Even if you want to stick with this metaphor for far longer than it needed to be, you do realize that breaking in is, in itself, a threatening action, yes?

Anyway, even if the chance is infinitesimal, why is the mother forced into it? What gives you the right to determine that she must take on this risk, simply because she has the necessary reproductive parts? Remember how the whole point of this is that one person's rights may not overstep another? The fetus is the invading property here, and it's as simple as that.

you know Antony and Alan... i don't think you'll get a chance to be president... i already intend to run for president once i am old enough and when i win i intend to rule my new American Empire (oh did i mention i'll be taking over the rest of the world too) with an iron fist

I'll let you guys manage the parking facility formerly known as France

I will only agree if I am awarded Minister of *****es position within your cabinet, sir.

That's the exact same argument I used, and I see it didn't work any better for you. You're absolutely right about common sense and pre-conceptions. To me, it is so obvious that abortion is not self defense. It's common sense.

If it's obvious you'd be able to come up with some reasoning to back it up You've yet to do so.

I personally am glad your opinion is correct without fail so that I do not have to exercise my thinking guts to come up with one of my own.

Deal. I hear they have lots of sluts.

.

Not only did I provide 3 reasons and an alternative analogy, but I even further explained that one. Yawn.

wow. you're so awesome.

I didn't say you hadn't.

I was responding to your claim that I had come up with no reasoning to back up my belief that you are wrong. Clearly I had.

But that wasn't really a reason at all, just arguing over semantics in a metaphor.

No... I used the metaphor to continue the path you were taking it. Bit I wasn't "arguing semantics." The points I make are still valid to your argument. The baby didn't choose to be there, has no power to leave, and the risk is insubstantial. If you are trying to defend yourself against someone who's threatening you, it's only valid if they've chosen to do you harm, they have the capability to make that choice, and there's risk enough that their actions are going to hurt you.

In the military, we have a term called the Deadly Force Triangle. In order for any of us to use deadly force on anyone, the three elements of the triangle have to be met. These elements are Opportunity, Capability, and Intent. If any one of those 3 elements is not present, we have no justification for using deadly force. Opportunity means they're near enough to you to do damage (ie, a guy holding a baseball bat 200 yards away and yelling threats at you does NOT meet the requirement of Opportunity, but if he has a rifle, then he does. Basically he has to be in range with whatever weapon he has.). Capability means they have a weapon or some reasonable means to risk your life. To use my previous example, if the guy has a gun capability is met, but if he has a banana capability is not met. Intent means the guy is demonstrating through words or actions that he plans to harm you (ie yelling "I'm gonna kill you" or holding a gun up to you). I explain this to you to demonstrate that you can't just arbitrarily decide that someone is risking your life and therefore they deserve to die. I can't say I know how civilian self defense laws are written, but I'm sure they have similar stringent requirements.

Now if you take the the case of pregnancy and apply the Deadly Force Triangle you come up with the following results:
Opportunity: Sure. The baby is near enough to you to do harm. He/she is "in range" so to speak.
Capability: A stretch, based on the likelihood that your life is in danger... This would NOT generally be considered met, but since it's arguable, I'll give it to you anyway.
Intent: Nope. The baby is not demonstrating any intent to harm you. Deadly force triangle is NOT met, and therefore, Deadly Force is not authorized.

You're much better off going with the "the baby's a parasite" argument.

For some interesting discussion on the subject check this out: http://www.defensivecarry.com/forum/defensive-carry-tactical-training/48794-deadly-force-triangle.html

Do you really want to argue intent of a baby? The entire purpose of a baby is to be born and to use the mother for nutrients. Sure, it's not consciously deciding that, but it's going to do it anyway. This isn't some "well it might do this", it WILL put the mother at some sort of risk, every time.

Hey. Trying to escape the womb and using someone's nutrients is NOT intent to kill, no matter how you swing it.

