tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post4889066189742051687..comments2024-03-28T00:01:43.037-04:00Comments on Grim's Hall: On the Personhood MovementGrimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-28588637863308779842011-11-15T10:21:26.758-05:002011-11-15T10:21:26.758-05:00I wish I had more faith in government so that I co...I wish I had more faith in government so that I could say they would not investigate every sexually active woman who had a late period (to make certain it was not, in fact, an abortion), but such faith is always tempered by the knowledge that what is ridiculous today may not be tomorrow.<br /><br />Twenty years ago, if you heard someone complaining that the government would make it illegal to cook with butter, you'd think they were some kind of kook. And yet, it's happened in NYC. Never underestimate the potential for evil in a faceless entity like government.MikeDnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-10390563043144338462011-11-11T22:40:38.041-05:002011-11-11T22:40:38.041-05:00I have many opinions on the larger issue, but will...I have many opinions on the larger issue, but will confine myself to the polling issues here. There are hardcore minority positions at both ends - some 20% who would allow any abortion and 20% who would allow none. In between there is a wide array (not a continuum, precisely) of beliefs, of folks who favor parental notification, or would forbid partial-birth or other late abortions, or who belief implantation/heartbeat/brainwave is the proper place to draw the line.<br /><br />Thus, depending on how the question is phrased, each hardcore side can claim dominance, by pointing out that the other extreme is rejected by 80% of Americans. True, but misleading.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-20492504137372888042011-11-11T16:42:30.321-05:002011-11-11T16:42:30.321-05:00There's another problem with the miscarriage b...There's another problem with the miscarriage bit, one that is exacerbated in today's world of a negligent, wholly irresponsible citizenry that requires government to intervene in our diets, for instance, to mandate what we may eat and further to limit our free speech rights to hear advertisements of what we might wish to eat. <br /><br />It's a short step from there for a government to investigate the woman's miscarriage--provably a miscarriage and not an abortion--as resulting from a negligent, and so actionable, life style, or from a proximate series of events she <b>should have known</b> would, or could, lead to a miscarriage.<br /><br />In the end, I agree with Valerie's ethically impure solution from a different perspective: I trust the individuals, in the main, to behave ethically far more than I do any government.<br /><br />Eric HinesE Hineshttp://aplebessite.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-37265783185454846672011-11-11T15:35:43.099-05:002011-11-11T15:35:43.099-05:00A miscarriage past a certain point may be, but I t...A miscarriage past a certain point may be, but I think very often early spontaneous miscarriages occur before any OB/GYN would have become involved. In fact, they may not even be recognized as pregnancies.<br /><br />This is another reason that the standard is a difficult one legally, even if it makes sense morally to draw the line that way. As a practical matter, at the earliest moments the business is often being handled entirely by unconscious processes of which we may never become conscious.Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-2183858874482185862011-11-11T15:16:38.296-05:002011-11-11T15:16:38.296-05:00Umnnhhhh....
Miscarriages are usually certified a...Umnnhhhh....<br /><br />Miscarriages are usually certified as such by the woman's OB/GYN. And miscarriages do not cause the physical damage to the birth canal which 'surgical' abortions do.<br /><br />It's no surprise that Planned Barrenhood wrote the spin that they did--and that J&J joined. "Day After" birth control causes abortions, after all, and that would eliminate a number of potions from the marketplace--not to mention PP's most significant income-producer.Dad29https://www.blogger.com/profile/08554276286736923821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-25949180970566608112011-11-11T13:00:07.221-05:002011-11-11T13:00:07.221-05:00That's an interesting reading, Valerie. It is...That's an interesting reading, Valerie. It is true that the government used to mandate sterilization, in some cases -- there was a story about that in last weekend's <i>Charlotte Observer</i>, which I read while I was up in the Carolinas. <br /><br />Is it true, though, that giving the power to prevent something mandates giving them the power to compel it? That seems like a strange claim: we often want the government to ban things like rape, without imagining that we are licensing the government to ever compel people to submit to being raped. <br /><br />I would like to say that there is a natural law protection at work here, in which there are things that no government can do regardless of what powers have been granted to it. A government that transgresses these natural law limits is illegitimate, and may be overthrown with an easy conscience. Surely a government that read its delegated power to punish rape as a license to permit rape to go unpunished would be in the wrong: and one that used such license to <i>compel</i> rape would be manifestly worthy of revolt and overthrow. Positive law is not everything! Indeed, more and more I think it is very little.Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-45042508528849604392011-11-11T12:46:10.876-05:002011-11-11T12:46:10.876-05:00It goes further than you take it, because declarin...It goes further than you take it, because declaring the zygote a "person" does not address the question of a grant of power under our Constitution.<br /><br />The Roe v. Wade decision pointed out that, once a grant of power is made to our government, there is no way to require a specific outcome of a decision made according to that power. To grant the power to intervene in the decision about an abortion inevitably grants the power to compel abortions.<br /><br />The notion of "personhood" doesn't solve this problem. All that is required under our Constitution to kill a person is "due process," and we decide what is due process.<br /><br />At the time the decision was published, I didn't know what to think about that problem. Certainly, many people loudly declared that a slaughter of the innocents by government could never occur here, particularly if the rights of the baby were recognized from conception.<br /><br />But after that, it happened in China, and our current Obamacare is very easily adapted to rulemaking that could compel not only abortion, but euthanasia.<br /><br />I am now very strongly of the opinion that the Supreme Court did us a great service, by forcing the decision to have an abortion (medical ability gives us the power-no way to withdraw that) to be a case-by-case decision by the persons most affected. It doesn't stop ALL abortions, but it does stop a wholesale slaughter of the innocents by government fiat.<br /><br />The solution is not ethically pure, but in an imperfect world, it does put a stop to the greater evil.<br /><br />ValerieAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com