FOX News Poll: Half of Voters Eye Candidates' Abortion Stance

FOX News ^ | Friday, October 26, 2007 | By Dana Blanton

[Drew68]

I don’t identify myself as prolife. In fact, most prolifers leave a sour taste in my mouth. You will meet them and understand why on this thread.

I agree. Many of the pro-lifers on this forum are so myopic that they see no other issue except for life. When they are not posting here they are reading and posting articles from the various pro-life news sites. As such, a "preaching to the choir" mentality has developed among them and they can't understand that many, many reasonable Americans on both sides of the political spectrum see the issue of abortion in various shades of gray (a thesis that this article supports). For them, there is no compromise, no "shades of gray" and no debate.

[cajungirl]

Yep. And no discussion usually.

I really do feel the law needs to be out of this business of regulating abortion except for issues of minor children and late term abortions. And I don’t think anyone changes anyone’s mind about the issue by preaching and namecalling.

[dbacks]

I could care less about his abortion position. What about his Supreme Court nominations? His stance on illegals? His views on Terrorism? A president can’t alter abortion but is other positions can.

[WFTR]

I think the big point in this question is the "fatal" qualifier. We don't know how much pain the child feels at each stage of development. The doctors may believe that the child will suffer less if aborted early, and the choice may seem to be between the child being aborted in the first few months of pregnancy or dying a painful death in the first few weeks out of the womb.

Again, the issue is not whether you would make one decision or the other. The issue is whether you would send someone to jail for refusing to make the decision that you recommend. I would lean towards letting the child have a chance to live, but I wouldn't want the criminal justice system to prosecute someone for making the other decision. Each of these circumstances will be different and may depend on subtle medical issues. I don't some power-hungry district attorney who never even took college biology trying to make these kinds of difficult distinctions.

To further complicate matters, many of these situations may be ones where the pregnancy is a real, medical danger to the mother. I have a friend who's wife had a problem with her pregnancy. The baby wasn't completely dead yet, but the baby was dying and was certain to die. If his wife had continued carrying the baby, the miscarriage might have come at a dangerous time and might have impacted her too quickly for doctors to save her. In that situation, they aborted the baby to ensure her health. That's a tough decision, and I wouldn't want some district attorney trying to prosecute them because he promised his pro-life constituents that he'd punish someone for a "mother's health" abortion.

Bill

[CindyDawg]

With the comments that you two are making I wonder how many others with different views feel comfortable debating this . Is that the purpose “no discussion”?

[WFTR]

Does her desire to move on with her life outweigh a baby's life?

Yes, her desire to move on with her life should outweigh any obligation that someone else tries to force on her. Again, the law should exist to mete out justice and not to ensure the outcomes that we want. Justice is not served by punishing the victim for refusing to carry the baby. Regardless of whether she carries the child, the rapist should be punished more severely if the victim becomes pregnant. He should bear the punishment either for the loss of the baby's life or the loss of the victim's time.

Bill

[doc1019]

The middle ground began back in the early days of Roe v. Wade. In the early days of this pogrom, there was no middle ground, either you were for abortion or against it and you were aborting a “baby”. Over the years of hedonistic propaganda, the baby is now a “fetus” and abortion is now a viable berth control method, financed, in part by our taxes.

We are fed constantly via TV an Movies that abortion is an acceptable alternative to giving birth, even to the point that any that appose it are either insanely religious, crazy or extremely intolerant.

Frog in boiling water?

[WFTR]

I distrust Rudy Giuliani for many reasons. Some of the ones that you mentioned are among those reasons.

[xzins]

Fox is shilling again for Rudy.

But, in the last election Ohio was the deciding ground and a turn around of about 50,000 votes would have given the state to Kerry.

Florida had a difference of about 900 votes, wasn’t it?

So a 7% difference is HUGH!

[AHerald]

Justice is not served by putting a rape victim or her doctor in jail because she refused to carry the child forced on her by the rapist.

I appreciate deeply and sympathetically the grave reality of the circumstances we are discussing. However, true justice is not served by destroying innocent human life--no matter how troubling the reality surrounding conception.

It is an idea born of misplaced kindness to place the comfort and convenience of a rape victim over against the inalienable right to life. In the end, for all your sincere and kind intentions toward the victim-mother due to the burdens she might well endure through no fault of her own, the unvarnished logical conclusion of your argument is that some life is not worthy of protection simply because it's inconvenient.

[WFTR]

With the comments that you two are making I wonder how many others with different views feel comfortable debating this . Is that the purpose “no discussion”?

I can't read people's motives in most cases. I think many of those who launch into immediate flames on the topic are simply that passionate about the issue. They aren't necessarily trying to stop all discussion, but they may be intent on shouting down any position but their own. Maybe they believe that if they shout down all other positions then what they advocate will become the law. I won't question their motives, but their technique isn't winning them any support.

I think many people also have a hard time distinguishing between what they want to happen and what the criminal justice system should punish. We seem to have become a society where everyone believes that they should use the law to force everyone else to be just like them. Most abortions don't quite fit this scenario because abortion either is or is not the taking of another human life. However, in the gray areas, particularly those involving the life or physical health of the mother, things aren't as black and white. In these areas, we can all have opinions, but we need to accept that we don't have to send others to jail for not accepting our opinions.

