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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (4632)	1/4/2017 11:44:17 AM
From: bentway	Respond to of 360995

Nobody likes abortions. So, the good news is they're down, historically, while being more available than ever. Perhaps that has to do with the morning after pill being available over the counter? Contraception decreases abortions. Watch for Republicans with power reversing this progress.

To: i-node who wrote (4632)	1/4/2017 3:58:44 PM
From: Lane3	1 Recommendation Recommended By i-node Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 360995

I recognize the issue remains unsettled in the eyes of many, including me. I'm pretty well settled. I've expended a lot of time and effort trying to get my head around the ProLife movement, talking to different people, trying to read what's going on behind the slogans and shibboleths. Hard to do that when dealing with an alien culture so anything I come up with is imperfect. But, I spend a couple of hours each day in mindless exercise and the brain has to do something so it works and reworks issues like this. As of now I have synthesized all that data gathering into three reasons for opposing abortion: 1. The Bible says so, and that settles it. 2. It feels wrong. 3. There but for the grace of God go I. As for number 1, well, nothing much to be done with that other than to remind folks about the separation of church and state. Number 3 is interesting. No one to whom I attribute that ever directly expressed it as a reason. Reading between the lines I suspected that a couple of the most vehement opponents of abortion wondered if they might personally have dodged the abortion bullet. Both were in situations that sometimes result in an abortion, one based on severe disability and the other on family size. I picked up on something like wistfulness and suffering at the notion that they might not have been born. I bounced off one the notion that, had he not been born, he would not be suffering at the thought of not having been born since he wouldn't be around to do that. He looked at me like I had two heads. Guess ya gotta be there... Number 2 seems to be where the unsettlement lies. True story: When I was in the fifth grade my family moved from an apartment to a house. Mom made a garden and gave me a piece of it plus a couple of packets of seeds. One packet was radishes. Not sure about the other. I followed the instructions on the packets and soon there I could see little green things poking through the dirt. They were alive, and cute, and tender. I was in awe. The next step on the packets was to thin the planting to a specified spacing. Uh, oh. I was supposed to kill some of them. I was very upset. They were so young and so vulnerable and would not get a chance at life. It seemed so wrong. But it made complete sense. I finally smacked myself a few times, repeated "grow up, Karen, you twit" or some such, and I finally steeled myself to do it. It was ten years before I ever again tried to grow something from seed. Gourds. I planted the seeds at final distance so I wouldn't have to destroy any of them. Dried and painted the gourds. Still have them. Still can't trim a philodendron and throw the cuttings in the trash. They have to go in water where they have the opportunity to survive and grow. Otherwise it just feels wrong. I am not suggesting that a radish is the moral equivalent of a human, only demonstrating that I understand how something can feel so wrong. But that doesn't mean that it is. I think we, society, have the question backwards. We in group number 2 talk about when abortion might be morally acceptable and what might not rather than what is the moral basis for disallowing it, those of us operating under number 2, that is. In an effort to be as objective and rigorous as I could be approached the question from Moral Foundations Theory with its six categories of morality. I found that the two categories that apply are Sanctity and Care/Harm. Sanctity is dominant; Care/Harm a secondary player. Perception of sanctity is a matter of what one's culture considers taboo. And that varies. So it's not absolute.