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Tristyn Bloom
Matthew Cantirino
Anthony Esolen
Gene Fant
Greg Forster
Matthew J. Franck
Collin Garbarino
Robert P. George
William J. Haun
Leroy Huizenga
Katherine Infantine
Joseph Knippenberg
David T. Koyzis
Robert T. Miller
Matthew Milliner
David Mills
Mark Movsesian
William Mumma
Nathaniel Peters
R.R. Reno
James R. Rogers
Russell E. Saltzman
Matthew Schmitz
Kevin Staley-Joyce
David Talcott
Anna Williams
Death by Treacle
Pamela Haag, The American Scholar
In an Apocalyptic Daze
Pascal Bruckner, City Journal
Social Issues Sink to the Bottom
Pew Research Center
The 20-Year Nostalgia Cycle
Forrest Wickham, Browbeat
Heroic Catholicism, Not Casual Catholicism
Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, via Deacon’s Bench
April 18th, 2012 | 10:04 am
Re: Heroic Catholicism, Not Casual Catholicism
Here are a few excerpts from Bishop Jenky’s homily I thought were particularly worth thoughtfully considering:
Bishop Jenky is right about our having nothing to fear. Yet if we don’t consider the lessons of history we will be caught off guard. If we lose the eternal perspective of which Bishop Jenky reminds us, and cling to the illusory security this world offers instead of to Christ, when it becomes clear that that worldly security is a mere facade by its crumbling, we will be filled with unnecessary fear.
So, we need to read the signs of the times (Mt 16:3) and draw the conclusions to which they testify. We need to keep our hearts where our true treasure is located (Mt 6:21): in a heavenly place Christ has prepared for us (John 14:2). Our treasure is Christ Himself. His love for us and ours for Him will cast out fear. (1 John 4:18)
April 18th, 2012 | 10:26 am
In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.
It is simply outrageous to accuse Obama of following a path similar to that of Hitler and Stalin. It is appalling that a Catholic Bishop would say such a thing. I understand Catholics are upset by the “contraceptive mandate” (which still exists only in outline form), but it it is not a clear violation of the First Amendment. If it were, the Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority, would be sure it strike it down. Contraceptive mandates on the state level have been upheld by the Supreme Court. It’s all going to boil down to how the court interprets Employment Division v Smith and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. There is absolutely no guarantee that the contraceptive mandate will be struck down by the courts, so it is not a “clear violation of the First Amendment.”
April 18th, 2012 | 11:25 am
Hello, David Nickol,
The hostility to theism, and to Christianity in particular, in which modern, atheistic, radically secular regimes ever more aggressively engage, having already transformed jurisprudence from one based on natural law (“the laws of nature and nature’s God”) to one of legal positivism in which there is nothing particularly significant about biological humanity as an attribute meriting one legal personhood, and for which there is no necessary connection between morality and law – this hostility is thinly disguised and personified in Barack Obama.
It is a “no brainer” to conclude that all the governments of modern history that were intensely hostile to theism have also been fatal to innocent human beings by the millions and have ultimately been rightly judged as immoral, illegitimate disasters. It is entirely understandable why Obama’s cold, hardhearted opposition to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, his unwavering support of the legalization of taking the the lives of countless innocent human beings brought about by Roe v Wade, his being entirely and openly devoted to the godless social engineering of Planned Parenthood, his completely unnecessary attempt (unnecessary because contraception is ubiquitously available and cheap) to force the Catholic Church and individuals who consider abortifacient contraception an intrinsic evil to directly participate in distributing it – all of that does, of course, lead to comparisons between him and others who have led godless regimes that were hostile to theism, Christianity and Catholicism in particular, and who also worked to diminish their influence on society. There is nothing outrageous about pointing that out at all.
April 18th, 2012 | 11:48 am
harry,
Obama is a Christian, and a very thoughtful one, too. Just because you disagree with him on the issue of abortion does not make him anti-Christian or atheist. I can understand why you and others disagree with him, but I really don’t understand why you try to make him into the personification of evil.
I have found it wise to avoid discussions about the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act, since there is a “party line” among pro-lifers that simply cannot be contradicted. Suffice it to say that there was no solid evidence that the alleged abuses BAIPA was supposed to remedy had actually ever occurred. Nor has anyone ever been able to demonstrate to me that the passage of BAIPA actually changed anything. Has there been one prosecution in Illinois based on BAIPA?
There is no solid evidence that any of the contraceptives or emergency contraceptives that would be covered by the “contraceptive mandate” are “abortifacients” even in the sense that pro-lifers use the term (that is, to include drugs that interfere with implantation). There is some reason to suspect that some of them might be, but that is quite different from claiming that they are. The alleged abortifacient nature of contraceptives is also a matter of the pro-life “party line,” and no amount of evidence seems to be sufficient to contradict it.
April 18th, 2012 | 11:48 am
harry – Disagreeing over personhood is not hostility toward religion.
April 18th, 2012 | 2:37 pm
It is simply outrageous to accuse Obama of following a path similar to that of Hitler and Stalin.
I actually see several similarities.
I am especially concerned over the refusal to tolerate competition. Obama’s model is a model where the state is the sole source of all nourishment – ideological, spiritual, psychological, mental, and physical. His model does not allow room for the family or the church, and in fact Barack Obama has taken aggressive measures to replace and displace both family and church.
Ray Ingles: the Germans were only disagreeing about personhood, too.
If you’re going to use that criteria, no crimes were committed, because none of the people they killed were “people”.
April 18th, 2012 | 2:41 pm
If you’re going to use that criteria, no crimes were committed, because none of the people they killed were “people”.
By the way, the sincerity of the belief that so many had – in the early part of the 20th century – that various ethnic and racial groups could be human in a technical sense, but “not human” (in the sense that they somehow lack some essential “I know it when I see it” quality that differentiates real humans from mere human-like animals) is one of the most persuasive arguments there is against abortion.
Either human life is sacred, or human life is sacred except when people in power insist that it’s self-evident that the person they want to kill is just ‘obviously’ not really ‘human’.
It’s another way of saying, what standard do we wish to apply? Might makes right, or sanctity of life? Barack Obama is like Hitler and Stalin in choosing might makes right and rejecting sanctity of life.
April 18th, 2012 | 2:45 pm
Susan Stabile at Mirror of Justice on that unfortunate analogy:
http://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2012/04/comparison-of-obama-to-hitler-and-stalin.html
April 18th, 2012 | 3:14 pm
Ray Ingles: the Germans were only disagreeing about personhood, too.
