WIP

Which is not quite the same thing as you posting pages without explaining why you think they're important, and how they factor in to your arguments. If you bothered to check, Judith Jarvis Thompson is a philosopher who spent most of her academic career at M.I.T.. She is not an activist....and you would have known this yourself if you bothered doing any checking. Because I'm curious if you have a consistent position on this issue, since you've claimed to be pro life, but are now indicating that you accept abortion in the first three months of pregnancy. Why is it such a problem for you to tell us where you stand on an issue that is important enough to post pages from anti-abortion websites?

Yes it is! Otherwise, what the hell is the point of discussion? Pretending your own beliefs are not an issue is a way to duck having to take a clear position and lay out your claims on an issue. I see it all the time on the global warming threads where deniers shift from claiming no global warming to it's natural causes to yes, humans are altering the climate, but we can't do anything about it to...right back to square one. It's a ruse like trying to fight brushfires, without being able to expose the weaknesses of the other side's argument. So, after three months it was considered human, but not before three months? And where did you get this story that abortion used to be legal up to three months....where was this, and why was three months chosen as the cutoff point? I mentioned the example of the Catholic Church in earlier times determining that "ensoulment" occurred during the quickening process, when the fetus starts to kick...but that does not occur in the first three months....it's between 15 and 20 weeks, according the wikipedia entry. And during most of that time, the Catholic Church still did not approve of abortion....it's just that before 1869, most of the popes declared that aborting a fetus prior to quickening was a venial sin, not a mortal sin. It's not an issue of whether it is human, it's whether a fetus should be regarded as a person, with rights that could infringe on the rights of the mother.....and it's still a contentious issue, in case you haven't noticed! I don't claim to have it all figured out, since there are competing interests; and I think those who consider it to be cut and dried, have not weighed all of the consequences before taking sides.

Yes, there does seem to be quite a change in attitude, and a contempt or disregard for the middle class. I remember years ago, one of my uncles from Michigan who worked at the Cadillac Plant, telling us that when he bought a cottage on the Upper Peninsula in the late 60's, in an area where many GM executives and managers owned property, that they weren't too happy about this development that saw factory workers buying summer homes in the same locations where they spent their holiday time. The executives of that era were starting to feel that factory workers were too close to them on the economic ladder, and maybe alot of what's happened over the last 30 years goes beyond merely accumulating more wealth, but also includes a desire to bring back a greater separation between the rich and everyone else.

I guess the main point is that even if a fetus has a right to life, that doesn't necessarily mean that it has a right to the means of sustaining life, if that is provided by another person. The Violinist analogy is strongest when dealing with the issue of rape, but less so in consensual situations. I remember reading the People Seeds and Expanding Child thought problems awhile back....interesting take on the issues of consent and responsibility to avoid accidental pregnancy. One difference with the problems and the real life examples is that the violinist, people seeds, and expanding child, are all strangers and not biological offspring. Parents have special obligations to their children according to the law, and there is going to be a grey area regarding whether some obligation can be walked back prior to birth, especially in the cases of late term abortion. Should it be permissible to abort a 24 week old fetus because it has been determined to be the wrong sex, or have minor birth defects like club foot?

That's Judith Jarvis Thompson, and I didn't quote her; I was responding to another post that referred to a thought experiment she created to explain the abortion dilemma called "The Violinist," and it wasn't posted by cybercoma devoid of his own thoughts on why he wants it given consideration.....and that is my beef with many of your posts that just copy and paste pages from websites that reinforce your beliefs. It's the same as your previous posts on evolution, that quote pages from creationist websites, without any of your own thoughts that might indicate whether or not you have actually read them yourself. And copy and paste spam doesn't answer questions that are directed at you on the topic.

