somewhere, reported how Italy was the biggest supporter of the Pope and the Catholic Church...but how they also had the lowest out of wedlock birthrate in Europe.

My Born Again friend assumed this was due to abstinence as per the Catholic dogma.

  ::)  Yeah, right.

Offline Mikaela

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #122 on: October 21, 2007, 01:53:20 pm »
"OK, so you don't support sex education, Planned Parenthood Clinics or any social programs that help parentless children/unwed mothers, but you're all for forcing me to have this child (hypothetically) and me picking up the bill for it even if I don't want it.  What was I supposed to do?"

His answer?

Well, as a single, unwed adult/near adult woman, she was NOT supposed to be having sex in the first place.  She was supposed to be 'waiting' to be made an honest woman.

This kind of opinion, combined with several of the major religions' condemnation of and work against the availability of contraception, is the reason why I see much of the "pro-life" activities as directly tied to attempts to take control of women's bodies and sexuality away from the women themselves. (Heck, in many parts of the world these are not just attempts - they're quite successful...  :-\ >:(  )

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I think someone on this board or I read it somewhere, reported how Italy was the biggest supporter of the Pope and the Catholic Church...but how they also had the lowest out of wedlock birthrate in Europe.
Italy also has one of the lowest in-wedlock birthrates in Europe. Which points to Italian women taking charge of and controlling their fertility in and out of wedlock, whatever the Catholic Church has to say about it. Italy is known to be the country in Western Europe with the poorest social rights for women with small children; low kindergarten availability coverage, very limited maternity leave with pay, etc. The governmental attitude has been that once married, women are to stay at home and have babies. Italian women however have other ideas, and live their lives accordingly. Which clearly shows that women can be trusted to make informed and responsible choices concerning their own bodies and reproduction, if anyone were to doubt that...

moremojo

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #123 on: October 22, 2007, 10:05:49 am »
Might as well weigh in on my own thoughts on abortion, as the thread has come to include that topic. I support a woman's right to abort her developing baby within reasonable parameters (that is to say, before the fetus can live viably outside the mother's body), but I do have qualms about what people are doing with abortion, and how they rationalize it.

Much of the argument in support of the right to abortion hinges on the concept of personhood (louise, I noticed above, invoked the idea of a soul). When does a person come into being? There is no easy answer to this, and because of this very fact, I think we should approach abortion with caution and humility, acknowledging the possibility that we might be extinguishing a distinct human being in the process. We certainly know that a potential human being is being snuffed out of viability.

A good friend of mine emphasizes the humanity of the fetus, while supporting legal access to abortion. He argues that we should consider not the personhood of the fetus (which to my understanding he tacitly recognizes), but rather the question of whether it is ever appropriate to kill human lives. I think he and I would both agree that in some circumstances killing must be permitted. Truly defensive war would be an immediate example that comes to my mind (think of how necessary it was to meet Hitler's violence with violence), and I think my friend would join me in submitting that legalized abortion is another.

There is a part of me that wonders if abortion may actually be doing the world more favors than we realize. By sparing these unborn children the suffering that is inherent in life, they may actually become luckier than those of us who are expelled from the womb into a frequently pitiless world.

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #124 on: October 22, 2007, 10:21:19 am »
I've been put in mind of a couple of quotes by Sir Winston Churchill. No, he didn't speak about abortion, far as I know, but I'm drawing the analogy nevertheless. Here's the first one:

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

Replace "Democracy" with "Pro-choice" and "government" with "dealing with unplanned pregnancies", and you see what I'm getting at. In practical life, what would a strict so-called Pro-life solution lead to except an abundance of human tragedies?

I like this way of thinking about it.

I think here's what it comes down to, for me. I can understand the attitudes of abortion opponents, can see how it's possible to believe that abortion extinguishes a human life, or at least something close enough to one that it's morally wrong to mess with it.

But in the end, my understanding of those arguments is purely intellectual or academic. I don't really feel them. My gut's not in it. What my gut tells me is that extinguishing a mass of cells that that couldn't survive on its own and isn't aware of its own existence -- even if it, as the pro-life people are always saying, has a beating heart or part of a brain or moves its legs or whatever -- is not an evil thing to do. Or if it is, it's a mild and sometimes necessary evil.




Offline Brown Eyes

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #125 on: October 22, 2007, 12:49:29 pm »
This extended discussion about abortion rights has turned out to be really fascinating.  I wonder if it should be spun out into its own thread at this point, since it's a bit off-topic from the original question of this thread.

