Robin Koerner Trumps Anti-Abortion Dogmatists at WA Liberty Caucus

[Christian Liberty]

Miscarriage is a different issue, its not the woman's fault. I haven't considered the issue of smoking or drugs much, but at least then, harm to the fetus is an accidental side effect of something the woman wants to do anyway, not deliberate murder.

ANd yes, I'm not an anarchist. I do think government has one role, and that is to protect people from aggression. Murder in the womb is an act of aggression.

Ron Paul has always supported the right of the states to punish murder, AS WELL HE SHOULD.

 

[fr33]

I bite my tongue on some of Koerner's stuff. Like this one and where he was giving in to socialized medicine. I'm definitely not a "blue republican". I think they are naive and do not understand what they give up when they concede on these things.

 

[GopBlackList]

but for you it's freedom for all but unborn babies who are subject to death at a whim.

And abortion is an act of aggression.

It ISN'T an easy issue.

You're right its not an easy issue. You also have to consider not everyone subscribes to the idea that life starts at conception, including myself. Some may be more inclined to believe that life begins after the first trimester.

 

[sailingaway]

You're right its not an easy issue. You also have to consider not everyone subscribes to the idea that life starts at conception, including myself. Some may be more inclined to believe that life begins after the first trimester.

what's the magic line for that?

I understand, and I that is what I said initially. It depends on where you think life begins. Once you think it begins, whenever that is, it isn't just one person's choice.

 

[GopBlackList]

what's the magic line for that?

I understand, and I that is what I said initially. It depends on where you think life begins. Once you think it begins, whenever that is, it isn't just one person's choice.

It is their personal choice which is why I lean more towards pro-choice than pro-life. Overall, the whole anti-abortion movement is futile in my opinion.

 

[Christian Liberty]

It is their personal choice which is why I lean more towards pro-choice than pro-life. Overall, the whole anti-abortion movement is futile in my opinion.

I agree that its probably futile. Republicans are also EXTREMELY soft on this issue. I feel so strongly about this issue that I want Scott Roeder pardoned. That would mean more to me than any stupid, half-hearted legislation somebody could make up.

Most Republicans who claim to be "Pro-life" are a joke. They want to violate the constitution and make a Federal law, but they gasp at the thought of any real punishment for the mother, even at the state level, and they wouldn't even consider pardoning anti-abortion vigilantes, who are the real heroes in this fight.

 

[Rocco]

I don't see how you can possibly try to sit there and tell me intent doesn't matter. "Less direct forms of abortion" is an incorrect term for miscarriage. Intent is the difference between me shooting someone and me accidentally hitting them with my car. Intent is EVERYTHING in regards to murder issues. If you can't see the difference between a 3rd party being an ACCIDENTAL byproduct of bad personal decision making and the mother making the conscious decision to take her fetus to the doctor and cutting the baby into pieces then you're irrational.

It's funny to me how you can sit there and say "not one single living person on this earth has the right to violate another's personal autonomy" in defense of taking away EVERY right of millions of people annually. The argument that because the baby depends on the mother they therefore have no rights is completely backwards, what kind of libertarian believes you need to be independent in order to have rights? Libertarians believe our rights come from our humanity, and you have already admitted the unborn are people, so don't sit there and act like the pro life side are the ones inconsistent with liberty. A baby outside of the womb, left on their own, will die without the care of another. They are by no means independent. An elderly person who has severe dementia cannot survive without the care of another. They are by no means independent. Here we have two other examples of groups that have zero personal autonomy, they cannot function as individuals, yet society affords them rights because they are human. You put the "don't even try this argument" qualifier in there because you know that this fact cripples your argument.

It is true the woman's body is being intruded upon, it is also true in 99% of cases that she decided to have sex and is therefore responsible for the consequences of that. Even in cases of rape, you still have to consider the degree of a violation of rights you are inflicting on both parties. If both parties are living people then they both deserve protections under the law, and the right to life simply trumps the right to reverse a bad decision (or even a tragic accident) that will occupy your body for 3/4ths of one year. This is another thing that we really need to consider with the pro life vs pro choice argument, the average life expectancy is 78 1/4 years, pregnancies last about 3/4ths of one year. To say an equal level of rights are being taken away is a pretty ridiculous comparison when seen in this light. When we live in a society where a parent has ZERO legal obligation to take care of their kid once they are born (if they really want to get out of it they can turn them to the state) how can we say that a 3/4th of a year commitment trumps the right to a life of 78 1/4th years? Remember, you have accepted the premise that these are humans, so when I say this is an equivalency in terms of years taken from life your position seems to indicate you would agree.