As others have already pointed out here, the promises of trickle down economics that were made 30 years ago, have been revealed as a total fraud....except for the top 2% of income earners of course! Those regulators move in and out of government to have a turn at altering government policy for the benefit of their corporate interests, and then they go back to Goldman Sachs or other investment banks to cash in....same thing with the MMS Dept. managers who were supposed to be regulating offshore drilling, but rushed through drilling permits for BP, removed inconvenient regulations, and allowed the company to write their own inspection reports. That's what happens when corporations have the power to regulate government, instead of the other way around like it was supposed to be done. Corporations seek to control markets, and thanks to the right, which wants to eliminate regulations preventing monopolies, they are getting exactly what they want. In a world with no public schools, public health care, or public services, people born in poverty are condemned to live out their lives in poverty...as you may notice if you check on the web for recent data on quality of life comparing the U.S. with Sweden, France and many other European nations with those dreaded SOCIALIST societies. If you were right, upward mobility would be greater in the U.S. than in Western Europe....but it's not...just the opposite is occurring -- Social Immobility: Climbing The Economic Ladder Is Harder In The U.S. Than In Most European Countries The public sector unions are being scapegoated by the wealth class because they have not declined as the rest of the economy has over the last 30 years. Instead of trying to take away what the public sector workers still have, working class people with a brain in their heads should be demanding that the tax rates be put back to what they were before 1980, and those "free trade" deals that destroyed manufacturing jobs and sent them off to Third World countries, be scrapped. GDP growth doesn't mean a rat's ass if the rich are the only ones who have benefited, and everyone else is working longer and longer hours just to keep what they've already got. Lately, I've been pondering why the Koch's and some of the other gangster capitalists are so aggressive and ravenous in their greed. After listening to an historian a few weeks back discuss the Space Race and the rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the 1950's and 60's, I'm starting to wonder if the only reason why they were willing to accept unions and progressive taxation was because the Soviet economy was growing fast during those years, and they figured they had to be nice to the working class here for fear that they might be influenced to support the Communist system of expropriating private wealth. After the fall of Communism, what do you know...all of a sudden they want their tax rates reduced every election cycle, and their corporations deregulated. I'm thinking that the CEO's then were likely just as greedy as the ones today, but the ones now think that their version of capitalism has no serious rivals, so they can just go for broke and take us back to the days of the old aristocracies.

One of the early pioneers of talk radio here in Canada was the late John Michael.... a sort of libertarian, but socially liberal talker who made a good living working in St.Catharines and Niagara Falls for decades. Whenever I happened to be listening, I recall him frequently saying:"don't read to me, don't tell me what the bible says, don't tell me what the CBC or the Globe & Mail say, I want to hear what YOU have to say," and that point was made both towards liberal opponents and like-minded conservatives who called in. In the same vein, if you want to debate an issue, debate your points, instead of doing the internet equivalent of posting talking points from dubious agenda-driven sources. If you want to live in a safe conservative bubble, don't go on forums where different opinions are offered up. It's easy to find a wide range of opinions on any subject....although all of the anti-abortion spam that shows up in the average search makes it more difficult to find pro choice information. But, if you're really interested in evaluating opposing viewpoints, you can find them. So far, you are making no attempt to expand your sources of information, and just serving up the same stuff we've already heard over and over many times already...so what's the point? As for your sources, pro life, conservative feminists is an oxymoron, since the leaders of this movement, like Sarah Palin, have been worse form women's rights in their actual terms in government than conservative men. These women are like gay Republicans trying to be accepted at CPAC, after continually being kicked in the teeth by all of the conservative organizations there. Or black republicans, who abandoned their people to ingratiate themselves with well-heeled Republicans, who can reward them with easy money and playing token so that Repubs can say 'see, we got one too.' And, after posting a previous response condemning all feminists as "feminazis"....something I guess you heard on Limbaugh's show....you're now walking it back to say that women who call themselves feminists, but work against the rights of other women, are the okay feminists. These highly selective historical articles are not worth much consideration from the outset, since they mention that early suffragette and feminist leaders like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, opposed abortion, without bothering to mention that during their time, abortion was illegal, as well as dangerous to the pregnant woman, and most of the abortions were self-administered. This is not the same thing as a modern medical clinic, but because your source is propaganda, they don't bother to mention that fact!

