RoR: Forum

John,

Fear of crazy, un-objective laws is no reason to change the line where right to life begins. Just imagine one of those left-field libertarians who argue for no rights until eighteen stepping up and saying, “with rights prior to eighteen, next we’ll see laws that automate charges of reckless care-taking whenever a child dies and someone once saw the mother giving him too much chocolate." I am guessing that you would respond as I would: That’s a bad, un-objective law, but not a good reason to consider children right-less chattel until eighteen.

(Edited by Jon Letendre
on 3/01, 8:17pm)

Post 21

Thursday, March 1, 2007 - 9:36pm

Jon, was your post below in response to my deleted post here meant to be on Audrey's thread? Because now the Vicodin and Scopolamine are kicking in and the room is spinning...

And if you have the opportunity, try my dad's favorite trick, and put a small baked-potato in the diapers of the next toddler whose parents won't sue for for the joke.

Ted
(Edited by Ted Keer
on 3/01, 9:54pm)

Post 22

Thursday, March 1, 2007 - 9:48pm

(Edited by Jon Letendre
on 3/01, 10:53pm)

Post 23

Thursday, March 1, 2007 - 8:15pm

This is Rand's one major inconsisitency. On the one hand she says human life is the highest value, on the other she defends snuffing it out in the womb. I realize that I am a lone wolf on this issue, but, there can be no rational reason to kill innocent human life.
As to the argument of when a fetus is human, that is all bologna, it is human and we all know it. The moment a woman gives birth to a catfish I will consider changing my position, until then, let's stop kidding ourselves.

Post 24

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 3:45am

Oh my - here we go again - ignorance prevails...............

Read this, then comment ---------
http://www.amazon.com/Facts-Life-Science-Abortion-Controversy/dp/0195090462/ref=sr_1_2/102-1157340-5183330?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1172835948&sr=8-2

(Edited by robert malcom on 3/02, 3:47am)

(Edited by robert malcom on 3/02, 3:48am)

Post 25

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 7:31am

Ok, so brain function doesn't start until the 24th week. So what? We all know it is going to start, and by aborting you are still killing a human life. All you are doing is pre-emptively taking a life that you know damn well is human and, in time, will have all the functions and capabilities the rest of us enjoy. Couldn't you apply the same reasoning to an infant? After all, what separates us from the animals is the ability to reason, and infants can't reason. If you really want to take it out to it's extreme, the same would apply to professors and...wait a minute, I'm starting to like this idea...

Post 26

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 7:57am

> there can be no rational reason to kill innocent human life.

Well, there are circumstances that to bring forth the new life would ruin the woman's life, her spouse/partner's life, the well-being of their whole family. And the potential new life would most likely to be a wretched one too, if it survives at all.

(Edited by Hong Zhang on 3/02, 8:09am)

Post 27

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 8:22am

Ted, what the hell are you doing taking scopolamine? From Wikipedia ...

The drug is highly toxic and has to be used in minute doses. An overdose can cause delirium, delusions, paralysis, stupor and death.

The use of scopolamine as a truth drug was investigated by various intelligence agencies, including the CIA, during the 1950s. see: Project MKULTRA. It was found that, due to the hallucinogenic side effects of the drug, the truth was prone to distortion, and the project was subsequently abandoned.

Anti-cholinergics like scopolamine are often used in order to test the efficacy of 'smart drugs' -- because they first reduce the efficacy of your mind, by blocking receptors for our most important 'memory molecule', acetylcholine.

Ed

Post 28

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 4:43pm

Ed,

I'm not on Vicodin either, and have never posted under the influence. The drugs were the first two funny-sounding mind-altering substances that came to mind.

And actually, I do take phenobarbitol with belladonna extract (donatol) a few times a week to quiet my intestines. The ingredients for that are scarier sounding than their very beneficial effects at low doses. I have had several abominable abdominal surgeries, and was on a heroin drip (I mean morphine, I always say heroin by mistake - sometimes to comedic effect) for six months from 2001-2002, with no withdrawal issues or lasting effects. I even asked my neighbor, who works in the US Surgeon General's office about my morphine dosage at the time. He said it was kid's stuff, less powerful than certain other drugs, and was prescribed orally in the last two months after that operation because I am codeine intolerant.

Ted

Post 29

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 7:59pm

Necessary Bitter Pills, not meant for children

The fetus pictured here is at about 5 months. The procedure is legal often to term.

This is more properly described as partial-birth infanticide.

If the fetus's head is not held into the woman, the child will be delivered live. It must be manipulated to breach position and then be intentionally held in place to prevent live birth, until the brains are removed. Again, the procedure is in strict accordance to Jewish law, as is circumcison, which is perhaps less of a tragedy.