If I'm on watch and someone comes on board the ship and grabs something off the quarterdeck and makes a run for it, I have no right to kill them. They're not threatening my life. (In the same way that a baby "stealing" a woman's nutrients is not threatening her life.) Assuming it can even be argued that the baby is stealing them, since really the mother is GIVING them to the child.

If the mother wants an abortion, there's no way you could say she is giving it to the child.

And apparently you don't understand the concept of risk despite it being described multiple times here. You even said you were willing to accept the idea of risk, so why are you rejecting it now? Backpedal much?

The physiological effects of pregnancy are entirely a product of the embryo (e.g. production of hCG.) This is a similar concept (although much more complex) to a mosquito injecting you with a vasodilator before feeding. You can no more claim the mother "gives" nutrients to the fetus than you can claim that you "give" blood to a mosquito.

I don't care what side you take in this debate, but at least the mechanical parts of reproduction should be understood. There's no excuse for this kind of fairy tale romanticism.

The mosquito instinctively harms its host for its own benefit. We say the mosquito intends to harm, even though it is clearly not capable of philosophically reasoning about their behavior. If we can say a mosquito has intent, we can say a fetus has intent.

The mother has opportunity to kill the baby; the baby is right there. The mother has capability; she is in an abortion clinic right now. The mother has intent; she just told the doctor to get this thing out of her before her 'pap has a coniption'. The baby is well within his rights to murder his mother in self defense.

Also, the MMR is 16.7 as of 2008; or, 16.7 deaths per 100,000 live births. There were 4247694 live births in 2008, so 720 women died in childbirth in 2008. There were 1212350 abortions performed in 2008. If these babies had not been aborted, we would expect there to be 202 more women who died in childbirth.

Now if only the mother wasn't the one defending herself, you'd be right (besides all the other crap about whether it's actually living/a person/etc debates).

Oh, and once again you're trying to draw a line in the sand and use it as an excuse to tell women what to do to protect themselves.

Your numbers assume only American births. The deaths from childbirth are FAR worse in many other parts of the world. So are you going to tell those babies they're out of luck? You're drawing a line, so you better back it up pretty damn good, bub.

Worldwide average as of 2006 is 400 per 100,000 live births. Most of them are in Africa.

I don't have much else to contribute to the thread since we're essentially beating a dead horse. However, I would like to share with you (quickly) the story of my daughter's birth & how it has enforced & even strengthened my "belief" that women should have the right to have an abortion.

My wife's pregnancy was planned. We did everything "by the book" (we literally read books on the subject). Her "diet" was perfect, her weight was spot-on (she gained the maximum recommended weight of 25 lbs.) & everything went perfectly, until we were in the hospital. She was in labor for 24 hours. One of the nurses accidentally knocked off my wife's IV & failed to notice until she lost a decent amount of blood. She wanted a "natural" birth & tried her best not to take any pain relief. Her contractions ended up getting too painful for her to bear so she opted for an epidural. She had what the anesthesiologist called a "rare reaction" & was almost completely paralyzed (she wouldn't have been able to push & if the baby came at that moment she would've had to have a c-section). She was really against this idea & was given the option of waiting for the epidural to wear off & to continue delivering the baby naturally. Once the epidural wore off, she began pushing, as the nurse recommended. The baby was crowning when several other nurses entered the room to offer their assistance. The doctor that was supposed to be on-call hadn't shown up yet (she was running VERY late). The nurses began to argue over whether or not she should continue to push or wait for the doctor. My wife told me that she was in a great deal of pain & that she needed to continue pushing. I yelled over the arguing nurses & told them that we were going to push, whether they advised it or not. They stopped arguing & assisted us. As one of the nurses was pulling on the head of the baby, the doctor walked in & finished the job (she appeared to be intoxicated in my opinion).

I'm not a woman & I can't possibly know how they feel about carrying, giving birth to & caring for a child. However, the entire ordeal was anything but smooth, we were frightened on several occasions & I can understand more now than ever why a woman may choose to get an abortion if she finds herself pregnant (regardless of how or why). Although my wife & I would like to have another child some day, we're probably going to take a GOOD look at adoption, because neither of us really want to go through anything like that, or worse, again.