Blake,
We’ve been through this before. The Germans never claimed the Jews (or homosexuals, or Gypsies, or any other targets of the Holocaust) weren’t persons. That’s just false. They considered them inferior, or undesirable, or degenerate, but they didn’t consider them nonpersons.
April 18th, 2012 | 3:30 pm
I see that you don’t deny that Obama opposed the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.
The Illinois State Senate was dealing with a controversy brought about by induced labor abortions, where the premature birth is intentional, and, as in many premature births, the child is born alive. These infants were being left to die in hospital closets used for things like soiled linen instead of being taken to the newborn intensive care unit.
Below is a link to a transcript provided by the State of Illinois:
http://www.ilga.gov/senate/transcripts/strans92/ST033001.pdf
It is entitled:
STATE OF ILLINOIS
92ND GENERAL ASSEMBLY
REGULAR SESSION
SENATE TRANSCRIPT
See pages 84-90. You will find that Obama does not dispute in any way that born-alive children are not being cared for.
According to the transcript Obama says at one point
It sounds like, according to Obama, the patients in the hospital newborn intensive care unit who are less than nine months old – this is common – are not really protected by law.
Obama goes on to say,
The fact that the fate a born, wiggling, kicking baby, albeit premature, is under consideration apparently means nothing to Obama.
Obama continues with
He acknowledges that “child” is an appropriate term for born-alive, premature infants after admitting that “the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child.”
April 18th, 2012 | 4:23 pm
These infants were being left to die in hospital closets used for things like soiled linen instead of being taken to the newborn intensive care unit.
harry,
This statement is based solely on allegations made against one hospital by Jill Stanek—allegations that were investigated by the Illinois Department of Public Health and not corroborated.
It sounds like, according to Obama, the patients in the hospital newborn intensive care unit who are less than nine months old – this is common – are not really protected by law.
No, Illinois law already protected viable infants born alive. What was under discussion was treatment of an infant too premature to survive more than a few hours. Hospitals do not take premature infants who cannot survive to the neonatal intensive care unit to try futilely to prolong their lives. They provide “comfort care” so the infants who cannot possibly survive die as comfortably as possible.
“… this essentially says that a doctor is required to provide treatment to a previable child, or fetus, however way you want to describe it.”
Note that Obama says “previable child.” What was under discussion was providing futile “lifesaving” treatment to previable babies—babies who by definition could not survive. If you check page 87 of the transcript, Obama said they could have compromised and written a bill that dealt with the treatment of previable babies. That was the issue under discussion. Obama’s position was perfectly reasonable. If previable babies were being mistreated, they should have written a law to mandate proper treatment for them.
The whole pro-life argument about Obama and the Born Alive Infant Protection Act is fiction. Obama was not opposing the saving of viable babies that were born alive. They were already protected under Illinois law. It would be reprehensible to mistreat a nonviable born-alive infant, but it would be cruel to subject an infant that could only live for a few hours to aggressive and futile “lifesaving” treatment.
I challenge you to come up with one instance where the Born Alive Infant Protection Act has been used to attempt to prosecute anyone in Illinois who has been accused of mistreating nonviable, born-alive infants. Or, for that matter, name a case that has been brought under the federal law.
April 18th, 2012 | 5:05 pm
Yes, the atheocracy doesn’t even enforce laws already in place to protect innocent human life. Roe v Wade granted physicians a license to kill; it didn’t grant them a license to engage in criminal negligence resulting in the deaths of born infants. Obviously, a wiggling, kicking prematurely born infant should be taken to the neonatal care unit, not left in a hospital closet to die. There really should have been no need for a Born Alive Infants Protection Act. Criminal negligence is already just that: criminal.
Of course he was. He expresses his fear that to protect them might might endanger abortion rights.
I trust First Things readers will look at the transcript themselves instead of accepting the spin put on it by an advocate of “legal” abortion such as yourself.
It is indeed reprehensible. Yet there have been millions of late 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions, many of which took the lives of children older and more viable than the patients in modern newborn intensive care units. Can one really believe that the physicians-turned-executioners who do this killing can be trusted when they say “but it would be cruel to subject an infant that could only live for a few hours to aggressive and futile ‘lifesaving’ treatment.”? Get real.
April 18th, 2012 | 5:20 pm
It’s rare that evil bares it’s teeth so boldly as is evident in Obama’s discussion of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. Even the abortion lobby did not oppse the bill. That he puts a reasonable and kindly explanation in service of this evil end is all the more insidious.
Google the name Kermit Gosnell and see what another man with a reputation for community activism and care for the poor is capable of doing once one rejects the personhood of the unborn. He murdered hundreds of infants who survived his incompetent attempts at a abortion, according to a Philadelphia grand jury report.
April 18th, 2012 | 9:01 pm
Harry,
As usual, you’re so eager to hang the man for what you wish he were saying that you don’t pay enough attention to what Obama’s actually saying.
Go to page 87 of the transcript where Obama, the constitutional lawyer everyone likes to mock, explains that he was right once before when he said that a previous abortion law would be ruled unconstitutional. He further explains on page 86 that some pro-choice members supported language that would treat previable children humanely but that the bill went so much further that the bill would be ruled unconstitutional.
He concludes his statement on page 87 by suggesting that he will vote neither for nor against the bill but only present. He supports the humanity of the bill but not its overstepping of constitutional bounds.
April 19th, 2012 | 9:15 am
Hi, Michael,
I trust First Things readers will read the transcript for themselves and draw their own conclusions.
The fact that Obama’s oppostion to such legislation is primarily rooted in his concern with protecting “legal” abortion is clear, and is confirmed by many other public statements of his, his policies and his devotion to Planned Parenthood. Their wish is his command. And their wishes are cold and hard. In Planned Parenthood v. Danforth the Supreme Court ruled in favor of PP and struck down a ban on salt-poisoning abortions — an outrageous procedure where the child is immersed in caustic solution that is consumed by the child as well. Imagine being submerged in a vat of acid but you were somehow kept from just drowning in it.
And if Planned Parenthood is not cold and hard, please provide for us its record of staunch opposition to hospital policies that deny care to infants who are born alive after an induced labor abortion?
April 19th, 2012 | 12:22 pm
harry,
No one could ever deny that Obama wants to protect abortion rights. However, you are portraying him as wishing to protect the “rights” of abortionists to mistreat nonviable infants born alive. That is clearly not the case.
First, there was no corroborated evidence that any mistreatment of such infants had taken place. Jill Stanek claimed she had heard of one such incident, and she claimed to have intervened to prevent another. Her allegations were investigated and not corroborated. They were investigated because, had such behavior occurred, it would have been illegal. But the Illinois Department of Public Health was unable to verify that what Stanek alleged had actually occurred. (Nobody is saying she was lying. But when the authorities investigate an alleged crime and no evidence is found that it occurred, what are they supposed to do?)
