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Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[GrizzlyAdamz]

What we really need is an ongoing attempt to educate people on how to effectively argue over the internet. And perhaps a standardized format for boiling arguments down to the essentials, so that they can be easily grasped.

This made me smile because it's both reasonable & the essence of a pipe dream.

+1, throw it in with 'armed' self-defense safety & licensing courses in high school

[Angle]

What we really need is an ongoing attempt to educate people on how to effectively argue over the internet. And perhaps a standardized format for boiling arguments down to the essentials, so that they can be easily grasped.

This made me smile because it's both reasonable & the essence of a pipe dream.

+1, throw it in with 'armed' self-defense safety & licensing courses in high school

...

Challenge Accepted.

[GlyphGryph]

Does they say anything about father's responsibility for all of this? Or is it always considered "her fault"?

Since she's the one who has to face the consequences, it is always her fault. Unless the her, in this case, is their daughter or family member, in which case it's his fault.

Also, the "Birth control causes abortion" thing I mentioned earlier, in case anyone was wondering, is still a pretty bunk cause, even if people consider life to begin at fertilization.

For every 100 fertile women on birth control each month, only 0.15 fertilized eggs will be flushed out. In contrast, for every 100 fertile women not on birth control in a given month, 16 fertilized eggs will be flushed out.

Even if it makes fertilized eggs more likely to fail, it still results in less killed fertilized eggs.

If you're goal is to prevent dead babies, and every fertilized egg is a dead baby, you should still be supporting this stuff.

[GavJ]

Glyph, those numbers are for more general types of birth control that prevent ovulation, which is statistically how those results happen. Those are not the 4 types specified in this case, which for the most part work by preventing implantation. The court decision and AFAIK Hobby Lobby's position are consistent with the data you're citing, actually.

[Moghjubar]

Anti-abortion activists would have a lot more credibility re: "It's a human life and it's murder!" if they displayed the same concern for people after birth and the mothers themselves as they do the fetuses.

I'm sure there are those who do, I think I've even heard of a few, but they're drowned out by the fuckwads. :v

A lot of them also seem to simply think pregnancy is like cooking a turkey in the oven, where after a set amount of time the baby just comes out and theres very little chance of something happening to the oven itself simply due to the fact the turkey is in it.  Like explosions, being caught on fire, peeling paint... oh wait maybe I should segway into pregnancy here..

*Ahem*

Death, complications, long term issues, etc.  Pregnancy is not just a time-clock thing where you have to wait and its magically done and nothing can go wrong.  Pregnancy is potentially dangerous (and unlike an oven, which doesn't scream when you take the turkey out, also quite painful) and human bodies aren't perfect (almost like they were evolved by random chance instead of made from some sort of perfect thing, and don't even get me started about birth defects and genetics).  Maybe some of these people seem to forget the massive amount of problems people have had throughout history with pregnancy and death (not to mention babies simply not making it... there's a reason we celebrate birthdays and not conception days: one of the major aspects of pre-modern life was simply making a bunch of babies and watching most of them die, up possibly until the woman died herself due to complications, which at least has drastically been reduced thanks to modern medicine THAT SOME PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO LET OTHERS PRACTICE TO POTENTIALLY SAVE THEIR LIVES).  Also side note: if you make abortion criminal only criminals people that will quite likely die due to back alley abortions issues will have abortions.

A lot of it is some kind of weird pseudo-morality thing, I guess, which basically comes down to the fact that the unborn baby, or at least the potential of a baby, which is some potential of a human, seems to be far more important than the actual human that would be forced to host said baby at risk of her own life and future (specifically: against her own will, mind, and regardless of the method), and there's certainly much less cared about that baby as soon as its out of the womb.  My own personal morality would not force pregnancy even to save our own species (which in any case is certainly not in jeopardy anyway, and in fact may have already breached critical-population mass for earth), so I certainly cannot get behind that idea at all.

[Angle]

Glyph, those numbers are for more general types of birth control that prevent ovulation, which is statistically how those results happen. Those are not the 4 types specified in this case, which for the most part work by preventing implantation. The court decision and AFAIK Hobby Lobby's position are consistent with the data you're citing, actually.

Well, no, that's not actually true. SalmonGod already covered this, it's number three o the list:

This link may benefit the discussion.

[GavJ]

Although I am pro choice, the arguments in Mogh's post seem weak to me. Yes, pregnancy can kill you, but it does so vastly less often than 50% of the time. So if you view embryos as equal (not better than) lives to mothers, the most efficient way to kill the fewest people would be to prevent abortions. Because nearly 100% of the time an abortion is done, the embryo is killed, but only I don't know, 1% of the time or whatever does a mother die from pregnancy nowadays.

Well actually, the most efficient way to save the most lives if you view embryos as lives would be to prevent all routine abortions, but to allow abortions in cases where it is almost medically guaranteed that the mother will die (and the embryo along with her anyway). Because it's senseless to have both die versus one. But even then, that still stacks up to a policy of no routine abortions.

[GavJ]

Glyph, those numbers are for more general types of birth control that prevent ovulation, which is statistically how those results happen. Those are not the 4 types specified in this case, which for the most part work by preventing implantation. The court decision and AFAIK Hobby Lobby's position are consistent with the data you're citing, actually.

