Monday, March 12, 2012
A short rant on the regulation of reproduction
It will come as no surprise that I oppose both the federal mandate to require employers -- actually, any employers -- to pay for prescription contraceptives, and the ridiculous trend in state law to impose gratuitous burdens on women who are confronting the decision to have an abortion (never mind lefty proposals to impose equally offensive burdens on men). Both left and right are amply demonstrating why such mandates are terrible for the United States and its civil discourse. Just because the Dutch, the Swedes, and the Swiss can impose mandates on their homogeneous populations does not mean that we can do or ought to try.
Talk amongst yourselves.
18 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue Mar 13, 07:33:00 AM:
To be fair, the lefty proposals are only trying to prove a point. Whether the legislative process should be used for those ends is another matter.
While both are objectionable, I find the federal mandate far more odious. In ostensibly trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist, it is a clear violation of the Constitution's protection for freedom of conscience. That is above and beyond the federal government having no authority to tell a private company that it must offer a good or service for "no charge".
By 
W.LindsayWheeler, at
Tue Mar 13, 07:51:00 AM:
Upon the same logic, I think it wrong that government should tell people it is wrong to steal! There should be NO laws about stealing. We should all grab what we want from any other person!
State and Federal laws punishing stealing is odious!
I should be free to do whatever I please!
By Carolyn, at
Tue Mar 13, 01:52:00 PM:
@w.LindsayWheeler: Everyone recognizes that laws which protect life, liberty and property generally take precedence over freedom of conscience (or religion).
I don't think "stealing" was the best example for you to use. Ironically, some people think of mandates that certain businesses or classes of people spend their money on what the government mandates that they spend it on could be considered "stealing".
By W.LindsayWheeler, at
Tue Mar 13, 02:36:00 PM:
@Carolyn "Everyone recognizes that laws which protect life, liberty or property take precedence over freedom of conscience (or religion)"
Was this part of the tablets that Moses was handed to by God? Is that stuff written in stone somewhere?
If I remember right, abortion was ILLEGAL up until 1973. So Carolyn, this precedence you are talking about have any weight before 1973 or did you just make that up?
Let me see 500 years ago, that was NOT the duty of government. I can tell you that in Classical Antiquity, people were put to death by governments for slandering religion!
To mind comes Socrates put to death by Athens. Plato in the Laws remarks that Atheists are to be put to death and he is probably referencing a Spartan law! There are several stories in Roman History that disabuse you of YOUR Opinion that has no historical relevancy!
Look at Christendom and the Inquisition. Religion and State always went together in Classical Antiquity, in the Middle Ages, In China and in India and in Christendom and Byzantium. Please Carolyn tell me what planet you come from? For what you say has no factual basis in history.
America before the 1960s, state governments prosecuted homosexuality, abortion, profanity and pornography and interdicted contraception products.
So Carolyn, which Amerika are you talking about? Christian Protestant America pre-1960 or Post 1960 Marxist Frankfurt School multiculturalist/diversity AmeriKa where Christianity is persecuted?
Are you part of the secularist drive here in America?
By , at
Tue Mar 13, 03:44:00 PM:
Hey you. Was abortion not legal before 1973? Opinions differ, though I suspect yours carries great weight in your own mind.
I have had it with your crazed rants, your half-assed attempts to hijack threads and, especially, your barely hidden racism/anti-semitism. I hate your "Amerika" crap.
Go away. Bother other people. You are a disturbing individual.
By , at
Tue Mar 13, 03:45:00 PM:
That last comment was from MTF, should anyone care.
By , at
Tue Mar 13, 07:47:00 PM:
@w.LindsayWheeler: Yes, once upon a time, governments did all kinds of nasty things. Still do. Is it your argument that they should therefore be allowed to continue? Because you really aren't making whatever your argument may be clear at all.
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Tue Mar 13, 09:44:00 PM:
If any of the onerous interruptions to a woman's right to an abortion still result in the same number of abortions, then it is indeed a mere harassment, an intrusion. But if it results in fewer abortions, wouldn't that rather prove the pro-life claim that "If you think about this, you will see it our way."
Waiting periods for guns, grace periods where you can repent of a signed contract - the principle is there for other issues. I don't know if these particular laws are a good idea, but the automatic assumption that they are horrible heavy-handed intrusions doesn't stand up.
Relatedly, if Trudeau's "exaggeration to make a point" is really just a prochoice evasion for "lying," what does that tell you?
By Gary Rosen, at
Wed Mar 14, 01:46:00 AM:
"So Carolyn, which Amerika are you talking about? Christian Protestant America pre-1960 or Post 1960 Marxist Frankfurt School multiculturalist/diversity AmeriKa where Christianity is persecuted?"
But according to you the Founding Fathers were "nihilists" so "Amerika" was doomed from the beginning, you pathetic ignorant semiliterate douchebag. Go back to Nazi Germany with your BFF Buchanan.
By Dawnfire82, at
Wed Mar 14, 02:03:00 AM:
I concur with AVI, as I often do. Automatically opposing any additional measure necessary for an abortion procedure is knee-jerk and, I posit, the product of decades of liberal conditioning. A perfectly reasonable case can be made that things like ultrasounds are necessary to combat the absurd lie that fetuses are "just clumps of cells" for many weeks after conception.
