Same sex marriage and the slippery slope.

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If you believe the Gallup poll and the Marist poll agree, you quite obviously did not understand both of them. Since the Marist poll was simple enough for a chimp to understand, and I assume you to be more intelligent than a chimp, that leaves the conclusion that you misunderstood the Gallup poll.


It was implicit in your intitial unsourced claim, and I called you out on the fact that that number of people almost certainly do not share your views.


And now I know the precise paragraph of the Gallup poll at which you stopped reading. They broke it up further than that. Even the amount that you did read, you still seem to have misunderstood.


No, it doesn't. The Marist poll purports to show overwhelming opposition to abortion, while the Gallup poll shows that pro-life has only a very slight edge, and remarks that this is a departure from previous polling results where pro-choice has traditionally been the predominant position.


And most of the people you've been debating in this thread have not taken that position, so this is a dishonest straw man. Being pro-life does not necessarily (and usually does not) mean a position as extreme as yours, and several people have attacked you not simply for being pro-life, but for the extremity of your stance.

And I pointed out that it was disingenuous to cite such numbers as support for your position, when they clearly don't. This poll shows 76% who disagree with you, and only 15% who agree. Your position isn't "some restrictions on abortion." It is "ban abortion." The two are very different. The former is normal, mainstream, and pragmatic. The latter is extreme and unreasonable.

Let me deal with a few issues in your last post.

It was not implicit in my claim. All I claimed was that around 60% of Americans supported restrictions on abortion. Please tell me which part of that statement is a claim that a majority of Americans believe that abortion should be illigal all cases except under the double effect terms I specified when describing my position.

Well the rest of the gallup poll had to do with political affiliation and pro-life pro-choice. It did not explore what people mean when they use those broad terms to describe themselves. The other poll did. If you read the link in my last post you will see the two described together.

As to the extremity of my position. Close to a quarter of the population supports something like my position and a good number of people ouside of it support something close to it (this is hardly a fringe view).

Incorrect. In context of the initial post I made criticizing your claim, you were attacking AG and LKL for supporting a relatively centrist stance that actually encompasses the views of many of the people you cited as disagreeing with them.


You still missed a lot of significant details by not reading enough of the text. I will spell it out for you:
-Pro-life has an incredibly slim lead
-Pro-llife in the poll is defined more broadly than you probably would define it
-This is a recent phenomena likely tied to broader political fluctuations, and may not even last
-Historically, pro-choice has held a significant lead
-The difference between your stance (far right) and the far left stance (which has not even been advocated in this thread) is statistically null, and historically the far left stance has often been significantly more popular. It has never been dramatically less popular.


23% in Gallup, 15% in the most recent one you cited. The mainstream view is definitely closer to what LKL and AG were promoting, thus your citing of polls to claim the majority oppose their standpoint is dishonest. After all, both of them upheld the possibility of some restrictions on abortion, putting them in that 60% that you claimed.

Basically, you are inappropriately conflating distinct viewpoints, in multiple directions.

@Orwell

This was AG's origional statement
'I think it is generally agreed that third trimester is when we can actually BEGIN to start calling this a child.'

I responded to this claim. This is not a position that is supported by the evidence I put forward. Since most propel why favor restrictions on abortion would not allow for a third trimeester abortion of choice.

I was not attacking LKL and AG for supporting a centrist stance. I was defending my own views. I never said anywhere that they MUST support my view. In fact I often qualified it as my own view.

You are now blatantly and persistently misrepresenting my position and intent.

@Orwell

This was AG's origional statement
'I think it is generally agreed that third trimester is when we can actually BEGIN to start calling this a child.'

I responded to this claim. This is not a position that is supported by the evidence I put forward. Since most propel why favor restrictions on abortion would not allow for a third trimeester abortion of choice.

I was not attacking LKL and AG for supporting a centrist stance. I was defending my own views. I never said anywhere that they MUST support my view. In fact I often qualified it as my own view.

You are now blatantly and persistently misrepresenting my position and intent.

You are again conflating 'life' and 'personhood.' We can all agree that a zef is "alive." We might not agree on where that life started (I would say that it never started and never ended, for example, at least not in a timeline that is relevant to this discussion), but saying that people agree that 'life starts at conception,' is not the same as saying that people agree that 'there is a child at conception.' LIFE is a very low criterion; only Jainists, of all of the religions on the planet, truly respect all life. Most of us respect life, but all life is not equal. All life does not deserve the respect of a human person(noun), not even all human (adj.) life.

^^^^

The personhood argument is not one that the average person seems to make much of distinction in regards to. I am yet to see any study relating to the general population making this distinction. It seems, at least in the public discourse, to be a distinction without a difference (politically it tends to be a distinction pro-life people do not make and one pro-choice supporters advocate) I would hazard a guess that the people who hold to the 'personhood' issue would tend to be among the 24% of people who reported 'viability' on the survey I cited.

I think most people would know the difference between the two, but we have no way of actually knowing what percentage actually make the distinction.

Problem with Abortion is it is usually used as a form of birth control because they were too irresponsible and didn't want to be inconveinenced with a child.

Also there is some interesting information about abortions.

Those who thought their criticism would silence me obviously haven’t done a Google search. This weekend’s anniversary of Roe v. Wade reminds us of the very wreckage abortion has caused: over 50 million babies dead, based on a decision that holds that certain human life can be taken for any reason or no reason. In America we require a lengthy and litigious process involving dozens of people to take the life of a criminal who has done great harm to society — and at the same time grant one person the absolute right to determine whether an innocent child should be granted the rights of personhood and therefore life.

How can this be, and why was I pilloried for suggesting this is an issue of civil rights? Because our courts have created a distinction between human life, which a fetus unquestionably is from a biological standpoint, since it is both human and alive, and personhood under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution — the very amendment that ended the immoral denial of personhood to blacks.

Over a million lives will be taken this year, and a disproportionate percentage of these children will be black. How is this any less a civil-rights issue than any other issue we tie to civil rights? It is a great irony that so many feel free to wrap their education-reform claims in the language of civil rights but chafe when it comes to the same claims about life. When we point out that our president does not allow the educational choice for poor black children in Washington, D.C., that he provides to his own children, does that make headlines?
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/25 ... -nro-staff

CNSNews.com) – Abortion kills more black Americans than the seven leading causes of death combined, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2005, the latest year for which the abortion numbers are available.

Abortion killed at least 203,991 blacks in the 36 states and two cities (New York City and the District of Columbia) that reported abortions by race in 2005, according to the CDC. During that same year, according to the CDC, a total of 198,385 blacks nationwide died from heart disease, cancer, strokes, accidents, diabetes, homicide, and chronic lower respiratory diseases combined. These were the seven leading causes of death for black Americans that year.

http://www.cnsnews.com/node/55956

I will also argue that there are those that are pro-Abortion that thinks its still okay to kill a baby after the baby is born, including Senator Barbara Boxer.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoTjb9rzyEo

You have to turn your speakers up to listen to the video.

Whether or not a slippery slope will happen depends on the beliefs of the society. Will society one day believe that children are capable of making vows to another person and consenting to sex? Will society one day believe that the number of people in a "marriage" should not be limited to 2 (polygamy, three-some, four-some, etc...)? Will society one day believe that humans can marry any other living thing?

In the past, marriage was seen as only between 2 people of opposite genders. In terms of interracial marriage, there were other issues like racism obviously.

I agree with this statement. The term "life" is probably picked for rhetorical reasons, but the real issue is not "life" but rather whether it is a person or not.