Republicans, Abortion, Women's Rights, and the challenges facing them.

[Clem1029]

Forgive me if I don't quote all the prior posts Stephen...this might get too long as it is.

Starting with the "rape" and "baby-making factory" argument - there's a major problem with this formulation. Namely, it fails to address what exists from the moment of conception. That question has to be answered for a common ground to exist to further the discussion at all. If it's just a clump of cells, then your explanations are pretty much pointless - it doesn't matter what justification is given, because it can just be treated like a tumor or something. On the other hand, only when we accept that at the moment of conception "human life" is actually present do your arguments even begin to apply. So instead of shifting the discussion away from what I posted previously, the fundamental starting point must begin with the philosophical discussion of when a "person" exists (since the "human life" exists at the moment of conception).

The reason I'm emphasizing this (beyond it being the foundation of everything that comes after) is that it requires us to address uncomfortable questions. The biggest one being in your rape argument (that Buckeye alluded to in an earlier post) - why is it the fault of that life that it was created in such a violent manner? How do the physical rights of the new life balance against the psychological rights of the woman that was attacked? Does the new life only become a person based on the way it was conceived? How does that even work out metaphysically?

These are all major questions that smarter people than either of us wrestle with constantly. If you want we could go there, but I tend to find men discussing rape on the internet tends to end badly, no matter how even-handed and honest one tries to approach it.

So with that said, perhaps some practical thoughts on the rape/abortion link. Depending on what statistics you read, in our country, the percentage of abortions from rape are either about 1% or lower. So, let's be overly conservative here and, for the sake of argument, that 5% of abortions are from rape (I'm going with 5 times the maximum statistic for emphasis rather than any meaningful reason). So I'll make you a policy deal - abortions permitted when the DA gets and indictment for the rapist, allowing for "John Doe" rape indictments, with some sort of legal remedy if it is determined that the woman wasn't raped. In one shot, we've eliminated 95-99% of all other abortions, allowed an out for the rape discussion, creates an incentive for women to report rape early (which is one of the biggest problems in all rape cases), but allows for a punishment if an abortion happened without rape. Oh, sure, I could find a few holes in the policy proposal, but I offer that as a thinking out loud starting point - the important point is that it should be possible to create a legal framework to handle the microscopic minority of cases while still preventing casual widespread abortion.

Also, your "baby-making factory" goes back to my point of changing the culture. Abortion doesn't change the culture to prevent marital (or any type of) rape. On the contrary, it takes an already dehumanizing act (the rape) and further dehumanizes it. All abortion does is remove one of the potential physical aspects of rape (marital or otherwise). In fact, in the marital example, it allows the husband to basically commit sexual abuse without any consequence to himself. Abortion does not and cannot solve this cultural and behavioral issue. The only thing that can solve it is a sexual ethic that promotes the actual meaning integrated into the whole of a human person. Our culture must change - we should not change to accommodate negative aspects of our culture.

With that, moving onto the "religious statistics" argument. There are two flaws in this argument. First, the stats you post are pretty much in line with the religious affiliation of the country - simply put, we're a majority Christian country, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that the majority of any given crime/sin/problem are committed by Christians. Your stats simply indicate that abortion is a culture-wide problem and occurs within all demographic groups at a rate corresponding to their distribution in society. This is no real surprise. Also, the stats posted don't indicate religious belief at time of the abortion - at least, they don't indicate when the question was asked (and I'd be very curious about the methodology). There is a huge difference in the questions "What is your religious affiliation? Have you ever had an abortion?" and "What was your religious affiliation when you had your abortion?" The second question would more accurately lead to the point you're trying to make, while the first would result in flawed stats, if for no other reason than the fact that many women come to religious belief because they are seeking forgiveness/comfort/solace after having an abortion.

Second, and probably more telling, your argument confuses professing a standard with always being able to live up to that standard, which is a common attack on any faith-based moral system. The idea that someone would never commit a given sin because they believe it to be a sin is an awesome ideal that all people of faith strive for, but given our lived human nature, it is difficult to achieve - as evidenced by your statistics. The failure for people to live an ideal doesn't make the ideal wrong. The ideal is there as something to aim for - lowering the bar helps nobody.

