In a letter to the editor in today’s Cincinnati Enquirer, the writer insisted that the government has no right to impose morality on people, i.e. the morality of those opposed to abortion; and that the new health care law should disregard this moral issue and focus only on “health” issues. Law trumps morality, even though that law is practically a newborn in the history of law. This argument is pure fallacy.
First, most fundamental law is about morality. Laws against stealing, rape, and murder all interfere with human liberty and seek to curtail the impulses to act in ways that are considered immoral as well as unlawful.
Second, if the health care bill passes with taxpayer-funded insurance that includes abortion coverage, that not only imposes a particular moral decision on the whole country, it forces people to pay for what they consider to be immoral. Moreover, if doctors don’t have a conscience clause that permits them to refuse to perform what they consider to be murder, morality or lack of it will be forced on them and on hospitals that may be required to perform abortions, not just in order to receive government money but in order to continue working at all.
Third, a woman’s right to abortion depends on redefining the unborn as non-human, so that abortion does not equal murder. The terminology for the “unborn” is tortuous because people want to reverse the history of all human belief (though not all human behavior): unborn (the reverse of undead); fetus; embryo; tissue. How about effluvium? The more “scientific” or technical the language, the less people have to think about the creation and destruction of humanity. There’s no reason, then, to think of humans at any age as anything more than a flesh sack of chemicals and water.
Fourth, women's health, especially if you include mental health, isn't necessarily helped by abortion when pregnancy and childbirth are not an immediate danger.
One thing that’s changed since abortion was legalized is now there’s a feeling that abortion is not a painful decision brought on by desperation, but rather it’s what any rational woman should do for any reason or without any reason, if giving birth would inconvenience her or annoy her boyfriend. Therefore someone who doesn’t have an abortion of convenience provokes fury because she lets the team down. Actually she makes everyone else look weak. Sarah Palin is a case in point. She makes other women (and men) anxious, because she has five children, and she knowingly gave birth to a handicapped child, who, in the new morality, ought to have been killed, and none of this has impeded her career. She is living the model of what feminists used to dream of in the ’60s: she has a lot of family support, and she takes the baby to work.
Some women who’ve had abortions over time become touchy around people who haven’t, such as one woman and her husband who got angry about a trivial family comedy movie that they said glorified “breeders,” a contemptuous name for parents. This is a perverse Puritanism in new guise: whereas spinsterish types used to be portrayed as having a squeamish disdain for fertile (i.e., obviously sexual) women, as in the 1950 movie Cheaper by the Dozen, today the spinsterish types are sexually compliant and active but produce no issue, to use an antique phrase. Puritanism is alive in a lot of the quasi-religious fervor of current beliefs about what you should eat and smoke and drive, and how many children you should have. In fact, people sometimes give cigarette smoking and abortion about the same moral equivalence.
It’s about class, too. White trash have children while sophisticated people delay or avoid reproduction, as brilliantly depicted in the 2007 movie Idiocracy.
Barack Obama has taken abortion rationalization to its logical extreme. He was the only member of the Illinois legislature to vote against the born-alive law, which would require medical care to be given to an infant (call it what you will) that survives an abortion. If it isn’t killed outright during the abortion, he said it should not be allowed to live. He reasoned that the born-alive law “would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute.” It looks like a child, it sounds like a child, but if you call it a child, you can’t kill it. Ergo, don't call it a child and you can kill it; or, kill it and it's not a child. He also famously said he wouldn’t want either of his daughters to be “punished with a child” if they made a mistake. Can he have entertained any realistic picture in his mind of what a newly expelled infant looks like, let alone what it might be experiencing?
Realistically, a lot of people do feel their children are a punishment, but a lot of people feel that way about their parents, their brothers and sisters, and their neighbors too. Morality, and usually the law, require that we extricate ourselves from burdensome relationships in some way other than killing them.
Comments
(Rhonda's reply - Dec 4)
I was careless when I hastily wrote "member of Congress" when I meant the state legislature (which is, after all, the state congress). Otherwise, it's all true. The "unconstitutionality" of giving medical care to infants born alive is a matter of interpretation, and only Obama twisted that meaning into it by insisting that an embryo is not a human being if someone intended to kill it.
(my reply - Dec 4)
"I was careless..."
