"Power never concedes anything without a demand; it never has and it never will."
Sam Adams
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
Here we go! (Stop me if this is beyond the scope of this blog)
So i've been reading about abortion a lot late lately and watched a real long documentary on it. I was very much for it being legal before i started researching it more in depth. Since then i have found an uncomfortable position on the fence, though i still lean in the legal direction. Religious arguments are irelevant in my opinion because they can't be enacted into law without serious non-religious justification in which case they cease to be religious arguments are become scientific arguments. I would love to hear what you gentlemen think about it.
I understand that roe v. wade was decided because it was more dangerous for a woman to give birth than to have an abortion. But I do believe now days birth is safer than before. So does that discredit the case, I don't know.
This is my take on the subject. When is it a human? and therefore protected under the LIBERTY of life. I feel instead of us argueing over abortion, we need to come to some conclusion of when a human becomes a human. now in teh case that it the birth may hurt the female, that is a tough call, and maybe should be left for the courts for each individual case. As for rape, that is another tough call, but if we decided on when a human was a human it would then be protected under the law and therefore could not or could be aborted.
For me I find that it is a human from the very beginning right after the sperm enters the egg. My reasoning behind this goes like this. The fetus may not look like a human or even can act like a human, but it is what it will become that counts. It will grow into a human and therefore it is a human. Lets pretend that there are only two more polar bears in the world. One is male and the other is female. They mate but the male dies right after sex (what a good way to go). So all that is left is the cubs in the female. To keep the speices alive the scientists protect the fetuses, even though they really aren't yet polar bears. It's the fact that they will become ones that protect them. So even though it is a fetus in the womb it is still a human and it has some form of LIBERTY. I've heard people say well it's helpless and can't survive without the host mother therefore it isn't a human, but so too is a baby until a it's like 5 or so or handicap person. Are these not humans?
But i would compromise on this time table if that meant a clear cut law on when the fetus is protected. I know we have a law kind of right now; no late-term abortions. But I would like something more clearer. There have been cases where a drunk drive is on trial for two murders for killing a pregnet woman, while a woman in the same stage of pregnency has an abortion. That seems a little off to me.
The fact that more women died in childbirth was part of it. There was also that substantial amount of women who died giving themselves abortions. Of course that is in addition to the right to privacy which is where the Court found it in the constitution to decide Roe v Wade.
I think you are right, deciding when a life is a life is possibly the most important question in this debate. The problem is, it is medically very difficult to study the very beginning of the process. Here is where most (if not all) of the abortion laws currently on the books make the distinction: the fetus is not a life until it reaches fetal viability. What that means is that until the fetus can survive on its own outside the womb. I think that is a pretty good distinction because i find it hard to consider the fetus its own separate life if, when separated from the mother it could not live. It is then more appropriately considered a part of the mother. So as it stands right now, abortion is illegal past the point of fetal viability. Another objection, admittedly a weaker one, i have to protecting the LIBERTY of the fetus is that there is no guarantee that the fetus will live till birth. So we would be protecting the LIBERTY or something that is not necessarily going to be born at the expense of the LIBERTY of someone who already is living.
The ambiguity of the laws, as far as i know, is where he makes concessions for late term abortions to protect the "health" of the mother. I think there is a difficulty in making the law too strict because then people who are in need and entitled to abortions would not be able to get one.
One of the books i want to read on this issue is about the biological process of the formation of the embryo. For me personally, when a life becomes a life is absolutely the most important issue. (I will continue to rant against religion) I think that there is a lot of the current ideas about when a fetus is a life are a reaction to the Christian idea that the fetus is a life at conception because that is when it gets its soul (and because God has knit us together in our mother's wombs). Anyways, i eagerly await the moment when we are able to pinpoint the moment when life begins.
we didn't have an open post monday this monday so i thought i would start one on the end of this.
here's an article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/education/06mock.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
(in case you don't read it) its about a group of high schoolers from an all jewish school who won their state mock trial competition. So that means they get to be in the nationals but the competition is on Friday and Saturday. Given that Saturday is Sabbath, the students can't compete and when they requested that the competition be moved to a different day they got denied. So they sued for religious discrimination.
Here is my question: is that really religious discrimination?
forgive me for being late on the open mondays thing. time seems to be plying buy and i feel like i'm really busy, but i have nothing to show for it. anyway...
about your question... the first thing that came to my mind was, yes it is religious discrimination. They are not being allowed to compete because the majority of society doesn't see anything wrong with working on saturday. This is a case of majority ruling over the minority. (its really late and i need to wake up early tomorrow so i'm going to leave it at that, but i will think more about it. i just wanted to get something down)
on first glance i thought, sure, thats an easy one. its discrimination. but then i thought, at what point do we stop making concessions and get on with life. i mean, they can't do it on sunday because then they are discrimination against all the christians who practice their religion on sunday. Then i thought, hypothetically, what if there were 7 religions who all practiced on different days of the week. what would we do in a case like that? Somebody has to lose.