I've used Judith Jarvis Thompson's example "The Violinist" previously, because it does get across the point about having a right to decide how your body is used to men, who do not, and never will have a first person sense of what is being expected by demanding that pregnant women carry through all of their pregnancies to birth. But, I think "The Violinist" is only a rough analogy at best; since in the example, the violinist and the hospital patient are total strangers that have no prior relationship. And even more important, the prospective host has gone to the hospital for a different purpose and woken up attached by I.V. tubes to the violinist. In the kind of society that conservatives are trying to return us to, where women have no access to birth control, and married women have no right to refuse their husband's wishes, then the analogy would fit; but in the liberal society that we are rapidly losing hold of, young women still have opportunities to avoid pregnancy...in most jurisdictions of course....I'm not sure about what the hell is going on in the bible belt from some of the stories I'm reading lately! Anyway, if unwanted pregnancy is accidental or from lack of preparation, the Violinist example doesn't work as well, but first and second trimester clinic abortions may still be justified, because the fetus is not viable outside the womb, and it hasn't started higher brain function that would be needed just to start a conscious existence. The fetus will grow and develop and become a person (thanks to the necessities of life provided by the mother), but lack of conscious awareness and total dependence on the mother make a weak case for declaring it a person with its own rights during most of the pregnancy. What the conservatives are actually doing is making the pregnant woman a servant to the growing fetus inside her. The other argument for calling fertilized eggs persons, is that it has the potential to become a person, and that is also a weak argument, considering that potentials have to be denied all the time in real life, and these same conservatives think nothing of callously denying the potentials for a decent life of children who are born into poverty....many likely from the same unwanted pregnancies.

Our nation is becoming totally dependent on oil, so it's going to be "uncanadian" also....especially now that tar sands oil is destroying manufacturing and tourism by driving up the Cdn Dollar.

No, you do it by destroying laws that prevented corporations from building media monopolies, which enabled Limburgers network to buy up 600 radio stations and insist on putting him on. Limbaugh, Hannity and the other rightwing radio clowns get beat in many big city media markets even by more liberal radio shows on lower powered stations; but rightwing radio is there for propaganda and mind control purposes....if it makes money, that's bonus for the owners....just like foxnoise!

Yes, and I could add Chartered Accountants to that list of professional guilds that work similar to closed union workshops...where the union has the control over hiring. A lot of chartered accountants have an army of C.G.A.'s who have to do most of the actual work....just like a lawyer can have legal assistants doing his work for him. But CEO's need these union members, so they never extend that concept of "free choice" to the union members that they depend on.

Yes, but I don't recall feeling morning sickness or swelling up and feeling bloated or having bladder problems or having the physical experience of delivering a baby during my wife's pregnancies. Being a birth coach is not much different than being a hockey or basketball coach; you may learn a lot about the game, but you're not actually out there playing the game. Don't try to twist my words! You're the one who acts as Catholic-basher here whenever you get into the former Catholic speech as a way to interact with the heathens here. I've actually defended Catholics and the Catholic Church here many more times than I've criticized them, because there is never a shortage of condemnation of the Catholic Church on this Board. Whenever there is a priest scandal, or new revelations about the Pope, or Vatican Bank scandals, I can count on someone else posting it up there. My job is usually to point out that Catholic Churches do a lot of work to help immigrants and the poor, even though I feel their rigid rules on procreation (which you agree with) are a root cause of many of these problems. The reason why I mentioned the Catholic Church is simply because it was the only game in town for many centuries...at least in Western Europe, where most of us are from. The Protestant attitudes on birth control didn't change until relatively recent history. All of the Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and others pretty much mirrored the Catholic dogma until they decided to cut bait on the birth control issue. But, many of the new Evangelical Churches are going back to that rigid line that anything which interferes with procreation is abortion, and that is why they are now at war with Planned Parenthood in the U.S.. This is not just about abortions; they are trying to eliminate organizations which offer birth control and birth control information, without having to test it in a court of law. That may serve as a legal definition, but third trimester abortions are virtually impossible for women to obtain in Canada unless there is a serious medical risk issue, and the situation is not much different in the U.S. In Kansas, Dr. George Tiller was murdered two years ago for valuing the mother's life more than the baby she was carrying inside her....that's pretty much it, pure and simple; in countries where abortion is extremely restricted, such as Brazil, Doctors have been excommunicated and threatened with state law for situations like a recent notorious case where they aborted twins from an 11 year old girl to save her life. Once fetal rights become sacrosanct, pregnant women are back to being expendable vessels for baby-making...just as they were for centuries, when doctors were threatened with the death penalty if they crushed the skull of a baby that was unable to get through the birth canal....rather than just let the mother bleed to death. It's a shame that so many young women who are of child-bearing years, just follow their religious programming without contemplating that they may be putting their own lives in jeopardy if the pro life cause gets its wish! I don't know how old you are, but the problem today with women under 50 is that they aren't old enough to remember what it was like before gender equality became a legislative goal. Even when I was young, there were still separate help wanted columns for men and women; women, like one of my cousins - who was raped so violently that she spent several days in hospital afterward because of massive internal bleeding, were told by their lawyers that they would be better off not pressing charges because of what would happen to their reputations if they went to court and faced an aggressive defense attorney. There is some stupid idea promulgated today by conservatives that the 1950's were a magical time when everything was perfect! Well my earliest recollections only go back to about 1961 or 1962, but I remember enough to know it wasn't the good old days, and the Feminist Movement, just as the unions, was an issue who's time had come. Most of your complaints likely arise from the caustic manner of most of the 2nd wave feminist leaders, who had very difficult relationships with men. Most of them, as their bio's reveal became activists because of their experiences and had a hard time dealing with men after they became leaders....they focused all their attention on women(middle class white women for the most part) and shut every one else out....to their detriment probably, since younger women started seeing being a feminist as something connected with hating men or being a lesbian or something. Before I forget, on the abortion issue, I don't see the problem having any connection with feminists issues, except that the post-modernists have had the greatest influence. These are people who avoid moral and ethical issues as a rule, and would want every ethical issue to be regarded as a matter of private choice; and this is an approach that will result in a gradual eroding of the liberal position on every issue, because it leaves the conservatives as the only ones engaged in discussing morality and ethics.