Exactly so, Rhonda. You are careless with the facts -- as in, you really don't care what the facts are. You'll post any lie that supports your fantasy view of the world.
"Otherwise, it’s all true."
When you claimed that "[Obama] said [the fetus] should not be allowed to live", you were lying. And now you are still lying.
"The "unconstitutionality" of giving medical care to infants born alive is a matter of interpretation, and only Obama twisted that meaning into it by insisting that an embryo is not a human being if someone intended to kill it."
Obama made no such statement, Rhonda. You simply cannot stop lying, no matter how you try. Lying is built into your genome, it seems.
Diogenes wandered the world with a lantern in his hand, searching for an honest man. Meatbrain is, like Demosthenes, searching the world for an honest man (or woman). I lit a candle for you today, MB, in case you don't have a lantern. No kidding, I lit a candle in church. Time after time, MB finds me not just mistaken, not just dishonest, but genetically incapable of being honest. Then why spend so much time here? It's a mystery. A man who's searching for truth in the world must have some truth of his own to offer. Truth is a beautiful thing.
Oh, how cute! Rhonda is trying to pretend she has something deep and serious to say.
"Diogenes wandered the world with a lantern in his hand, searching for an honest man. Meatbrain is, like Demosthenes, searching the world for an honest man (or woman)."
Which was it: Diogenes or Demosthenes? Darn those Greeks and their confusing names.
And you're quite wrong, of course. If I were looking for someone honest, I wouldn't waste two seconds on your spew, Rhonda. I'm here because you lie, and you need the fact of your mendacity thrown back in your face.
"I lit a candle for you today, MB, in case you don't have a lantern. No kidding, I lit a candle in church."
How very pious of you. Is this supposed to excuse your lies?
...continued...
"Time after time, MB finds me not just mistaken, not just dishonest, but genetically incapable of being honest. Then why spend so much time here? It's a mystery."
I'll clear it up for you, then. I am sick and tired of lying dissemblers like Rhonda Keith poisoning the political discourse in this country. When I see you lying, I feel compelled to make certain you know you've been caught lying. I don't expect you to stop lying, of course -- you simply don't know any other way to behave. But I will deny you the satisfaction of believing that you are a successful liar.
"A man who's searching for truth in the world must have some truth of his own to offer. Truth is a beautiful thing."
Yes, it is. I remind you that I'm not here looking for truth. I know you don't have any to offer.
But I can offer you a truth, Rhonda: You're a liar, and a failed liar at that.
I am only deleting those comments of Meatbrain's that contain links, just to amuse myself. But he (is it a he?) keeps coming back! I suppose those links are the only way MB can generate traffic to his site. But the main truth in this article, which MB has ignored in quibbling about paraphrases of Obama's rationale for his vote against medical care for live infants who survive abortion, is this reality: Some infants survive abortion and Obama was the only one who voted to refuse them medical care by law. To prevent this unseemly survival, of course, in some late-term abortions the doctor cuts the baby's spinal cord, pierces the skull, and vacuums out the brain. If this can be done before the infant completely exits the birth canal, everyone can say that an infant was born dead, not that delivery was induced and it was killed.
"I am only deleting those comments of Meatbrain's that contain links, just to amuse myself."
You're lying, of course. You're deleting that comment because the links it contains lead to articles that prove conclusively that you have lied to your readers.
There really isn't anything you won't lie about, Rhonda -- including your own motivations.
Rhonda continues to delete comments that link to articles containing facts that prove she is lying.
Why are you afraid of facts, Rhonda?
Why are you afraid to let your readers know the facts?
Assuming that thinkingmeat is Meatbrain's blog, readers should note that I got a warning when I attempted to go to that site, saying it's some kind of "attack" site. My security program blocked it. Also note that every time I delete a Meatbrain message that includes links, presumably to his site (though I used a Google search), Meatbrain comes back to my site to repost. This means that (1) possibly more people will read my comments about abortion, and (2) I make more money when he/she comes back! Thanks, MB, and Merry Christmas to you too.
"...presumably to his site..."
You mean you are too jawdroppingly STUPID to paste the links into your browser and find out?
Why am I not surprised?
"Assuming that thinkingmeat is Meatbrain's blog, readers should note that I got a warning when I attempted to go to that site, saying it's some kind of "attack" site."
You're lying again, Rhonda. There is no warning on my site. Your lies are getting more and more desperate by the day.