I thought more about it and i tried to come up with a reason why we should make a concession for people's holidays and I really couldn't come up with any sound arguement. But then that led me to thinking about all discrimination issues. There is the case about the firemen (i forgot what state but it's recent news) and their test. The firemen to get promoted have to take a test, well 11 white firemen passed the test after hard studying and no minorty group passed the test. So they said the test was discriminatory and they threw it out. So then the white firemen said that was discriminating to them and sued. I understand that everyone should vote and there should be no discrimination when it comes to that, except for age (meaning you have to by 18-more like 21 would be better to vote). But other than that, isn't the idea of discrimination just the government micro-managing our everyday lives. So what if a white landlord doesn't want to rent out his place to a black man. So what if a dunkin donuts serves bacon and therefore can't hire muslims. So what if a black church doesn't want to marry a gay couple. Do not the people who run their business have a say in who they serve? There was a business guy in california who said, if you can't order your food in english i'm not serving you. Well california courts ruled that discrimination and fined him. That's just bull. A friend of mine in harlem was waiting in line to buy some milk and food and the clerk there passed him and took the orders from the blacks in the store first, that's discrimination, but who cares. So life is tough. If the jews can't participate in the mock trials, too bad.
But then it gets tricky when it comes to government programs. The government shouldn't be allowed to discriminate, so if the state is sponsering the mock trials then it gets more foggier. But i think all private owned and runned operations should have the right to discriminate, it's their loss of business and in this day and age it's quiet stupid to do that. I kind of see it like if you have a lawnmower and one neighbor asks to use it and you allow her to use it but then another neighbor asks too but because they are white you refuse, it's your lawnmower. It's your business or your orginization.
I agree with you to some extent about private business discrimination. But i do think there is still a problem with it. I don't really like categorical imperatives but i will use one in this instance. If all private companies chose not to hire black people then there would be a serious number of people who are unemployed which would have a very adverse effect on the economy. So economically speaking, discrimination of employment is detrimental. And not hiring a certain races forces them to make money in the black market economy, dealing drugs or things like that, which to me seems like i kind of slavery.
There is also a mental aspect that i think is important here. If we allow racial discrimination to continue it perpetuates an idea about the value of races. I think there is a difference between free speech and free action as far as we should let them go. I believe that the KKK should be free to speak their ignorant, bigoted, hideous bullshit. But the second they cause harm to anyone they are speaking out against they should be prosecuted. I think parallels can be drawn between that situation and employment discrimination.
I agree it doesn't make sense to not hire someone, if they are able to do the job well, based on race. But what i am saying is, it's really not the government's place to tell someone who one can hire or fire.
Here we go! (Stop me if this is beyond the scope of this blog)
ReplyDeleteSo i've been reading about abortion a lot late lately and watched a real long documentary on it. I was very much for it being legal before i started researching it more in depth. Since then i have found an uncomfortable position on the fence, though i still lean in the legal direction. Religious arguments are irelevant in my opinion because they can't be enacted into law without serious non-religious justification in which case they cease to be religious arguments are become scientific arguments. I would love to hear what you gentlemen think about it.
I understand that roe v. wade was decided because it was more dangerous for a woman to give birth than to have an abortion. But I do believe now days birth is safer than before. So does that discredit the case, I don't know.
ReplyDeleteThis is my take on the subject. When is it a human? and therefore protected under the LIBERTY of life. I feel instead of us argueing over abortion, we need to come to some conclusion of when a human becomes a human. now in teh case that it the birth may hurt the female, that is a tough call, and maybe should be left for the courts for each individual case. As for rape, that is another tough call, but if we decided on when a human was a human it would then be protected under the law and therefore could not or could be aborted.
For me I find that it is a human from the very beginning right after the sperm enters the egg. My reasoning behind this goes like this. The fetus may not look like a human or even can act like a human, but it is what it will become that counts. It will grow into a human and therefore it is a human. Lets pretend that there are only two more polar bears in the world. One is male and the other is female. They mate but the male dies right after sex (what a good way to go). So all that is left is the cubs in the female. To keep the speices alive the scientists protect the fetuses, even though they really aren't yet polar bears. It's the fact that they will become ones that protect them. So even though it is a fetus in the womb it is still a human and it has some form of LIBERTY. I've heard people say well it's helpless and can't survive without the host mother therefore it isn't a human, but so too is a baby until a it's like 5 or so or handicap person. Are these not humans?
But i would compromise on this time table if that meant a clear cut law on when the fetus is protected. I know we have a law kind of right now; no late-term abortions. But I would like something more clearer. There have been cases where a drunk drive is on trial for two murders for killing a pregnet woman, while a woman in the same stage of pregnency has an abortion. That seems a little off to me.
The fact that more women died in childbirth was part of it. There was also that substantial amount of women who died giving themselves abortions. Of course that is in addition to the right to privacy which is where the Court found it in the constitution to decide Roe v Wade.