Second, Obama expressed a willingness to write a law prohibiting the mistreatment of nonviable infants born alive, but that was not what the Born Alive Infant Protection Act was about. It was pro-life grandstanding that did nothing to change the way nonviable infants were treated. You yourself can’t produce any evidence any version of a Born Alive Infant Protection Act has ever been used to prosecute someone. These bills do nothing to save lives. Actually, they can’t save lives, because previable babies, by definition, can’t be saved, and viable infants are already protected by law.
Obama did make a significant mistake—a mistake not made by my own congressman (Jerrold Nadler), probably the most liberal in the House and the strongest supporter of abortion rights. Nadler voted for the federal version of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act because he realized, as Obama did not, that the bill was no threat to legal abortion:
And if Planned Parenthood is not cold and hard, please provide for us its record of staunch opposition to hospital policies that deny care to infants who are born alive after an induced labor abortion?
There are no hospital policies that deny care to infants who are born alive after induced labor abortions. If appropriate treatment is not provided, the hospital is breaking the law. However, that does not mean that every baby born alive (as the result of an abortion or a premature birth) must be rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit. Babies that have no chance of survival are given “comfort care” just as many adults in the final stages of terminal illnesses are given palliative care in hospices.
April 19th, 2012 | 12:57 pm
Harry,
You have a consistent pattern of changing the subject whenever your interpretation is challenged.
In your last post, you state that Obama is pro-abortion rights. That much is clear, and I agree that your assessment is correct. In fact, Obama himself would agree with your assessment. Your assessment is also beside the point since the point under contention was whether Obama supported the killing of children born after a failed abortion.
You then go on to attack Planned Parenthood, which is also beside the point.
So let’s see if you can stick with the point.
You say that “Obama’s oppostion to such legislation is primarily rooted in his concern with protecting “legal” abortion.”
But in the transcript you cite, Obama says that he supports protecting those children who are born and are viable and that he would have supported a bill that protected those children. The reason he did not support the bill was because it would have required heroic measures to save children who were NOT viable and because he believed that such a bill would be rejected as unconstitutional if a court were asked to review it.
You can attack Obama for being pro-choice, but don’t attack him for motives he doesn’t have. He couldn’t vote for a bill that he believed would be held as unconstitutional because it required heroic measures for children would die regardless.
April 19th, 2012 | 1:43 pm
These “children” (you are correct in calling them “children”) were viable until labor was prematurely induced. Obama does not object to a wiggling, kicking viable child deliberately being put in a situation where it is no longer viable without care in a neonatal care unit. This topic cannot be discussed in any depth without it becoming apparent that the issue is child-killing, that Obama vigorously supports that, and if maintaining child-killing requires him to put up with absurd situations where children are being deliberately killed while younger, less viable children are being cared for in the neonatal care unit — so be it.
As I said, Obama does not dispute the fact that infants were denied care. This is not disputed anywhere in the transcript by anyone. Even so, one of things that makes it difficult to stop outrageous crimes is that it is so hard to convince people anybody would actually do those things. There are still those who deny the reality of Nazi genocide.
April 19th, 2012 | 4:51 pm
Harry,
“Obama does not object to a wiggling, kicking viable child deliberately being put in a situation where it is no longer viable without care in a neonatal care unit.”
If I’m following you correctly, then what you’re really complaining about is that Obama is pro-choice.
“maintaining child-killing requires him to put up with absurd situations”
Yes, you’re right. I think the pro-choice does lead people into taking absurd stands.
In the meantime, however, you’ve conceded the point that Obama doesn’t support killing children born after a failed abortion.
Your arguments wouldn’t collapse so dramatically if you didn’t begin by distorting the evidence so that people look worse than they actually are.
April 19th, 2012 | 5:17 pm
He is notorious for supporting killing children after a failed abortion if restricting that practice might endanger the “right” to kill children with “successful” abortions. In either case he supports killing children.
It is interesting to note that abortion is a “procedure” that only “succeeds” if a child dies. That is why it is intrinsically wrong – the intention is to kill an innocent child.
Why don’t abortion advocates insist on outlawing abortions where the child could survive in a neonatal care unit? What is PP going to do when medical technology advances to the point that even in the first trimester it is easy to terminate a pregnancy without endangering the life of the child by transferring it to some kind of artificial womb or to the womb of an adoptive mother? Are they going to insist on a woman’s “right” to a dead baby? Since they are into social engineering, not human rights, I’m guessing they will insist on dead babies. However PP chooses to violate human dignity and human rights, Obama will be obediently parroting their view.
April 19th, 2012 | 7:15 pm
Harry,
“He is notorious for supporting killing children after a failed abortion if restricting that practice might endanger the “right” to kill children with “successful” abortions.”
You persist in distorting the issue. The question is whether doctors should perform heroic measures in order to save a child who cannot survive on its own. Doctors are not required to perform heroic measures on adults facing the end of life, but you want them to do so on children who cannot develop any further. The only reason you are willing to pursue this absurdity is because you hate abortion.
One should hate abortion, but there’s no reason to embrace absurdity in doing so.
The Illinois legislature could have written a bill that wasn’t absurd, but extremists pushed for a bill that was nonsense. Obama had the good sense to reject a flawed, unconstitutional bill.
April 20th, 2012 | 12:50 pm
I am confident the readers of this discussion are fully aware of the fact that the “doctor” himself has brought about the situation where the viable child now needs to be placed in a neonatal care unit to remain viable. If such a “doctor” had any respect for the lives of children at all, he wouldn’t create situations where they cannot survive and then excuse himself from caring for them by saying “it would take heroic measures to save these children.”
These children are not at the “end of life.” They most certainly can further develop if the “doctor” doesn’t prematurely induce labor. And if he does do that to terminate a pregnancy, they can still further develop if cold-blooded, hardhearted people don’t refuse to take them to the neonatal care unit, or refuse to support leglislation that would require that.
To offer the lame excuse that such legislation, in one’s opinion, wouldn’t be constitutional considering Roe, reveals that one’s intention is to maintain the status quo. It is like saying “Well, I am not for slavery, but we have to take into consideration the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision.” The Supreme Court can no more make slavery or child-killing “right” than it can make the Earth flat by declaring that is the case.
Please keep discussing this. Your remarks reveal the true horror and insanity of the situation far better than I ever could.
