Here’s something I didn’t realize until I watched The Rachel Maddow Show tonight. There are five Republicans running for U.S. Senate who do not believe in any rape or incest exemption from their proposed ban on abortions. Maddow was able to document through video and surveys that Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ken Buck of Colorado, Joe Miller of Alaska, Sharron Angle of Nevada, and Christine O’Donnell of Delaware all hold this extreme view on reproductive rights.
I’m pretty sure that none of the 100 senators currently serving have publicly embraced this absolutist position. I would hope that holding such a position is sufficiently repulsive to make you unelectable to statewide office in this country. But Miller and Paul are ahead in the polls and Angle is within the margin of error.
Not too many people are focusing on social issues in this election, but we shouldn’t fail to take notice of this disturbing trend. Anyone who wants to tell you that there is no difference between the parties is full of shit. The Republican Party was bad enough when Ronald Reagan was running the show. They were catastrophically bad under the latter Bush. But they are now worse than they’ve ever been. When you’re pro-bestiality and anti-masturbation, when you’re pro-rape child and anti-desegregated lunch counters…you’ve left the universe of the sane.
We need to defeat all five of these Senate candidates.
And what does it say about the state of the TradMed that all these clowns have gotten this far?
I don’t know, some reporter was tearing O’Donnell apart last night on AC 360. Called her a liar and a fraud.
That’s nothing really .. especially when Turdblossom went there first .. I mean … if Turdblossom was calling her extreme .. who is going to argue(of course he was forced to retract later by Limpballs)?
BooMan, why are you making an exception? If anything, more power to them. They’re at least consistent with their position. Yes it’s disgusting, yes it’s misogynistic, but they’re not rationalizing “well it’s murder sometimes and not other times.”
People who make exceptions are like Puritans placing Scarlet Letters on women and shaming them: “Oh, you weren’t raped? You slut, you can’t have an abortion.”
I don’t even understand what your are saying. How am I making an exception? I’m pro-choice. I don’t need to make an exceptions.
You’re acting like this position is more extreme than people who make exceptions. I completely disagree. This just exposes what the abortion debate is all about: them trying to rationalize their sexism of placing a piece of shame on women who had sex with their own free will.
People who make exceptions are stuck trying to say “well this is different.”
I realize you’re pro-choice. I’m talking about people who make the exception. Those are the people who tell the tall tale of what this debate is about: control over women.
You completely disagree?
So, someone who cannot foresee any circumstance in which a woman would be justified in having an abortion is not more extreme than those that can envision some circumstances?
You don’t really believe that.
I understand your point about consistency, and your point about shaming and control. But you’re still 100% wrong.
And, frankly, I think the inconsistency argument is a bit overblown. You can make a consistent argument that the unborn have some presumptive rights and that to override those rights you ought to have to meet a high standard with a competing claim. So, if the pregnancy endangers the health of the mother, or will cause her extreme mental torment, or the pregnancy is the result of incest, then obviously that high standard is met. To refuse to even acknowledge that mother can have such superior claims is an extremely radical point of view.
Now, for me, what might be a convincing moral argument doesn’t do too well as a legal one. I do not believe you can craft any conceivable legislation that would protect the presumptive rights of the unborn that doesn’t trample on the privacy rights of all people who experience pregnancy (whether that pregnancy is terminated, ends spontaneously, or results in a live birth). In other words, there is a competing claim (privacy) that trumps any presumptive rights of the unborn. So, that’s how I settle the issue in my own mind.
But I don’t think it is fatally inconsistent to argue that it ought to be illegal to have an elective abortion unless there are extraordinary circumstances. I think it’s extremely wrong-headed as a legal matter. Morally, it’s a much closer call.
What’s totally indefensible is to say that an embryo has all the rights and the mother has none. To say that a woman must carry a rapist’s baby to term is obscene. And it’s a much more radical position than that held by the conventionally anti-choice.
The extreme position on abortion doesn’t include health of the mother, BooMan, they only focus on the rape and incest part. I suppose there are some who say “Let God decide who must live…the mother or the ‘child’.”
But, did you watch the debate last year?
This is a consistent position within the Republican party. They all mock the health of the mother, and if they had their way, they would ban it across the board. Did you read Glenn’s article today? They are all the same, some are just better at concealing it.
However, on this post, you specifically said rape and incest. They’re opposed to those two positions.
I just don’t see how you can rationalize murder with “rape” and “incest.” It makes zero sense. It’s not overblown. You know what it’s about as well as I do, you’re just trying to temper the extremism. They’re both extreme.
Why does privacy trump the rights of a “baby” that was conceived during rape?
You are asking me to play Devil’s Advocate, so I will.
