The New Republician Guide to America
POSTED BY: fredgiblet
UPDATED: Friday, July 25, 2025 18:57
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PAGE 5 of 9
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Originally posted by Khyron:
At the risk of dragging this discussion too much into the abortion debate...
Now why wouldn't you want to do that?
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but going with what Anthony said, it's important that abortion doesn't become some alternative choice of pregnancy-prevention and an excuse for women (and their partners) to become lazy with their prevention methods. The first choice should always be the usual methods of prevention, and abortion just in case the methods that were tried during intercourse didn't work.
Which is why comprehensive sex ed is so important. I think that it is interesting that the people who want abstinence-only education are also the people who want to ban abortion.
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This idea is not at all worked out yet, but maybe there should be like some sort of limit to how often a non-rape victim may have an abortion, some mandate like "Barring uncontrolled circumstances, a woman may have up to 3 abortions in her lifetime". Or 5, or whatever. Just something that stops the more careless and negligent to constantly have unprotected sex and think an abortion will get rid of the consequences.
Hmmmm...perhaps an abortion tax? One that increases exponentially with each "convenience" abortion? Say $0 for the first, $20 for the second, $100 for the third and so on? What do you think?
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Because while I'm pro-choice, I do NOT want to see abortion becoming standard practice and a normal event in daily life.
Completely agree.
EDIT: I particularly like how some conservatives seem to think that the goal of pro-choice people is to make so that every woman has an abortion every weekend.
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The problem with abortion is that who is to say what is and what is not vital. Moderate "pro-lifers" say "it's okay in exceptional circumstances" but who decides the exceptional circumstances? Me? You? The guy down the road? The mother? Isn't she doing that already?
The exceptional circumstances that I've heard just don't cover it.
To go into a real life circumstance a friend of mine had an abortion. She was more or less forced into it by an abusive boyfriend. None of the exceptional circumstances would cover her, but whether or not abortion was legal she would have had one, because she would have been forced into it.
If abortion was illegal, except for exceptional circumstances, she would have been forced to go to a back street abortionist, where her chances of dying are dramatically increased, and her chances of becoming infertile even more so.
She’s since had two daughters (in another relationship) so given the fact that "pro-lifers" would force her to the backstreets, rather than having a safe regulated procedure in a licensed hospital which would have good chances of leaving her dead or infertile, wiping out 2 or 3 lives that I know for the possibility of 1 that would never exist anyway, I know where I stand.
You’re not going to stop abortion by making it illegal, not matter how much you want to force people to be better people. You will make the problem worse and far more damaging though.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
And as you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what I have to say.
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Hey there,
I won't be trite or snippy. And that bumper sticker analogy was a fair representation of the counter-argument.
A child is a job. A child is the hardest and most taxing job a person is ever likely to have. (Assuming, as you say, they want to do it right.)
I know this because I am a parent. A parent who has paid for his wife to have an abortion.
My first child was a son. We were using protection, but it turned out to be ineffective. Neither of us was financially prepared for the burden of raising a child. (We were both earning close to minimum wage at the time.)
We had an important decision to make. We could give it our best shot, we could give it away to someone else who would give it their best shot, or we could kill it.
We made one good and one bad decision at that time. We decided to have the baby. We also decided to get married.
I still have a beautiful son. I'm no longer married.
Now, about the abortion.
It was the second child of my first wife and I. A son. He had a medical condition. I no longer remember the name of it, but it essentially caused his head to fill with fluid and expand like a balloon. His brain was pushed into a thin paste on the exterior of the cranium. He would either die in the womb, or immediately after birth.
If allowed to grow in the womb, he would be a health risk to my wife. So we got an abortion. The abortion wasn't covered by our medical plan, even though it was medically necessary. It was me, waiting with my wife and holding her hand in an 'abortion clinic.' The only abortion clinic in town that would handle such a late-term abortion. It was a sick feeling, and a sickening procedure. But it was necessary.
It was about a year later that we got divorced, for reasons that had nothing to do with children... Except perhaps that we had married because of them.
I don't know where other people live, and what things are like there. But where I live, anyone can surrender their child to the government for adoption. Babies have a high adoption rate, as opposed to older children or teenagers. You can't be sure that the people who adopt your child will love it... But nothing is sure in this world, is it?
If you make a mistake, I believe it's your responsibility to own that mistake if you can. If you make a life, I think it's your responsibility to give that life everything you've got. If you can't? Find someone who can.
The alternative is to kill it. Kill it because you might not be the best possible parent. Or because someone else might not be. Or because pregnancy sucks.
I understand alternative views on this topic. I don't like abortion. I don't think it's practical to legislate against abortion. And I'm not speaking out of my rectum.
--Anthony
"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner
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The problem with abortion is that who is to say what is and what is not vital. Moderate "pro-lifers" say "it's okay in exceptional circumstances" but who decides the exceptional circumstances? Me? You? The guy down the road? The mother? Isn't she doing that already?