April 20th, 2012 | 5:54 pm
I am confident the readers of this discussion are fully aware of the fact that the “doctor” himself has brought about the situation where the viable child now needs to be placed in a neonatal care unit to remain viable.
harry,
If you check out the text of the bill Obama voted against, it did not contain the word abortion. I can’t find any statistics right now, but I am quite confident in saying that the number of nonviable babies born (that is, babies born so prematurely that they cannot possibly survive) far, far exceeds the number of nonviable babies born alive from botched abortions. State and federal legislation regarding infants born alive would apply to all live births of previable babies. The Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act was not an anti-abortion bill. It simply declared any infant born alive to be a person under the law.
I am confident the readers of this discussion are fully aware of the fact that the “doctor” himself has brought about the situation where the viable child now needs to be placed in a neonatal care unit to remain viable.
Since Illinois law mandated that a viable, born-alive infant had to be given lifesaving treatment, the only infants under discussion in the debate about the Born Alive Infant Protection Act were previable babies—that is, babies that could not possibly survive whether they were taken to the neonatal intensive care unit or not. The viability of the infant, as viability is used in this discussion, does not depend on what the doctor does after a live birth. It depends on the age and condition of the infant. A viable infant is one that can be saved. A nonviable infant is one that can’t be saved. If an abortionist in Illinois did not try to save a viable baby, he was committing a crime. If any doctor tried to save an infant he knew to be nonviable, that doctor was unnecessarily running up hospital bills and inflicting unnecessary suffering on a dying baby.
You seem to be evading this point: Rushing a nonviable baby the the neonatal intensive care unit for treatment is not a good thing. It is futile care. It is not done in the case of nonviable infants born alive in cases of premature birth. The American Academy of Pediatrics concluded:
Also
Your remarks reveal the true horror and insanity of the situation far better than I ever could.
I am not arguing in favor of abortion, and indeed legal abortion raises complex moral questions. I am not saying Obama was not trying to protect the status quo when it came to abortion. I am saying he did not vote the way he did because he was indifferent to the way born-alive infants were treated. There is simply no evidence of that. There would be no denying that, being pro-choice and a strong defender of a woman’s right to have an abortion, he valued the lives of unborn infants less than he valued the right of their mothers to have abortions. That is true of anyone who supports abortion rights. However, Obama was not voting for the mistreatment of any infant born alive, either nonviable or viable. As I have said before, there are three important points. First, there was no corroborated evidence that any born alive infants had actually been mistreated. Second, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act did not mandate any standard of care for born-alive infants. It merely declared them persons under the law. Third, there is no evidence that the Born Alive Infant Protection Act actually changed anything. To the best of my knowledge, it is a law that has never been invoked. Every once in awhile, an incompetent, careless, sleazy abortionist is found to have treated infants in ugly, inhuman ways and is prosecuted, but to the best of my knowledge, it is done according to laws that existed before born-alive bills were passed. It is irrational to be so critical of Obama for refusing to vote for a law that did nothing. I understand why those who are pro-life disapprove of him so strongly for his pro-abortion stand, but the vote on the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act is irrelevant.
April 21st, 2012 | 12:01 pm
David,
There have been millions of late 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions. Late 2nd and 3rd trimester infants are routinely cared for in neonatal care units. Some abortion procedures result in live births, especially with induced labor abortions where there is no direct, homicidal attack on the child in the womb as is the case with most abortion procedures.
These survivors create a situation that exposes the “Big Lie” in propaganda intended to dehumanize the child in the womb in the minds of everyone. Children who are often older and more viable than the patients in the newborn intensive care unit are being killed in the very same medical facility housing the NICU. Calling these children”fetuses” while calling the younger, less viable children who are patients in the neonatal care unit “babies” just doesn’t fool everybody, nor does it diminish the horror of the conclusion that must be reached by thinking people: The government is pretending to have the authority to sanction homicide.
In what way should thinking people respond to what is now apparent is ongoing mass homicide that has taken the lives of millions of innocent human beings? The situation forces one to get off the fence and take a side, so to speak.
On the Obama side of the fence one must do what one can to repair the crumbling facade of legitimacy created by the “Big Lie” in order to maintain the status quo. This amounts to insisting there is really no problem at all; there is no need for anything like BAIPA legislation; it wouldn’t do anything anyway. In short, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” or the glaring contradictions and hypocrisy in modern medical facilities.
More and more people are noticing “the man behind the curtain.” He is personified by Obama, although Obama is really only the servant of godless social engineers who have radical, lethal ideas about how to manage humanity, which they consider to be a “herd” of beings which have no more inalienable rights than does a cow. And like cows, they are butchered whenever these self-appointed managers feel that is appropriate. For godless social engineers, there can be no such thing as the inalienable, God-given rights of humanity.
If civilized societies have laws against murder because mere mortals have neither the wisdom nor the authority to decide it is their “right” to kill another innocent human being, then it is irrational to pretend Supreme Court justices or physicians have such wisdom and authority, much less every female capable of getting pregnant.
April 21st, 2012 | 5:30 pm
Harry,
“I am confident the readers of this discussion are fully aware of the fact that the “doctor” himself has brought about the situation where the viable child now needs to be placed in a neonatal care unit to remain viable.”
Yes, that’s right, but what you are saying is true about abortion in general. What you’re saying has nothing to do with why Obama couldn’t support the bill.
Obama wanted a bill that would treat viable children humanely, but he refused to support a bill that treated nonviable children inhumanely. For some odd reason, you support a bill that inhumanely only delays the inevitable for the nonviable child.
“they can still further develop if cold-blooded, hardhearted people don’t refuse to take them to the neonatal care unit”
Taking a nonviable child to a neonatal unit will not save the life of the child. That’s was NON-viable means. Do you understand that point? It’s been explained to you in a number of ways, and yet the reality seems to escape you.
The nonviable child should be given palliative care, which is what Obama wanted, not heroic measures, which is what the bill called for and which you appear to prefer, despite the inhumanity of such measures for these particular children.
“reveals that one’s intention is to maintain the status quo”
Why do you keep bringing up this point when NO ONE believes that Obama wants to change the status quo?
April 21st, 2012 | 6:18 pm
harry,
Read the Illinois law that was in effect long before Obama became a state senator. If a physician planning to perform an abortion believes the infant has a chance of survival, the physician must use the abortion method most likely to keep the infant alive. No physician may perform an abortion when the infant is viable without having a second physician on hand to care for the infant should it survive. If an infant is born alive, the second physician “shall exercise the same degree of professional skill, care and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as would be required of a physician providing immediate medical care to a child born alive in the course of a pregnancy termination which was not an abortion.”