EACH AND EVERY TIME RHONDA KEITH DELETES THIS COMMENT, SHE PROVES HERSELF AN INTELLECTUAL COWARD. ONLY THOSE WHO KNOW THEY ARE LYING ARE AFRAID OF THE FACTS.
"Some infants survive abortion and Obama was the only one who voted to refuse them medical care by law."
Once again, Rhonda Keith chooses to lie to her readers. The facts tell a very different story:
bit.ly/6asN93
It should come as no surprise that Rhonda Keith is an intellectual coward. She has (once again!) embarrassed herself by deleting comments that dared to point out her mendacity. This is a favorite tactic of wingnuts, and one with which I have had long experience. I've posted a mirror of this page as it was with the original comments:
bit.ly/7ODf7e
You would be better served, Rhonda, if you would stop lying in your posts, and start dealing honestly with those who challenge your assertions. But we both know that you will never develop the strength of character to do that.
Meatbrain is stuck on this abortion article, though he avoids the real issue. How many children do you not have because of abortion, MB?
The real issue is that Rhonda Keith is a liar and a coward, as the facts clearly demonstrate. Because she is a coward, she attacks me personally instead of addressing the facts.
Not an attack, just a request for pertinent information. It's not like it would be anything bad? Would it?
Rhonda Keith is lying again. Of course she's mounting an ad hominem attack -- that's what lying cowards do when they don't want to discuss the fact that their lies have been exposed.
Did Obama state on the floor of the Illinois Senate that a fetus "should not be allowed to live"? No. The complete text of his remarks shows that he did not.
I provided a link to that complete text. Rhonda Keith knows that anyone following that link will see that she lied. Thus she deletes the comment containing the link, and mounts a personal attack on me for daring to post the facts.
Conclusion: Rhonda Keith is a liar and an intellectual coward.
You understand what paraphrase is? Even if Obama didn't say those exact words, if you do not want to allow medical care for an infant who survives abortion, how is that different from saying it should not be allowed to live? And how many little meatbrains is the world lacking?
Rhonda Keith's exact words (no paraphrase):
"If it isn’t killed outright during the abortion, he said it should not be allowed to live."
I challenge Rhonda Keith, right now, to quote the exact passage from Obama's remarks in which he makes this statement, or anything that a rational person would "paraphrase" into Rhonda's claim. (Rhonda knows where to find the exact text of his remarks, because I've told her repeatedly.)
Obama did not say what Rhonda Keith claims he said. Rhonda Keith is a liar. plain and simple. It is far from surprising to find her now scrambling or cover cover behind the hoary old "paraphrase" excuse.
The vote says it all. Can the vote mean O. thinks the baby should live, without medical care?
Notice that Rhonda Keith is now desperately trying to change the subject. Suddenly, she doesn't want to talk about what Obama said in debating the bill -- although she was quite willing to make a claim about his statement when she didn't think anyone would be fact-checking her.
So I will issue the challenge again: Can Rhonda Keith quote the exact passage from Obama's remarks in which he makes the statement that Rhonda attributes to him, or anything that a rational person would "paraphrase" into Rhonda's claim?
An honest person would do one of two things: cite the statement, or admit that no such statement was made. Watch how Rhonda Keith responds, and learn how an intellectually dishonest liar reacts to this challenge.
Is anyone surprised to find that Rhonda Keith is utterly incapable of producing a single scintilla of evidence that Obama ever said that a fetus "should not be allowed to live"?
Is anyone astonished to learn that Rhonda Keith is a bald-faced liar?
No, neither am I.
Meat, I'm still waiting to learn what YOU think of this legislation and of late-term abortion and of not giving medical care to surviving, uh, creatures.
Notice that Rhonda Keith is now desperately trying to change the subject. Suddenly, she doesn't want to talk about what Obama said in debating the bill -- although she was quite willing to make a claim about his statement when she didn't think anyone would be fact-checking her.
So I will issue the challenge again: Can Rhonda Keith quote the exact passage from Obama's remarks in which he makes the statement that Rhonda attributes to him, or anything that a rational person would "paraphrase" into Rhonda's claim?
Rhonda has already flunked this test, of course -- she won't discuss her own statements. I doubt there can be any clearer demonstration of Rhonda's fundamental dishonesty.
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