Re: Abortion and Appeals to Emotion
At 01:15 PM Friday 5/20/2005, Warren Ockrassa wrote: The justice system in the US is tortuous and ghastly to be caught in the middle of, and I don't think we need to be creating *more* possibilities (in the form of laws that would have to be judicially interpreted, prosecuted, challenged, etc.) for misery and trauma than we already have in place. Which is why some of course have the (perhaps unachievable) goal of writing legislation (for this or many other issues) which is subject to only one interpretation: the one intended by the writers of the legislation. -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Abortion and Appeals to Emotion
On May 23, 2005, at 5:16 PM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote: At 01:15 PM Friday 5/20/2005, Warren Ockrassa wrote: The justice system in the US is tortuous and ghastly to be caught in the middle of, and I don't think we need to be creating *more* possibilities (in the form of laws that would have to be judicially interpreted, prosecuted, challenged, etc.) for misery and trauma than we already have in place. Which is why some of course have the (perhaps unachievable) goal of writing legislation (for this or many other issues) which is subject to only one interpretation: the one intended by the writers of the legislation. I think experience alone has shown that this is, in fact, an impossible goal. This suggests to me that it should not be tried. Not because it's futile; but because needless suffering will be the inevitable result. Since that suffering is preventable, it makes sense to *not* act, and to not enact as a result of the non-action. ;) -- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress The Seven-Year Mirror http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Abortion and Appeals to Emotion
On May 19, 2005, at 4:54 AM, JDG wrote: At 10:44 AM 5/18/2005 -0700, Warren wrote: Dan, you seem to be of the sense that almost any excuse can be developed for a late-term abortion; it appears that Gary is of the opinion that this is not a correct interpretation of current abortion legislation. Clarigication: Gary is of the opinion that this is not a correct interpretation of current abortion jurisprudence. Thanks to the activist liberals on the Supreme Court, very little in regards to abortion is governed by legislation. :D I just love the buzzwords. Activist liberals -- would these be the same kind of liberals who, oh I don't know, forced an end to segregation last century by their jurisprudence? Them wacky wacky judges. As I cited in my previous message, he is playing fast and loose with the facts by only citing a single SCOTUS abortion case, when in fact the abortion jurisprudence is based upon several cases - including the case Doe vs. Bolton, which was decided concurrently with Roe vs. Wade. There do appear to be some vague-sounding decisions. To my mind I see a lot of language that places heavy emphasis on the health and well-being of the mother, and I can see why that might trouble you. But as I think I've made very clear by now (other posts), our entire discussion is made much more complicated by the unclear ideas and definitions we're basing it in. I think it might be fair to suggest that you believe life begins at conception, and from that moment on we're dealing with something human. That belief is incompatible with my own, which is that humanness is a quality that is innate in a fairly tenuous way, and furthermore can be revoked by actions (or earned by them as well). To a great degree I think the definition of human is a cultural artifact, not something absolute, not something that simply *is*. That aside, if the issue in discussion is late-term abortions -- as it seems to be -- then things become (for me) more cloudy and difficult to reconcile, because now we're dealing with a fetus that is clearly much more human than not. I see you're be of the feeling that *one* late-term abortion carried out under false pretenses is one too many, that doctors (or, as you might call them, abortionists) could be playing fast and loose with something ensouled, and this puts them -- possibly all of us -- in peril in ways that are sensible from one perspective but not from another. On this we can't agree either. *That* aside, though, I will freely agree that a fetus in the third trimester should be provisionally treated as one might an infant, which suggests that only when a mother's life or physical health are in peril should an abortion be considered a possibility. However, this is where we'll diverge again; I don't favor laws that make such a rule, for perhaps the same kind of reason that you might believe one casual abortion is one too many (BTW, I agree with that as well, though probably not for the same reasons as you): There will be exceptions to *any* law and, in my view, one *exception* is one too many. The justice system in the US is tortuous and ghastly to be caught in the middle of, and I don't think we need to be creating *more* possibilities (in the form of laws that would have to be judicially interpreted, prosecuted, challenged, etc.) for misery and trauma than we already have in place. We also, of course, have the simple *facts* of the last 30+ years - in that no State has succeed in prohibiting third-trimester