To me, it sounds like a very horrible place to have children. I wish you and your wife the best on future children. I'm sure if my wife went through that ordeal, we would have two less children.

This assumes that dangerous pregnancies and abortions aren't correlated. Without all those abortions the MMR would be higher.

I did nothing. All conclusion are your own.



They appear to be, yes. Because they are dead. Did you mean those mothers? Aside : Mothers don't have abortions, because, if they abort then they are not a mother.

I think we could probably come up with a reasonable approximation of what the MMR would be if we could find statistics that broke the birth, abortion, and mother-death rates down by age group. Teenage mothers are at more risk, and also have more abortions, so the numbers are definitely skewed.

Just want to say...

Mentat, that sounds like an incredibly trying ordeal. I'm sorry you and your wife had to go through that. But I don't see how that strengthens your belief that a woman should be able to choose abortion. Maybe you could explain further how you came to that conclusion? If it were me, it would instill in me only a desire for the people working at that hospital to be fired. (And I would choose to never have a child at that hospital again.)

But this thread has gone pretty incredibly off track. It's still my opinion that Ron Paul is a financial genius (look up videos of him in the past predicting the state we'd be in today with shocking accuracy). And I think that will probably be the most important skill our future president could possess in the upcoming years. I think Obama has proven that he doesn't know what he's doing.

As to the abortion thing, I'm pretty confident none of us our going to convince each other of anything. I think our opinions on abortion are based on our core values and beliefs. (It's my opinion that this is true even for Cool Matty, despite his somewhat unique justification.) We could argue this position back and forth and never change anyone's mind. However, It's my opinion that this should be a non-issue for this election, and even if he was pro-abortion (or pro-choice, if you prefer that terminology), I would still support Ron Paul's bid for President.

This is all true. I just don't think it means he's shaping the race. A large segment of Paul's voters will not vote for any other Republican candidate. They'll write him in in the general election, or they'll vote for the libertarian, or they'll stay home. As for the Paul primary voters who don't fit into that category, I think the Republican frontrunners are content to try and pick them up after Paul inevitably drops out.

A candidate shapes a race when others shift their positions to compete with that candidate for votes. That's just not happening with Paul. Other Republican candidates are either authentic Tea Party insurgents who just happen to have positions on economics and size of government similar to Paul's, or they're not, and they're shifting to compete with Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, not Ron Paul.

Originally posted by Sarn_Cadrill:

Mentat, that sounds like an incredibly trying ordeal. I'm sorry you and your wife had to go through that. But I don't see how that strengthens your belief that a woman should be able to choose abortion. Maybe you could explain further how you came to that conclusion? If it were me, it would instill in me only a desire for the people working at that hospital to be fired. (And I would choose to never have a child at that hospital again.)

I think it's true that different people would react differently about situations such as the one my wife & I went through. However, what I took away from the experience was the the following.[/SIZE]

1. I don't think that our situation was unique. It's not difficult to find "horror" stories all over the internet of people going through hell at hospitals. I've personally witnessed two, one of which, through nurse incompetence, almost lead to the death of my father.
2. I don't think that our situation was extreme. We're fortunate enough to live in a country with supposedly decent medical care. There are situations much worse than the one we went through, in this country & far worse in others.
3. I think it's rational for someone to loathe & even fear the "process" of giving birth, especially if they've been through the process before, have heard negative accounts of said process (or others) from friends or family, or through research on other people's experiences.

I think that some people may see situations such as these as rarities (not a cause for concern). They may think that these things don't happen at every hospital (I've been witness to 2 life-altering experiences at 2 different hospitals, both of which are highly reputable). I think they're incorrect in this assumption. I think that giving birth is quite a scary ordeal, even when it's relatively smooth, never-mind the difficulties that can (& do) arise.

