My guess is that is unlikely that you will change your mind but if you have any questions, even if you are firm in your current position, don't hesitate to ask.
You're going to be sorry you offered, assuming, that is, that you're not already.
it could be taken as meaning "I suprised that some one who holds a viewpoint as crazy as yours can be so reasonable and calm.
LOL! It was a straight complement, but I admit that your second option resonated a bit. I'm glad you have a sense of humor.
It's not that I think the viewpoint is crazy. I don't. The reason, in my experience, that it's hard for me to discuss anything with pro-lifers is that whatever question I ask evokes a response along the line of "because God tells me so." I'm an analyst both by temperament and training. I don't know what to do with that or where to go from there. There's no way to develop a mutual understanding or find common ground when one of the parties resorts to divine revelation.
I would agree if I thought it was not killing innocent children but was instead just a matter of personal morality or esthetics.
I still don't understand on what basis you think a few split cells is a child. Let me put the question into context. I don't like abortion. When I trim back a house plant I always put the trimmings in water to root even if I don't want to reproduce the plant because I feel like a murderer putting them in the trash. I'm certainly not cavalier about a fetus. But I know in my head that a clipping is a potential new house plant and a fetus is a potential child, not a child. Do you have anything that will convey to me why what I consider a potential child is an actual child? How do you know you're right? (If you say "because God tells me so," I'll assume you're teasing me.)
To actually ban it by a court decision you would have to have an activist pro-life court, just as I see Roe vs. Wade as an example of an activist pro-choice decision
I think it would require an amendment to the Constitution. We amended it when we decided that slaves were whole people. I think we'd have to amend it to say a fetus is a person.
How is a slightly more difficult question
When I asked "how" I wasn't thinking about how to get the law changed but how it would be implemented. For example, Would a pregnant woman who drank and had a miscarriage be guilty of manslaughter? Or the party responsible for an auto accident that killed a fetus? Could a pregnant woman take out a life insurance policy on her fetus? Would a fetus be eligible to win the lottery? And if it did, what would happen to the money in the event of a miscarriage? I know some of those are silly, but the point is that changing the date of personhood affects all sorts of law and practice in all sorts of unpredictable ways.
. To try to reduce the amount of deaths of innocent unborn children and for at least some pro-life people to try to get a measure of justice for those who are unjustly killed.
If the point is to reduce the deaths, it seems to me that there are more feasible and constructive approaches than criminalizing abortions. There could be a lot of political energy around reducing the deaths, particularly it it also reduced the births through birth control. Why beat one's head against the wall going for criminalization? Surely it's better to reduce the deaths than to get vengeance.
Karen
P.S. I also am against the exlution of an idea from all public consideration just because a religion supports it.
Just for the record, I wouldn't exclude an idea from public consideration just because a religion supports it. Religion supports world peace and I think that makes great public policy. The problem is when there's no basis for the idea other than divine revelation. |
