Less than 30 minutes after the Supreme Court finally admitted that there is no constitutional right to abortion, President Obama called the ruling a political attack on “the essential freedoms of millions of Americans.” What essential freedoms were under attack? Actually, there was only one—though the former president is loathe to call it by name. I’ll say it for him:
"In returning abortion to the jurisdiction of individual states, each state was given more freedom, not less. And we the people now have opportunity to vote on abortion at the ballot box and with our feet."
First of all, for what does a "state" need freedom? Freedom is something that only individuals can enjoy.
Secondly, the people do NOT now have the opportunity to vote on abortion. I believe that if there were a referendum on abortion in every state, it would be legalized in every state. It is only the extreme right-wing Republican Christian politicians who want to make it illegal.
So you like the idea of "shotgun" weddings? Do you think shotgun weddings make for a happy married couple? You are more crude than you appear.
You said too many things in the article for me to answer them all, but I could write a book.
Leaving the ethics of abortion aside, the problem with Roe is that it unilaterally struck down a whole nation full of duly-enacted laws—on the pretense that the Constitution guarantees a right to abortion. Seven non-elected men invalidated hundreds of years of precedent overnight. This is not how the Court is supposed to operate. It’s not an oligarchy; it’s there to ensure that the Constitution is upheld. When the Court instead manufactures a bogus constitutional mandate in direct opposition to established legislation, it is subjecting the states to a form of judicial tyranny. The freedom that states now have from this half-century of overreach is real and invaluable.
That being said, you could be absolutely right about state-by-state abortion legislation. It’s entirely possible that the popular vote will be cast in favor of abortion, not against. That’s already been the case in Kansas, but much of the support for abortion comes from those who have never been adequately confronted with the case against abortion. This is changing. And with a better understanding of prenatal development comes less willingness to dehumanize the victims of abortion.
With regard to marriage, I would say that happiness is the wrong metric. Marriage makes life harder, not happier. But I would also argue that it makes life better. It is the assumption that “marriage should make me happy” that causes so many marriages to fail. Shotgun marriages can certainly be as successful and fulfilling as marriage in general. Maybe even more so, because they’re motivated not by “What’s best for me?” but by “What’s best for my child?”
Each time you write or speak, you reveal your true values, and they are not pretty.
Protecting Supreme Court precedents is less important than the rights of individual citizens. If the Supreme Court in 1973 made abortion legal, it was because they felt that a fetus' existence did not supersede a woman's right to control her body. As I have shown in my comment on your most recent article, there is no proof (not even any evidence beyond common sense) that a fetus has a soul. That being so, it should not be afforded the protection given a human being after birth. Your point of view is essentially misogynistic. You would make each woman a slave to her reproductive system. You would turn a woman into an oven which turns out a baby every time she becomes horny and has sex.
In my opinion, people who support abortion understand intuitively that aborting a fetus in the early stages is not killing a human being. Did you know that polls have shown that about one-third of Christians believe in reincarnation? They understand that the Christian model -- one life to live, after which you are assigned to Heaven or Hell depending on how you acted in that one life -- is essentially nonsensical. Reincarnation affords us more than one opportunity to make wise choices before we are condemned. Indeed, in my religion, we are immortal, and we exist perpetually, always learning and always growing. (Immortality is the central gift given to us by God.) My views are a much more sensible model of the universe than the one which has an angry and jealous Christian god running the show. Indeed, that's why you like Trump, isn't it? Because he resembles the capricious, cruel, narcissistic god of the Old Testament.
As far as "shotgun" weddings go, conservatives today celebrate cruelty, and you don't seem to be any different. My own landlord is a Trump cultist, and he told me once that he was proud of the fact that he feels no sympathy for anyone. That's what Christianity is -- it is the "no sympathy" religion. You get one life in which to behave well, and if you fail, you are condemned to be tortured in Hell for all of eternity. Such a cruel god and such a cruel universe do not exist. God is the embodiment of compassion.
You know, the conservatives who have overtaken the Court now (with Mitch McConnell's help) are more activist than any liberals who came before. Yes, Roe was an activist decision, but in recent years the Court has become far more activist, ruling that corporations should have the same rights as people, that the second amendment has virtually no restrictions on it, etc. (There are more bad decisions the Court has made that I can't think of right now.) So please don't talk to me about activist courts.