Well, no, that's not actually true. SalmonGod already covered this, it's number three o the list:

This link may benefit the discussion.

Glyph's link cites actual data. Which is gathered from ALL non-barrier contraceptives as far as I can tell from his link. Therefore, while it may apply to those 4 specific types in the case, it also might not. Summary data tells us nothing definitive at all about the 4 that matter. We would require specific data from those 4 specifically to conclude it applies to this case.

SalmonGod's link cites "a lack of evidence" which still does not fill the ambiguity gap I just mentioned in the above paragraph.

Also I have serious doubts about the logic of how it makes sense for emergency contraceptives the day after sex to work by preventing ovulation when the majority (or maybe not, but still a huge chunk) of the time a pregnancy would have otherwise occurred, the woman would have ALREADY ovulated by that time. It seems more likely, from its efficacy rates, that it does both.

Could be wrong, but still need hard data to establish it if I am.

[Descan]

The thing that prevents abortions is not legislating against it, but making contraceptives more wildly available via education and healthcare. If you want an abortion, you'll find a way to get an abortion, it'll just be less safe, where-as if you use a contraceptive, less likely to get pregnant = less likely to need an abortion. Ironically enough, that means that, because those against abortion also tend to be against contraceptive, places that have anti-abortion laws also have anti-contraceptive... well, perhaps not laws, but tactics at least, and that means that the places with anti-abortion laws tend to have *higher* rates of abortion than places where it's safe, effective, and legal.

But anyway, what I meant about "anti-abortion activists caring about people after they're born and the mothers themselves" was also about things like child-care, health-care, poverty reduction, and not-sending-people-to-die-in-Iraq-care. Actually putting their money where their mouth is when they call themselves "pro-life" and doing things that help EVERYONE living, and being against things like the death-penalty, or wars, or people dying in the streets.

[Angle]

We are, of course, missing the most important thing- a fertilized egg alone is not a human being. If it doest have a brain or a mind, it's not human.

[Moghjubar]

the most efficient way to kill the fewest people

Thereupon we have a morality postulate:

1: Killing the fewest people is good (and assumed: we should do good)

This is specifically not the argument taken by anti-choice/abortion as they often tend to support things that cause more lives to be taken (also, specifically, to kill the fewest people, you make the fewest amount possible born as turns out everyone thats born, dies, which would implicate possible necessary, invasive procedures upon men it turns out as those are safer/reversible in case of necessity).

If only they did support the argument this way, it would make a great start to eliminating executions, wars, vastly improving healthcare/spending and welfare, and probably a great deal of healthcare research (and lots of funding for artificial wombs that have a better chance of carrying a baby than a woman does, while also not risking her life).  When it comes down to those arguments though, it often goes back to "But muh freedums!".  Which very specifically, should also apply to said woman who is pregnant, but then suddenly she doesn't have that freedom anymore.

[Descan]

Ah but there's the rub: Not everyone agrees on that. Some view the mere potential of human life being extinguished as killing a human life. Of course, that can be stretched to the absurdity that any sperm that doesn't go into an egg is tantamount to murder, and ESPECIALLY the idea that any egg, being a finite resource, that isn't fertilized is lost potential.

But the idea that "no mind = not human" leads to the point where post-birth babies, who can be argued (ARGUED, not necessarily what I believe) don't have a mind or consciousness, not having reached that development point yet, are not "human" and that you can "abort" them just as morally-easily as fetuses.

Though it also raises euthanasia, in that most of the time it's about people who do not have a potential future, i.e. brain-dead, or a disease that is so incurable and painful that it's incredibly unlikely to be cured before they would die from it, and in the mean time they're in horrible pain. So arguments that rest on "potential human life" also impact on the assisted suicide argument. Just goes to show that morality and legislature do not work in a vacuum, and that the arguments one uses for something seen as "morally clear" can also be used for other things, things that you don't necessarily agree with or see as morally clear.

This got a little tangental. :v Don't take what I wrote here as indicative of my stance on anything, or I'll punch you in the gizzard.

[Angle]

But the idea that "no mind = not human" leads to the point where post-birth babies, who can be argued (ARGUED, not necessarily what I believe) don't have a mind or consciousness, not having reached that development point yet, are not "human" and that you can "abort" them just as morally-easily as fetuses.

...No they can't. post birth babies most definitely have brains, and minds to o with them. They may not be very developed, but they've certainly got them.

This got a little tangental. :v Don't take what I wrote here as indicative of my stance on anything, or I'll punch you in the gizzard.

...I don't have a gizzard...

[Descan]

It certainly can be argued, because people have argued it. You may not agree with the argument, or anything they say, but it's there. :V

Edit: No, I wasn't, GO.

[Frumple]

...I don't have a gizzard...

Medical science can fix that.

Actually, a decent nail and a hammer can fix that, though I rather imagine being punched in the gizzard at that point would hurt considerably less than having a gizzard affixed to you with a nail.

Or tape, I guess, but there's less blood and screaming fun involved with that.