More importantly, we know that, physically, the only sure fire way not to get pregnant is to not have sex. Period. So given that, instead of saying "abstinence doesn't work," the question we should be discussing is "what are the issues preventing people from living that ideal?" This is whole other discussion for another time, but one of the biggest issues, again, is the culture. We exist in a sexually over-saturated culture where if you're not having sex, something is wrong with you. More than half the medication advertisements on TV are about sexual performance. Let's not even mention most of the entertainment options out there. Abstinence is openly laughed at and mocked (see this thread). Again, I keep riding this because it's critical to the discussion - this should be about changing our culture, not changing the standard so we don't have to work to change it. Saying "abstinence doesn't work" is lazy - asking "how can we change our culture to promote the value of chastity?" is a difficult question and requires hard work.

Finally, on your implication that I have an "anti-sex ideology," not only is this this complete opposite of the truth, in reality, it is your position that actually reduces, and really, dehumanizes sex. My argument recognizes that our sexuality is fully what's part of makes us human and is actually stamped onto our bodies in their design. As such, sex has a physical, emotional, mental, (spiritual if you want to go there), and unative aspect, both in it's joys and pleasures as well as it's consequences. When you remove one of those aspects, sex is reduced to something it's not designed to be. This is obviously evident in the rape and abuse examples you use - those aspects aren't there, which dehumanizes the act. My position is not as you describe, that sex must only be for procreation. If that were the case, you'd be right, I'd be reducing sex to something it's not designed to be. My position in this discussion is that intentionally removing ANY aspect (in this case, the procreative aspect) itself reduces sex to something it's not designed to be. Your argument isn't simply a "pro-sex" argument. Your argument is "pro-sex without consequences," and that is something I intensely disagree with. If you remove the consequences of an action, you remove its meaning, what it is designed to be. In reality, if you remove the consequences, you remove the capacity to fully love, which reduces a human person to a shell of what they're designed to be. A culture that functions with this attitude towards sex couldn't help to be a massive improvement over the morass that we live in now.

Our culture doesn't need any more cop-outs or lowered standards as it is. it

[uptowngirl]

Faye, you bring up an interesting question. Religious and personal opinions aside, if almost half the women getting abortions have already had one previously is birth control realy working? Is not abortion being used as a secondary birth control? Or is it an educational issue? I previously posted factuals around reasons women are getting abortions and over half stated failure of birth control. Now this may just be because they are too embarrassed to state they are not using anything- but that seems high no? Combined with repeat abortion seekers we obviously have an issue with the proper use of birth control, not just access.

[wsansewjs]

As a guy, this is my standard in practicing cautious sexual intercourse and what are the consequences afterward. This is goes in order by priority from most effective to the least.

Full control in handling ->
Condom (ALWAYS except making babies LOL) ->
Birth Control (If she can take them) ->
Plan B or Morning After Pill (If accidental spillage has occurred; I would even pay for the pills) ->
Abortion (Only if you give your most damnest and all, sometime all the methods you done to prevent any pregnancy, then abort early as possible) ->
Abortion Late (Don't even abort. SUCK IT UP and take care of the kid).

-Josh

[FayeforCure]

One thing you fail to mention in your comparative analysis between the US and the Netherlands is the disparity in levels of education.

You just might bring the free contraceptives, but American youths might be too stupid to actually see any benefit or too lazy/apathetic to take action.

buckethead, we have intentionally conditioned American youth to be too stupid. After all, the crazy SOS program where St Johns county public schools has been paying a private company to provide abstinence only eduction for almost a decade, doesn't allow our youth to become educated contraceptive users.

Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Endorses "Unacceptable" Abstinence-Only Program
by Michael Jones · March 24, 2011
Topics: HIV/AIDS · International Gay Rights

Imagine an education program that has been denounced for spreading misinformation about HIV/AIDS, and one that has ties to leaders pushing the death penalty or life imprisonment for LGBT people in Uganda. That program would be condemned and not held up as a shining example of how to teach our kids about human sexuality, right?