Nobody knows with any certainty what happens after we die. Nor does anyone know how or when ensoulment takes place. Reincarnation is a nice-enough idea. It satisfies our desire for justice without demanding too much justice. It works philosophically so long as you ignore the perpetrators of truly horrific crimes. But the fact that we have no memory of past lives is a significant strike against it. If the purpose of reincarnation is for individuals to get progressively better, it doesn’t seem to be working. How could it in the absence of any recollection of our past-life mistakes. It also compels a brutal sort of personal isolationism in which we must ignore the plight of the poor and oppressed—since they’re clearly paying for their past sins. Who are we to interfere with justice? The bottom line is you can’t make public policy decisions based on the doctrine of reincarnation—or on the doctrine of heaven and hell for that matter. Metaphysical arguments in the service of dehumanization never stand up to history. You might conveniently believe that aborted babies simply come back as someone else, but that rationale could be used to justify any act of homicide—which is why it doesn’t work.
Yes, and we also can't make public policy based on the tenets of one religion, such as Christianity, can we? In your last two comments (this and on the other article), you are trying to argue the issue from every angle. But as I just said in the other comment, if we don't survive death, then life has no meaning, and we might as well all die as fetuses.
Insofar as reincarnation is concerned, the idea is that you remember your past lessons unconsciously. By being reborn in each life, without any memory of past lives, we are able to live as if we were mortal, with maximum freedom -- maximum freedom to be good or to be bad without fear of consequences.
Now, there is pleasure in committing murder. (I know this from watching a lot of true-crime shows, but also from other sources -- such as an interview with a person who committed mass murder in Rwanda.) A man who becomes a serial murderer is doing it partly for the pleasure of taking and killing. But once that man has lived more lives, he will have learned the wrongness of that. And even though he doesn't remember has past lives, he will be able to live a life of restraint in which he curtails his violent impulses.
Once more: If the fetus does not have a soul, aborting it is not a dehumanizing action.
* Abortion allows women to be equal to men.
* It allows parents to manage the size of their families.
* And it helps to control the human population -- which at present is at a serious tipping point.
"In returning abortion to the jurisdiction of individual states, each state was given more freedom, not less. And we the people now have opportunity to vote on abortion at the ballot box and with our feet."
First of all, for what does a "state" need freedom? Freedom is something that only individuals can enjoy.
Secondly, the people do NOT now have the opportunity to vote on abortion. I believe that if there were a referendum on abortion in every state, it would be legalized in every state. It is only the extreme right-wing Republican Christian politicians who want to make it illegal.
So you like the idea of "shotgun" weddings? Do you think shotgun weddings make for a happy married couple? You are more crude than you appear.
You said too many things in the article for me to answer them all, but I could write a book.
Leaving the ethics of abortion aside, the problem with Roe is that it unilaterally struck down a whole nation full of duly-enacted laws—on the pretense that the Constitution guarantees a right to abortion. Seven non-elected men invalidated hundreds of years of precedent overnight. This is not how the Court is supposed to operate. It’s not an oligarchy; it’s there to ensure that the Constitution is upheld. When the Court instead manufactures a bogus constitutional mandate in direct opposition to established legislation, it is subjecting the states to a form of judicial tyranny. The freedom that states now have from this half-century of overreach is real and invaluable.
That being said, you could be absolutely right about state-by-state abortion legislation. It’s entirely possible that the popular vote will be cast in favor of abortion, not against. That’s already been the case in Kansas, but much of the support for abortion comes from those who have never been adequately confronted with the case against abortion. This is changing. And with a better understanding of prenatal development comes less willingness to dehumanize the victims of abortion.
With regard to marriage, I would say that happiness is the wrong metric. Marriage makes life harder, not happier. But I would also argue that it makes life better. It is the assumption that “marriage should make me happy” that causes so many marriages to fail. Shotgun marriages can certainly be as successful and fulfilling as marriage in general. Maybe even more so, because they’re motivated not by “What’s best for me?” but by “What’s best for my child?”
Each time you write or speak, you reveal your true values, and they are not pretty.
