While I would still strongly disagree with "pro-life" people, it would be with a bit more sympathy..

[Silent3]

Last edited Fri Sep 3, 2021, 12:11 PM - Edit history (3)

...if there were any consistency in their so-called "pro-life" position.

With rare exceptions, however, most of the same people who like to claim a fetus or an embryo is "sacred", are:

* Pro-death penalty
* Just loves 'em some wildly unregulated firearms. (Many clearly fantasize about the day they finally get to shoot an intruder. Yee hah!)
* Are very casual about "collateral damage" when eager to carpet bomb a perceived enemy.
* Don't care much when cops kill people, especially white cops killing black people (a black cop killing a white person -- that might get them riled up).
* Are against free universal healthcare.
* Don't want to pay a dime in taxes for the well-being of a baby after it's born - you're on your own, kid!
* In the age of COVID are vehemently anti-vax and even anti-mask, as if even a piece of cloth on your face is way too much of a burden for protecting other people's lives.

Find me that rare pro-life person who is against the death penalty, pro gun control, pacifist, pro police reform, pro universal healthcare, is willing to use public funds to make life for a child better after being born, gets vaxxed, and will wear a mask... I'll still disagree with them, but, as I said, with a bit more sympathy for their point of view.

Why am I pro-choice? It's not that I'm an absolutist about "a woman's right to choose", which is the formulaic response for a lot of people here on DU.

Like all rights, no right is absolute when it bumps up against other rights. If (and only if) a freshly-fertilized human egg cell had the same right to live that a post-natal person has, it would not be a slam-dunk that "a woman's right to choose" always exceeds an embryo's or a fetus's supposed right to live.

I'm pro-choice because I don't believe a fertilized human egg cell should be granted full equivalency to a born human being. I believe it has a developing, growing value as birth approaches and viability outside the womb increases.

If my only criteria for my pro-choice position were "a woman's right to choose", I couldn't be self-consistent and support, as I do, vaccination mandates. I clearly think there's a point where a person's choices, be they female or male, about what they do with their own bodies, run up against countervailing public health concerns.

[Texaswitchy]

1. Maybe a lot of them will get the virus.

No vaccine, no masks.

The hospitals are over run.

It is only getting worse.

[dewsgirl]

8. RW radio hosts are now an endangered species.

Yet they continue to suicide themselves/their followers.

[dewsgirl]

10. RW radio hosts are now an endangered species.

Yet they continue to suicide themselves/their followers.

[Ocelot II]

2. "Pro-choice" is the important phrase.

For me, at least, the issue isn't whether abortion is bad or wrong; it's whether the state gets to decide that question for you. The inconsistencies of the anti-choice people's positions regarding "life" has a great deal to do with controlling women's sexuality, making it less of a mental gyration for them to oppose abortion while approving of the death penalty and other policies that can kill actual living, post-born people. I find the official position of the Catholic Church, for example, a bit more defensible because it opposes the death penalty as well as abortion, and is therefore at least consistent. I get why someone might oppose abortion on moral or religious grounds (though I don't agree), which the GOP politicians claim to do, although it's clearly something else. My point is that the power of the state should not be used to further a minority religious belief.

[Silent3]

4. If a human right were involved, clearly it would be the business of the state to intervene...

...to protect the right's of one individual from the actions of another.

If (and only if) you grant the unborn equal rights, then it can't be up to the individual to override those rights based on personal opinion. That would be like granting a racist the right to kill black people because the racist chooses not to value black lives as equal. Clearly the state has to step in with an overriding decision and ignore personal opinion.

[Ocelot II]

5. That's exactly why they want to grant legal "personhood" to embryos.

But then, of course, you have the dilemma of whose rights prevail and should be protected by the state. In that world, already-born women will lose almost every time.

[Freddie]

3. And if they actually supported preventing abortion

Funny you never hear a word about that from the “pro-life” crowd.
Their insistence that 4 cells in my uterus have more rights than I do is an insult to all women.

[DickKessler]

6. Well said!

[Carlitos Brigante]

7. They're pro-birth, yet anti-child. nt

[world wide wally]

9. In reality, abortion has been around for thousands of years.

Our laws legalizing abortion were created with a woman's safety in mind. Women will always find some way to terminate unwanted pregnancies as they always have in spite of the dangers involved.
The whole issue has been framed around bullshit about morality and a higher calling.

[Texaswitchy]

11. My mother did in the late 1950's.

She a d and c.

My aunt paid for it.


My mother did not want more children.

Abortions are not new.

My mother was lucky.

She had safe way to get one.

[Midnight Writer]

12. There are two tried and true methods for reducing the number of abortions.

1) Free, unhindered access to birth control

2) Comprehensive sex education for kids 10 and older

Conservatives are against both of these things. Vehemently so.

Both of these methods could be implemented immediately at little cost. There is no need for anyone to go to jail or be punished over this.

The rejection of simple, effective methods such as these tell me that the true objective of the Right is not pro-life.



T