I don't mean to be a killjoy, but the believers here need to be informed that this is a satirical piece in a satire publication - The Onion.

Don't start chest-thumping about those poll numbers! We are already well in to a brainwashing onslaught by big oil and their puppets in the Conservative Party and P.C. parties locally. Harper has, as quietly as possible, shifted his Government's policy on climate change from an advocacy of Cap and Trade to outright denial of the issue. He's got his Government stocked with a bunch of deniers now, and according to a recent report by the European Commission, they are preparing for a legal fight with the Canadian Government because the E.U. wants to continue a ban on dirty tar sands oil from being imported by Europe. Now, add this to the steady stream of oil-funded propaganda by fake climate science groups like "Friends of Science", and their media like...well, pretty much everything that's run by Izzy Asper, Shaw's Corus Radio Network and Quebecor. The only thing standing in the way of the Conservative propaganda machine is that they don't have editorial control over the CBC yet, like the corporate world in the states got by the continual defunding of public broadcasting. A CBC that is totally dependent on advertising dollars and corporate endowments will have a drawer full of Kevin O'Leary clones all trying to out-rightwing each other...just like they do on Foxnews.....anyway, expect those high numbers supporting the scientific consensus on global warming to drop steadily as more and more people read more and more stupid bogus headlines like "31000 scientists don't believe in global warming" on the front page of their daily newspaper.

Wow is there any doubt about the corporate tail wagging the political dogs now? "I wouldn't call him, he's not one of us!" Nice of this corporate lackey to reveal his intentions to everyone. WTF looks like the corporate BORG owns every Republican at every level of government in the U.S., and likely at least half the Democrats as well. It appears that your transcript link is busted, but I found another link at Daily Kos that has the transcript

I'll agree with you as long as you agree that your doctor should have the right not to be a member of the A.M.A., and your lawyer has a right not to belong to the Bar Association.....let them have free choice too!

Perhaps you should get acquainted with modern history prior to the era when collective bargaining and the right to form unions were legalized. It hasn't always been the case, and your laissez-faire "let the market decide" ideology was the way things were done throughout the Industrial Revolution until 100 years ago. If it was such a good system, why didn't it bring a share of the profits to the workers in those factories? Now that we are in a situation again where trade unions have lost members and lost power, and the rich have been the only ones who have increased income over the last 20 years, a lot of people are finally waking up to the fact that they allowed themselves to become too complacent now that "free enterprize" has taken us back to the income disparity of the Guilded Age.

