like libs keep on saying, it is the fastest growing religion (not true, but libs like to say it). a little reminder to our libs that not everyone thinks like them.

a big chunk of humanity does not like abortion. How do libs explain that? Isn't everyone except for a few bush supporters supposed to be in love with abortion?

once again we witness the desparate eagerness of westerners (but let's just say white people) to eliminate themselves.

It's called "FREEDOM." If you don't believe in abortion, don't get one. But I have the right to be free to make a choice as should all women.

This is absurd. We make laws all the time that restrict what you can and can't do based on how it affects other people. We even force parents to take care of their children or we charge them with neglect. Our freedom has always been limited when it impinges on another person's life.

Which always gets the comment that they aren't a person they're a fetus. Which shows you how little those who support abortion actually think. The fact that some people will argue that the same baby in a NICU can't be killed but one in the womb can shows the irrationality of the situation.

Sometimes you don't get to make a choice that's just how reality works. It's time to live in the real world and learn how to act like an adult.

Actually, it's usually an embryo. And those one billion Muslims who are presumably against abortion...I've noticed that they aren't all that big on women's rights of any kind. There DOES seem to be a correlation there.

Well Cassandra, whatever about our Muslim friends, there are several million Irish people of all hues and stripes that have a problem with abortion, and have consistently voted against it in repeated referenda. Are we all to be dismissed as anti-women chauvanists also?

Hmm, since there is no such thing as the legal fiction of a "fetal person" I would suggest that the lack of "thinking" best describes those who insist that a fetus IS a person.

Furthermore, the valid comparison is not with an infant in a NICU - NICUs are a rich person's luxoury. The reality is that preganancy itself - carrying a fetus to term - in much of africa is a One In Five roll of the dice on the host woman's life.

To suggest that anyone but the host woman has a right to compell her to take such chances with her life violates just about any "pro-life" concept out there.

Largely yes. The anti-choice driver in Ireland is the association with the Roman Catholic Church.

IOW a wholely irrational belief and adherence to an organization that is still quite mysoginistic and has a history of such "pro-woman" actions as burning them at the stake as witches.

Not true at all degsme, and a rather narrow view of Ireland if I might say so. Ireland has undergone massive changes in recent years, and the authority of the Church has collapsed. Most Irish people view the institution of the Church with a degree of disdain, and certainly do not take their positions on major issues from the bishops. For example, the right to divorce was introduced in the late '90s in the face of a major Church campaign against the proposition. Last year, the Lisbon treaty was defeated in Ireland even though the bishops came out strongly for it. It has been a a long time before a remotely significant proportion of the population tuned their thinking on any matter to that of the Church. So please, enough of the demonisation of those with whom you disagree. I'm an atheist myself, and have sincere trouble with abortion. It doesn't make me misogynistic or chauvanist or any such thing. Indeed, I seriously doubt if the Church's stance on the matter is driven by anti-female misogyny. And bringing up the sins of the past does not do much to support such a theory.

The immediate authority of the church may have collapsed, but the cultural legacy, the core mythos as to what is and is not "evil", does not evaporate overnight.

To think that someone is a person only if they are legally defined as one is absurd. African Americans were people even when they weren't legally defined that way.

It is the valid comparison if you were paying attention it was in response to the point made that freedom means we can't force women to carry a child to term. That argument is specious because we already limit everyone's rights in other situtions where it impinges upon others. So the question really should be is the child a person or not. There is no logical way to say that one in the womb is anymore deserving of life than one in a NICU.

As far as your argument about the death rate in Africa, the answer to that isn't let's help them kill the children, it's let's provide better medical care so they both live. I'm pro-life that's one reason why I've been donating to organizations that provide better medical care in third world countries since I got my first job.

So often abortion seems to be the lazy way out of actually helping people. How about we try to provide real valid solutions to people's problems instead of just killing them.

To think that someone is a person only if they are legally defined as one is absurd

Hmm, the issue is about the legality of abortion, but you consider it absurd to talk about the issue in terms of legality.

I don't think I've ever seen a more quintessential example of oxymoronic reasoning.

That argument is specious because we already limit everyone's rights in other situtions where it impinges upon others

Actually it is your CLAIM that is specious. Legal systems that recognize the primacy of individual autonomous rights - ie Human rights - ONLY constrain DIRECT action on other individuals. And furthermore, they do not cede to The Government the power to enforce involuntary servitude regardless of the impact on individual life.

After all, if The Government has the right to compell you into involuntary servitude where the risk to your life is 20% (that's the base maternal mortality rate without access to modern medicine), then it also has the right to compell you to donate any one of your organs to "preserve the life" of a person deemed "more important" by The Government.

You are not "pro-life". You are "anti-choice". You support the empowering of The Government to strip a woman of the autonomy of controlling her own body. Regardless of your motivations, THAT is what you advocate.

