Abortion and USA elections

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Is your view on abortion enough to decide on who to vote for in the upcoming USA elections. I have noticed that a lot of people will vote republican based on Obama's quasi pro choice stance. Is it sensible to allow one issue to dominate your thinking when it comes to voting for the leader of arguably the largest and most influential country in the modern world ?

Yes.

Well, I am also someone, who votes based on one issue (but it's not abortion), so I guess it'd be hypocritical so condemn anti-abortionists for their issue of choice. but then, I can do that since the party I'll vote for complies with my other preferences very much. It'd be IMHO illogical to vote for a party you disagree with on all issues except abortion.

'Obama's quasi pro choice stance' -- You gotta be kidding me?

OBAMA SUPPORTS INFANTICIDE!!

In 2002, as an Illinois legislator, Obama voted against the Induced Infant Liability Act, which would have protected babies that survived late-term abortions.

Obama will do whatever he can to protect a woman from being 'punished with a baby'.

Why do people have to push the abortion issue so hard? We should be worried about more pressing matters, like resolving the situation in Iraq, getting our economy out of the s**tter, and universal healthcare. USA is the greatest nation ever to grace the planet, and we can't even ensure the health of our own citizenry? Give me a break...

I think it is a form of signaling game. the issue is not so much important itself, but as indicator how 'moral minority' the candidates are.

Last edited by LostInEmulation on 31 Aug 2008, 2:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

McCain and his veep both support forced pregnancy.
Forced pregnancy advocacy tends to go along with other nasty philosophical positions, so while it looks like a 'single-issue' vote, it's actually a vote for the most obvious trait of a suite of traits that tend to go together.

I wish there was a way to tell which fetus would be a democrat then we could abort only those.

If you accept the pro-life premises (that the fetus is a living human being with rights that should be protected) then it does indeed make perfect sense for that to be the most important issue to consider, easily trumping Iraq or the economy. If you do not accept those premises, then such an approach to the issue appears absurd. The dispute over abortion is a definitional one, and the definition you choose determines your stance. If your definitions hold the fetus to be human life, then abortion is murder and is a very serious issue.

For me, I'm pro-life, but not for the same reasons as the fundies... For me, it's more about preserving the aspie way of life. Abortion coupled with genetic testing (which is becoming more sophisticated and reliable as time goes on) is tantamount to eugenics.

Overall though, getting the economy working again is more important than that. If our economy is working poorly, a parent without much money would be more likely to abort a fetus that is genetically determined to be autistic (for economic reasons), whereas in a good economy the only people that would see the autism rather than their child are the jenny mccarthy types... and I'm hoping that this mindset lessens as autism is further understood...

I can't for the life of me work out how people would care more about forcing a child on a woman they don't know and never will know, without giving a stuff what happens to the child after it's born, than about killing millions of people who are already born, alive, and have homes, families and lives (ie Iraq and Afghanistan - look up DU/Depleted Uranium if you think I'm exaggerating) or about not sorting out their own fellow countrymen and women who are impoverished and suffering the lives they already have with a health system that doesn't work and unemployment and poverty rife.

Remember, these are issues that concern the lives of people who are wanted, who are alive, who are living and breathing and thinking and feeling - not blobs of cells that aren't wanted and don't even have brains or hearts or anything else yet.


Utterly ridiculous.

One needn't necessarily be a fundie to hold to pro-life positions because of a belief that the fetus is alive. Your justification for pro-life stances is reasonable to you, and it is something that can be set aside for other issues. But if one believes abortion to be murder, which follows from the definition of a fetus as a living human being, then there really aren't any more important issue.

I still haven't decided which set of definitions I want to use, so I'm on the fence about abortion now.

I know it's probably a very aspie thing to do, but you can't let it come down to definitions.

Forcing abortion to be illegal is wrong. Simple as that. And on many levels -

For a start, you're making it mandatory that every pregnancy is taken to term. That means women already in poverty suffering more, women who don't want a child bringing it into the world where it could well be unloved or abused, women who are at the wrong stage in life to have a child having one forced on them and stuffing up their entire lives, women too young or mentally unsound to be parents being forced into it, women medically unable to safely be pregnant dying because of this stupid law, children being born into poverty and hardship when the parents could wait a few years and give them so much more...

Isn't child abuse already too high? Isn't the world and her ecosystems suffering from overpopulation and over-crowding enough? Aren't there already too many unwanted children?

Then there's the fact that regardless of what you think of it, you can't stop it. If you make it illegal you're forcing women to use back-street abortions which are often extremely dangerous, damaging, can destroy women's bodies, lead to massive infection or kill them. Or else women ordering abortion pills from the internet from sites that could well be selling them something totally different and completely toxic or deadly - they have no way of knowing. Make it legal so the ones who want it - as is their choice, being their body and their life and all and absolutely nothing to do with you!! - don't end up extremely sick or dead because of your interference.



The legality of it is not even an issue, regardless of whether or not you feel it's right or wrong.

But it is a game of definitions. I will work from pro-life definitions to show you a different view on this. Note that I myself am not pro-life. I don't have a well-defined opinion on abortion, just a relatively balanced view of what both sides believe.


A different set of definitions than you hold comes to the conclusion that abortion is wrong. Simple as that. And on so many levels.


For a start, you're making it legal for women to murder their children because those children are inconvenient.


Your same arguments can easily be used to justify the murder of young (already-born) children who might be unloved or abused or a financial burden. And the child is not "forced on" them unless the pregnancy resulted from rape, which is exceedingly rare.


No, the parents could wait a few years and give other children so much more... not the children that are dead, they will never have anything, not even a single lungful of air in their entire existence.


Aren't many Western countries already suffering from an aging population and below the replacement rate? Does overpopulation justify murder? Is child abuse worse than murder?


The arduousness of a task does not make it any less right.


Not their body and their life- the body and life of an innocent child. Can I go kill some Mexicans? Should that be legal? It has absolutely nothing to do with you, so why should you consider it to be wrong?

As said earlier, I'm doing devil's-advocate here. I have no opinion one way or the other, I just dislike piss-poor reasoning and deluded beliefs that anyone who disagrees with you is either evil or a moron. Refute the idea that a fetus is a human life, then you will have a leg to stand on if you wish to debate pro-choice.

I don't care particularly what other people believe about abortion - all I care about is that it remains a legal option for those who need it, so they don't end up killing themselves when they go the 'back-street' route.


Also, I'm sure we can all agree that the issue of the lives of the people who already live and breathe in the USA in poverty and without healthcare, or those of the millions of families being slaughtered needlessly in Iraq and Afghanistan - and who will suffer forevermore thanks to the use of DU - should take precedence when deciding on who to vote for (not that it matters) rather than an issue of what a woman does with her own body?

Yes, I know.


Interesting way to phrase the question. The problem is that it is not universally agreed that abortion is something a woman does "with her own body" rather than something she does to someone else's body. If a premise is not agreed to be true by all participants in an argument, it can't honestly be used. You are using overly emotive language to support your views, and your statements are intellectually dishonest.