I don't know who the hell you are, so why should I take your word -- someone on a forum who claims to be a globetrotter, over the news articles written by women who live there and are concerned about public safety? And you haven't identified whether you're a man or a woman...if you're a man, you don't have skin in this game in the first place. Says you! And I should just take your word on it? Whatever reasons you are so defensive about India is not my problem, or my concern.

Looks like there's another religious revival at MLW.

I used to be a hockey fan...but I've totally lost interest since the late 80's/early 90's.....I just never watch the games anymore, and glance at the scores around playoff time so I can pretend that I'm paying attention. Maybe it was too many teams; too much bump and grind/ neutral zone trap-style of hockey...or just plain too much dirty playing....there seems to have been a tradeoff over the years, as players are now wearing plastic suits of armor and face stiffer penalties for fighting, there seems to have been an increase in the cross-checking, spearing, slashing etc.. I'm glad I'm not the only one who flips the channel for something else to watch when a game is on!

And there is no legal recognition of personhood for embryos and fetuses; which is why there are rightwing crackpots in the U.S. at this moment who are trying to introduce new laws to define such as persons. By this definition, you have to ban most birth control as abortifacients...since they can prevent newly fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus......so, are you going to call for a ban on birth control, along with a ban on abortion like these anti-abortion advocacy groups do? Couples discover they are pregnant? Seems like you're trying to pretend that a man also is going through the stages of pregnancy as something more than a spectator. Maybe you could explain then why Catholic Church tradition waffled between conception and quickening as the point when a new soul was dropped in to a baby. It has only been consistent since the 1850's on this issue. One of those evil regimes you mention, was run by a Catholic, who was never excommunicated by the Church....guess which one? If you reject rationalism, you reject the right of the individual to reason and make logical, informed decisions. You are advocating blind obedience to Church authority; and that is truly immoral....since followers acting on a leap of faith have eliminated their capacity to second guess and reconsider their actions. And at what stage of development do you consider it to be worthy of having a right to life....a right that cannot be exercised without abrogating the rights of the woman is supporting that life? You ignored the example that was given which illustrates the problem of obligating others to support a life against their will, but it doesn't seem like those rights concern you very much.

I saw a bumper sticker slogan once that said:"75% of all pro life antiabortion groups are run by men....and none of them have to worry about getting pregnant. That one stuck with me because I also had a hard time trying to figure out why some guys....mostly preachers, have made this issue their life's work. I don't think it's being overly analytical to posit that there is a conscious or even an unconscious desire to be in control of the baby-making business. And again, why so much concern for planned abortion, and little if any concern for unplanned abortion, or miscarriage...which ends about half of all pregnancies? It doesn't add up if the "saving babies" rhetoric had any credibility. That right to privacy cannot be defended as an absolute rule. A big part of the reason why the pro choice side of the abortion debate has steadily lost ground since the 70's, is because they tried to keep all the focus on the "right to choose" and avoid any mention of a fetus having its own interests and when its rights might have to be considered. When I mentioned late term abortion for the purpose of sex-selection previously, there were at least two responses that it might be wrong, but said the state should still not have the right to interfere...even when there is evidence from China and India that it skews population demographics, which is detrimental to society as a whole.

Hold on a second! I didn't get her continual circling back to claims that an Islamic cultural center two city blocks away from WTC was a "ground zero mosque" or that it was somehow sacred and hallowed ground because the Burlington Coat Factory building there got clipped by the wing of one of the planes....it sounded like an argument built on a foundation of emotion rather than logic.....which is exactly what the promulgators of this new theology - like Pamela Geller intended! Those are the people who deserve flames, not people who for, whatever reasons, believe their arguments. I don't know specifically what is making her so angry now that wasn't here six years ago; I don't pay too close attention to everything that others write, but I thought she was on my left when I started here, and then, especially with stuff like "Ground Zero Mosque", I find her far to the right. But, whatever it's about, I hope that she decides to stay active here considering the time invested so far. For my part, I have to disappear from time to time because I start feeling like the same arguments keep circling back over and over again; and sometimes I need time to think over and re-evaluate my own beliefs.