Also, note this provision:
I can see no difference between this provision, in effect from 1975 onward, and the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. The latter said an infant born alive, no matter at what stage of pregnancy, was to be considered a person under the law. The 1975 act says a born-alive infant is an “individual,” and Illinois homicide law says killing an “individual” is homicide.
I understand and respect that you are opposed to all abortions. I respect and understand that you oppose Obama because he supports abortion rights. However, Obama’s position on the Born Alive Infant Protection Act is basically irrelevant. BAIPA, had Obama voted for it, would have been redundant and would have changed nothing.
April 21st, 2012 | 11:06 pm
The child was viable before premature labor was induced. Do you understand that point?
Millions of children have been killed who were older and more viable than the patients in neonatal care units. Do you understand that point?
Some of these children who were born alive were placed in hospital closets used for soiled linen instead of taken to the neonatal care unit. Do you understand that point?
Nowhere in the transcript does anyone dispute that this happened. Do you understand that point?
Nurses don’t just make up stories like that so they lose their jobs. Do you understand that point?
Future generations will look at the photographic evidence of the brutal murder of children that took place in our times and be as shocked as we are today when we see the photographs of the bodies of those slain in Nazi concentration camps. Do you understand that point? (Would referring to these victims as “adult tissue” make their murders acceptable? Neither does referring to the mangled bodies of babies as “fetal tissue” make murdering them acceptable. Do you understand THAT point?)
You and David and others like you, who do all you can to legitimize the indefensible are a huge part of the problem. Do you understand that point?
There is a life after this one where we will all be held accountable for the good or the evil we did in this life. Do you understand that point?
April 22nd, 2012 | 1:24 am
Harry,
“Late 2nd and 3rd trimester infants are routinely cared for in neonatal care units.”
The infants you describe are VIABLE. Children born BEFORE 24 weeks or so are NOT viable. No amount of care will keep children born in the early to mid second trimester alive because their organs haven’t finished developing.
Do you understand this point yet?
April 22nd, 2012 | 12:47 pm
“The infants you describe are VIABLE. Children born BEFORE 24 weeks or so are NOT viable.” -Michael
Because some of my own children required care in neonatal care units, I have spent a considerable amount of time in such places. There were late 2nd trimester babies in the units back then, and that was over twenty five years ago. One would think even younger children are cared for now since medical technology has surely advanced in the last quarter century.
April 22nd, 2012 | 6:28 pm
One would think even younger children are cared for now since medical technology has surely advanced in the last quarter century.
harry,
The youngest premature infant ever to survive was born at 21 weeks and 6 days, and 98.5% of abortions in the United States take place at 20 weeks or earlier. If a baby is born at 20 weeks or earlier, whether by premature labor or by abortion, it is futile to try to extend it’s life.
You said in an earlier message, “There have been millions of late 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions.” This is not true.
Some of these children who were born alive were placed in hospital closets used for soiled linen instead of taken to the neonatal care unit. Do you understand that point?
That is not in the transcript you cited. It is from Jill Stanek’s testimony. The charges were investigated by the Illinois Department of Public Health, and they could find no evidence that such things—which would have been illegal under existing law—had actually happened.
Once again, I will point out that, as Obama said, they could have agreed on a bill mandating specific treatment for any infant born alive. They could have said, “In the case where an infant is born alive, at whatever stage of pregnancy, the doctors must take it immediately the the neonatal intensive care unit and do x, y, and z.”
Instead, they proposed this law, which Obama declined to vote for:
You consider Obama evil because he did not vote for that, but you are unable to cite any case where this bill (or the federal version) actually was invoked. You consider Obama evil because he did not vote for a redundant bill that did nothing to improve the care of born-alive infants that was not already in the law already.
April 22nd, 2012 | 11:23 pm
Harry,
“The child was viable before premature labor was induced.”
I don’t think you understand the meaning of the word “viable.”
You appear to believe that “viable” means living, and while it’s true that the child was living before labor was induced, the child remains non-viable.
Do you understand that “viable” means that the child can live outside the womb?
Do you understand that a non-viable child cannot live outside the womb no matter how many machines you plug into him?
Why would you torture a non-viable child with invasive and futile measures?
April 22nd, 2012 | 11:48 pm
David,
According to the Guttmacher Institutute, in the United States, 1.5% of abortions are at 21 weeks or after. There have been well over 50 million abortions in the U.S. since Roe. That is at least 750,000 late 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions in the United State alone. And that 1.5% statistic is provided by the Guttmacher institute, which is not exactly known for being entirely objective, as it was formerly a special research affiliate of Planned Parenthood.
Even if it is only 750,000 late 2nd and 3rd trimester babies killed in the U.S. alone, leaving out the rest of the world which would certainly put the number in the millions, are you saying there is no problem with deliberately killing 750,000 infants developed to the point where they are clearly recognizable as just that: infants? No problem until we kill a million such babies? Is that it?
April 23rd, 2012 | 10:24 am
No problem until we kill a million such babies? Is that it?
harry,
The problem is that you invented statistics. I am not trying to justify late-term abortions here, or early abortions. I’m trying to deal with factual matters about what Obama did and didn’t do, and what difference (if any) it would have made if he had done something different.
In any case, what we are talking about here regarding the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act is not the infants born alive that were capable of survival, but a very small number of infants born alive as a result of abortion that had no chance of survival no matter what medical treatment they received. This is the point you keep evading. The lives of babies that had a chance of surviving were clearly protected by Illinois law without the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. If the Born Alive Infant Protection Act had any affect at all (which I believe it didn’t) it was in the treatment of nonviable infants—that is (to repeat) infants that had no chance whatsoever of survival no matter what treatment they had received. There were unproven allegations that some babies, in one hospital, had been treated inhumanely. The allegations were not that the infants had been neglected and died of that neglect. They were that babies that had no chance of survival were not provided “comfort care.”
From your point of view, I don’t see what difference it makes if an abortion is performed early or late. You still regard it as murder. Certainly a murder that causes suffering is in some ways worse than a murder in which the victim dies quickly and painlessly. But both are murder.
April 23rd, 2012 | 11:48 am
Let’s assume all your numbers are correct. That leaves 1.5% of the abortions in the U.S. taking the lives of infants clearly recognizable as just that — infants. That is at least 750,000 babies killed who were as old or older than the age at you say premature babies can survive. Do you really expect anyone to believe that the killers who make a living taking the lives of these babies actually rush a child who survives their assault to the newborn intenstive care unit?
Why are you so determined to put lipstick on this evil pig?
April 23rd, 2012 | 7:39 pm
Harry,
I notice that you haven’t answered my question from last night. It’s not clear to me whether you understand the meaning of the word “viable.”