Abortion can looked at as a moral issue or a political issue, and depending on which you are discussing, different approaches are appropriate.
Let’s start off with moral issue.
Morally, you can argue that people have the right to life. An embryo or fetus isn’t an independent person and so they don’t have the same absolute right that a person enjoys. There are times, for example, when the fetus is actually killing or likely to kill the mother. In such a case, there is a competing claim for the same right. Which party should prevail? Most people agree that the mother’s right to life should prevail.
That fetuses have some presumptive rights is established in Roe v. Wade. It’s not legal to terminate your pregnancy in the third trimester unless there is a health reason. The debate is mostly about what threshold should be met in the first or second trimester.
What you’re doing is simplifying the debate by arguing that all anti-choicers consider all abortions to be murder, but any ethicist can tell you that the debate is more complicated. I do not have to consider something to be murder to consider it to be an unjustified denial of rights. Shooting a random citizen is an unjustified denial of their rights. Giving a serial killer a lethal injection has some justification, whether you agree with it or not.
If you don’t take an absolutist position, and you are willing to grant some presumptive rights to the unborn, then (as a strictly moral issue) you can make a logically sound argument that it is wrong to have an abortion unless the mother can make some superior claim that trumps the rights of the unborn. It is not an argument that contains any logical fallacy.
You can then debate what that threshold should be. But we’re still talking about a moral decision, not a law.
Debating morals doesn’t invade anyone’s privacy.
Once you try to legislate morality in something as complex and intensely private as pregnancy, you immediately stomp all over people’s privacy. And, as Roe v. Wade correctly decided, our privacy is a right that is just as presumptively important as the presumptive rights of the unborn.
So, to get back to the political, when evaluating the competing claims of rights of mothers and the unborn, it’s understandable that people will make an effort to find the right balance. And they’ll use their moral understanding of the situation to inform what they think the policy should be. But that’s a mistake. It isn’t an issue that can be solved by deciding what the right thing is to do morally, even if people could agree on that. It’s an issue that could only be solved by making every pregnancy an open investigation. No matter how you resolved the issue morally, you could never transfer that decision into law without destroying people’s privacy.
So, it’s like a part of a case the court doesn’t need to decide. It doesn’t matter what the right or wrong thing to do is, because it isn’t a matter for the law.
Yeah, the people who call it murder and then make exceptions are making a flawed argument. But most people aren’t calling it murder, and they aren’t calling for it to be treated as murder either.
I’m a tad tipsy, so bear with me.
Correct. And as far as I know, other than Christine O’Donnell, no one is disputing this. I don’t even know if she’s disputing this. I mentioned it in my previous post with “Some might say let’s play chicken and see who has the right to live in God’s eyes.” I said most don’t see it the way of “Let God choose;” beyond most, let’s say 90%.
Really? Any ethicist? I don’t see how you can say “oh, she was raped? Not murder,” and flip it to “That slut dun got knocked up? Murder.”
I don’t see the justification other than “an eye for an eye.” And that’s not a justification :, it’s a boner for revenge.
Which only applies to her life being in danger, where you’re forced to choose which life will live. It does not apply to “this rape baby will live and so will the mother…” There’s no choice of who will live and who will die, both will live.
On the law part, we agree entirely. I mean, murder really is nothing but a legal term anyway.
Maybe you’ll do better now that the sauce has worn off.
You are still operating on the assumption that all anti-choicers consider abortion to be murder. That is a distortion, and it fundamentally ignores the real issue, which is that a pregnant woman is in a special relationship with her potential child. They can and do have competing claims that cannot always be satisfied at the same time. A woman has a right to life, but she also has a right to good health. She has a right to be free from mental anguish, which is a component of good health. She has a right to privacy. With the exception of the most radical, the debate is over what the balance should be within the law between these rights that all potential mothers enjoy and any presumptive rights that a embryo or fetus should enjoy.
As a moral question, this is obviously one of the most difficult questions to answer. As a legal matter, the courts basically say that the mother’s life and health (including mental health) has the higher claim. However, her privacy right moves on a continuum, weakening as the pregnancy progresses until, eventually, the privacy right has the weaker claim. It’s this last issue that is the most contentious, as most pro-life politicians concede the first two points, but fervently dispute any privacy right.
This is why it is much more radical to take the position that the embryo’s rights trump every right the mother has, including her right not to suffer the mental anguish of mothering her rapist’s child.
If you look at as a question of murder vs. not murder, then these distinctions disappear. But very few people actually view it as murder, which is evident from the fact that almost no politicians want to treat it like murder under the law.
