Who disagrees with Paul that life beings at conception?

[JosephTheLibertarian]

I disagree. I just don't believe government should be in the abortion debate. It should just not be a government issue. Just leave it alone.

 

[Roxi]

im still wondering when you think life does begin?

 

[Kuldebar]

I disagree. I just don't believe government should be in the abortion debate. It should just not be a government issue. Just leave it alone.

I would like to see the idea settled at the most local level possible, county or city level, I think this would allow for both viewpoints within large regions.

But, as a libertarian, if you believed that the fetus is human, I would expect you might take a different stance.

I have heard various arguments, here and in the past, but "eviction" does not usually involve ending a life, especially a life brought about by willful action.

The debate is emotional, so I tend to keep it simple and to error on the side of life and view the privacy and choice stance as canard solely because ending a life isn't a right to privacy or choice matter.

 

[FreedomLover]

Well, he is an OB/GYN. And he also is a christian who respects life, so it makes sense that he would be against it personally.

But he knows that it is a personal thing and should not be decided by government on the federal level.

For finding one person who won't vote for him for being pro-life, you will find 10 more potential republicans who wouldn't vote for him if he were pro-choice.

I personally agree with his position.

 

[JosephTheLibertarian]

im still wondering when you think life does begin?

Life begins when you have sex, unless she doesn't get pregnant, then it just doesn't happen. But the question is: Should government be in the business of outlawing abortion practices? If you outlaw abortion, only outlaws will have them! How in the hell can we possibly enforce this? You don't think they would have abortions anyway? By themselves? I just don't see how it's my business what other people do. I wouldn't want a girlfriend of mine having an abortion, but I don't really care what other people do! This is a collectivist belief. I'm not even pro choice, I'm just pro-not talking about it. Also, there is no definite answer to "when life begins," everyone has their own idea which usual reflects on if they're pro choice or pro life initially, so it's just always going to be a big debate.

I'd say, leave it to states, but on the state level, I'd support government staying the hell out of it. If I were governor or whatever, that'd be my policy. It's just a never ending battle : if America were strictly pro life, there would be abortions anyway. I America allowed abortion 100%, there would be outrage from parents, churches, groups.. so, why not actually raise your child better then? Maybe it should come down to parenting? If your daughter has had five abortions and is on welfare, then what does it say about you as a parent? There is no debate to murdering born babies, the debate is aborting the fetus. There's people that WANT TO, and then there are those that want to tell them what to do, so why is it my business that some girl had an abortion? Who cares. What are we gonna do, charge them with murder?

There's really no sense in even talking about it, people will go on thinking the same way.

 

[bygone]

I would agree with you, except for one small thing. The baby. Doesn't it at some stage, have any rights not to be murdered? I'm not sure what that stage is, but it certainly does at some point prior to being born.

It only has that right if you impose it by force and law. And when you do that, you can't stop it from happening, all you can do is punish people for doing it. At a greater risk to those who do it, and damnation of doctors that engage in the practice with the belief that if you are going to lose the baby, the mother shouldn't have to suffer too.

Good intentions pave the road to hell. You can take this harsh view of things further too. We, as people, only have a right to live if that right is imposed by force and law. And if that right is violated, people can only be punished for the action. People are killed every day despite laws to prevent it and police and jails that punish the offenders.

Making things illegal does not prevent things from happening. I have wondered if we can somehow remove an unwanted baby from a mother, with consent, and keep it alive. If we could do that, maybe you'd have a solution where everyone but people who wouldn't like to pay for it would be happy. Given the number of people who want children but can't have them, maybe even that problem could be solved.

The bottom line of the issue for me is that you cannot prevent a mother from getting an abortion, you can only punish them for doing so. How that action helps is not clear to me. This is similar to many other issues. There needs to be a better solution than killing the child if the mother doesn't wish to carry it; but I feel that the government forcing women to have children is wrong in so many ways and it leads to some things that RP is very vocal about being against.

It's not that I believe killing children is right; I do not. My daily life proves this. I simply don't believe that making it illegal to have an abortion will prevent it from happening; nor will it make the situation any better when it does; and that when you give the government this kind of power you are making a serious mistake.

I respect your opinion, I ask that you respect mine. This is a serious topic that can get heated easily. I do not mean to insult anyone with my opinion.

 

[kylebrotherton]

I strongly agree with Dr. Paul on this. But, as with many of his issues, he would let the states decide.

So, vote for Paul, and then you fight it out in your state legislature.

 

[Kuldebar]

Making things illegal does not prevent things from happening. I have wondered if we can somehow remove an unwanted baby from a mother, with consent, and keep it alive. If we could do that, maybe you'd have a solution where everyone but people who wouldn't like to pay for it would be happy. Given the number of people who want children but can't have them, maybe even that problem could be solved.