“Do you really expect anyone to believe that the killers who make a living taking the lives of these babies actually rush a child who survives their assault to the newborn intenstive care unit”
Your analysis of this situation is shot through with so much righteous indignation that you seem unable to focus on the particulars that David and I have raised. It was a matter of law BEFORE the bill was debated that hospitals must rescue viable children. The bill did nothing to change that fact. Why do you believe that an additional bill was necessary? Are you able to answer that simple question? David has asked it a number of times and in a number of ways, but you can’t bring yourself to answer it.
The only new thing the bill did was require hospitals to employ extreme measures in order to pretend to rescue NON-viable children that would die anyway. I have asked you several times and in several ways to answer the simple question of why you would further torture these dying children and yet you refuse.
April 23rd, 2012 | 8:22 pm
Why are you so determined to put lipstick on this evil pig?
harry,
The really question is, With things as bad as they are from your point of view, why do you and other pro-lifers feel you need to resort to exaggeration and hyperbole? When you say there were millions of late-term abortions, and I point out your numbers are too high, do you feel you have too weak a case because there were “only” 750,000? Do you feel it’s wrong to point out what a realistic estimate is? Don’t facts matter? Is it better to incorrectly claim there were millions when there were not?
Do you really expect anyone to believe that the killers who make a living taking the lives of these babies actually rush a child who survives their assault to the newborn intenstive care unit?
I think everyone knows that competent, professional, law abiding abortionists simply make sure the infant is killed either before or during a late-term abortion. They make sure they do not wind up with a born-alive infant on their hands. I don’t like that any better than you do, but if something like a born alive infant protection act has any effect at all, it’s sending a message to abortionists that no infant should be allowed to be born alive. And since killing it in the womb is legal, that is what they do.
Blame Obama all you want for being pro-abortion, but the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act, I am quite sure, would not have saved any lives if Obama had help pass it, and it doesn’t save any lives now that it has passed. And the federal version doesnt either. The bills were purely symbolic pro-life victories with no effect on abortion whatsoever. In fact, it states right in the bills that they don’t protect the unborn:
April 24th, 2012 | 11:06 am
Readers of this web page have been made aware of the standard Obama supporter line regarding BAIPA. Here is the other side:
http://www.nrlc.org/ObamaBAIPA/WhitePaperAugust282008.html
http://www.nrlc.org/ObamaBAIPA/Obamacoveruponbornalive.htm
http://www.nrlc.org/ObamaBAIPA/index.html
On just how rabidly pro-aborftion Obama is:
http://www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/Oct08/nv101608part2.html
Here is an excerpt:
As recorded in another Illinois State Senate transcript covering April 4th, 2002, Obama states his belief that the proposition that a doctor other than the abortionist should assess the state of the still living infant “is really designed simply to burden the decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion.” He goes on to express his confidence that the abortionist would make sure the infant was looked after — this from a man who has no problem with FOCA bringing back partial birth abortion or with abortions for minors without parental knowledge and consent.
April 24th, 2012 | 11:32 am
harry,
There is no Freedom of Choice Act. Bills were introduced in the 108th Congress and the 110th Congress, sent to committee, and no action ever taken on them. We are now in the 112th Congress. No ones has introduced a version of the Freedom of Choice Act. There is not going to be a Freedom of Choice Act. Obama is not going to sign a Freedom of Choice Act.
Obsessing over BAIPA and FOCA makes pro-lifers seem hysterical and irrational. BAIPA does nothing, and FOCA will never happen.
This will be my last message in this thread.
April 24th, 2012 | 11:57 am
Fortunately, FOCA didn’t get anywhere. The point is that Obama would have signed it had he been given the chance to do so. If Planned Parenthood began advocating “After Birth” abortions I would not be surprised to see Obama obediently supporting that idea. (There is an ongoing attempt to legitimize blatant infanticide. See: http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2012/03/01/a-sign-of-the-times-2/ ) Re-electing Obama is tantamount to handing the country over to Planned Parenthood.
April 24th, 2012 | 3:01 pm
If Planned Parenthood began advocating “After Birth” abortions I would not be surprised to see Obama obediently supporting that idea.
harry,
What a fine example of Christian charity.
You and other Christian Obama haters really inspire me. Planned Parenthood is not going to advocate “after-birth abortions”—never in a million years—and Obama, in spite of what you love telling yourself, is not in favor of killing children after they are born. I respect the idea behind the pro-life movement, but when it generates this kind of viciousness, I don’t see how I can respect the movement itself.
April 24th, 2012 | 4:32 pm
David,
One can’t put anything past Planned Parenthood, the folks who opposed a ban on salt-poisoning abortions. You don’t suppose there is anything vicious about placing a child in caustic solution that burns it inside and out, since the child can’t help but consume it, and causes the child to go into convulsions. The baby can’t simply drown in the caustic solution because it is sustained by the umbilical cord, and may have to endure this torment for what, I am sure, seems like an eternity to the child. Nothing vicious there, right?
I don’t hate Obama. I hate his outrageous agenda, which is that of Planned Parenthood. Admitting that that is the fact of the matter is not “hating Obama.”
April 25th, 2012 | 4:34 am
Harry,
“Obama states his belief that the proposition that a doctor other than the abortionist should assess the state of the still living infant “is really designed simply to burden the decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion.” He goes on to express his confidence that the abortionist would make sure the infant was looked after”
I’m a little frustrated that you refuse to answer direct questions and instead raise new subjects. However, I take this comment to indirectly answer my question, “Why do you think a new bill is necessary?” Have I guessed correctly?
Is there any chance that you will explain why you support a law that would torture children who cannot live by employing extreme measures in futile effort to keep them alive?
April 25th, 2012 | 7:55 am
I met a young lady years ago. I’ll call her Mary. She told me how she had been forced by her parents to get an abortion she didn’t want when she was a teenager.
I don’t think her parents had any idea of the nature of saline abortions. I suppose they just wanted their daughter “unpregnant.” Mary is the one who found out the true nature of salt-poisoning abortion alone in a room with her baby endlessly thrashing about within her — alone when she finally gave birth to a bright red, very dead baby. Her baby. She was devastated.
Unlike many women who have been utterly traumatized by abortion, and fortunately for her, she found the Lord. When I met her she was a very saintly Evangelical Christian. One of the most humble, charitable and brave women I have ever met. She spent time in prison for blocking abortion clinics. She had experienced in her life some of the worst the author of lies and murder dishes out, and she had experienced the goodness, love and healing power of the Author of life. In response to His goodness and love she was willing to go to prison for the sake of Him in His least brothers and sisters, and for the sake of the other victims of abortion: the devastated and traumatized women, many of whom have not yet been so fortunate as Mary.