PS: Since you tried to contradict my point about Dr Paul's position, here's an actual quote from him on the subject:

"Abortion on demand is the ultimate State tyranny; the State simply declares that certain classes of human beings are not persons, and therefore not entitled to the protection of the law. The State protects the “right” of some people to kill others, just as the courts protected the “property rights” of slave masters in their slaves. Moreover, by this method the State achieves a goal common to all totalitarian regimes: it sets us against each other, so that our energies are spent in the struggle between State-created classes, rather than in freeing all individuals from the State. Unlike Nazi Germany, which forcibly sent millions to the gas chambers (as well as forcing abortion and sterilization upon many more), the new regime has enlisted the assistance of millions of people to act as its agents in carrying out a program of mass murder."

How would you determine intent when examining less-direct forms of abortion, ie: inducing a miscarriage? You can't. It's unenforceable, arbitrary, and an invitation to tyranny. You act like blunt-force abortions are the only way to kill a fetus, or that simply eliminating those versions will end the problem. It won't. Maybe it will make you sleep better at night, but that's about the only effectiveness such a diktat would have.

Do you want to charge women that do crack and get black-out drunk regularly during their pregnancy with assault on the fetus? Let's get down to brass tacks here - your entire position is an excuse to penalize women for anything that may be viewed as damaging to the fetus, not just death. Worse yet, you want the monopoly on force to carry it out. And yes, you are a Statist for thinking you have the right to control what pregnant women do with their body via the State. That you use a Constitutional Republic as your excuse doesn't make the end result any less tyrannical.

Rights stems from self-ownership, because you have no rights if you do not own yourself. That includes the right to life. The moment you accept that others do not own their bodies, for whatever reason, you have stripped them of their rights carte blanche.



You haven't read enough of what Ron Paul has said about abortion. Refer to KurtBoyer25L's post.

The unborn are people. Unfortunately for you, not one single living person on this Earth has the right to violate another's personal autonomy in order to live. Subversion of personal autonomy is the denial of self-ownership. In your concern for the unborn child, you are more than willing to enslave women. This is your position, just own it.

Note, by the way, that the unborn have zero personal autonomy. They are not an autonomous individual until they can be sustained outside of the womb. Recognizing this, don't try to pull the fallacy of equivocation that sentence two of the previous paragraph is likely to provoke given your position.



Which is precisely why the State shouldn't be involved in the matter. The fact you mentioned something State-sanctioned should have given away the tyranny.

 

[Origanalist]

Round and round we go. The crucial issue is whether a 2-week-old mass of reproductive tissue is an "infant." As long as people disagree on that, the "it's killing babies!" argument is overly simple and goes nowhere.

So you would consider abortion after two weeks to be murder?

 

[KurtBoyer25L]

So you would consider abortion after two weeks to be murder?

No, I wouldn't. I believe that the age-old scientific method of defining things by their properties is valid. Why is it okay to kill a cockroach but not a house cat? Because of the house cat's *properties* that make it a house cat -- it is a mammal with fur, four paws, etc, and (more importantly to the discussion) a sentient self-aware mind capable of love and emotion. Whereas the cockroach is probably not self-aware at all, just a machine that is built to survive and find food.

A two-week old embryo has few of the properties that describe a human being. Most crucially, if you believe that the mind & consciousness are centered in the brain, as I do, an embryo that has no brain cannot have a consciousness. You can believe it has a "soul," and the Flying Teapot principle keeps you from ever being proven wrong, but it is a religious belief. Religious beliefs should not be coded into law in a Constitutional republic where citizens may disagree. And as Robin pointed out, there are contradictions even within the paradigm of fundamentalist Christianity when it comes to the "soul is created at conception" belief. If God exists, God may in fact be super-rational and far above human beings in reasoning; however, I personally feel that people make a mistake when they assume the super-rational would directly contradict human rationality at any point. The idea that God creates souls to inhabit physical bodies & then eliminates 75% of them almost immediately, for no apparent reason, is very problematic even within a religious paradigm. I'm not saying it could never be explained away somehow, but I am saying that the burden of proof is on the anti-abortionist to *prove* God exists and to *prove* that a fertilized egg has a soul and to *prove* that there is a defensible double standard for God and human beings when it comes to eliminating embryos. To say otherwise is to say that a cockroach *may* have a soul, and therefore, we should not kill cockroaches.

The idea that the first & foremost property of humans that makes us human (and valuable) is self-aware consciousness seems to be very unpopular. Some members of this board have had a "so what?" reaction whenever I propose it, if they don't just ignore it altogether. Since consciousness is the first fundamental property that separates mammals from plants, I find it hard to fathom why this idea isn't taken more seriously. And yes, I oppose late-term abortion for the reason that a late-term fetus has a brain and therefore enjoys some level of human consciousness. However, I'm still not sure that the State is the answer to the problem. It's a whole separate debate. Lost in all this are those of us who are firmly anti-abortion but believe in only peaceful/voluntary means of curbing them.

