Craziness in Colorado Springs

[desertvixen]

 K, we all know that Colorado Springs is home to Dr. Dobson, and our friends at Focus on the Family.

 This is really on the whacked out side to me: Teen Fights For Personhood Amendment

 Seven years after the attacks that left Americans stunned, Coloradans may be voting on a proposal that Kristi Burton, a 20-year-old deeply religious home-schooled woman, thinks will change the world: an abortion ban.

Dubbed the Personhood Amendment, her proposal is simple in its succinctness: It states that the state constitution should be amended to define a person as including any human being from the moment of fertilization.

The implications of that statement, though, are certain to make Colorado a national battleground on the abortion issue - it could outlaw abortions and some birth control.

You know, I get that people don't believe in abortion, for various reasons.  Other people believe that a woman's right to control her body is more important.  I think we all know which side I come down on.

 But seriously - until it implants in your uterus, it doesn't matter whether the egg gets fertilized or not.  If it doesn't implant, pregnancy does not happen.  A baby does not result. 

 To me, the answer is simple - if you don't believe in abortions, don't have one.  Don't take away other women's rights to choose to do what they feel is right for their lives.

 DV

Comments

[xinef.livejournal.com]

I agree.

[betray802.livejournal.com]

<< K, we all know that Colorado Springs is home to Dr. Dobson, and our friends at Focus on the Family. >>

Or as I like to call them, "Focusing on Everyone Else's Familes Except Our Own".

Because, honestly, who minds their business, while they're so busy minding everyone else's?

There's also a whackjob preacher down in the Springs who preaches that Pokemon and similar games/toys are Satanic, "because they purport to elevate children over God." *Headdesk* Annoying? Possibly, though Pikachu's adorably cute when he's mad. Satanic? As our favorite future cop says, "Oh, grab a little corner of reality."

Music of the Moment: You'll Never Know by Mindy McCready

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

To me, the answer is simple - if you don't believe in abortions, don't have one. Don't take away other women's rights to choose to do what they feel is right for their lives.

Alas. That is not an argument. Or, it would be one if you assume first that there are no consequences, civil, moral, or ethical to aborting one's offspring. Unfortunately, one could just as well say, "If you don't believe in slavery, don't own a slave. Just don't take away other citizen's rights to do what they feel is right for their lives."

Honestly, you could sub in just about anything for slavery.

More useful: You may believe that parents have a duty of care to their offspring, that partioning homo sapiens into two sets, one called "human" the other a thing with slightly less moral weight than a vole is dangerous and wrong, but I belive that until said offspring can function without causing unfair obligations, up to and including physical harm (or even death) to a woman, she has the right to do with it whatever she wants, including kill it, up to **insert preferred cut-off point here***.

I've heard that construction you use so many times... perhaps I'm wrong to find it so very troubling, but it does seem as if you could justify just about any atrocity, using it.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the advice on phrasing.

I believe that we should respect the fact that the woman's established life is more important than the potential life growing inside her. For women who already have children, add the weight of her already-born children. I don't deny that the fetus is alive, but I do deny that it has rights that trump mine.

I do believe that the second trimester mark established in Roe v. Wade is a reasonable mark. There are also numerous abortion providers who will only perform first-trimester abortions because they have conflicts over the issue. I respect that.

I also believe that choice is the root of the debate. Women should have the right to choose to do with their bodies what they feel is best. Women's reproductive health care shouldn't be held hostage to morality issues.

And yes, for the record, I find the idea of forced abortions/sterilization to be as abhorrent as the absolute denial of same.

I think the partial birth abortion ban is hurtful, and pointless, and will not save any unborn children. It will merely bar what is, in some cases, the most effective way to preserve a woman's ability to have future children. It's not something done on a whim, but often the tragic conclusion to a wanted pregnancy where something has gone horribly wrong.

Birth control, birth control, birth control - we need more access to it. We need more access to education, and facts. Abortion should remain a back-up, used when other birth control has failed, or when there is a medical need, or when a woman has been raped - if she desires it.

I do believe that the decision to have an abortion should be between a woman, and her doctor, and possibly her partner.

DV

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

If the partial-birth ban is disallowed where the mother's life is in jeopardy, I agree with you. Perhaps we have different data points though, since from what I've read of the 1,000 or so PBAs done each year, only a handful are in situations like pre-eclampsia: the rest are ones where the "abortion-as-birth-control option" was simply left too late; more importantly, the method used to kill her offspring essentially involves the same methods used to deliver it. In other words, there is no additional risk to mom, if the baby is delivered alive.

And there's the rub, for me.

As to the first trimester allowance: I can see it, certainly via the argument you use, "I don't deny that the fetus is alive, but I do deny that it has rights that trump mine,"

However, ever since the logic was pointed out to me (completely a-religious mind you--it was from an atheist) that

• (1) The thing growing inside the woman is a member of the species H. sapiens; the complete unique genetic code, complete with sex is present.
• (2) I acknowledge that the only safe, civilized reason for killing H. sapiens is if he or she has forfeited said right for committing murder, after being convicted by a jury of his or her peers or in self-defense, either civil or in a just war.
• (3) I acknowledge that parents have an inalienable duty of care to their offspring and
• (4) The thing growing inside a woman's uterus is in fact her offspring and nothing other

Then the only allowable abortions are those where the woman's life is in jeopardy; or where, by the actions of the offspring's father, the offspring cannot be considered truly innocent of its existence, and the burden of pregnancy it places on the mother. If uterine replicators ever come into existence, though, I'd remove the latter.

So there it is: until someone can convince me otherwise: i.e new data or better logic; I'm no longer in the "okay through the first trimester, but afterwards only for life-threatening / prevent permanent maiming" camp.

Where we can agree is that women's reproductive health shouldn't be held hostage to politics: doctors need to know how to perform abortions safely, and moreover, they need to find better ways of dealing with "this pregnancy is in jeopardy" other than "kill the fetus, it's easiest and cheapest." Both, thanks to the legal abortion that was Roe v. Wade (which I've always opposed) are problematic, as the country has never been allowed to work out a compromise, or a solution a la the Europeans.

To get back to the phrasing, "your rights vs. mine;" that's solid, especially if you're comfortable with subdivisions of Real Humans^TM; which many are. The choice argument, really, has never worked with me: I'm a dyed in the wool conservative: The notion that there are many, many choices that we can make, but we shouldn't after all, goes with the territory. I just used to be a lot more libertarian on the choice of killing one's offspring at the earliest stages of their development, specifically as to whether or not that "should" could reasonably be enacted into law, or was instead something for which social pressure and moral suasion ought to apply.