Abortion's shades of gray (by Michael Medved)

Townhall.com ^ | October 24, 2007 | Michael Medved

[redangus]

We were 19/20 and just scared and confused, but thankfully PPH was there to help us out. Maybe the saddest part of all of it was that my wife later died of breast cancer at age 46. No one will ever convince me that the abortion was not a factor in that.

[Daffy]

Agreed.

[restornu]

We well see!

[the808bass]

Maybe the saddest part of all of it was that my wife later died of breast cancer at age 46.

That is truly, truly heart-rending. I would like to offer my deepest condolences.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

If conservatives can’t even make a distinction between someone dressing in drag as a joke and real transvestite, then why should they be leading our party?

A grown man wearing women's clothes and dancing around like a whore for a bunch of pervert liberals is no joke... it isn't even funny...

I say to hell with Julie-Annie.

No more perverts in the White House!

[hinckley buzzard]

Stupid argument

It really is, and a good illustration of why I think Medved should stick to reviewing movies. He often comes prepared with good information but his reasoning tends to be adolescent.

In general the abortion issue has no shades of gray, because it is defined by principle. The politics of abortion does indeed, have shades, even (shudder) nuances because, it's political-- neither moral nor scientific.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

A grown man wearing women’s clothes and dancing around like a whore for a bunch of pervert liberals is no joke... it isn’t even funny...

[hopespringseternal]

At least 25% of all women have received abortions, but I've never heard sane advocates for human life suggesting we should execute or imprison these millions of females.

Oh, that old strawman. Never heard of ex post facto? If you did pass a death penalty for abortion, it would mean absolutely nothing to the millions of women who have had abortions. If you tried to write the law to allow them to be tried it wouldn't last ten minutes in any courtroom.

[Salvation]

LOL!

[hinckley buzzard]

In Europe, it will be Islam that brings it to an end, after the Europeans abort themselves into extinction.

Just to keep things in perspective, the US has more liberal abortion than most of Europe. We, sadly, not Europe, are the bottom of the western world's barrel.

[Salvation]

So sorry about your wife. Were you able to have other children?

Planned Parenthood really isn’t there to “help” people in my opinion. They are basically there to “kill” babies.

[Salvation]

**My hope is that as technology advances more and more people will come to agree with me on the beginning of life. If that happens then we as a nation will become much less accepting of abortion. If that happens then the culture will change and abortion will become rare, but we can probably agree that the genie will never be put completely back in the bottle.**

I think this is actually happening. The pendulum had swung all the way to the left — even in the Catholic Church. It is now coming back to the middle and, in fact, has passed the center point and is moving to the right — again this is evidenced in the Catholic Church with Pope Benedict XVI bringing back the Latin Mass and people flocking to it wherever it is said.

My prediction is that the younger people who are voting will vote moroe and more conservatively and yes, we will get those conservative judges appointed.

Another thread is talking about this. Why the Democrats Are Blue or something like that. Believe me, we aren’t going back to the liberal side of the spectrum for a long, long time. Here’s the link to that thread: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1918024/posts

Thanks, God, now America needs to respond.

[hopespringseternal]

I really don't know. I am not a doctor. But that's a good question. I'll research it and get back to you

Here is a clue for you: "the life of the mother" almost always boils down to something other than a life or death situation. It usually boils down to "it would be unhealthy for me to take a second job to support this baby."

True "life and death" situations are such things as ectopic pregnancies where the pregnancy simply isn't viable.

When you filter out all the pro-abortion noise, it turns out that even lumping health, rape, and incest together comprises far less than 1 percent of abortions.

[Salvation]

Amazing statistics there. I had never really pondered the health of the mother excuse either. Thanks for your excellent post.

[HereInTheHeartland]

“There is no way of getting around it, the populist view on abortion is that it should be legal in the first trimester, restricted in the 2nd trimester, and illegal in the 3rd trimester except to save the Life (not the health) of the mother.”

That may be true unfortunately in our nation..

But we also would hate to bring up what the populist view was in early 1940’s Germany towards the Jews.

Abortion is wrong no matter how many people support it. It is the murder of an innocent life.

[WhyisaTexasgirlinPA]

...we were 20 years old and just too young and stupid, ...

You were old enough to have sex, but I guess you were right about the stupid part.

I guess I don't get the candle lighting at the church since it was her choice to kill the baby.

[the808bass]

The racial disparity in death penalty statistics makes it very likely that the heinousness of the crime was not all that was taken into account by the sentencers. That is enough to make it suspicious.

If 48% of murderers happen to be black, but they make up less than 48% of people sentenced to death, your argument falls flat. Which is the case. Ergo, your argument falls flat.

Having said that, there are other good arguments against the death penalty. I'm not nearly the gung-ho "fry-em-all" guy I was even two years ago. I read an interesting true-crime book by Gresham (of all people) and it was eye-opening. I just don't think the racial hand-wringing fits the data.

[TigersEye]

But at the same time however, I also realize that Christian, Jew, Budhist, or atheist -- there is a point in the pregnancy in which they have no choice but to agree because the law compels them to -- and that point is viability.

As a Buddhist I trust the sutras that say consciousness joins the body at the moment of conception. Secular legal semantics don't change the fact that intentionally killing a zygote, embryo, fetus, baby, child, teenager, adult or senior citizen that is doing no one any harm is murder. Of a human being.