Interestingly enough, there's really cool book about that possibility:

Blurb:

Dr. Evelyn Fletcher is a surgeon caught in a maelstrom of controversy. She has secretly devised a surgical procedure that could alter the lives of millions. When the beautiful and successful Valerie Dalton walks into Fletcher's office for a routine abortion, the doctor realizes that she has found the perfect experimental subject.

Karen Chandler and her husband sought pregnancy for years with no success. They greet Fletcher's offer of a radically new procedure as a miracle. Karen, with no hesitation, agrees to undergo the clandestine surgery.

When little Renata is born and then falls deathly ill, only one person can save her life. A woman who does not even know her daughter exists. Under a barrage of media scrutiny, Valerie Dalton must face the courts with her lover in an unprecedented custody battle. Ultimately, she plumbs the depths of her shattered soul to find the answer to the conflict that rages within her and all society.

I do believe technology may eventually end the moral dilemma.

I've said a lot of things in this thread topic, but I too believe ultimately that the morality of the issue rests with the woman and whomever assists her in the abortion.

I believe murder is wrong, I have no problem with people losing their liberty if convicted by a fair and impartial trial. I am a strong supporter of jury nullification as well. I don't believe taking a human life is always murder. But, I believe that taking lives indiscriminately and wrongfully erodes the underpinnings of a society that individuals build together. Like principles, once broken, they aren't principles any longer and everything built upon them is a lie.

Ultimately, crimes that can't be detected can't be punished so it's simply becomes a matter of natural law, karma, God or conscience...or whatever.

I think abortions would have no major place in a civil society. I don't fool myself by thinking wouldn't happen. Child abuse, murder, rape, incests, fraud, theft all those myriads of things would still be part of the human condition.

But, there would be justice, compassion, accountability and responsibility to help counter the damage of such things.

 

[fj45lvr]

its so ironic to me that those who are so comfortable with abortion are often the ones who would be telling me as a private property owner that I couldn't do anything on my own land that might THREATEN TO HARM some kind of endangered insect!!! and they have NO PROBLEM with crap like the Endangered Species Act. How wicked and twisted is that?

Paul states that he has a friend that was a long time abortionist that gave it up after the advent of the ultra-sound and is now a strong advocate for life. Alot of the talk on the subject makes it more plausible to believe how easy it was for the SS to do what they did without impunity. Watch "Children of Men" a work of fiction and consider the subject.

 

[Politeia]

Ron Paul is a Teacher.

So... Why is it that we have one of these threads *every* *other* *week*?

There is a reason why this issue keeps coming up: because it is key, it encapsulates all the others. If you're uncomfortable with it, it's because you're uncomfortable with the truth. As Dr. Paul says, without respect for Life there can be no Liberty, and certainly no pursuit of real happiness.

I too was uncomfortable with Dr. Paul's presentation at the Iowa Straw Poll, his placement of the abortion issue first, with emphasis. Not because I disagree with him -- if I'm honest with myself I cannot -- but because I know how all my liberal friends will react. I've long ago quit talking to them about anything of consequence, because I find consistent rejection too painful.

But maybe it's just that Dr. Paul has more courage and integrity than I do. Might as well go right to the heart of the matter, and then let the chips fall where they may. Otherwise, maybe he's just wasting his time. Certainly, Ron Paul has shown the world a lifelong example of "Speak the truth, and fear no man." Ron Paul is a truthspeaker, a "soothsayer"; that's what sets him light-years apart from everyone else in politics. If what he says makes you uncomfortable, you have the opportunity to examine your own resistance to the truth.

Besides an opportunity for some folks to vent their ignorance, this discussion has also provided a demonstration of why the "Ron Paul Revolution" is almost certainly doomed to failure. Anyone who claims to support Ron Paul, but "disagrees" with him on this "issue", is just deluding emself. As I wrote above, Ron Paul's presentation is not a random pastiche of "issues" designed only to gather votes; it is all of a piece, a single issue. Call it the Constitution, or the Non-Aggression Principle, or the Golden Rule: it's all the same. You cannot "disagree" with him on one "issue" without rejecting everything he says.

As Dr. Paul also says, ultimately the question of abortion cannot be dealt with via the clumsy and superficial mechanism of the law. What's required is a moral sea-change in the culture. And nothing short of such a change will enable us to survive the coming tribulations, which we have brought on ourselves. That's why this "issue" inevitably comes to the fore, again and again. Without facing this "issue" squarely, there's no real point in talking about "solutions". Regardless of what other band-aids may be applied, this "civilization" will not survive so long as it is based on wholesale murder.