Protecting Supreme Court precedents is less important than the rights of individual citizens. If the Supreme Court in 1973 made abortion legal, it was because they felt that a fetus' existence did not supersede a woman's right to control her body. As I have shown in my comment on your most recent article, there is no proof (not even any evidence beyond common sense) that a fetus has a soul. That being so, it should not be afforded the protection given a human being after birth. Your point of view is essentially misogynistic. You would make each woman a slave to her reproductive system. You would turn a woman into an oven which turns out a baby every time she becomes horny and has sex.
In my opinion, people who support abortion understand intuitively that aborting a fetus in the early stages is not killing a human being. Did you know that polls have shown that about one-third of Christians believe in reincarnation? They understand that the Christian model -- one life to live, after which you are assigned to Heaven or Hell depending on how you acted in that one life -- is essentially nonsensical. Reincarnation affords us more than one opportunity to make wise choices before we are condemned. Indeed, in my religion, we are immortal, and we exist perpetually, always learning and always growing. (Immortality is the central gift given to us by God.) My views are a much more sensible model of the universe than the one which has an angry and jealous Christian god running the show. Indeed, that's why you like Trump, isn't it? Because he resembles the capricious, cruel, narcissistic god of the Old Testament.
As far as "shotgun" weddings go, conservatives today celebrate cruelty, and you don't seem to be any different. My own landlord is a Trump cultist, and he told me once that he was proud of the fact that he feels no sympathy for anyone. That's what Christianity is -- it is the "no sympathy" religion. You get one life in which to behave well, and if you fail, you are condemned to be tortured in Hell for all of eternity. Such a cruel god and such a cruel universe do not exist. God is the embodiment of compassion.
You know, the conservatives who have overtaken the Court now (with Mitch McConnell's help) are more activist than any liberals who came before. Yes, Roe was an activist decision, but in recent years the Court has become far more activist, ruling that corporations should have the same rights as people, that the second amendment has virtually no restrictions on it, etc. (There are more bad decisions the Court has made that I can't think of right now.) So please don't talk to me about activist courts.
Nobody knows with any certainty what happens after we die. Nor does anyone know how or when ensoulment takes place. Reincarnation is a nice-enough idea. It satisfies our desire for justice without demanding too much justice. It works philosophically so long as you ignore the perpetrators of truly horrific crimes. But the fact that we have no memory of past lives is a significant strike against it. If the purpose of reincarnation is for individuals to get progressively better, it doesn’t seem to be working. How could it in the absence of any recollection of our past-life mistakes. It also compels a brutal sort of personal isolationism in which we must ignore the plight of the poor and oppressed—since they’re clearly paying for their past sins. Who are we to interfere with justice? The bottom line is you can’t make public policy decisions based on the doctrine of reincarnation—or on the doctrine of heaven and hell for that matter. Metaphysical arguments in the service of dehumanization never stand up to history. You might conveniently believe that aborted babies simply come back as someone else, but that rationale could be used to justify any act of homicide—which is why it doesn’t work.
Yes, and we also can't make public policy based on the tenets of one religion, such as Christianity, can we? In your last two comments (this and on the other article), you are trying to argue the issue from every angle. But as I just said in the other comment, if we don't survive death, then life has no meaning, and we might as well all die as fetuses.
Insofar as reincarnation is concerned, the idea is that you remember your past lessons unconsciously. By being reborn in each life, without any memory of past lives, we are able to live as if we were mortal, with maximum freedom -- maximum freedom to be good or to be bad without fear of consequences.
Now, there is pleasure in committing murder. (I know this from watching a lot of true-crime shows, but also from other sources -- such as an interview with a person who committed mass murder in Rwanda.) A man who becomes a serial murderer is doing it partly for the pleasure of taking and killing. But once that man has lived more lives, he will have learned the wrongness of that. And even though he doesn't remember has past lives, he will be able to live a life of restraint in which he curtails his violent impulses.
Once more: If the fetus does not have a soul, aborting it is not a dehumanizing action.
* Abortion allows women to be equal to men.
* It allows parents to manage the size of their families.
* And it helps to control the human population -- which at present is at a serious tipping point.
Abortion is altogether good for mankind.