April 25th, 2012 | 10:17 am
Mary and her baby were tortured. Do you really think the infants in the neonatal care units are being tortured?
You just don’t “get it.” In the United States alone there have been at least 750,000 children killed who were as old or older than the age at which even David agrees babies have been able to survive outside the womb. There have been, as I have said before, millions of such killings.
If one of these children survive the homicidal attack on its life, do you really think the abortionist rushes it to the neonatal care unit? Again, abortion is a procedure that only “succeeds” if a baby dies. Abortionists have already demonstrated that they are willing to kill if there is enough money in it. Such people just don’t tolerate “failure” in their business ventures. Having their intended victim end up being cared for in the neonatal care unit wouldn’t be good for business. Everybody with intelligence beyond that of a turnip knows these folks, as a group, cannot be trusted to make sure care is provided to the children who survive their assault. That is why your intellectual honesty is very doubtful.
If Planned Parenthood is really all about “free choice” why aren’t they speaking out about the horror girls go through like that Mary suffered when she was a teenager? Because they support the rights of parents? That can’t be the reason since they always oppose parental notification laws. Why are they silent about the millions of women who feel they were coerced into getting abortions they didn’t really want? Why are they silent about forced abortions in China? It seems the only choice they support is one that takes the life of a baby. Does this bother you at all? It should. It should also make you wonder about Obama’s limitless devotion to Planned Parenthood’s agenda, which obviously has nothing to do with “free choice.” It has everything to do with godless social engineering that has at its very core a vehement, aggressive, lethal denial of the inalienable, God-given rights of humanity.
April 25th, 2012 | 11:03 am
Why are they silent about the millions of women who feel they were coerced into getting abortions they didn’t really want?
harry,
There you go again. Here is something I posted less than a month ago:
According data from the National Right to Life Committee web site, pressure from boyfriends and families is the least among the “social reasons” given for abortion:
Social Reasons (given as primary reason)
• Feels unready for child/responsibility . . . 25%
• Feels she can’t afford baby . . . 23%
• Has all the children she wants/Other family responsibilities . . . 19%
• Relationship problem/Single motherhood . . . 8%
• Feels she isn’t mature enough . . . 7%
• Interference with education/career plans . . . 4%
• Parents/Partner wants abortion . . . <1%
• Other reasons . . . <6.5%
TOTAL: 93%
“Hard Cases” (given as primary reason)
• Mother’s Health . . . 4%
• Baby may have health problem . . . 3%
• Rape or Incest . . . <0.5%
TOTAL: 7%
And of the less-than 1% who give as the reason that their parents or partners want them to have the abortion, how many do you suppose are actually "forced"?
It is part of pro-life mythology that women are forced into having abortions. Women have abortions because they get pregnant and don't want the baby (and don't want to go through with the pregnancy, either).
April 25th, 2012 | 12:36 pm
How would we deal with a woman who claimed her parents or husband or boyfriend “forced” her to kill her newborn child, or her 5-year-old? Unless the force involved something like holding a knife to the woman’s throat or a gun to he head, I really don’t think even pro-lifers would say, “The poor thing. She needs post-infanticide healing.”
April 25th, 2012 | 12:43 pm
David,
All of those reasons can be coercive if in her heart of hearts she instinctively wants to keep her baby. Those reasons are most likely often given precisely because those coercing her convinced her that those things made necessary what she was herself reluctant to do. This isn’t always the case, of course, but I think it is the case far more often than is indicated by the survey results. We know from anecdotal evidence that many, many women eventually, if not immediately, regret their abortions and consider it the worst mistake they ever made. They now wish they had been true to themselves and their instincts instead of taking very bad advice from those they mistakenly thought they could trust. Many, of course, were plainly coerced into doing what they definitely didn’t want to do.
The survey would be more meaningful if it was separated into groups of women surveyed soon after their abortions, five years later, ten years later and so on.
I have spoken personally with women who would have given different answers to such a survey years after their abortions than they would have given soon after it. Sometimes it takes years of reflection to realize what was really happening in the midst of a crisis situation. And when what happened has destroyed one’s inner peace, one tends to reflect on it for years.
I have heard many times the stories of women devastated by abortion. Those willing to share their stories with me were those like Mary, who had found and been healed by the Lord. I grieve for those devastated women who haven’t found Him yet, based on what those who shared their stories with me said happened to their lives and their self esteem after their abortions.
Tell that to the women in China, as ex-Planned Parenthood director Norman Fleishman basically did in a letter to Napa Valley Register by way of expressing his approval of the HHS mandate: “Unless we act (this legislation, along with China’s “one child” policy, is a start), the world is doomed to strangle among coils of pitiless exponential growth.”
Here is an excerpt from:
http://www.hli.org/index.php/cloning/277?task=view
PP is about social engineering, not choice. The web page goes on to discuss the support other groups and agencies give to China’s forced abortion policy.
The world is doomed to strangle all right – if Planned Parenthood gets its way – which is to solve humanity’s problems by exterminating massive segments of it like we were cockroaches. We are already beginning to experience the inevitable demographic disasters brought about by the Planned Parenthood “strategy” to solve the problem of “unwanted” children. Of course, the same solution can be used to fix populations now top-heavy with the elderly as was used by PP to bring that problem about: Killing people. Grandma and Grandpa, watch out! “Legal” euthanasia is around the corner.
Getting rid of Planned Parenthood instead of killing people by the millions is a much better strategy.
April 25th, 2012 | 2:31 pm
Harry,
I’m hearing an answer to my second question but not to my first.
Two kinds of children are under discussion here.
One is the group you are willing to talk about: children who are viable. These children are 24 months old or older and have a chance of surviving.
The second group you haven’t clarified your position on: children who are in the second trimester, 13-23 weeks, and who will not survive no matter how many machines you plug them into. The bill you support requires life-saving procedures on these children despite their inability to survive. Why not require palliative measures instead?
April 25th, 2012 | 2:54 pm
Obama sounds like he doesn’t think the patients less than nine months old in the neonatal care unit merit the protection of law. David assures us PP would never advocate after-birth abortions. And Michael … you are amazing (disturbing?) as usual.
April 25th, 2012 | 3:36 pm
Harry,
“And Michael … you are amazing (disturbing?) as usual”
What I find “disturbing” is your inability to answer a simple question: Do you want doctors to try by all means possible to keep alive a child in the 20th-month of development, in the 13th, the sixth, the first?
Just answer yes or no, and we can get somewhere. But this endless refusal to answer is maddening.
You don’t seem to understand that the technology to keep children that young alive and developing simply doesn’t exist.