 

[Rocco]

A "soul", I love it....how about unique and independent human DNA? That's what the 2 week old fetus has. There is nothing religious about most of our opposition to abortion, in fact it is the pro choice side who we find is aligned against science when we look at the science of the issue.The first and foremost property of humanity is not consciousness, it's homo sapien DNA. If you possess that, you are entitled to rights.

 

[torchbearer]

A "soul", I love it....how about unique and independent human DNA? That's what the 2 week old fetus has. There is nothing religious about most of our opposition to abortion, in fact it is the pro choice side who we find is aligned against science when we look at the science of the issue.The first and foremost property of humanity is not consciousness, it's homo sapien DNA. If you possess that, you are entitled to rights.

if my thumb is removed from my body, does it them have rights of its own?
it has homo sapien DNA.

 

[Brett85]

He sounds like a sick man if he's trying to claim that the Bible condones abortion.

 

[KurtBoyer25L]

A "soul", I love it....how about unique and independent human DNA? That's what the 2 week old fetus has. There is nothing religious about most of our opposition to abortion, in fact it is the pro choice side who we find is aligned against science when we look at the science of the issue.The first and foremost property of humanity is not consciousness, it's homo sapien DNA. If you possess that, you are entitled to rights.

While you're busy getting indignant, understand that I'm not arguing against just you but offering commentary to a community. If you want to believe the authoritarian pro-life movement has nothing to do with the Christian Right, be my guest. I hear the green cheese on the Moon is pretty tasty.

 

[WhistlinDave]

if my thumb is removed from my body, does it them have rights of its own?
it has homo sapien DNA.

It should have the right not to be used gratuitously in magic tricks.... No?

I'm kidding of course. +rep For this answer. There's a difference between saying something is "human" and saying something is "a person." Separated thumb is a good example; it's definitely human, but that does not make it a person with rights.

I think if there's ever to be a consensus on this issue unanimously across society, first we all need to agree at what point the baby* becomes a person. And I don't know if we have the science yet to tell us definitively, at least not just yet. *(Personally I don't like the word "fetus" because even before it has individual consciousness, it's still a baby.)

 

[Rocco]

I get indignant because your whole "christian right" argument is based on the premise that our defense of the liberty of the fetus is based in some irrationality such as religion. By tying it to religion you're implying that there is no logical reason for being pro life if you're in the liberty movement, that it MUST be because the man in the sky told you so, and you shove this idea into every point. I base my decisions on reality, not the bible. I'm not even anti religious, I'm just saying that you can't pigeon hole the pro life argument as being based on a blind interpretation of the bible.

While you're busy getting indignant, understand that I'm not arguing against just you but offering commentary to a community. If you want to believe the authoritarian pro-life movement has nothing to do with the Christian Right, be my guest. I hear the green cheese on the Moon is pretty tasty.

 

[Origanalist]

No, I wouldn't. I believe that the age-old scientific method of defining things by their properties is valid. Why is it okay to kill a cockroach but not a house cat? Because of the house cat's *properties* that make it a house cat -- it is a mammal with fur, four paws, etc, and (more importantly to the discussion) a sentient self-aware mind capable of love and emotion. Whereas the cockroach is probably not self-aware at all, just a machine that is built to survive and find food.

A two-week old embryo has few of the properties that describe a human being. Most crucially, if you believe that the mind & consciousness are centered in the brain, as I do, an embryo that has no brain cannot have a consciousness. You can believe it has a "soul," and the Flying Teapot principle keeps you from ever being proven wrong, but it is a religious belief. Religious beliefs should not be coded into law in a Constitutional republic where citizens may disagree. And as Robin pointed out, there are contradictions even within the paradigm of fundamentalist Christianity when it comes to the "soul is created at conception" belief. If God exists, God may in fact be super-rational and far above human beings in reasoning; however, I personally feel that people make a mistake when they assume the super-rational would directly contradict human rationality at any point. The idea that God creates souls to inhabit physical bodies & then eliminates 75% of them almost immediately, for no apparent reason, is very problematic even within a religious paradigm. I'm not saying it could never be explained away somehow, but I am saying that the burden of proof is on the anti-abortionist to *prove* God exists and to *prove* that a fertilized egg has a soul and to *prove* that there is a defensible double standard for God and human beings when it comes to eliminating embryos. To say otherwise is to say that a cockroach *may* have a soul, and therefore, we should not kill cockroaches.

The idea that the first & foremost property of humans that makes us human (and valuable) is self-aware consciousness seems to be very unpopular. Some members of this board have had a "so what?" reaction whenever I propose it, if they don't just ignore it altogether. Since consciousness is the first fundamental property that separates mammals from plants, I find it hard to fathom why this idea isn't taken more seriously. And yes, I oppose late-term abortion for the reason that a late-term fetus has a brain and therefore enjoys some level of human consciousness. However, I'm still not sure that the State is the answer to the problem. It's a whole separate debate. Lost in all this are those of us who are firmly anti-abortion but believe in only peaceful/voluntary means of curbing them.