ReplyDeleteI think you are right, deciding when a life is a life is possibly the most important question in this debate. The problem is, it is medically very difficult to study the very beginning of the process. Here is where most (if not all) of the abortion laws currently on the books make the distinction: the fetus is not a life until it reaches fetal viability. What that means is that until the fetus can survive on its own outside the womb. I think that is a pretty good distinction because i find it hard to consider the fetus its own separate life if, when separated from the mother it could not live. It is then more appropriately considered a part of the mother. So as it stands right now, abortion is illegal past the point of fetal viability. Another objection, admittedly a weaker one, i have to protecting the LIBERTY of the fetus is that there is no guarantee that the fetus will live till birth. So we would be protecting the LIBERTY or something that is not necessarily going to be born at the expense of the LIBERTY of someone who already is living.
The ambiguity of the laws, as far as i know, is where he makes concessions for late term abortions to protect the "health" of the mother. I think there is a difficulty in making the law too strict because then people who are in need and entitled to abortions would not be able to get one.
One of the books i want to read on this issue is about the biological process of the formation of the embryo. For me personally, when a life becomes a life is absolutely the most important issue. (I will continue to rant against religion) I think that there is a lot of the current ideas about when a fetus is a life are a reaction to the Christian idea that the fetus is a life at conception because that is when it gets its soul (and because God has knit us together in our mother's wombs). Anyways, i eagerly await the moment when we are able to pinpoint the moment when life begins.
we didn't have an open post monday this monday so i thought i would start one on the end of this.
ReplyDeletehere's an article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/education/06mock.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
(in case you don't read it) its about a group of high schoolers from an all jewish school who won their state mock trial competition. So that means they get to be in the nationals but the competition is on Friday and Saturday. Given that Saturday is Sabbath, the students can't compete and when they requested that the competition be moved to a different day they got denied. So they sued for religious discrimination.
Here is my question: is that really religious discrimination?
forgive me for being late on the open mondays thing. time seems to be plying buy and i feel like i'm really busy, but i have nothing to show for it. anyway...
ReplyDeleteabout your question...
the first thing that came to my mind was, yes it is religious discrimination. They are not being allowed to compete because the majority of society doesn't see anything wrong with working on saturday. This is a case of majority ruling over the minority.
(its really late and i need to wake up early tomorrow so i'm going to leave it at that, but i will think more about it. i just wanted to get something down)
on first glance i thought, sure, thats an easy one. its discrimination. but then i thought, at what point do we stop making concessions and get on with life. i mean, they can't do it on sunday because then they are discrimination against all the christians who practice their religion on sunday. Then i thought, hypothetically, what if there were 7 religions who all practiced on different days of the week. what would we do in a case like that? Somebody has to lose.
ReplyDeleteI thought more about it and i tried to come up with a reason why we should make a concession for people's holidays and I really couldn't come up with any sound arguement. But then that led me to thinking about all discrimination issues. There is the case about the firemen (i forgot what state but it's recent news) and their test. The firemen to get promoted have to take a test, well 11 white firemen passed the test after hard studying and no minorty group passed the test. So they said the test was discriminatory and they threw it out. So then the white firemen said that was discriminating to them and sued.
ReplyDeleteI understand that everyone should vote and there should be no discrimination when it comes to that, except for age (meaning you have to by 18-more like 21 would be better to vote). But other than that, isn't the idea of discrimination just the government micro-managing our everyday lives. So what if a white landlord doesn't want to rent out his place to a black man. So what if a dunkin donuts serves bacon and therefore can't hire muslims. So what if a black church doesn't want to marry a gay couple. Do not the people who run their business have a say in who they serve? There was a business guy in california who said, if you can't order your food in english i'm not serving you. Well california courts ruled that discrimination and fined him. That's just bull. A friend of mine in harlem was waiting in line to buy some milk and food and the clerk there passed him and took the orders from the blacks in the store first, that's discrimination, but who cares. So life is tough. If the jews can't participate in the mock trials, too bad.
But then it gets tricky when it comes to government programs. The government shouldn't be allowed to discriminate, so if the state is sponsering the mock trials then it gets more foggier. But i think all private owned and runned operations should have the right to discriminate, it's their loss of business and in this day and age it's quiet stupid to do that. I kind of see it like if you have a lawnmower and one neighbor asks to use it and you allow her to use it but then another neighbor asks too but because they are white you refuse, it's your lawnmower. It's your business or your orginization.
I agree with you to some extent about private business discrimination. But i do think there is still a problem with it. I don't really like categorical imperatives but i will use one in this instance. If all private companies chose not to hire black people then there would be a serious number of people who are unemployed which would have a very adverse effect on the economy. So economically speaking, discrimination of employment is detrimental. And not hiring a certain races forces them to make money in the black market economy, dealing drugs or things like that, which to me seems like i kind of slavery.
ReplyDeleteThere is also a mental aspect that i think is important here. If we allow racial discrimination to continue it perpetuates an idea about the value of races. I think there is a difference between free speech and free action as far as we should let them go. I believe that the KKK should be free to speak their ignorant, bigoted, hideous bullshit. But the second they cause harm to anyone they are speaking out against they should be prosecuted. I think parallels can be drawn between that situation and employment discrimination.
I agree it doesn't make sense to not hire someone, if they are able to do the job well, based on race. But what i am saying is, it's really not the government's place to tell someone who one can hire or fire.
ReplyDelete