Politics: Where we struggle to kneel in the muck.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
The right to be free to control your body is not a property right.

Then what kind of right is it?

[dtb]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I suspect there are few newborns/infants in that category. Most are going overseas to foreign countries to adopt newborns/infants because of the shortage here.

They were infants at one point. Do you see a lot of people adopting kids from Africa?

From Asia, from Eastern Europe, from South America, yes. Not Africa, however. How curious.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
You know, if I said half the shit you jackasses say I did, you'd be drooling like rabid dogs instead of building scarecrows.

That said, I'm going to laugh my ass off when Bush does replace O'Connor with someone who doesn't believe in making shit up outside of the framework of laws. You people will be screaming, begging, crying when the majority is again allowed to exercise their will instead of having this shit imposed on them by liberal judges and the silver-spoon cheering section.

God forbid you get something like a Constitutional Amendment before imposing your morality on us. And how ironic that you accuse us of doing the same to you.

This is cheap, but I find you repellant, so here goes.

You do understand that, because I can afford plane tickets, and most of my "friends" (and for that matter the country) can afford plane tickets to get whatever abortions we may need elsewhere, that no matter what the Court does, you will never have the desired impact on our "selfish" lives that you seem to desire. Sure, I know... you're just arguing about lagalities. No you're not. You actually want to see people like me - the rotten moral relativists - suffer, or as you call it, "be responsible for our actions." You can't turn back the clock. Bugs you, huh? I may rot in hell, but you're going to have to deal with my kind for the rest of your angry life.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
That's an arbitrary line you've drawn, one that suits your argument. There are also distinct differences, physiologically based, between me and my prepubescent sons, and yet you likely wouldn't let me shoot my pheasant-scaring progeny. (But, unlike Seb. you would understand the analogy.)

I didn't draw a line. I said that drawing a line is hard. You have a developmental continuum between conception and birth, and no obvious place (Justice Blackmun's tenure at the Mayo Clinic notwithstanding) to draw a line. And yet the difference between the fertilized egg and a newborn is profound. (More profound, I would say, than that between you and your prepubescent sons, and perhaps more profound than the differences between them and the pheasants they're shooting. Though that's debatable.)

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
As I recall, Kerry states that life begins at conception.

Curiously, life ends at death, yet there are times within either end of that time period when it is acceptable to use external means to end that life.

[SlaveNoMore]

Secret_Agent_Man
Your fixation on Kerry's mention of prostitution is both personally revealing and a red herring. Kerry did not COMPARE terrorism to prostitution. Instead, he said we need to fight terrorism and beat it down UNTIL it is no more important that prostitution or illegal gambling. Anyway, the attacks from B/C and the GOP would be identical even if Kerry had mentioned more serious crimes.

Actually, he wants a return to the day when they were nothing more than a nuisance, i.e. the "head-in-the-sand" shiny, happy days of 9/10.

So, the question remains: Why, Slave, Why? BoSox in 6.

The Sox, like Kerry, are doomed. Yanks in 6.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Dred Scott. Really? Shirley, you jest.

Stop calling me Shirley.

A woman is not an economy. The right to be free to control your body is not a property right. And its certainly not anywhere near analogous to a property right in a slave.

Didn't say it was. Merely pointing out that there are competing rights. And, the argument will never resonate with someone who doesn't believe that that unborn human/fetus/lump might be deserving of consideration in the confering of entitlement to rights. You've made an arbitrary distinction, like Ty - and so have I, at another point on the continuum. I think, like I bet you do, that there is no way for us to know the "right" answer to that. Difference is, I'd prefer to err on the side of not killing.

There is no trumping solution here, although I applaud your attempt to work an end-around my reasonable offer to compromise.

Let's only kill pheasant-flushers who get less than a "B" average. Good compromise?

I view the woman's right as trumping your argument.

Yep, that's the bottom line of the whole fight.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
This is cheap, but I find you repellant, so here goes.