"Hmm, the issue is about the legality of abortion, but you consider it absurd to talk about the issue in terms of legality.

I don't think I've ever seen a more quintessential example of oxymoronic reasoning."

The point is that to end the discussion with, the law doesn't see them as people means they aren't people is absurd. This is a case where the law is wrong and needs to be fixed. In the same way that it was wrong and needed to be changed when it enforced racism.

Try giving a reason why the baby isn't a person?

"Actually it is your CLAIM that is specious. Legal systems that recognize the primacy of individual autonomous rights - ie Human rights - ONLY constrain DIRECT action on other individuals. And furthermore, they do not cede to The Government the power to enforce involuntary servitude regardless of the impact on individual life."

How you can not understand that abortion is a direct action against a person blows my mind. Before the abortion the baby is alive, after the baby is dead. How do you think that happens if it isn't by direct action.

Your point is also just plain wrong. Governments enforce child neglect laws all the time, which is exactly the same type of thing that you're calling involuntary servitude. A statement by the way that demeans the real suffering African Americans who were ripped from their homes dragged to foriegn countries and enslaved for a short brutal life. That in no way compares to pregnancy.

Your rant about me being anti-choice is also absurd. I've given enough time and money for medical care and to crisis pregnancy centers that nothing you can say could touch that. What have you done to help people out?

The point is that to end the discussion with, the law doesn't see them as people means they aren't people is absurd. This is a case where the law is wrong and needs to be fixed.

Now you are arguing by tautology. You define the problem as being that a fetus isn't recognized as a person and therefore anything that fails to recognize a fetus as a person is inherently wrong.

Try giving a reason why the baby isn't a person?

A person is by definition someone who has been born. See? You don't like tautological reasoning much either. Now come up with an arguement that isn't tautological.

How you can not understand that abortion is a direct action against a person blows my mind.

That doesn't mean that I'm wrong or you are right. Consider RU-486 style abortions. RU-486 does not cross the placental boundary. What it effectively does is shut off blood flow to the placental wall in the host woman. That's NOT direct action on the fetus. There are consequences to the fetus, but they are the same consequences that a born child with severe illness experiences when he is refused a blood transfusion or a bone marrow transplant from the mother.

Yet we would never consider strapping the mother to a gurney, wheeling her into the OR and cutting out a kidney or part of her liver "in the state's interest in promoting life". Why? Because her choice NOT to provide her body in servitude to her child is NOT a direct action.

Your point is also just plain wrong. Governments enforce child neglect laws all the time, which is exactly the same type of thing that you're calling involuntary servitude

Try sorting out the actual facts before you go off demonstrating your ignorance. Parental rights and obligtions can be VOLUNTARILY Surrendered. Thus the choice to continue in the assumption of those Obligations AND Rights is purely voluntary.

As for involuntary servitude - what you are describing is Slavery. The Involuntary Servitude clause of the 13th Amendment was included specifically to prevent a person from being forced to serve out a contractual obligation against their will. The typical example was an indentured servitude contract - one that was often unilaterally, and unjustly extended (by charging the servant for things like room and board). By adding in the "involuntary servitude" clause, the limit to breaking such a previously agreed upon contract was a civil tort.

Now if you want to enable the "fetal person's" estate to sue the host woman under a tort claim - that's fine. Because the executor of that estate is the host woman.

Your rant about me being anti-choice is also absurd. I've given enough time and money for medical care and to crisis pregnancy centers that nothing you can say could touch that

How much you've given is irrelevant. The point is that you are not arguing "pro-life". You are arguing a position that empowers THE GOVERNMENT to control the bodies - to violate the most sacred autonomy we have as individuals - of all fecund women. That is simply Anti-choice. How you rationalize it is irrelevant.

Personhood begins when at the moment of differentiation.

As far as calling it involantiry servitude by your own definitions of voluntary and involantiry a woman made a choice to have sex therefore she voluntarily gave up the right to abort the child. So it would be okay to deny abortions for everything except rape even by what you say.

Your definition of direct and indirect is the type of thing that people tell themselves all the time try to suppress guilt, that doesn't make it true.

Let's symplify things for you because of what I've done people are alive. Because of what the pro-death movement has done people are dead.

What absolute nonsense! It really amazes me that many of those who, like myself, consider themselves liberal, are so nakedly intolerant and hostile to any views which diverge from their own. I have already stated that I am an atheist, I fully support gay rights to marriage, and abhor the death penalty. I know many people who think the same way. And yet rather than accept that legitimate divergance of opinion on matters, you degesme, seek to demonise and generalise, portraying those who disagree with you as closet chauvanists and misogynists. It's quite depressing really that, after 8 years of such despicable activity from Washington Republicans and the White House that some liberals should show themselves so adept at it themselves.