Can We have a Civil Discussion about Abortion?

[Chuck Naill]

When you go against the grain of the universe, you'll get splinters per H.H. Farmer. The problem isn't just men. The problem is the wrong idea of what it means to be blessed or happy or prosperous. Spending a life time fighting for rights. Ugly parodies of what's good and right with men and women. How people treat each other and how everyone fights to have it their way. This is the way of the world. For all the liberal wisdom, they have not produced a better world for themselves or others.

I notice the Hispanic woman, usually with several children following and one on her back to be generally happy. The children are sweet an smile. Perhaps they are told to smile to get more, but it is a smile. Maybe some white people don't see children as a blessing. Maybe too many unwanted pregnancies, but you have to ask how one gets pregnant? Are all pregnancies rape? I can just hear it now when a group decides all sex is rape.

The godless mind looks at society and sees no hope. The person who changes their mind and perspective on what is good can have hope. All of the anger of men do not produce goodness to exist. The answers will not come from inside. No need to argue the point. Anyone should be able to consider their experiences.

[Chip]

My skin is crawling from the creepiness after hearing of such a lifestyle built on this level of repression, denial, and even abuse.

In my early days as writer, while at college, I was fostered by the Utah Arts Council after getting their poetry prize. Another author on the roster had grown up in a polygamous household, not in some rural backwater, but in the suburbs of Salt Lake City. The values as far as roles and gender, were similar to this latest excrescence.

We became friends. I found her book harrowing.



Her father was murdered during a power struggle among polygamist groups.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rulon_C._Allred

The official LDS church excommunicated the cohabs and other fringe elements, but they're still around. I'm not a fan of Krakauer, who like a vulture seems drawn to blood and death, but here's a more recent account of the cults:

[TSherbs]

I can't imagine. Not sure I could take a close look at these things.

[Chip]

Biblical patriarchy taken to extremes.

[Chuck Naill]

Neither of you have shown any empathy or emotional distress for the millions of children who never was allowed to live. Neither have taken a balanced perspective.

[TSherbs]

Neither have taken a balanced perspective.

This is wildly incorrect.

[Chuck Naill]

Very correct. You’ve never been an advocate for children. You champion drag queens and pregnant women.

[TSherbs]

Very correct. You’ve never been an advocate for children. You champion drag queens and pregnant women.

More bullshit lies from you. Don't expect me to treat your lies with anything better than rude contempt.

[TSherbs]

I've "never been an advocate for children."

Do you have no working memory from one thread to the next? Or are you just a troll, here for jollies? Or maybe you have gone Jesus-soft in the brain and now you fling baseless and wild generalizations against your perceived enemies here?

I actually can't pick which one of these is the more likely case, cuz you're just flat wrong. But the "why" you are so wrong is something of a mystery to me.

[Chip]

No children without pregnant women.

Or did that point escape you?

[dneal]

Very correct. You’ve never been an advocate for children. You champion drag queens and pregnant women.

More bullshit lies from you. Don't expect me to treat your lies with anything better than rude contempt.

If you treat everyone who disagrees with you as only worthy of rude contempt, or another "ignore list" candidate, who will you talk to? I thought you wanted conversation?

Chuck's post (585) seems a reasonable conclusion derived from your post history. kazoolaw thanked it, I assume for that reason.

I've "never been an advocate for children."

Do you have no working memory from one thread to the next?

Do you? I see a lot of invention and assignment based on a penchant for taking quotes out of context.

Or are you just a troll, here for jollies? Or maybe you have gone Jesus-soft in the brain and now you fling baseless and wild generalizations against your perceived enemies here?

This absurdity is delicious. After a flinging a string of baseless and wild generalization against a perceived enemy, you accuse them of doing that? I couldn't come up with a more perfect demonstration of confession through projection.

I actually can't pick which one of these is the more likely case, cuz you're just flat wrong. But the "why" you are so wrong is something of a mystery to me.

You don't know the "why" because you mistake feeling for thinking. More aptly put, it's why you can't articulate why. Like most of your posts, you just emote. You have engaged your animalistic emotion first, then employed the power of reason to instead rationalize. Nothing is subject to logic, but merely whether or not it "feels" right. That's why it's word-salad. A string of your feelings presented as an argument. When that is called to your attention, you enter into denial which turns into the vitriol above.

But you wonder why there's no discussion here.

[Chuck Naill]

No children without pregnant women.

Or did that point escape you?

Based on your previous posts, I say I have a better perspective on that than you, Chip, but I'll play along. What is your point?