These experiences & thoughts on the matter have led me to believe that it's rational to choose an abortion over going through even the possibility (no matter how statistically insignificant they're supposed to be) of any of this (you'll never see my wife's case or the case of my father included in any statistics other than "successful birth" or "successful surgery"). I think that there are probably a lot of cases that never come to light because the people that go through them are happy to be alive & aren't interested in going through some sort of legal process after such an ordeal. I'm quite certain that my father would've had a strong case to sue but the last thing he wanted after an accident, surgery, a blood clot, almost 2 weeks in ICU & a weakened heart, was a legal battle.

I don't base my pro-choice opinion entirely on these experiences & thoughts. However, they do indeed strengthen my "belief" on the matter. I don't disagree with you on how I should feel about the healthcare workers involved in said cases, but for me, that's a separate issue.

Originally posted by Sarn_Cadrill:

But this thread has gone pretty incredibly off track. It's still my opinion that Ron Paul is a financial genius (look up videos of him in the past predicting the state we'd be in today with shocking accuracy).

I think that the problem with this argument is that Ron Paul supporters think that he's the only one making accurate predictions (taking your word that his predictions are accurate for the sake of argument) because they aren't looking for information elsewhere. There are economists that are far better at comprehending our circumstances than Ron Paul (e.g., Krugman, as a Nobel Prize winner in Economics, isn't even always accurate). His idea of returning to the gold standard seems ridiculous to any non-Objectivist economist that I've ever heard of. His economic arguments appear to be simplistic & unrealistic to me. However, I don't pretend to be an economist & I'm guessing that you aren't either. I would advise you to look beyond a "common sense" approach by researching the arguments against (they're quite easy to find). The fact that he's a medical doctor & not an economist sends up red flags for me, especially when everything he says is contrary to what actual economists say.

Originally posted by Sarn_Cadrill:

I think Obama has proven that he doesn't know what he's doing.

I don't consider myself to be an Obama supporter (although he appears to share some of my opinions) but I think he's far more "capable" than you give him credit. He's certainly more intellectually capable than any of his recent predecessors. He's much too far to the right for my liking.

Originally posted by Sarn_Cadrill:

However, It's my opinion that this should be a non-issue for this election, and even if he was pro-abortion (or pro-choice, if you prefer that terminology), I would still support Ron Paul's bid for President.

I think it's true, for most of us, that we'll never have a candidate that represents everything that we believe. However, I do think that Ron Paul's opinions on various matters say a lot about how he thinks. I don't think that he's a logical or rational thinker. In other words, I'm less concerned about what he may or may not do (since there's no way to determine this) & more concerned with what he wants to do & why.

P.S. It's beginning to get a bit irritating when vBulletin keeps automatically changing the color, font, style & size of my posts.[/SIZE]

A stopped clock is right twice a day.

Mentat, thanks for the explanation on your story. While your thought process is still something I would not have gone through, I can see how you came to the conclusion. That being said, I would still argue that for women that are scared of the process of child birth or maybe even not scared, but just don't want to go through it for whatever reason, there are LOTS of incredibly effective methods of birth control available to prevent them from ever being in that situation. Granted, I get that sometimes **** still just happens, and sometimes there's rapes and things like that, but for the majority of women, abortion would never have been necessary in the first place if they'd just told their man to put a rubber on, and/or had a little self control. So my thought process is 1) demonstrate self control, and if you're going to have sex, have safe sex. 2) Don't find yourself in a situation where you feel the need to murder another human being because you're uncomfortable with going through the process of child birth.

As to the case of rape, I recognize that to be a more touchy subject, but, since I still come at this from a perspective that sees the unborn child as a victim, I think it's unfair to him/her. I guess the old adage applies: "Two wrongs don't make a right."

On Ron Paul and his ability as an economist:
Based on your comments, Mentat and even Jon`C, it's my opinion, neither of you have researched the claims I'm making about Paul's financial prowess.
Here's an example of what I'm saying that demonstrates my position. (You can find videos like this all over youtube.)