Wrong. Look no further than Project SOS in Jacksonville, Florida, a controversial abstinence-only program that has been active throughout the Sunshine State. What's the reason that Project SOS is so controversial? Well, for starters, research by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) shows that when it comes to the subject of HIV/AIDS, Project SOS has been spreading false and misleading information to children. To make matters worse, a study by the American School Health Association found that the curriculum that Project SOS uses -- which is taught inside a number of private and public schools in the state of Florida -- is so shoddy, it's been labeled "unacceptable" by the group for use in classrooms.

As if that all weren't bad enough, the Florida Independent noted a few weeks ago that the founder of Project SOS, Pam Mullarkey (who is still a current board member of the group), has direct ties to Pastor Martin Ssempa, the infamous Ugandan religious leader who has lobbied hard for legislation that would sentence LGBT Ugandans to either life imprisonment, or allow for LGBT people to be executed by the state.

Mullarkey's own words when talking about Pastor Ssempa were shocking; she called him a "change agent," whose "passion, charisma and character make his vital message irresistible."

Yet despite the controversial and heavy baggage surrounding Project SOS, the Sheriff of Jacksonville, Florida, John Rutherford, has given the organization a full-throated endorsement on behalf of the Sheriff's Office. Apparently in Jacksonville, the Sheriff's Office is just fine lending credence to groups that spread false information about HIV/AIDS, and have ties to some of the most vocal anti-gay activists in the world.

Project SOS touts Sheriff Rutherford's endorsement on their website.

"The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office is greatly appreciative of Project SOS in strengthening our youth and educating our parents. We applaud their statistics and success as well as their dedicated service to our community. Project SOS helps raise young boys and girls to become non-violent young men and women," Sheriff Rutherford is quoted as saying.

But if Project SOS's curriculum is so defective that it's been labeled "unacceptable" for school children, is that really something worth praising?

Ironically, also listed on the Project SOS website as an endorser is Clay Yarborough, a Jacksonville City Councilman. If his name rings familiar, it might be because Councilman Yarborough made national news a while back when he suggested that if the United States endorsed policies tolerant of LGBT people, the country would collapse like the Roman Empire. Then Yarborough added that he didn't want LGBT people holding public office.

Perhaps what's most shocking is that Project SOS has been given a boatload of money by U.S. taxpayers and Florida taxpayers to teach their "unacceptable" curriculum. According to reports, Project SOS has received more than $6.5 million in U.S. taxpayer money since 2002, and at least $1.5 million from Florida's Department of Health. And what have they done with that money? Built an abstinence-only curriculum that has been branded as dangerous, and fostered connections with anti-gay religious leaders who want to murder LGBT people. Talk about a scary use of taxpayer money.

Sheriff John Rutherford shouldn't be lending his voice, or the reputation of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, to legitimize the work of Project SOS. Students need accurate and factual information about human sexuality, so that they can be fully-informed and make responsible decisions as they grow into adults. What they don't need is lies and misinformation about HIV/AIDS. Send Sheriff Rutherford a message now by adding your name to this petition.

http://news.change.org/stories/jacksonville-sheriffs-office-endorses-unacceptable-abstinence-only-program

[wsansewjs]

I have been a victim of Project SOS. It is one of the worst programs ever. It doesn't EVEN TEACH worth a shit about sex and its consequences. They drive FEAR into every students by seeing these horrible photos and keep lot of the information restricted. They even "PREACH"(or teach) AS EARLY AS 7th grade.

I would love to call for a reform to bring the Planned Parenthood ALONG with the SOS to make sure they both stay on their toes.

-Josh

[NotNow]

Very well written and well thought out response Clem.  Thanks.

[wsansewjs]

Basically,

I am a child with some f***ed up DNA that caused my progressive blindness and deafness. That makes me a murderer! Hooray!!!

(sarcasm)

That's why it is pointless to argue anything beyond abortion. We can argue how we would use abortion or not, but being rational about things to push or support your argument using things that cannot be proven beyond comprehension.