abortions. Which, as you may have guessed by now, is OK with me. Here's a parallel example, if it helps. Many states have hate crime laws, and I find the idea somewhat foolish. If a man is murdered, he is no more dead because the murder was ethnically-motivated than if it was for his pocket change. Put another way, it can be argued that *all* crime is hate crime. Crime is crime; motivation is, to me, in many cases irrelevant. We don't *need* more laws under which to punish someone for a crime. Just prosecute under the laws we already have. That's enough. I'm not in favor of generating more legislation where I think it's of dubious merit. (Heh, to me that's proximally all legislation, but that's another topic. ;) As far as I can tell, laws that attempt to define with precision tend to be the least useful instruments of public policy every invented. And a law that wanted to define what mother's health meant would have to be a very, very long document indeed, and I am certain that it would still contain exceptions -- loopholes -- as well as some definitions that might make abortion impossible even when it genuinely is a medical necessity. John -- you seem to be objecting to the possibility of a fetus being aborted near or at its due date; yet you seem to have overlooked the stats posted by Gary, which suggest that late-term abortions comprise one in every 25,000 current abortion procedures (0.004%, which is four in one
Re: Abortion and Appeals to Emotion
At 10:44 AM 5/18/2005 -0700, Warren wrote: Dan, you seem to be of the sense that almost any excuse can be developed for a late-term abortion; it appears that Gary is of the opinion that this is not a correct interpretation of current abortion legislation. Clarigication: Gary is of the opinion that this is not a correct interpretation of current abortion jurisprudence. Thanks to the activist liberals on the Supreme Court, very little in regards to abortion is governed by legislation. As I cited in my previous message, he is playing fast and loose with the facts by only citing a single SCOTUS abortion case, when in fact the abortion jurisprudence is based upon several cases - including the case Doe vs. Bolton, which was decided concurrently with Roe vs. Wade. We also, of course, have the simple *facts* of the last 30+ years - in that no State has succeed in prohibiting third-trimester abortions. John -- you seem to be objecting to the possibility of a fetus being aborted near or at its due date; yet you seem to have overlooked the stats posted by Gary, which suggest that late-term abortions comprise one in every 25,000 current abortion procedures (0.004%, which is four in one hundred thousand, 4:100,000). That extreme rarity suggests to *me* that those procedures are genuinely undertaken in medical necessity, I disagree. Moreover, if the child in such a circumstance has a right to life, then giving legal sanction to even one such violation is one too many. JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Abortion and Appeals to Emotion
I'm going to summarize here because in the flurry of cross quoting I think I'd have to snip so much that I'd end up with a Burroughs style cut-paste note once it was all done. Dan, you seem to be of the sense that almost any excuse can be developed for a late-term abortion; it appears that Gary is of the opinion that this is not a correct interpretation of current abortion legislation. Since there isn't (TTBOMK) a real national touchstone, it seems that individual states are left to decide what to do about late-term terminations. (BTW, you seem to feel that a national standard might be unfair; I can think of at least one other unfair national standard that certain right-wingers are trying to foist on the country, so beware the strange bedfellow tendency.) Okay, that aside, Dan -- I'm having a hard time understanding what it is you're after. If your objection to the mother's health allowance is that pretty much any hack shrink could come up with *something*, do you have a better proposal in mind, or are you instead in favor of banning all late-term procedures on the argument that *some* *may* take place under false pretenses? Also, it's arguable that a woman who would go to a hack shrink to get a trumped-up excuse to have a late term abortion is, by definition, already pretty damned unhealthy and probably should not be allowed to have a child, or even be within 1000 yards of one. John -- you seem to be objecting to the possibility of a fetus being aborted near or at its due date; yet you seem to have overlooked the stats posted by Gary, which suggest that late-term abortions comprise one in every 25,000 current abortion procedures (0.004%, which is four in one hundred thousand, 4:100,000). That extreme rarity suggests to *me* that those procedures are genuinely undertaken in medical necessity, or else we'd have dithering mothers-to-be all waiting until the last minute to decide whether they really want to keep [the] baby, as Madonna so self-righteously put it. If these few procedures genuinely are medical-need ones, what exactly is it you're objecting to in others' defending the legality of abortions? -- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress The Seven-Year Mirror http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