Ted Keer

Post 30

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 8:19pm

Good God! Ted, are you on a sadistic streak?! This is so much worse than mere embryotomy. Totally appalling. But I guess it happens. Perhaps it happens a lot in China.

Post 31

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 9:30pm

Could someone educate me about partial-birth procedures? Specifically, it is my understanding that Roe v. Wade prohibits late abortions, let alone literally last-minute ones. I had understood that these were allowed under health of the mother exceptions. Also, I understood that most partial-birth procedures were cases of encephelo-something, basically the baby is doomed within hours or days anyway, and delivering it would cause mother damage. Is this not so? They are truly healthy, normal babies? Then why is the procedure allowed? I thought Roe V. Wade didn’t allow it? (Not being rhetorical, totally genuine. If you have an understanding, please share.)

Post 32

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 10:22pm

Roe versus Wade is usually circumvented in the case of partial-birth infanticide by the excuse that it is done for the "health" of the mother. Whether Roe vs Wade refers to the health or the life of the mother in the third trimester, I am not sure, but my unrefreshed recollection is that the argument was based on her life.

Universally, anti - partial-birth-infanticide laws have been struck down by recent and liberal courts because they make no exception for the health of the mother. Consider the acquittal of poor suffering Andrea Yates. Only the eldest of her five boys evidently understood (by her own testimony!) that he was being murdered on the day she drowned them, youngest not pictured.

The Supreme Court has done everything it can to avoid judgment, routinely avoiding any judgments of principle, and opportunistically kicking the matter back to the States) The red herring is that her "health" here is not her physical well-being, but her mental stress. Since this is subjective, all such killings could be justified on that ground.

While I do see some reason for concern as to whether Roe vs Wade was well based law on explicit grounds of precedent, I find its effect in equity, were it to be actually observed on the late-term end, quite reasonable.

Ted Keer

(Edited by Ted Keer
on 3/02, 10:58pm)

Post 33

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 10:46pm

Hong, I apologize for the bitterness of the truth depicted. I most certainly did not enjoy posting these pictures. (Neither do I enjoy Mel Gibson's more famously violent movies.) I had to google search for them. These were not the most gruesome I found, which I shall not even describe in words, but were rather the smallest and actually some of the least prejudicial. If you google search "partial-birth abortion" under images you will see much more disgusting photos. There are many photos of lynchings and genocide that disturb but also motivate.

I originally began the post "WARNING" but felt that this was intellectually cowardly, and the first few words that do show up on the unread-post header were chosen as literally accurate. We are all adults here, and to refuse to publish these pictures is to assume that we cannot separate unpleasant emotion from fact.

I continue to hold that this procedure, which I understand is never either necessary or the only means to save woman's life, is not meant to end pregnancy, but intentionally to destroy life. Whether that destruction is done three months before or after delivery seems trivial to me.

I fully support abortion until sentience, for which I use quickening as a stand-in (most admittedly on the conservative side, in the moral, not the political sense) to judge at this point. At some point, a woman's inaction becomes her consent. I will happily allow some room here for argument based on scientific examination of brain function. But I also question the brain-function of a woman who does not know she is pregnant after four months. Does her ignorance or distress affect a person's rights? I believe personhood begins here, and no person shall be deprived of life or liberty without due process of law. fetuses are not criminals.

Ted Keer

Post 34

Saturday, March 3, 2007 - 5:53am

Ted's graphic photographs in Post 29 do not move me in the slightest from my pro-choice position.

To quote Leonard Peikoff on the Abortion Is Prolife site, "A Picture Is Not an Argument."

As I said in the abortion poll thread, this subject simply does not move me to action. If abortions up to the day of birth became legal, I would not launch into a vehement moral crusade to reverse that trend. I am not going to sit here, as a man, and presume to waggle my finger -- or gun -- at women to tell them of their "duty" to carry that fetus to term. I just will not do it -- period.

Conversely, I could certainly see myself campaigning to keep the current Roe v. Wade standards in place versus seeing abortion outlawed altogether.

However, if push came to shove and I had to choose between outlawing all abortions or permitting all abortions, I would definitely choose the latter.

Put bluntly, I value my own life most highly, the lives of others to varying degrees and the life of a fetus not at all. I just do not see that value as one worth defending at the expense of a woman's liberty. I just do not.

Put even more bluntly, practically any fool who copulates can become a parent. Life is cheap in that regard. The real work comes in raising children after birth, not just conceiving them.

