it is texas timeFollow

My thanks to you for ruining my joke, you dirty Illini.

Only if the vans are tennis shoes.

Actually allowing the society itself to deal with those disagreements in situations where those disagreements don't actually involve rights. What we see with these two rulings is one side figuring out that if they can define the issue in the context of rights, they can justify pushing a minority opinion on the majority. How we can usually tell when this is happening is when the issue doesn't go away after the rulings are made.

Not a lot of people arguing that women shouldn't be allowed to vote today. Also not a lot of people arguing that people of color should not be allowed to vote, or own property, obtain good educations, etc. These issues were heavily opposed at the time, but now are not. What differentiates them from the issues of abortion and SSM? Those others are clear examples of laws and practices that were violations of people's rights, while abortion and SSM are not.

To address Joph's post, the issue isn't one of the "losers" wanting to deny people their rights, but the "losers" not believing the issue was about rights in the first place. And that's precisely why those issues continue to linger for decades after the court rulings that were supposed to resolve them have passed. When the abortion issue is still pretty evenly divided today, nearly 45 years after the Roe v. Wade decision, one has to conclude that the ruling didn't actually resolve the social disagreement at all. I suspect SSM will suffer from the same problem.

Edited, Oct 29th 2015 2:58pm by gbaji

A body which does occasionally get it wrong. Especially when it veers into positive rights territory.



That's wholly circular though. Replace abortion with any other activity one might choose to do with their own bodies (like say theft, assault, murder, rape, etc), and your argument does not change. Since I think we can all agree that those other activities should rightly be restricted, then the question isn't whether we gave a group of people 45 years of being able to choose what to do with their own bodies, but whether what they want to do with their own bodies is something which should be allowed. You know, just like the same decision making process we go through for all those other activities.

You could just as easily declare those a "right" and make the exact same argument. Which is why it's a particularly weak argument. Um... And also why many of us say that this isn't really just about declaring something a right and moving on as though that solves everything. It quite obviously did not.

Not other bodies, their own bodies. You can't rob, assault, murder and rape because you are performing an act upon another person.

Ah heck.



The action itself is performed with your own body though. You move your arm in a manner which causes your fist to strike another. We would never excuse the fact that you harmed someone else by declaring your right to move your arm as an absolute right, would we? That's the point I'm trying to get across. Abortion is no more a "right" than moving your arm (and no less). The question isn't whether you have a right to control your own body, but whether the result of that action causes harm to someone else that overrides that right of control.




Yes. It's the effect of the act on others that matters here. Which kinda makes the question of when a developing embryo/fetus should be considered a "person" with its own right not to be killed somewhat critical, right? Assuming we agree that the fetus has that right at 9 months, just minutes prior to being born (do we agree on this?), then where is the point prior to that where you think it does not have that right? That's the "question" of abortion, and it's absolutely not a solved and set in stone thing. Not remotely close.

Unless you're actually willing to state that elective abortion is an absolute right up to the moment of birth, then you already hold a position that a fetus has rights (or at least that there must be some right involved that should counter the woman's right to control her body). So it seems silly to go so far out of your way to avoid thinking about what that right is, where it comes from, and what method we should use to measure it relative to that woman's right. Doubly so when the same people engaged in this intellectual avoidance seem to be the ones most emotionally invested in the issue itself. It's like you're upset at anyone opposing "the right to choose", but you can't define that choice itself. Dunno. Just seems strange.

Edited, Nov 20th 2015 12:40pm by gbaji

Eh. Been busy.

You want me to make an arbitrary decision? Fine. First trimester. You should be able to make the decision by the first three months. After that, medical emergencies should be the only factor. I'm not a doctor. I'm not going to go into the whole "when is a fetus alive" argument. Nor should you. But you will anyways, just to tell me that somehow I'm wrong. I can only ask that you take less than three weeks to formulate your response, so I can at least remember the prior discourse.

Deciding which Singaporean wife to buy takes time, Kuwoobie. Show some respect, man!!

Since it's just slightly less than three weeks:



You're not wrong. That's a perfectly good answer to the question. There's no right or wrong answer here. If you haven't figured it out, my objective is to get people to actually stop and think about what their answer *is* first and then measure others relative to theirs if they wish. Far too many people do it the other way around (and often don't get to the point of deciding where they stand on the issue). As I mentioned above, unless you actually do support elective abortion up to the moment of birth, then you must agree that abortion is not an absolute right. Therefore, a rational person kinda has to at least think about what it is that counters that right of control over one's own body, and then decide where that counter balances out. Each person can obviously come up with their own answer. I'm just trying to get more people to actually walk through the process rather than falling back on bumper sticker rhetoric.

It's just obvious.