-Josh

[FayeforCure]

I have been a victim of Project SOS. It is one of the worst programs ever. It doesn't EVEN TEACH worth a shit about sex and its consequences. They drive FEAR into every students by seeing these horrible photos and keep lot of the information restricted. They even "PREACH"(or teach) AS EARLY AS 7th grade.

I would love to call for a reform to bring the Planned Parenthood ALONG with the SOS to make sure they both stay on their toes.

-Josh

Josh, talk about major waste!! This organization has WASTED: $8.0 Million dollars since 2001!
Without education on contraception, we simply CANNOT reduce teenage pregnancies.

Project SOS â€" the Jacksonville abstinence education program whose founder has endorsed the work of Ugandan Pastor Martin Ssempa, a vocal proponent of legislation (.pdf) in that country that prescribes the death penalty for homosexuality â€" has received $1.5 million in funding through the Florida Department of Health since 2001, according to a department representative. That money is in addition to the $6.5 million awarded Project SOS from the federal government since 2002. #

The Department of Health provides information about its Abstinence Education Program through It’s Great to Wait, the website for the department’s “statewide media campaign … designed to generate awareness and motivate the community to reduce teen pregnancy.”

http://floridaindependent.com/24754/additional-1-5-million-in-taxpayer-dollars-has-gone-to-controversial-abstinence-program-project-sos

Project SOS founder Pam Mullarkey should STOP the malarkey at taxpayer expense!!

Our kids deserve better!

Clearly, abstinence-only programs are ineffective and not about public health or preparing students for responsible sexual relations. Instead, they exist so ambitious politicians can funnel public money to ideologues who want to craftily inculcate students with religious propaganda.

Project SOS in Jacksonville, Florida is one example of this slippery attempt to evangelize on the public's dime. Despite the group's curriculum being called "unacceptable" and inaccurate by health experts, SOS has received $6.5 million in federal funding through the Department of Health and Human services since 2002 - including $454,000 in September 2010, according to The Florida Independent.

In a special report for Truth Wins Out, researcher Bruce Wilson discovered that Pam Mullarkey, the founder and director of SOS, says God inspired her program. Her church, Beaches Chapel Church, (Not the one with Bette Midler) identifies SOS as one of its "ministries" and calls Mullarkey a "missionary".

SOS is cunning in the way it disseminates sectarian messages to captive student audiences. For example, in one video, an actor has a tattoo on his forearm with large letters, "God is my judge."




"In functional terms, they amount to government-backed covert religious indoctrination programs," says Bruce Wilson in his report.

The program preaches no sex until marriage, which by design excludes LGBT teenagers who can't legally marry. Of course, this is no surprise, considering Mullarkey's church has an "ex-gay" ministry, "Laughter from Purity," which teaches inmates at a faith-based prison to resist homosexuality through Jesus Christ. According to the ministry's web-site, God loves homosexuals, but the homosexual must be set free from a "bondage of lies and deception that come from being wounded and sexually broken."

Most disturbing is SOS's endorsement of Martin Ssempa who presides over condom burning bonfires at a university in Kampala and is a leading backer of the "kill the gays" bill that may soon come up for a vote in Uganda's parliament.

Referring to the fact that several of Ssempa's family members have died of AIDS, Mullarkey told the Florida Independent that homosexuals in Africa "have destroyed people's lives."

Sadly, this useless program has reached more than 300,000 Florida students. SOS has at least 40 full-time and part time government-funded employees who are surreptitiously evangelizing.

At a time when Republican blowhards are obsessed with trimming government spending, why is such foolishness still being funded? According to an ACLU Florida study, "Sex Education in The Sunshine State", Mullarkey's SOS programs, "Employ fear and shame- based tactics" and some "Teach misinformation on HIV/AIDS." Such ridiculous and futile programs should be the first on the chopping block if Republicans are serious about reducing wasteful spending.

But, I doubt that will happen given the Religious Right's stranglehold on the GOP - particularly in Florida, which is quickly becoming the new Mississippi. Republicans will pretend they are funding such programs to uphold virtue, when they are really just fishing for votes.

