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Politics : To be a Liberal,you have to believe that..... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (2313)	9/15/1999 1:23:00 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6418

No, Charles, these are mercy exceptions, to mitigate a terrible hardship on the mother, and the main point is that the law refrains from imposing penalties in these instances...

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (2313)	9/15/1999 1:24:00 PM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6418

I don't think so. The issue is one where several interests, mother father, baby and society, need to be balanced. Killing your baby because its not convenient or it will detrimentally affect your lifestyle or pocketbook can be distinguished from an involuntary pregnancy such as a rape or incest. In those cases, the mother's life can arguably be placed before the baby. JLA

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (2313)	9/19/1999 7:08:00 PM
From: E	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 6418

<<<If a pro-lifer is to be consistent, there shouldn't be exceptions for rape or incest.>>> Of course not. If someone opposes abortion because they believe it is murder of a "human person," even in the earliest stages of pregnancy, of course there can be no exceptions. If someone believes that all abortion is murder, they would have to grant to the eight week embryo or twelve week fetus the same right they would to a nine month fetus or a toddler or a teenager. If a three year old were discovered by its mother, through the use of DNA testing, to have been the product of a rape instead of, as she had assumed, her husband's child, no one would approve the mother's killing the child, however it reminded her of her past trauma. These reproduction-dictators know perfectly well that early abortions are not of anything reasonably called human persons-- but they are terribly torn. On the one hand, they like the idea of getting the government to force the woman to give birth against her will, because they are convinced their own religious views are right, and that obedience to them should be mandatory for all citizens... But when the resultant injustice and anguish and horror of this forced child-bearing become vivid enough to them, as in the dramatic cases of rape or incest, many right-to-lifers are confronted with an emotional dilemma-- Like everyone, and maybe more than most, they like to be able to think of themselves as "decent" and "kind" and "moral" people. Sanctimony, I am convinced, is like a drug to them. And they are able to cling to that satisfying mind-state while doing this monstrous thing to women, by saying to themselves, and each other, over and over, that they are "saving babies." But-- there are circumstances in which they feel a distinct unease. They can't maintain and defend the fiction that these embryos or fetuses are actual "babies" and simultaneously perceive themselves as decent, kind and moral people when the outrageousness of their forced-motherhood policy is so blatant that even they themselves are offended by it. So, for the purposes of granting "mercy" in those cases, the "baby" nature of the embryo is conveniently set aside. IMO, the "mercy exceptions" give the lie to the claim of those who would force women to bear children they don't want that this is necessary because the fetus is a human person. The "mercy exceptions" are repellent to me for another reason, too-- they arrogate to self-appointed Rulers of the Uteruses the right to decide when "mercy" shall be bestowed, or withheld. Neocon, or Christopher, shall grant their "mercy" to, or withhold it from, the woman who does not want that embryo, to become a "human person" in her abdomen. They and their comrades take it on themselves to say yea or nay, according to how they score the importance of the pregnant woman's plea to be allowed to have an abortion before the fetus becomes a (dependent) person. (Is it Neocon, or Christopher, who will care for the unwanted children, BTW? Is it they who will adopt the ones who have been starved and beaten in their early lives by their involuntary mothers, who will adopt the fetal alcohol syndrome ones, the deformed ones, the ones who are not the blue-eyed accidents of pretty, non-smoking college girls?) The "mercy exception" is an outrageous concept to me. How dare anyone propose to bestow, or withhold, "mercy" to desperate women who know what they want and need-- a safe medical procedure to remove an embryo or fetus from their bodies before it becomes an infant.