The exceptional circumstances that I've heard just don't cover it.
Bill Napoli in South Dakota seems to think that he's the one to decide what an exceptional circumstance is. And it is appallingly inflexible:
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BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.
from: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june06/abortion_3-03.html
Aside from the fact that he decided he was in a position to quantify how much trauma a rape victim experiences, there are other conditions that would have severe psychological ramifications stemming from pregnancy.
My story:
(I'll preface this by saying I am on birth control--my mother was intelligent enough to discuss sex with me, answer my questions, and then send me off to the doctor for pills when it was time).
I'm not anti-children. On the off-chance that my maternal instinct ever kicks in, I really would like to adopt. I could technically get pregnant and give birth to my own child, but that probably wouldn't be a good idea. Why? Because if I'm going to be a parent, I want to be the best one I can be and that would include doing everything I could to ensure a healthy pregnancy. I refuse to change my pre-pregnancy behavior at this point in my life because I don't want to be pregnant, but if I were to get pregnant, I would want to do it "right". However, doing it "right" involves gaining anywhere from 25-40 lbs. Not really a big deal, unless you're like me and you have an eating disorder. I'm mostly in recovery right now, but I absolutely refuse to gain the weight. If I don't gain the weight, I probably wouldn't have a healthy pregnancy, but if I did gain the weight, I could easily slip back into disordered eating patterns and that would be equally unhealthy for me. And that's not something I would want to risk. You may call it vanity, but I call it mental illness.
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I am on The List. We are The Forsaken and we aim to burn!
"We don't fear the reaper"
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Thanks to everyone who gave me props for my argument. It would be fun to shake up the White House, but unfortunately I probably wouldn't even get as far as being chosen for party candidate. I'm just a little too opinionated and incapable of being a party tool.
Maybe if those that ran as independent every really stood a chance . . .
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I am on The List. We are The Forsaken and we aim to burn!
"We don't fear the reaper"
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AnthonyT,
I appreciate your response. I understand that it came from personal experience and deep emotion.
I was arguing in the more general sense. Once a woman is pregnant she will have the baby just by doing nothing. There are many decorations on the same result - from love and hope to being so drugged you don't care. I'm just pointing out that once pregnant having the baby is foregone, no matter how good or bad the reasons.
OTOH, an abortion comes from thought, decision and effort. And it's based on concern for the child to be, even if it's unformulated and unconscious.
And that is why I say abortion can be more responsible that having a child due to unconcern and inaction.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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I have two adopted sisters one of whom just sent me an invite to her wedding. I'm horribly conflicted on this issue so I offer this.
I believe my possition is pro-choice, I just think that there should be more than two choices available. There are plenty of people more than happy to adopt an otherwise unwanted child.
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Indeed, a very clever pro choice argument Sassa.
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It would be fun to shake up the White House, but unfortunately I probably wouldn't even get as far as being chosen for party candidate. I'm just a little too opinionated and incapable of being a party tool.
Yeah, young and zealous has its charm, but i prefer a more jaded and disenchanted character in a politician (or spaceship captain
). The lady who gets my vote for president can be heard in the link in this thread:http://www.fireflyfans.net/thread.asp?b=18&t=20551
An illustrative extract of dialogue:
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JC: It's weird that you don't seem to be moved by all this that's taking place in Nepal. What happened to my radical mother of Padma Kanya Campus 2022 Bikram Sambat?
Muwa: She grew up to understand that hope too has an expiration date
JC: I remember you were so excited in 1990.
Muwa: I was only 45. I was naïve.
Muwa for president!
As for your abortion analogy Sassa; I don't like abortion so I'm going to try to pick it apart:
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Do I also have a right to withold donation of said kidney, even if another person dies? Prior Supreme Court decisions say I do. Therefore, the conclusion that can be drawn is a person doesn't have to use his or her body in fashion that benefits someone else, even if that person dies. Extrapolating this to pregnancy, it means I don't have to use my womb for the fetus's benefit.
The difference with abortion is that you are killing the fetus, not letting it die by inaction. And if you consider it to be a human being that's murder, and there are laws against that. I'm not suggesting that all aborting mothers and abortion clinics be tried for first degree murder, i'm just saying this is a legal grey area that warrants its own legislation.
Therefore I'd say that you have to look at the morality of the case in hand. I think only religious types and (including?) staunch atheists can make a black or white call on this one - the rest of us draw a wobbly line somewhere down the middle, and then maybe cross it if circumstances press us.
I can understand the horror of religious people who see abortion as the slaying of a soul, and I guess they have a right to lobby for state intervention on behalf of the child, as you would if a mother was abusing her newborn baby. On this issue I think you have to give them a break, concede the moral high ground and concentrate on keeping a numerical majority over them wherever you live.