The disastrous Faith-based Initiative has intertwined church and state, with indoctrination slowly replacing education. Religious programs like SOS are ensuring that students don't stand a prayer when faced with key decisions affecting their health.

It is time to quit the nonsense and abstain from funding programs that are wasteful, unconstitutional and a transparent attempt to illegally raid public coffers to evangelize in public schools.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wayne-besen/forbidden-sex-and-chicken_b_830029.html

[Fallen Buckeye]

Secondly, science in the form of genomics and genetics has proven to us that the stuff of life exists in every cell of the body.  Including tumors.  If we are to accept your argument that every clump of cells that could result in a complete human being is sacred, then every drop of blood, every tumor, every hair, every abandoned toenail is the equivelant of murder.

Obviously this is an absurd argument.  So we are left to further qualify the idea. Which we already know leads down another blind alley logically, because then we are squarely faced with the natural processes that do not lead to a human life.

Sorry if I have rehashed some points people have already discussed, but I think they are important nonetheless. You know time is limited after all. I just thought that there were some points that were too important to risk leaving them out if no one else had mentioned them. That being said I would have to argue the exact opposite of most of what you're saying. It does not make sense to argue that life does not start at conception.

First of all, there is clearly a difference between the types of situations you are talking about. A tumor, a toe nail, or a pint of blood lack the same potential as a zygote. Unless acted on artificially a pint of blood will always be that same pint of blood. A zygote however has the potential and the natural tendency to develop into livers and blood vessels and bones and so much more.That zygote will develop into an adult human being naturally. The "clumps of cells" you cited as similar do not have that same potential without artificial stimulation even though it contains a complete set of DNA.

Also, what you're claiming just intrinsically does not make sense. People generally do value even parts of their own body. After all we don't routinely hack off body parts (Toe nails and hair don't count as those cells are already dead). If they are working properly we generally let them be. If people as a whole don't instrinsically value parts of the body why do so many shudder at the mere sight of blood? The only reason we remove gall bladders and tumors and so on is when they are diseased and threaten the health of our bodies overall because we as humans intrinsically value life. A zygote or an embryo or fetus is not the result of disease; a new life only occurs when our bodies are working correctly.

This argument is based on the idea of deterministic biology.  Since it contains the stuff of life that will develop into a human being, goes the idea, it is a human life from the moment that the necessary building blocks are present.

First, there is the inherent inaccuracy in this statement.  There is no guarantee that the fertilized egg will become a human being under the best of circumstances.  Sometimes the egg simply does not attach itself to the wall of the uterus and is simply flushed out by the womans body.  Sometimes the egg fails to develop properly and simply results in lifeless tissue that will never develop further, even after the egg has attached itself properly.  Sometimes, the chromosomes misfire during development and produce stillborn infants, half formed mutations, or tumor like formations that are spontaneously aborted.  So even in nature, without the interference of either the woman or medical procedures, the clump of tissues does not turn into a human being every time.  Indeed, sometimes it turns out to be something else altogether.

And finally the fact that miscarriages, mutations, and so on happen does not disprove that life starts at the moment of conception at all. I have a cousin with Down Syndrome. He was born with a hole in his heart and will likely not have a long life. He is mutated in some senses, but he is undeniably a living human being. Chromosomes misfire in adults resulting in death, too. People may carry aneurysms all their lives and then suddenly drop dead of purely natural causes. Or what about baby Joseph who was born with a condition that probably won't allow him to see his second birthday. This is happening naturally, yet he is a fully alive human being. Miscarriages and stillbirths are just a natural death that occurs before the child leaves the womb, and if anything affirm that life begins at conception because the fact that these "clumps of cells" can die means that they must have once been living by definition.

[FayeforCure]

Well if we prevent unwanted pregnancies (through contraception) and thus abortions, it really doesn't matter when life begins.