[Chuck Naill]

If Ted thinks there is no soul, there is no soul.
If Ted thinks we suddenly become a person by passing through the birth canal, we are.
If Ted thinks drag performers are not sex workers, they ain't.
If Ted thinks a Christain is whatever he thinks, that's who they are.
If Ted thinks science is the ultimate authority, he must first check with Chip, you know, the cowboy , aka Richard Petty look alike, book writer, whitewater expert, knew about Sam Johson before he was out of diapers, the atheist theologian, the one who knows females have babies, .......

Never thought I would say it, but @dneal make more sense every day.

[TSherbs]

Cool.

[Chip]

Never thought I would say it, but @dneal make more sense every day.

And you make less.

Hope you and dneal have a lovely time together.

[TSherbs]

Chris Sununu, in his I-am-not-running announcement, scolded the GOP for a losing electoral strategy on abortion (and culture war topics). You certainly don't have a chance of winning in New England. Opposition to abortifacient medications early in pregnancy baffles me, and many voting citizens see that as extremism and excessive control (I see it this way too). And then attempts to make it illegal to cross state lines with prescriptions and/or treatments? That is just zealotry, and young people and women (and some geezers such as myself) rightly ask, "What is wrong with you people?"

[Chuck Naill]

Never thought I would say it, but @dneal make more sense every day.

And you make less.

Hope you and dneal have a lovely time together.

We address the topic. It might be something for you to consider.

[Chuck Naill]

Chris Sununu, in his I-am-not-running announcement, scolded the GOP for a losing electoral strategy on abortion (and culture war topics). You certainly don't have a chance of winning in New England. Opposition to abortifacient medications early in pregnancy baffles me, and many voting citizens see that as extremism and excessive control (I see it this way too). And then attempts to make it illegal to cross state lines with prescriptions and/or treatments? That is just zealotry, and young people and women (and some geezers such as myself) rightly ask, "What is wrong with you people?"

Neither extremist or excessive if you consider the outcome. I've said for some time birth control should be free. At least we are moving toward availability of over-the-counter birth control.

Just because people want to protect unborn human children does not make them zealots of extreme. The are willing to choose to know that abortion ends human existence for which the pro death groups refuse. There is as much zealotry among those for ending human life as on the other. We need both voices in a civil society, but if you think one side needs to be silenced, that is not democratic.

[TFarnon]

They aren't children until they emerge from their mother, and are capable of (physically) living independently of that mother. That means that a lot of preemies are able to survive thanks to medical technology, but not all of them do. And a zygote is not a child. A barely-formed embryo is not a child. A 22-week preemie is barely a child, and then only if it survives. I can feel for the parents of deeply wanted infants when they have to deal with a still birth or non-viable (usually preterm) birth. And I can feel for those fragile preterm infants. But I will always question extreme measures for those frail preemies. We don't know if they feel pain, but I believe they do, and their earliest days, weeks and months have to be horribly painful. It can't be wonderful to have intestinal tissue so thin and fragile that it tears with just normal peristalsis, leading to sepsis, and multiple surgeries. It can't be enjoyable to have a heart that isn't up to the task, and multiple rounds of CPR. It can't be painless to have skin so fragile that even the gentlest of surgical tapes can tear it. And I can't imagine that life on a respirator is less than horrible. There is merely being alive, and living with no quality of life whatsoever.

I know someone whose child has now been in the ICU for over a month due to genetic issues. This is not that child's first stay. The child is still very much loved, but I feel for both the parents and the child. There is no good prognosis. I honestly don't know what the answer in that case should be, but I do know that it's not easy for the family or the child.

All I do is supply blood and blood products for patients of all ages, including preemies. Given that those preemies have nervous systems, how can they not experience pain? Just because if they survive, and it's a big if, and don't remember that early pain, doesn't mean they didn't experience pain. The infants are too young to understand anything beyond experiencing that pain. They don't understand, for example, that the pain of open-heart surgery will lead to a normal or near-normal life.

Given that one in three fertilizations ends in miscarriage, it isn't even a question of "allowing" a hypothetical child to live. I see the evidence of miscarriages and even miscarriages so early they are asymptomatic in antibody screen results of women of childbearing age. Not every woman who becomes pregnant develops those antibodies, but it is an ever-present possibility. I have seen women of childbearing age who have never been transfused or abused IV drugs who nonetheless have antibodies who never even knew they were pregnant in the past. Their blood tells the story. One of those patients did have multiple children with her husband. Unfortunately, her husband had a blood phenotype that couldn't have been any more incompatible, and she had developed antibodies to every single commonly encountered red blood cell antigen (about 20 of them). It was unclear whether she would be able to carry any future pregnancies by her husband to term.

If we aren't going to mourn every miscarriage, known or unknown, then we shouldn't be mourning the loss of zygotes and embryos.

[TSherbs]

We address the topic.

What bullshit. More lies. As God is our witness, you lie.