As for the 'mother doing the responsible thing' argument; I also have a sister who is adopted. She had almost as irresponsible a mother as you could imagine. Her life in my family has been rocky, as many adopted cases are. But hey, I can ask her, but I don't think she wishes she had been aborted. She wouldn't consider that to be her mother 'doing right by her'. Adoption always seems to be a valid way out for unwanted pregnancy. So unless you believe that an aborted fetus is reincarnated as another baby in a more favourable womb, this 'being responsible' argument doesn't wash - unless I'm missing something - something less obvious than reincarnation...
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I've been sick the past 2 weeks and thus unable to do anything besides dance in the party thread and promote the heathen ways of The Forsaken.
And now I'm drunk, so I'm not going to be the most rational person, but I'll come back tomorrow if I remember.
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I don't like abortion
Then,
1: Don't have one
2: Don't sleep with anyone who is pro-choice. I have a policy of not sleeping with anyone who is pro-life, thereby avoiding any potential disagreements.
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The difference with abortion is that you are killing the fetus, not letting it die by inaction.
When you really pick apart the pro-choice arguments and the pro-life arguments (my friends philosophy class did this), you'll find that the two sides aren't arguing about the same thing. One side says "it's my damn body" and the other side says "egads! BABY-KILLER!!!!". I also read somewhere, and I'm trying valiantly to find where, that one of the primary reasons abortion as outlawed in the U.S. was the Protestants didn't want the Catholics to irresponsibly and wantonly reproduce and eventually outnumber the Protestants. So it never really was about the fetus. It was just more religious politicking, which is always annoying.
Interesting article: http://www.counterpunch.org/bollinger10222005.html
I'm a woman, NOT an incubator!
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I've got one good friend who is a staunch Republican. I tease him all the time; "You're pretty cool...for a Republican." Gotta show him this.
Gotta give props to all the cool pro-choice arguments. Sassy, your kidney thing is the bombshit!
But since this pretty much has turned into an abortion debate, i've gotta weigh in. Abortion has been around for a long, long, time. Women all over the world have been and still are drinking poisions, shoving objects up themselves (cow dung and ground glass in Africa, i believe), subjecting themselves to beatings or unskilled and dangerous underground abortion providers for hundreds, probably thousands of years to abort their pregnancies. Until humanity stops having heterosexual intercourse and men stop raping women, there will be women who are pregnant who don't want to be. There will be abortions. Make them illegal or dole them out like Halloween candy, i don't care. They will always be around.
Now this is where things get tricky. Make abortion illegal, let's just say. Make all the women who seek abortion criminals. Make all the abortion providers criminals. Let's spend what would undoubtedly be millions of dollars that we DON'T have seeking, arresting, trying, and jailing them. (Because some people in power think it's morally wrong.) Who here wants to see their girlfriend, mother, sister in jail for something that they may have done years ago that you may have never known about? Would you now condemn that person, too? Let's force all the women illegally seeking abortions to unsafe back-alley, underground 'doctors' and risk their health and their lives, too. And while we're at it, since they're already probably pondering their decision, maybe thinking "I'm a bad person/I'm going to Hell/I'm sorry/I just can't have this baby/What would my parents think if they knew/But i used protection/God forgive me/Why?" let's add to their light and fluffy thoughts by making them cope with the fact that they are now, and forever will be, criminals. Yeah. That'll help.
But, what? You say make abortion illegal but make it legal in cases of rape and incest? Oooh, good idea! Women have never lied about who the father of their unborn baby is or the circumstances initiating the pregnancy! So, now, abortion is okay if you were raped. Great. Let's make innocent MEN suffer, too! Who doesn't think that there's a woman out there, somewhere (maybe you already know her) who would say ANYTHING if she knew that telling that lie would buy her access to a clean, safe, legal abortion, even if she knew damn well it could destroy someone else's life. Remember, all that sex offender stigma crap stays with a man for the rest of his life, even if he serves his time in prison. His neighbors can look him up on sex offender websites, employers can take his status into consideration, the possibilities are endless. (must note that i'm only sympathetic for the innocent ones in case anyone assumed i was gettin all lovey on rapists.) I believe that one man in prision wrongly convicted of rape is too many. The number of these men will only increase if women now have a very strong motive to accuse. And, c'mon, who here thinks a genuine rape/incest victim wants to go singing her sorrowful and very personal tales on the mountaintop just so she can have an abortion and get on with her life? Here's some fun info: Three women that are either my very dear friends and my cousin, aged 11, 15, 17, and 18, have been raped. The 11 year old by her uncle. Repeatedly. Not one of these women has pressed charges, and i think only one ever reported it. (Thank God, none of them got pregnant.) So it's been my experience that genuine rape/incest victims don't particularly wish to discuss their stories with the authorities.
Abortion needs to be legal. I don't want my little girl cousins, or friends hurt or jailed should they ever become pregnant and find abortion to be the best option for them. I damn sure don't want some shmoe in a suit thumping a Bible making choices for me should i ever become
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