I don't recall disputing the basic premise here; my point of contention is that the right lowers the value of the lives of poor women and children through its opposition to abortion and birth control. It creates a situation like many Third World countries, where millions of children grow up in grinding poverty....if they survive. But, I don't consider most rightwing politicians and church leaders to be sincere in the first place, when they state their concerns for fetal life. If that's what it was all about, they would have declared a Marshall Plan to stop the 50% of pregnancies that end in miscarriage, or involuntary abortion. The concern of rightwing male leaders is more likely to do with their insecurity about having lost control of women's bodies over the last half century or so. And that's why fetal viability may justify interfering in an abortion decision. An example would be for purposes such as sex-selection -- where the woman's life is not endangered, nor are there defects that will degrade the quality of life the fetus would have in the future. There have been no easy ways to draw a line where the rights of one should abrogate the rights of the other, but in general, most people agree that giving full human rights to newly fertilized eggs and banning birth control is stupid, but that ending the fetus's life at a late stage as previously mentioned, when it is both viable and becoming fully human, is wrong......it's a matter of finding a reasonable way to decide between the competing interests of the pregnant woman and the new life growing inside her. Regulating incest can be justified in most cases just on a basis of health -- preventing birth defects from dangerous inbreeding. And regulating reproduction as practiced in China, and formerly in India, may be justifiable on the basis of present day overpopulation and the risks it poses for longterm human survival. I recently heard an interview of retired engineer - environmental activist Jack Alpert on a panel discussion show...his position, as outlined on his own website is that the World can only support 100 million people permanently in the manner of energy and resource use we are accustomed to here in the West.....and he cannot come up with a plan that would accomplish a rapid population decline except through clandestine, involuntary methods, such as an aerosol mass sterilization strategy. Even panel members who preferred everyone reducing energy and resource consumption, still agreed that present day world population is two to three times a permanent sustainable level.

And yours is blindly following Covering Theology without question! We're fighting in Afghanistan...what the hell has that got to do with OUR rights and freedoms? In typical rightwing think, freedom is gained through blind adherence to authority, and going to war to support U.S. installed dictators. And fundamentalist Christianity went from condemnation of materialism to celebrating wealth and reveling in materialism....especially the Prosperity Gospel branch of this tree. Contemporary fundamentalists support a political and economic system that encourages war, oppression of foreign lands, consumption and accumulation of wealth, with total disregard and contempt for those who "deserve to be poor," and then on Sunday, they nash and wail about being worthless sinners....instead of doing something in the here and now to try to make the World a better place! Right wing Christians have no credibility to criticize hedonism and materialism when they reinforce this system, all in the interest of making government weaker so that the church will have more power and authority over most people's lives. This is a false dichotomy – objective morality comes from belief in God and if you are an atheist then morality has no objective basis and your morality must ultimately be subjective and relative. And what does it mean for a "Godly" person to claim they have an objective morality? The standards of morality have changed through the ages, and there still is little more than a very rough general consensus among the morality cops on the religious right. As soon as they start getting into details, then the arguments start. Human evolution plays an important part of morality. We're a social species and evolved with a sense of altruism and reciprocity....first towards our families and our tribes, and the trick ever since civilization started is how to extend these motivations to apply to people we are not related to. And there have been numerous moral systems developed to use as guides; philosophers, over thousand years, have worked out from first principles and developed ethical systems that are more than opinion – they logically flow from reasonable first principles. For example, we can start with the basic principle of equality – that all people should be considered to have equal rights. We can reason that without this principle there is no way to develop a practical moral system that works. And, of course it also appeals to our evolved sense of fairness and justice. Even though there will never be a full consensus on using one moral and ethical system, they still qualify as objective, in that their rules logically follow from first principles, and are agreed upon by many others. The difference between the religious and non-religious ethics, is not one is objective and one is subjective; it is instead that one stands or falls by its own merits, while the other claims supernatural authority and wields church authority to intimidate critics. I also want to add that just by asking that question, you demonstrate that you cannot respect or place any value on someone you don't consider "godly," but why should you....your religion teaches that everyone who rejects your salvation doctrine is also condemned by your God and tortured forever in an afterlife....and this makes your religion immoral rather than moral, since the lives of people like me are worthless in your eyes, and may as well be dead anyway!