That's a whole lot of gymnastics to justify killing babies. As for the bolded part, if I wanted to kill you could I say the burden of proof was on you to prove you have a soul? If not, why not? Maybe I don't think you have one so why shouldn't I be able to tear you apart limb by limb? I say the burden of proof is on the person killing the baby. And I don't know why you pro-abortion people keep bringing fundamental Christianity up. I never quote scripture in these discussions, I just believe killing babies is evil and barbaric. One doesn't need the Bible to see that 50 million dead babies is a sign of a barbaric and sick society.

 

[KurtBoyer25L]

That's a whole lot of gymnastics to justify killing babies. As for the bolded part, if I wanted to kill you could I say the burden of proof was on you to prove you have a soul? If not, why not? Maybe I don't think you have one so why shouldn't I be able to tear you apart limb by limb? I say the burden of proof is on the person killing the baby. And I don't know why you pro-abortion people keep bringing fundamental Christianity up. I never quote scripture in these discussions, I just believe killing babies is evil and barbaric. One doesn't need the Bible to see that 50 million dead babies is a sign of a barbaric and sick society.

That's a whole lot of loaded phrases to justify a shallow response. What kind of a puppet show would it take to get the point across -- that every time you say killing babies you're making a logical leap past the issue, while incidentally demonizing those who disagree as "pro baby killing." NOT. EVERYONE. AGREES. THAT. A. BRAND. NEW. EMBRYO. IS. A. BABY!!!!!!! Some of us think it's a...wait for it...a brand new embryo.

 

[Origanalist]

That's a whole lot of loaded phrases to justify a shallow response. What kind of a puppet show would it take to get the point across -- that every time you say killing babies you're making a logical leap past the issue, while incidentally demonizing those who disagree as "pro baby killing." NOT. EVERYONE. AGREES. THAT. A. BRAND. NEW. EMBRYO. IS. A. BABY!!!!!!! Some of us think it's a...wait for it...a brand new embryo.

Loaded phrases, shallow response, etc. etc.. You just don't like what I said, if I say 50 million "abortions" is a sign of a sick and barbaric society will that make you "feel" better? Why do you think you have the knowledge and ability to determine when a embryo is a human being? What special powers are you endowed with?

 

[KurtBoyer25L]

Loaded phrases, shallow response, etc. etc.. You just don't like what I said, if I say 50 million "abortions" is a sign of a sick and barbaric society will that make you "feel" better? Why do you think you have the knowledge and ability to determine when a embryo is a human being? What special powers are you endowed with?

I feel just fine. I didn't have any problem with your opinion, just the loaded rhetoric.

It doesn't take any special power to abide by a scientific principle. I believe a 'human being' is sentient, with a brain and a heart, and its consciousness gives it value above nonsentient life & inanimate matter. And one-day-old embryos with no brain and no consciousness. You act like this is some wacko concept that only a megalomaniac could think of, but it's pretty standard in Western philosophy.

 

[PierzStyx]

It doesn't bring anyone back, and there ARE equities on both sides. It is the only situation where we require a person to have their body used to sustain another. We don't require people to go to hospitals and plug their kidneys up to work for those whose kidneys' don't work. The mother does have a different position than any of the other actors in it. I'm not even 100% comfortable with law here, until the baby is viable (and I don't know when that would be. Heartbeat?), but that doesn't mean I think it is 'choice', just that I have a hard time judging for others despite my own views. I recognize people who are sincere. I don't recognize the notion that a fetus is like a nail clipping, and as disposable.

If you can't determine when life/viability begins, then the only moral and sane decision would be to protect the development of life from the very beginning. Better than than commit a million murders don't you think?

As for the mother/dialysis patient comparison you made, it is faulty. I do not create the life of the dialysis patient, nor am responsible for its health. A woman who has willingly had sex that created the child in her womb has taken upon herself the responsibility that comes with creating life, to preserve it and prosper it. She has obligated herself to that child and cannot morally throw off those obligations until someone else can honorably and equally and willingly accept them. In cases of rape abortion still cannot be the moral choice because the life being born within the woman is innocent. It did not violate her. To punish it by killing it makes as much sense morally and logically as a husband ripping his wife limb from limb because his boss pissed him off at work. Every being has a right to life, even the smallest most defenseless ones.

To address the idea of saving the embryos or the baby, the question isn't hard at all. You save the baby. Embryos in a laboratory are not developing life, they only hold the potential to become such. The lab has arrested their ability to grow. If they were implanted and growing it would be a different story. A child is a growing living being.