No one is preventing women from getting abortions with such rules. It just force them to face up to the reality of their decision without hiding behind convenient myths.
By Viking Kaj, at
Wed Mar 14, 10:29:00 AM:
The best argument I can think of for the conservative support of birth control is the case of Stanley Ann Dunham. A college student who was pregnant and married at 18, she never spent a day with the baby's father after the birth and divorced 4 years later. Look it up. If that doesn't convince you, nothing will.
By , at
Wed Mar 14, 12:57:00 PM:
In your world view, TH, does a fetus have rights at any point in time in the womb?
If so, is it ever appropriate for the state to intervene to defend those rights when the mother is contemplating terminating the pregnancy?
If not, does the fetus acquire rights at the moment it exits the womb? (An odd threshold by any measure.)
In that regard, did you see the minor firestorm created by the publication of the linked article in the JME arguing that newborn babies are not fully formed humans and the parents should be allowed to terminate their lives if desired?
http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/03/01/medethics-2011-100411.short
It seems to me that if one accepts the premise that a fetus has no rights, logic would dictate that a newborn baby has no rights either. The mere fact that the fetus has been removed from the womb it not particularly revealing. The fetus has not changed, only its surroundings have changed.
And I think your view is quite wrong. America has not yet dissembled as a society to the point that we can't reach a reasonable legislative compromise on the issue of abortion at the state level, much like we reach a reasonable compromise on other moral issues. Roe v Wade removed this issue from the public sphere and substituted the judgment of Justice Blackmun in it's place.
I am not remotely religious. My background is in science, engineering, and law. Anti-abortion activists are factually correct that a fetus is a distinct human entity with its own unique DNA. At some point in time this human entity needs to be vested with rights. The anti-abortion crowd argues that these rights should vest upon conception. The pro-choice crown runs like hell from the argument because they can't pinpoint a time at which rights should vest, or at least one that does not lead to logical conclusion reached in the article referenced above, i.e., that there is nothing immoral about killing a newborn baby.
I see nothing gratuitous or even remotely unreasonable about requiring a pregnant woman to undergo a process of testing and educating herself about the status of her fetus before having an abortion. If she stands as the sole arbiter of the life/death decision for the fetus, it seems completely reasonable for society to require that she make an educated decision.
-Anon Attorney
By , at
Wed Mar 14, 04:17:00 PM:
Echoing Anon Attorney:
Is it morally wrong to do the Spartan thing with a newborn spina bifida baby? Is it any different to do a late-term abortion of a spina bifida baby?
I see little difference between the two.
Parents, at least a mother, are what bring us into this world, not the state. I say let the parents make the decision.
Meanwhile the CBO just recalculated the costs of ObamaCare. For ten years CBO says it will cost $1.76 trillion not $940 billion. This adjustment is driven by the simple fact that the CBO is using a new 10-year time horizon, so that the new ten-year projection doesn’t mismatch 10 years of revenue with just six years of spending – only nine.
Recall that at $940 billion ObamaCare wasn’t suppose to raise the deficit. In the end it will cost a lot more than $1.76 trillion.
Let’s see how much play this gets in MSM.
By , at
Wed Mar 14, 08:25:00 PM:
That's $1.76 trillion in the first 11 years ... the whole thing about contraception is asinine. IMO people should pay for their own contraception, and stop whining. And the public should realize this is a made up argument to distract us all from the real issues our country faces. Abortion, gay marriage, etc. Our country is in trouble because our jobs are leaving. That's the issue of highest importance. It's like worrying about shoes when you have no feet. If folks have jobs and money, they have ample funds to take care of what 'health' insurance wasn't meant to cover.
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Wed Mar 14, 09:01:00 PM:
Thank you Dawnfire. I'll bet I'd get even more of those if I weren't so irritable and critical.
By MTF, at
Thu Mar 15, 10:50:00 AM:
Ann Coulter is worth reading today, on the "Sandra Flucke" aspect of leftist politics.
By Aegon01, at
Thu Mar 15, 10:43:00 PM:
"Echoing Anon Attorney:
Is it morally wrong to do the Spartan thing with a newborn spina bifida baby? Is it any different to do a late-term abortion of a spina bifida baby?
I see little difference between the two.
Parents, at least a mother, are what bring us into this world, not the state. I say let the parents make the decision."
This. Totally.
I really, really don't think this sort of thing should be legislated at all, and if it died as an issue it would improve discourse so much.
Now, I have a bunch of nasty afterthoughts on this topic for people of both sides, but I don't want to feed the trolls any more than you guys already have.
By Aegon01, at
Thu Mar 15, 10:59:00 PM:
But on a separate point, there are few pro-choice people who will advocate for abortion up until labor pains. Most draw an arbitrary line in the sand that's no more arbitrary than conception. Like some will say "12 weeks, 'cause then it has a heartbeat" or "30 some weeks, because then it has brainwaves."
Personally, if gametes don't count as fully human, then zygotes don't either. Just because one cell becomes a two-cell or four-cell cluster doesn't mean it has a "soul." I'll draw my arbitrary line somewhere else, probably around the "brainwaves" area.