You do understand that, because I can afford plane tickets, and most of my "friends" (and for that matter the country) can afford plane tickets to get whatever abortions we may need elsewhere, that no matter what the Court does, you will never have the desired impact on our "selfish" lives that you seem to desire. Sure, I know... you're just arguing about lagalities. No you're not. You actually want to see people like me - the rotten moral relativists - suffer, or as you call it, "be responsible for our actions." You can't turn back the clock. Bugs you, huh? I may rot in hell, but you're going to have to deal with my kind for the rest of your angry life.

Per this, a new Treasury Department ruling says that U.S. citizens cannot consume Cuban cigars anywhere in the world, something which Eugene Volokh apparently says they can do. WTF? How can this country punish you for going to, say, Brazil and smoking a Cuban if it's legal there?

Which, sebby, suggests that your faith in being able to fly away from local abortion laws may be misplaced.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
You can say you'll laugh your ass off, but it would doom the GOP to minority party status. Right now they get to play the victim, but the sort of decision you describe would simultaneously alienate swing voters and mobilize the Dem base like you can't imagine.

I sincerely doubt it. If 20 states move towards outlawing abortion, this issue goes away. Pro-choice Californians (assuming they are the controlling majority) get to tell the pro-lifers to move to Indiana or Utah. I'm not even sure the 20 pro-Life states are Republican, once the whole abortion issue gets obviated by allowing state control.

The beauty is, the serial abortion-obtainers and the occasional Catholic and whoever else can all move to your state and drive up property values even higher. Or they can visit for a few days whenever they get pregnant. The only way this becomes a huge problem for everybody is if somewhere North of 40 states (just to throw a random, but high number out) move to ban it so that people have to constantly travel to the same remote backwater to get it.

Otherwise, I think it mostly moots the whole issue for both parties, if the country could just a rational status quo on solid ground.

Hello

[SlaveNoMore]

Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Curiously, life ends at death, yet there are times within either end of that time period when it is acceptable to use external means to end that life.

True. The "nuisance" with the shrapnel bombs overseas are in complete agreement with you.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Actually, he wants a return to the day when they were nothing more than a nuisance, i.e. the "head-in-the-sand" shiny, happy days of 9/10.

Don't we all?

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Don't we all?

And wake up and go through 9/11 again?

No, thanks.

(Isn't there a Bill Murray movie about that?)

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
I sincerely doubt it. If 20 states move towards outlawing abortion, this issue goes away. Pro-choice Californians (assuming they are the controlling majority) get to tell the pro-lifers to move to Indiana or Utah. I'm not even sure the 20 pro-Life states are Republican, once the whole abortion issue gets obviated by allowing state control.

The beauty is, the serial abortion-obtainers and the occasional Catholic and whoever else can all move to your state and drive up property values even higher. Or they can visit for a few days whenever they get pregnant. The only way this becomes a huge problem for everybody is if somewhere North of 40 states (just to throw a random, but high number out) move to ban it so that people have to constantly travel to the same remote backwater to get it.

Otherwise, I think it mostly moots the whole issue for both parties, if the country could just a rational status quo on solid ground.

Hello

Not a freaking chance. Pro-lifers in every state mobilize over this issue. Pro-choicers mobilize as well. Pro-lifers will also try to pass laws giving the fetus the right to stay in the state to avoid travel to a state where abortion is legal. Various things will be criminalized. And so on.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
And wake up and go through 9/11 again?

No, thanks.

(Isn't there a Bill Murray movie about that?)

Don't fight the hypothetical.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Per this, a new Treasury Department ruling says that U.S. citizens cannot consume Cuban cigars anywhere in the world, something which Eugene Volokh apparently says they can do. WTF? How can this country punish you for going to, say, Brazil and smoking a Cuban if it's legal there?

Which, sebby, suggests that your faith in being able to fly away from local abortion laws may be misplaced.

Let them catch me. Like I said when Clinton lied under oath, you get a pass where the law is unjust/unjustly applied. And yes, I decide when the law becomes unjust for me on private issues. The price for such behavior is the risk of arrest. So be it. I never bought the "the law is the law and its your duty to obey it or change it" argument. The law on personal issues like drugs and abortion is what I feel like it ought to be, and when I get caught, hey... caveat amptor.