Just a thought.
the world was asleep to our latent fuss - bowie

Scott6373

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #126 on: October 22, 2007, 01:04:35 pm »
I don't really feel them. My gut's not in it. What my gut tells me is that extinguishing a mass of cells that that couldn't survive on its own


But...when does that "mass of cells that coudn't survive on its own" become a life?  Can, or even should we adjudicate that moment.  Do we apply modern medical technology to this argument and say, once a fetus has reached the point that it can be sustained artifically until it has grown to a sufficient point that it can survive on its own?  Most everyone here knows me as a very liberal thinking individual, but there is something inherently disturbing in this debate.  Do we set ourselves so high as to determine when life begins?

...and isn't aware of its own existence --


Do we know this for a fact?  Are we certain beyond the shadow of a doubt?  We have set that as our judicial standard for killing criminals.  Why should we not apply it here?

Or if it is, it's a mild and sometimes necessary evil.


No such thing.

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #127 on: October 22, 2007, 01:07:46 pm »
That's good idea, if people feel like they have more to say. I was just thinking how odd it was to click on a thread about the death penalty and know I'd be likely to find people discussing abortion.

I'm glad that it started here, though, because it gave an opportunity to examine what many see as an apparent (though, IMO, not real) philosophical conflict between supporting abortion rights and opposing the death penalty, or vise versa.

Another possibility would be to change the name of the thread, but that would be tricky because it's a poll, and then would we add polling questions about abortion, or what? Actually, it would be interesting to see how many are for or against both things, versus how many are for one and against the other. My suspicion is that the majority here would fall into the latter group: pro-death penalty/anti-abortion or pro-choice/anti-death penalty.

David, what do you think? About the new thread, I mean.


Offline serious crayons

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #128 on: October 22, 2007, 01:40:18 pm »
But...when does that "mass of cells that coudn't survive on its own" become a life?

Well, I think it's a life from the point where the egg and sperm merge. But lots of things are "life" that I have no problem killing: cows, chickens, fish, mosquitoes, carrots ... The question is, when does it become life with the status and rights of a human being?

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  Most everyone here knows me as a very liberal thinking individual, but there is something inherently disturbing in this debate.  Do we set ourselves so high as to determine when life begins?

Isn't that the whole problem? Scott, I think the fact that you find something disturbing in this debate puts you in league with most people. That's why this discussion is so difficult and unresolved.

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Do we know this for a fact?  Are we certain beyond the shadow of a doubt?

No. I was talking about my gut feeling, not my scientific knowledge. Science is years away from knowing this. And besides, awareness of its existence is only one factor in the human rights' discussion -- not necessarily the deciding one. A frog, I'm guessing, is probably more aware of its own existence than a fetus is. It can feed itself, it can see, it can move from one place to another, it can interact with other beings, it can take action to avoid danger. But so far, we haven't granted human rights to frogs. 

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We have set that as our judicial standard for killing criminals.  Why should we not apply it here?

Because criminals and fetuses are two different things, and we're not obliged to treat them the same.

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No such thing.

Well, good for you. Me, I commit them on a regular basis. For example, I think it's wrong to lie, and yet, rarely but occasionally, I do -- thus, a mild and sometimes necessary evil.  I think war and killing are evil, and yet I'd advocate them when confronted with a Hitler -- unquestionably necessary, though perhaps not mild.

Scott, unless science somehow develops light years beyond where it is now and comes up with some whole new paradigm, there is no way to determine to everyone's satisfaction that killing a fetus is not wrong. So then we're faced with all the problems mentioned above. Outlaw it and you have a bunch of women dying of back-alley abortions. And women and young girls forced to carry babies conceived through rape or incest, sometimes resulting in life-ruining health problems -- another evil, and not a mild one.

Scott6373

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #129 on: October 22, 2007, 01:52:35 pm »
Well, good for you. Me, I commit them on a regular basis. For example, I think it's wrong to lie, and yet, rarely but occasionally, I do -- thus, a mild and sometimes necessary evil.  I think war and killing are evil, and yet I'd advocate them when confronted with a Hitler -- unquestionably necessary, though perhaps not mild.


I don't recall setting myself up as some example of a non-evil (mild or otherwise) doing human being.  I simply said there is no such thing as a necessary evil.  Simple statement, because there is no such thing as necessary chosen behavior.  There are always other choices, we just choose to ignore them most of the time.

The question of abortion has always been a difficult one for me, and I have never publicly stated to anyone whether I am for or against it...until now.  I don't think abortion should be illegal.  I think there are very valid medical and social reason to have this avenue open to women, but...and you had to know this was coming;  Abortion is far to available of a choice.  It makes it much to easy to abdicate responsability for one's own actions.  I am still in process on this issue, so...that's all I can say.