Now, what's interesting to me is not so much what Paul says but how Bernanke seems to have no answers. Ben Bernanke of course as the Federal Reserve Chairman should be expected to know and understand what he's talking about, and yet it seems to me like he's sitting there saying "Yeah you're right. The economy sucks.. Hopefully it will get better. But I don't have any power to do anything about it."

I can find videos all over the place of Ron Paul basically schooling people in debate over financial issues. I can find videos of him making predictions about the collapse of the housing market waaaay back in eary 2000's. see here for an example. What I can't find are any videos demonstrating why he's wrong. (When I look for anti-Ron Paul videos all I can find are childish "humor" videos about Ron Paul being satan and what not.

I've spent a reasonable amount of time (more than I think is deserved) learning about Ron Paul (e.g., his ideology & positions on various matters). I've been doing so since before the 2008 election when I first became aware of him. I've actually seen the video that you posted before & dozens of others (my perspective of what was occurring obviously differs from yours). In addition, I've watched several of his exchanges with Greenspan when he held the position.

If your point is that I haven't studied enough about economics then I think that's something that almost everyone in the world is guilty of. However, I've at least read criticisms of the Austrian School of economics & of Keynesian economics, which is probably a great deal more than the average person in this country has done.

I think that those of us that disagree with you do so partly because we recognize the fact that nothing he's saying is as new or as interesting as your side espouses. He's regurgitating things that many of us have heard before. If I'm going to read about economics, it's going to be from an economist, not from a physician that follows a dead or dying form of economics that doesn't value the scientific method.

And a broken one is convinced it's right all the time.

If you could, would you go back and have an abortion instead?
[/SIZE][/FONT]

Why should you have the right to impregnate someone, thereby putting her life in danger?

Think about the answer really really hard, and you'll find that it's the same for both questions.

(Hint: There's no such thing as a "right," people will continue to abort despite legality, and people do things because they want to. Their reasons are their own, shaped by their individual perceptions. Look, you can think whatever you want about abortion, but you are absolutely wasting your time if your goal is to change minds or force people to stop. It's here to stay. Period. I think you like to hear yourself talk.)

You're creating a hypothetical situation that isn't equivalent to the subject we're discussing. I think that we can probably debate this issue without science fiction scenarios.

I wish someone would have used a coat hanger on this thread.

You have it backwards.

There are two reasons I'm not impressed:

1.) Ron Paul abuses the public's ignorance in order to gain free hits, e.g. predicting market cycles, or predicting bubbles where there is clear evidence of irrationality. The only impressive thing about Ron Paul's predictions is that The Economist publishes them a day earlier than he does.

2.) Even if Ron Paul is good at predicting future disasters, it doesn't mean he would be capable of averting them.

I guess it's time to talk about the economic schools, now. Ron Paul's economic ideologies are mainly informed by the Austrian school of economics, which JM mentioned earlier. The Austrian school believes in basically the same ideas as the Chicago school, except they don't believe in statistics or mathematical models. The Austrian school is generally regarded as crazy pseudo-science, but they have the same key ideas as the Chicago school and that's the important part. What JM didn't mention is that the Chicago school has dominated the discourse in Washington for decades. Bush, Bush and Reagan were all advised by prominent Chicago economists, including the late Nobel laureate Milton Friedman. Chicago/Austrian ideas are very much responsible for the present financial deregulation crisis and a return to 1920s-style income gaps, and many other social and economic problems over the past 30 years or more (I mentioned some of them earlier in this thread.)

Had Ron Paul been in power, he would have made the same decisions that led to this crisis.

Ron Paul sounds great in a YouTube sound bite, but the more you study economics the more you realize that he is not as impressive as Internet makes him sound. Read the works of Keynes, Friedman and Stiglitz.

(That Youtube video you embedded shows just how out-of-touch he is, even concerning his own philosophies. He's still advocating for a gold standard, but everyone else has abandoned gold as a currency because the price is too unstable. He's also complaining about devaluation of the US dollar, but that devaluation is making American labor more competitive, which is exactly what the US economy needs right now.)

False.

Only because I basically told you to say that.