If my harsh attitude makes me a monster in the eyes of others here, so be it. Crusading for fetal rights is one campaign in which I will gladly "abort" my participation.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 3/03, 5:56am)

Post 35

Saturday, March 3, 2007 - 11:14am

I'd like to add an observation to Luke's post. It is one thing to say that an unwanted child or infant has "the right to life" even if they are unwanted by their parent or parents. How many people saying this are clamoring for the chance to raise and support these children themselves? The fact is, children that are unwanted by their parents are rarely wanted (valued) by anyone. You may pay people (with tax money) to take care of them or subject parents with criminal penalties or guilt trips and force them to "raise" them but raising children who are aware their entire lives that they are unwanted has mixed results, most of them bad.

Post 36

Saturday, March 3, 2007 - 11:29am

Luke,

I certainly did not expect all people to react identically, although if the picture of the actual fetus did not in any way seem unpleasant I would be surprised. And of course, pictures without comments are at most implicit arguments, but they do represent evidence, and just like art, in being selected, they make a statement. The fact that Peikoff would say that pictures don't make arguments in just this context seems like special pleading. Do the pictures of soviet missile silos in Cuba, the pictures at Tiananmen, the pictures of gassed Kurds, of Lynched blacks not "make arguments?"

I am not ready to condemn anyone here who is willing to state there views, and answer objections. Like I said, I respect a friend who supports Roman style exposure (But not cutting up babies, or pimping them out to recoup medical costs before you do so). I find the stark either totally legal or totally illegal statement a false dichotomy, and perhaps a cop-out. Again, I think it is valid to ask what is the difference between PBA and simple infanticide. I posted these pix and also pointed out the fact that the procedure was specifically designed in order not to violate Jewish law because many people in this debate are either ignorant of, or do not wish to investigate those unpleasant realities.

I am with you, I would be happy if Roe versus Wade were enforced, but this would mean the end of PBA so far as I can see. There are also many side topics, light what if a woman eats an herb that is an abortifacient intentionally during the eigth-month, such thins are quite complex. But when it comes to having a medical doctor dilate the cervix, but manually manipulate a viable fetus to breach position, and suck out its brains with a vacuum while preventing the natural occurance of spontaneous birth that would otherwise occur, I think that conditions are clear enough to make legal distinctions that Roe versus Wade has already said are permissible.

I intimately know people who have had abortions, miscarriages, and who have felt that the fetus they saw at three months on an ultrasound was incontrovertibly a person. Much depends or personal experience. I may think that you seem a bit off on your reasoning here (since, I, of course, am right) but I don't think you are a monster.

And I repeat, pictures in context do make explicit arguments, else why claim they don't?

Ted Keer

Post 37

Sunday, March 4, 2007 - 12:35am

"Innocent human life" is a question begging idea unless "human" is clearly defined. And if "a being of volitional consciousness" is what to be human amounts to, then prior to the 24th week of pregnancy there is no human life in a pregnant woman's body. Yes, there is a grey area but far less than there is between an adolescent and an adult, a difference that law can handle adequately enough. So, Rand's quite consistent here as in most places.

Post 38

Sunday, March 4, 2007 - 1:48am

Six months are 26 weeks, so I assume that this make you, Tibor, a 5 Month & two weeker. In your own essay, I understand you to argue that at some point, a woman, by her actions, (specifically inaction) has taken responsibility for the life within her. As for Rand's consistency, the admission that there is a grey area is no great commitment to principle, just an admission that a boundary has not been set. And as I said, a 23 week old fetus has just come home from the hospital - a definition, de facto, of viability in my book.

Are you claiming that you have knowledge that a fetus does reach some plateau at 24 weeks? I am open to any evidence to back up this claim.

=====

Evasion, Evasion, Evasion

I have still not heard from one person in this debate - not one - whether they think that a woman is or is not evading what is going on inside her, if she cannot decide to abort after 120 days of consideration. if a woman only becomes aware that she is pregnant on her missed period (most woman know within a week of conception) then why does she need more than another 91 days after her missed period - until quickening - to decide to abort or not?

Why is this need for a woman to be given even more time to agonize, as the fetus reaches ever more full actuality such "sacred" ground to hard line pro-abortionists? in 91 days from today it will be June. If you found that you were 28 days pregnant today, would it you until June to decide to abort? Does the matter have to go before the UN security council?

A person is responsible for her actions, and does not evade that responsibility through evasion - the SIN of objectivism.

Will just one person please make me a plausible counterargument, rather than cowardly sanctioning the orthodox line without defending it? If Rand could hope that kittens have rights, what was her hostility towards late-term fetuses - if it existed - all about?

If pictures are not arguments, even less so is silence an argument.

Ted Keer

Post 39

Sunday, March 4, 2007 - 3:42am