I don’t dispute that a lot of anti-choicers are primarily concerned about controlling women and shaming them for their sexuality. But even the Roe decision was an agonizing effort to find the right balance between competing rights. Not everyone agrees that they got that balance right.
So, in conclusion, it’s not really the case that there is some logical fallacy in being anti-choice with exceptions. It’s actually a mirror image of Roe, which is pro-choice with exceptions.
The debate over the contours of those exceptions is a legitimate one.
For me, privacy concerns have a very strong claim. Others deny that they have any claim at all. I think they’re wrong, but I don’t see them as illogical. What I find frustrating is the lack of focus on the consequences of making abortion illegal, or even inconvenient. If you keep those consequences always before you, both the health repercussions and the privacy concerns are obvious and compelling reasons to keep abortion safe, legal, and rare.
Maybe you know different people than I do, but I grew up in an Evangelical home. There is no “distinction.” From what I have always known of this debate among anti-choicers, it’s that it’s murder no matter what, but the health of the mother (psychological health) trumps that murder. It’s still wrong in their eyes, but it’s “more wrong” to let her health deteriorate.
However, personally, not statistically, I’ve never known people who make the distinction. Every person I’ve come in contact with who is anti-choice has always opposed it under any circumstance, and has always said it’s murder.
Forgot this part:
The exceptions are the result of different logical steps, though. Pro-choice with exceptions meaning that they see it as a person beyond a certain point, as it can live on its own, barring some catastrophic emergency. Pro-life with exception meaning even though I believe a person starts at conception, I don’t think that life is greater than the woman’s health.
I think it’s illogical.
I worded that badly now that I just read over it, as what I just said would make one think I agree with you.
I’m just going to end it here.
I’ll try one more time.
If you look at the question as a balancing act, which is how the Courts have decided the question, then the difference of opinion is over where the tipping point should lie.
If you look at as though the potential child has 100% of the rights, and the mother none, then you’re taking an absolutist position that is shared by a minority of even the anti-choice community (and almost all elected officials).
Maybe a lot of evangelicals don’t spend much time thinking about details, but the details are implicit in the polling data. Whether or not people are clear in the mind about it, almost everyone agrees that the mother has some rights (usually health and life, and also with regard to rape and incest). If they’re making those exceptions then they are conceding that the mother has competing rights. And that is where the debate mainly rages.
Politicians who make no rape or incest exception are rare precisely because so few people share that absolutist view. They may say they do. But, when it comes down to it, they don’t.
You’ve spent a lot of time with absolutists, and it’s coloring your perceptions. That’s understandable, but they’re still a small minority.
I see what you mean: if the interests of the woman who is to bear the child are utterly disregarded, there is no difference. Oh, except for it serving as an incentive for rapists.
There is no incentive for rapists other than power. Are you saying rapists will think “oh, I can get her pregnant and she won’t abort…I should rape her!”
That’s exactly what he/she is saying. I’m sure you can imagine a variety of situations where a man might want to do that. And isn’t that a tremendous power to have over a woman?
I’d need to see some study about it, but I don’t think it’s likely that rape will increase because abortion is illegal.
I’m not saying it would necessarily effect the statistics, but it certainly exacerbates the situation.
I know Dems are afraid of getting into debates about social issues with Repubs because they’ve been burned so many times before, but I simply can’t believe that we’re not hearing more about the homophobia, the xenophobia, the misogyny of the Repub candidates.
Esp in light of what appears to be a growing acceptance of Christian Revisionist theonomy in the Republican party. The majority of Americans can’t afford to accept these views from their elected leaders. I believe that folks simply don’t know what some of these candidates believe.
Here’s the thing: what do we call these people? Republicans call moderate concern for social welfare and economic equality socialism, as if that were a dirty word, and the media accepts their framing. What do we call these people? “Talibangelicals” is funny (and true) but too weird for most people. How do we put together the A) racist worldview, B) reflexive plutocratism, C) extreme fundamentalism?
And there needs to be some kind of consensus on the left about what to call them. Even a mouthful like “reactionary fundamentalist” could be effective if there was consistent use of it.
Things are very bad… for some of America. The rich continue to amass wealth in record amounts and poverty, as a percentage of the US population is at an all time high. This is not sustainable and scary thing predictably happen when the gap between rich and poor gets too great. But the trend has been going the wrong direction for a generation.
Some say FDR greatest achievement was keeping America from falling to fascists and totalitarianism, as much of the world did in the 30s.
What I worry most about is not the next election or 2012 but beyond that. Even if they lose, these nut jobs aren’t going anywhere and their economic condition isn’t likely to get a whole lot better no matter what.
What will they do then? Second amendment solutions? Even whackier candidates elected by desperate people?