Bill

[WFTR]

I disagree. I suspect that if you'd asked this question ten or twenty years ago, you'd have a higher percentage who think that it's okay to abort simply because the child is unwanted. Over the years, our society has moved away from the idea that abortion is a good thing. When the issue started in the 70's, I think very few people saw the child as a person and saw the issue as a clear decision between protecting the child and not protecting the child. The development of ultrasound and pictures of the developing baby, the understanding of fetal development and the beginning of brain waves, the development of fetal surgery techniques have all moved people closer to thinking about the issue in terms of whether the unborn child is a person. However, even as we think of abortion in those terms, most Americans do not see the issue in the black-and-white terms that the most zealous pro-lifers do.

Bill

[WFTR]

I appreciate your sincere and reasonable advocacy of your position, but we'll have to disagree. I will not be a party to putting a rape victim in jail because she refuses to carry a child forced on her by rape. The criminal justice system should punish people for their wrongdoing but should not force them to bear the consequences for the wrongdoing of others.

Bill

[dbacks]

I sure don’t disagree!

[doc1019]

As a “zealous pro-lifer” we can agree to disagree. And meanwhile, innocent babies die.

I can’t imagine my grandmother (born around 1895), or even my mother (born 1919) thinking that abortion would be better than giving birth to an unexpected child, regardless the circumstances.

They might have sent the expectant mother off to a convent, or home for unwed mothers, accept the situation and allow the mother to come to term and put the child up for adoption, or accept the child into the family … abortion would never even be something they would even consider.

And, by the way, I thank GOD for my “zealous pro-life” feelings.

[Kevmo]

I believe many Americans are looking for a middle ground at this point in time.
***What is the middle ground on this issue? I don’t understand how someone can look at a living pre-born human and say that it’s just a mass of tissue that should have no rights in our society.

[CindyDawg]

Thanks for your post. As you probably figured out, stopping abortions is very important to me. I really don't see jail being an issue for the mothers though. When the law changes those cells should be reserved for the abortionists IMO.

The problem with the gray area is that one side will chip away, little by little until it's either black or white. It just depends on where you stand I guess. People say all life is valuable but clefts and Downs Syndrome are now being aborted. Women are aborting because of the gender of the child and abortion is now used as birth control. Middle school kids are being told sex is ok.

Nature gives us one chance a month but now moms are implanted with multiple embryos with the thought that if they all take then some can be killed. All this didn't happen over night but has developed over time since abortions were made legal. Where does it stop?

[org.whodat]

7% over a pro-abortionist candidate.

What line was that on in the survey?

[WFTR]

What is the middle ground on this issue? I don’t understand how someone can look at a living pre-born human and say that it’s just a mass of tissue that should have no rights in our society.

There are many sets of policies that could constitute a middle ground. A middle ground doesn't mean that we look at the unborn child and say that the child has no rights in our society. However, a middle ground can accept that the rights of the unborn child are not absolute.

At the very least, a middle ground starts by saying that if the pregnancy represents a real, physical, medical threat to the mother's life, abortion should be legal. Allowing abortion in these circumstances doesn't mean that we recommend abortion. The "mother's life" exception would simply mean that in a case where there is a realistic probability that the situation can't end in both patients surviving, the criminal justice system will not influence the decisions that a woman must make.

A middle ground might also start with some acceptance that legal rights don't necessarily follow biological life. I understand that biological life begins at conception, but I really don't see the early embryo as a person who deserves the full rights of any other citizen. I think we can have some restrictions on doctors playing Frankenstein with embryonic stem cell research without outlawing birth control pills that discourage implantation. That same middle ground would also help with the rape exception by ensuring that rape victims are not denied "morning after" or "emergency contraception" pills. That policy would allow other women to use these pills, but this middle ground may represent where many Americans stand on the issue.

We could be a long way from people seeing the very early stages of fetal development as representing a person with full rights. If we defined rights as beginning at the fetal heartbeat (~21 days) or brain waves (~40 days), we might find enough people willing to outlaw later abortions that the number of abortions would decrease substantially. I'm not entirely comfortable with setting the limit at that late a date, but those dates might represent a middle ground that would reduce the number of abortions.

Right now, I'd be happy with a middle ground that outlawed all abortions after 20 weeks of gestation. I believe that the record for a premature baby surviving is around 20 (maybe 22) weeks. If we set the limit at that stage, we'd stop some abortions. Furthermore, we'd introduce more people to the idea that a person can be a person with rights even while in the womb.

Bill

[Arthur McGowan]

You can’t see why it’s unjust to murder a baby because of the circumstances in which it was conceived?

You can’t see that having an abortion after a rape means that the woman is not only the victim of a violent act, now she has been induced to become a murderer? How does that bring healing and peace into her life?

I’m not attacking you. I’m pointing out that murdering an innocent baby does nothing to make anybody’s life better.