But, OK, I don't usually like to quote the Reason foundation since I mostly do not agree with their positions, however I have quoted this piece extensively because it is just brilliant:

Print|Email
Is Heaven Populated Chiefly by the Souls of Embryos?
Harvesting stem cells without tears

Ronald Bailey | December 22, 2004

What are we to think about the fact that Nature (and for believers, Nature's God) profligately creates and destroys human embryos? John Opitz, a professor of pediatrics, human genetics, and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Utah, testified before the President's Council on Bioethics that between 60 and 80 percent of all naturally conceived embryos are simply flushed out in women's normal menstrual flows unnoticed. This is not miscarriage we're talking about. The women and their husbands or partners never even know that conception has taken place; the embryos disappear from their wombs in their menstrual flows. In fact, according to Opitz, embryologists estimate that the rate of natural loss for embryos that have developed for seven days or more is 60 percent. The total rate of natural loss of human embryos increases to at least 80 percent if one counts from the moment of conception. About half of the embryos lost are abnormal, but half are not, and had they implanted they would probably have developed into healthy babies.

So millions of viable human embryos each year produced via normal conception fail to implant and never develop further. Does this mean America is suffering a veritable holocaust of innocent human life annihilated? Consider the claim made by right-to-life apologists like Robert George, a Princeton University professor of jurisprudence and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, that every embryo is "already a human being." Does that mean that if we could detect such unimplanted embryos as they leave the womb, we would have a duty to rescue them and try to implant them anyway?

"If the embryo loss that accompanies natural procreation were the moral equivalent of infant death, then pregnancy would have to be regarded as a public health crisis of epidemic proportions: Alleviating natural embryo loss would be a more urgent moral cause than abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem-cell research combined," declared Michael Sandel, a Harvard University government professor, also a member of the President's Council on Bioethics.

As far as I know, bioconservatives like Robert George do not advocate the rescue of naturally conceived unimplanted embryos. But why not? In right-to-life terms, normal unimplanted embryos are the moral equivalents of a 30-year-old mother of three children.

Of course, culturally we do not mourn the deaths of these millions of embryos as we would the death of a childâ€"and reasonably so, because we do in fact know that these embryos are not people. Try this thought experiment. A fire breaks out in a fertility clinic and you have a choice: You can save a three-year-old child or a Petri dish containing 10 seven-day old embryos. Which do you choose to rescue?

Stepping onto dangerous theological ground, it seems that if human embryos consisting of one hundred cells or less are the moral equivalents of a normal adult, then religious believers must accept that such embryos share all of the attributes of a human being, including the possession of an immortal soul. So even if we generously exclude all of the naturally conceived abnormal embryosâ€"presuming, for the sake of theological argument, that imperfections in their gene expression have somehow blocked the installation of a soulâ€"that would still mean that perhaps 40 percent of all the residents of Heaven were never born, never developed brains, and never had thoughts, emotions, experiences, hopes, dreams, or desires.

Yet millions of intelligent people of good will maintain that seven-day-old embryos have the exact same moral standing as do readers of this column. Acting on this sincere belief, they are trying to block biomedical research on human embryonic stem cells that is desired by millions of their fellow citizens.

But there may be a way out of this politico-theological impasse. The President's Council on Bioethics held an extraordinarily interesting session earlier this month in which two different avenues for obtaining human embryonic stem cells were proposed, in ways that would skirt right-to-life moral objections.

First, Howard Zucker and Donald Landry, two medical professors at Columbia University, proposed "a new definition of death for the human organism, an organism in development, and that is the irreversible arrest of cell division." They pointed out that a good percentage of in-vitro fertilized (IVF) embryos consist of a mixture of cells, some containing the wrong number of chromosomes (aneuploidy), some with the normal number. Embryos with such cell mixtures often cease development by cell division and thus cannot develop into fetuses, much less babies. Zucker and Landry argue that such embryos can be considered dead, and the normal embryonic cells they contain can be harvested just as organs can be ethically harvested from brain-dead adults. (Animal experiments have already shown that cells harvested from defective embryos will produce normal tissues.) Thus, we get stem cells from an entity that could not, under any circumstances, have become a human being.