April 25th, 2012 | 3:55 pm
This, apparently, is no Freudian slip. Yes. In the 20th month of development — that would be an 11 month old baby — and in the 13 month — that would be a 4 month old baby, I and most everyone else except those hopelessly indoctrinated by PP such as yourself, think doctors ought to use extra-ordinary care, as long as it provides realistic hope for success, to keep the child alive.
As for the 1st and the 6th month, the best way to keep the child alive is to keep the blood-stained hands of abortionists away from the child, who is completely viable inside its mother’s womb.
April 25th, 2012 | 4:18 pm
Obama sounds like he doesn’t think the patients less than nine months old in the neonatal care unit merit the protection of law.
harry,
Remember, Obama was talking about nonviable infants—infants that could not possibly survive. He was not talking about infants who were between 24 and 36 months. He even says “nonviable” in the transcript.
You are doing everything you can to evade a rational discussion. You know Michael weeks and not months. Your response to him was childish and uncharitable.
April 25th, 2012 | 4:39 pm
Harry,
Really. I have to ask this again because you can’t read past a typo? We have been talking for days now about PREVIABLE children. Previable means children who are less than 24 weeks old in the womb.
So for your benefit, I’ll rephrase.
Do you want doctors to try by all means possible to keep alive a child in the 20th-week of development, in the 13th, the sixth, the first?
April 25th, 2012 | 5:06 pm
Why is it you both keep using “months” in a context that implies that viability doesn’t begin until long after the birth of the child? Have you both been subjected to the same mind control techniques?
April 25th, 2012 | 7:18 pm
Have you both been subjected to the same mind control techniques?
harry,
We’re both being driven nuts arguing with someone as totally exasperating as you! For each handful of our hairy we tear out, perhaps a few brain cells come with it!
From now on, when you type, be verrrrry careful, because if you make the least little typo or “slip of the keyboard,” Michael and I will be poised to pounce.
April 26th, 2012 | 8:48 am
I make mistakes in my posts, too. We all do. If I make a mistake repeatedly such that what I intended to convey is not obvious, and it isn’t clear whether it is a revealing Freudian slip pertaining to the topic at hand or what I really meant to say, please point it out to me.
If you are going to pounce on my every typo, you will be very busy. ;o)
This discussion has been interesting. You two are very dedicated and articulate. I wish you both were on my side. Maybe some day you will be. Ask God about these matters in prayer and see what He thinks.
April 26th, 2012 | 12:45 pm
I entered this conversation because I believed that Harry was misrepresenting Obama’s position on the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. To David’s statement that Obama “was not opposing the saving of viable babies that were born alive,” Harry replied, “Of course he was.”
After eight days of conversation and over fifty posts, I still don’t know whether Harry understands the difference between viability and nonviability, between a child that has developed enough that it can survive outside the womb (viable) and a child that cannot survive and will regardless of the level of care (nonviable).
I’ve tried to make my questions simple and clear. I have not cluttered by posts with answers to the extraneous subjects he has raised or the spurious charges he has made. I’ve stayed focused instead on the question of whether he understands the kind of torture he wants hospitals to perform on children who have only developed in the womb for a few weeks, weeks 13-23.
The closest Harry has come to an answer is to state that “If such a “doctor” had any respect for the lives of children at all, he wouldn’t create situations where they cannot survive.” While it is true that without abortion, the question of what to do with a failed abortion wouldn’t arise, that truth doesn’t answer the question. The point of the bill was not to outlaw abortion but to guide doctors and hospitals toward the humane treatment of babies who survived abortion. Like Obama, I believe the bill correctly defined the humane care of viable survivors and incorrectly defined the humane care of nonviable survivors.
Harry seems to take my position to mean that I support Obama’s position on abortion in every respect. As he knows from previous conversations on other threads and as I’ve implied in my comments on this thread, I think Obama is wrong to support abortion. I think he is wrong to fight against every curtailment of women’s right to choose abortion. But I think he made the right call against this bill, and I sympathize with his focus on women’s rights.
Abortion will never be a simple issue because it pits two goods against each other: the protection of children’s rights and of women’s rights. Extremists of either stripe want to make the issue simple, but happily, they can’t. The only hope is that saner heads prevail.
April 26th, 2012 | 9:01 pm
Michael,
You admit we are talking about children who are capable of experiencing pain.
You admit these are children who are capable of experiencing pain and that they DO have rights. Yet, I must assume, you believe a woman’s rights DO include a right to arrange for her child, who is capable of experiencing the pain of being killed, to be killed by abortion.
You admit Obama fights against any restriction of a woman’s right to choose abortion and that he is wrong to support abortion.
Let me see if I understand your position. Women DO have a right to arrange for children to be killed who are indeed capable of experiencing the pain of being killed, and Obama is wrong to support abortion and to oppose any restriction to a woman’s right to do this, even though women DO have that right. And the children being killed have rights, too.
Yes indeed.
April 26th, 2012 | 10:06 pm
Harry,
As I said in my first post, “As usual, you’re so eager to hang [someone] for what you wish he were saying that you don’t pay enough attention to what [he’s] actually saying.”
To illustrate my point, my answers will include things I’ve already said.
Harry: “You admit we are talking about children who are capable of experiencing pain”
Me: Of course, I do. “I think Obama is wrong to support abortion.”
H: “You admit these are children who are capable of experiencing pain and that they DO have rights.”
M: Yes, that’s what it means when someone says abortion is wrong. “One should hate abortion, but there’s no reason to embrace absurdity in doing so.”
H: “Yet, I must assume, you believe a woman’s rights DO include a right to arrange for her child, who is capable of experiencing the pain of being killed, to be killed by abortion”
M: Your assumption is incorrect. Women’s rights include lots of things (the right to vote, property rights, etc.). As women gained more of these rights, they gained more control of their fates, control once held by fathers, husbands, and brothers. Quite rightly and naturally, that control included control over their bodies. Some women have gone too far in asserting what rights they have over their bodies.
H: “You admit Obama fights against any restriction of a woman’s right to choose abortion and that he is wrong to support abortion”
M: I wrote the following in my second post: “you state that Obama is pro-abortion rights. That much is clear, and I agree that your assessment is correct. In fact, Obama himself would agree with your assessment.”
H: “Let me see if I understand your position…”
M: You misunderstand my position because of your incorrect assumption above. Your assumption grows out of your eagerness to “hang [someone] for what you wish he were saying. … you don’t pay enough attention to what [people] actually [say].”
Now for my question: What’s more revealing, my occasional substitution of “month” for “week,” or your consistent misreading of what people are saying?
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