Just as the Welfare State and the Warfare State are the same Beast, and we can't feed the one without growing the other, even so are the credit/debt economy and the abortion culture two heads of a single monster as well. People are always talking about "for the children", but in truth Americans couldn't give a rat's ass for their children. For the sake of their obsessive indulgence in material greed, they are selling their children into unending debt slavery; for the sake of obsessive indulgence in sexual pleasure (though such mad compulsion is not really anything like pleasure), they are slaughtering their children by the millions.

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." - George Bernard Shaw. And, one must add, particularly in view of responses to this "issue", even from those who claim to love Liberty -- most women as well.

The real drug, of which all the others -- marijuana, alcohol, heroin, nicotine, caffeine, "credit" -- are merely symptoms, is self-delusion. If you can't speak the truth to yourself, you'll certainly never build truthful relationships with others.

As a bid for the presidency of the late, lamented United States of America, Ron Paul's campaign will be an abject failure. The American sheeple just won't stand for it. As an opportunity for individual awakening, his efforts will bear fruit if, perhaps, a few of us really look into the mirror of our own souls, and truly take stock. Ron Paul is a Teacher. Whether we hear is message is entirely up to us. God bless him for trying.

 

[georgia_tech_swagger]

I also disagree with Ron.

Does life begin at conception? Technically speaking.... yes. It's just as much alive as the bacteria on your stale leftovers, or the skin cells you constantly shed. Is it a human? Hardly.

I consider it a human when it has a brain, even a primitive one. I think therefore I am.

I'm pro-choice up until the formation of a brain. I would hope pro-lifers would at least provide exceptions for incest, rape, mortality risk to mother, a fetus that is genetically "incompatible with life", and those living at the poverty level who have no means to support a child, thus letting the pregnancy continue would be a burden to society.

 

[georgia_tech_swagger]

BTW -- wonder if Brownback would change his views on abortion if someone close to him had a rape pregnancy. Brownback is such a tool.

 

[Tn...Andy]

Don't agree it begins at conception.

Do think RP would move to leave it to the States, as it should be under the 9th and 10th.

Doesn't stop me from supporting him 100%

There will never be a candidate other than myself with whom I would agree 100% of the time, and even myself, I find contradictory.

 

[LibertyEagle]

That is what I thought too. But I was told today by a staffer, that he wants his bill to pass, and then refuse to give states any federal funding for anything (like roads, etc.) if they allow abortions in their state. So you may not call it a ban, but it will act like one.

Jennifer, I'm not sure who you talked to, but I just called Dr. Paul's congressional office and talked to the aide in charge of this area (Norman), who told me that he has never heard anything like this from Dr. Paul. Nor, does he believe it to be the case.

 

[BillyDkid]

No, I don't like euphemisms, I prefer straight talk.

There is a big distinction between being "pro-choice" and being "pro-abortion". I don't support abortion, but I do understand, just as RP himself has said, that there is room for honest disagreement and the issue is not simply black and white in all cases.

 

[hard@work]

I believe that abortion needs to be stopped at all costs. We have to do everything in our power to find a way to stop the unnecessary termination of unwanted pregnancy. I am outraged at the politicians for taking advantage of us all to get our votes without any real intent to solve the terrible issue of a woman going in for surgery to stop the birth of a child.

I am pro choice.


Ron Paul is my frikkin hero on this matter.

 

[jjschless]

The fact that we must abort a very natural and healthy process with such frequency speaks volumes about the corruption of our once noble values. This process, if elected as contraception not a remedy for health/rape, cannot be thought of in a benevolent sense. The fact remains that with the abundant availability of contraceptive aids and the ease of application of said aids, a great many individuals are simply lazy, thoughtless and/or careless. Those three words have never been a good excuse for anything.

 

[squirrelbrewer]

By week 3 the brain has started to develop. By week 5 the brain develops into five areas and some cranial nerves are visible.

I'm not a doctor, and I didn't sleep at a Holiday Inn last night, but I think it's sad when we feel we're justified in terminating life because we've already considered their existence as a burden on society. That's no fun.

 

[NoxTwilight]

I'd agree life begins at conception, but I'm very much pro-choice. I feel that decision is between the woman and God.

Anywho, this is THE only issue I've found dividies anyone I talk to. I've talked to pro-lifers that hate him for it and pro-choicers that hate him for it.

Whatever the case, I stress to people that this polarizing issue is nothing compared to the economic and soverign future of our country.

This is exactly my view. One of the things that has helped me accept this is that Dr Paul is the ONLY politician who explains his views in a logical and rational manner that doesn't incite the normal rage that this issue can bring out in people. At least for me.

I personally believe that life does begin at conception however I also believe that God gave us Free Will and it is a woman's choice to bring that life and person into the world. If that little soul isn't born to one woman, it will be born to another.

 

[risiusj]

Why do we continue talking about this issue?
It doesn't matter what a president thinks. Why so many people use the abortion issue as the main deciding factor for whom they vote for is beyond me.