William Hurlbut, a consulting professor in the Program of Human Biology at Stanford University and another member of the President's Council on Bioethics, proposed another way to produce cloned human embryonic stem cells that right-to-lifers should not find morally objectionable. Hurlbut cited work by researcher Janet Rossant at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto in which she inactivated the cdx2 gene in mice. Once the cdx2 gene is inactivated, the mouse embryo cannot form a trophoblastâ€"the tissues that grow into the placenta. However, embryonic stem cells do develop, although they cannot form an embryo. Hurlbut proposed an attempt to find similar genes that could be inactivated in the nuclei of adult human cells before they are installed in enucleated human eggs to produce cloned embryonic stem cells that are a genetic match for the person who donates the adult nucleus. (Transplanted cells and tissues produced by such therapeutic cloning would not be rejected by the donor's immune system.) Once the stem cells have been derived, the inactivated genes could be reactivated so that the stem cells could be used to produce normal transplantable cells and tissues.

"This process does not involve the creation of an embryo that is then altered to transform it into a non-embryonic entity," explained Hurlbut. "Rather the proposed genetic alteration is accomplished ab initio, the entity is brought into existence with a genetic structure insufficient to generate a human embryo."

Will this research reduce the number of embryos populating heaven? Who knows? But these options offer a possible way around the moral blockades that impede promising biomedical research on human embryonic stem cells. Should we halt current human embryonic stem-cell research while these possible new avenues of research are being explored? Absolutely not. That would be surrendering to the moral bullying of a minority that wants to halt promising medical research that could cure millions on theological grounds that many of their fellow citizens do not share.

http://reason.com/archives/2004/12/22/is-heaven-populated-chiefly-by

[Clem1029]

Well if we prevent unwanted pregnancies (through contraception abstinence and a cultural shift) and thus abortions, it really doesn't matter when life begins.

Fixed that for you.

[FayeforCure]

Well if we prevent unwanted pregnancies (through contraception abstinence and a cultural shift) and thus abortions, it really doesn't matter when life begins.

Fixed that for you.

What is wrong with effective contraception, except for your moral judgement?

[uptowngirl]

This is all just a way to justify the deliberate decision to end a pregnancy- potential life or not. Naturally flushing an embryo is completely different than making a conscious decision to do so.  So if you choose to have an abortion, that is fine. But you certainly should not hide behind the fact that this "just happens normally" in some pregnancies so it is perfectly natural for you. Some people to have an abortion.  Some people have diabetes and end up with amputated limbs, but that does not justify me amputating my perfectly good leg now does it? In fact that would qualify me to be hospitalized for 72hrs. If you truly believe this, that these are not viable children, then why would the fact that 47% of women seeking an abortion have already had at least one previously? After all they aren't viable human lives? They are just a mass of cells, like getting a cancerous tumor cut out of your body. No difference really, correct?

[NotNow]

You are twisting the man's words.  All he is saying is that sex has consequences.  There is more to it than bumping uglies and moving on.  I am with you on encouraging contraception and I can accept it as a public health initiative.  STD's can be fatal and abortion is an ugly and brutal process for all involved.  But sex is mental, as well as physical.  It is personal on the most basic level (for most people).  Clem obviously wants to discourage the disparagement and cheapening of sex in our current culture.  I agree with him.  This is where public sex education fails.  This is where Fathers should teach their sons to be men and Mothers should teach their daughters to be women.  

I know this is not a perfect world, but we should strive to be a better society, not just accept our failings.  I don't have an answer to the abortion debate, I don't believe that any of us do.  But I think (and I believe that Clem thinks) we can do better.

[uptowngirl]

Actually Stephen it was directed at Faye, who posted the article in defense of abortion. I think the real question is are we comfortable with researches monkeying around with human DNA?

I think trying to justify a conscious decision to have an abortion with the fact that many women naturally miscarriage early on and do not even realize it is an insane argument. The difference between the two is the woman getting an abortion KNOWS she is pregnant. I think it is a very tough decision to make, or at least it should be, and if excuses such as "it happens all the time to women naturally" are used, well that 47% is going to increase. Science can't tell us for 100% when life actually starts, one way or the other. as you know I am not a christian, but I am spiritual and do believe in a higher power so until I can know for sure I am sticking with at conception.