Frustrated over single issue pro-lifers

[estesbob]

I just love politicians who have their mouths full of the right to life, but at the same time throw country into a prolonged recession, effectively making countless women abort for economic reason.

There is no moral equivalence between political differences on how the best address economic issues and supporting unrestricted taxpayer funded abortion on demand. . Hopefully you are not implying that a woman should be able to kill her child due to financial hardship.

 

[kama3]

That is the liberal mantra these days. But one should ask if corporations are holding on to their money, why are they doing so? It does not benefit them when they do. Corporations are generally started by people who have a good idea, scrape together enough money to fund that idea and then reap the profits of their investment.

That used to be the case 50 years ago. Today you have the MBA mentality: balance sheet is all that matters, reap profits at all costs, even if it means destroying the long term base of the company. HP under Carly Fiorina would be a texbook example: the company went from a leader in high-tech test equipment to a third-rate printer manufacturer in six years. Oh, and she got a $20M severance package for her earnest efforrts to improve the bottom line.

This is because the corporations are owned by investment funds, not founders (or even managers). An investment fund does not care how a corporation produces profits (i.e. if the business is sustainable), only how much profit can be produced short term.

I’ve seen investment funds reap 40% profit in one year after investing in a company. It basically amounted to closing down the perfectly functioning facility and selling off the assets. Workers? Who cares.

 

[estesbob]

That used to be the case 50 years ago. Today you have the MBA mentality: balance sheet is all that matters, reap profits at all costs, even if it means destroying the long term base of the company. HP under Carly Fiorina would be a texbook example: the company went from a leader in high-tech test equipment to a third-rate printer manufacturer in six years. Oh, and she got a $20M severance package for her earnest efforrts to improve the bottom line.

This is because the corporations are owned by investment funds, not founders (or even managers). An investment fund does not care how a corporation produces profits (i.e. if the business is sustainable), only how much profit can be produced short term.

I’ve seen investment funds reap 40% profit in one year after investing in a company. It basically amounted to closing down the perfectly functioning facility and selling off the assets. Workers? Who cares.

The overwhelming number of Corporation today are small busnesses that are taxed as S corporations and havevery few shareholders. Small businesses provide over 70% of the jobs in this country and their owners have nver met an investment fund manger, mre or less be run by one. It should be very simple for people to grasp that you dont increase employment by making it more expensive fro emplyers to do business.

Of course none of this is relevant as to whether one should ever support a pro-abortion canidate. Dislike of fund managers can never mitigate ones support of abortion

 

[kama3]

Hopefully you are not implying that a woman should be able to kill her child due to financial hardship.

You have to recognize that ultimately a woman is able to kill her unborn child. Once she wants to, the issue boils down to technicalities, money and determination. Messing with legality and funding of abortion services basically amounts to throwing hurdles in front of the woman, to prevent her from carrying out her decision. But what kind of world do we live in that women decide to kill their children? How about we arrange the world so they don’t want to?.

What really bothers me about the pro-life movement is that all the effort directed at preventing women from obtaining abortion clouds the real issue: why the women want to abort in the first place. Also, the pro-life movement apparently believes that a woman who wanted to kill her child and is forcibly prevented from doing so will somehow make a great mother all by herself – as women who gave birth drop off average pro-lifer’s radar. That’s a great leap of faith right here.

A legal ban on abortion in today’s world is fiction, pure and simple. Cheap international travel allows access to surgical abortion abroad, which cannot be prevented without screening every travelling woman for pregnancy. The Internet and cheap international shipping allows chemical abortion, which cannot be prevented without inspecting each and every package which comes into the country.

(Interestingly though, when I pointed the above to a pro-lifer, the reaction I got was something like Yes, but the ban on abortion is not meant to effectively prevent abortions. It’s meant to embody an axiom that all life is sacred. Abortion is evil and so must be banned!. Sheeesh. )

Abortion ban cannot be effective. Period. The battleground should be about women’s conscience, living conditions, supporting full families and adoption.

This is why I will not vote for a politician who, while paying lip service to pro-life voters and the Church, will enact economic doctrine which will throw more women into financial hardship, effectively giving more women more incentive to abort – which will statistically translate to more abortions (either legal or illegal). Been there, seen that.

 

[kama3]

Dislike of fund managers can never mitigate ones support of abortion

I like that phrase

Here’s a tangential point though: if a fund manager makes a corporation fire 10,000 women, it is a statistical certainity that this decision will drive some of these women to abortion. Is the fund manager in question morally culpable for these? Should he account for it when he makes decision?

Because from where I sit, he has more responsibility than a pro-choice politician or a pro-choice voter. The latter does not give the woman incentive to abort, while the former does.

 

[estesbob]

You have to recognize that ultimately a woman is able to kill her unborn child. Once she wants to, the issue boils down to technicalities, money and determination. Messing with legality and funding of abortion services basically amounts to throwing hurdles in front of the woman, to prevent her from carrying out her decision. But what kind of world do we live in that women decide to kill their children? How about we arrange the world so they don’t want to?.

What really bothers me about the pro-life movement is that all the effort directed at preventing women from obtaining abortion clouds the real issue: why the women want to abort in the first place. Also, the pro-life movement apparently believes that a woman who wanted to kill her child and is forcibly prevented from doing so will somehow make a great mother all by herself – as women who gave birth drop off average pro-lifer’s radar. That’s a great leap of faith right here.

A legal ban on abortion in today’s world is fiction, pure and simple. Cheap international travel allows access to surgical abortion abroad, which cannot be prevented without screening every travelling woman for pregnancy. The Internet and cheap international shipping allows chemical abortion, which cannot be prevented without inspecting each and every package which comes into the country.

(Interestingly though, when I pointed the above to a pro-lifer, the reaction I got was something like Yes, but the ban on abortion is not meant to effectively prevent abortions. It’s meant to embody an axiom that all life is sacred. Abortion is evil and so must be banned!. Sheeesh. )

Abortion ban cannot be effective. Period. The battleground should be about women’s conscience, living conditions, supporting full families and adoption.

This is why I will not vote for a politician who, while paying lip service to pro-life voters and the Church, will enact economic doctrine which will throw more women into financial hardship, effectively giving more women more incentive to abort – which will statistically translate to more abortions (either legal or illegal). Been there, seen that.

I’m very familiar with the standard abortion apologists rationalization for supporting evil. It is always based on demonizing those who oppose abortion as single issue zealots and any candidate who stands for life as someone who really doesn’t care about abortion, but only opposes it the to get votes. In the bizarro world of pro-abortionists those who oppose abortion really support it and those who support abortion are really pro-life heroes. And of course abortion has the notable distinction of being the only evil in the history of mankind that should not be made illegal because people are going to do it anyway.

Every single restriction on abortion since Roe V Wade was imposed on the country came via Republican legislators and governors. Every single one of these restrictions was opposed almost to a man by the Democrats. Recently a rather benign Bill to allow health care providers to refuse to provide elective abortions and forbid public funding of abortions could muster only 15 votes from the Democratic caucus. One the first actions of the current Democrat president was to release funds for overseas abortion providers. . He also recently, by executive Fiat , forced Catholic employers like myself to cover contraception an abortive accounts in the healthcare plans. I provide for my employees

. If refusing to vote for people who believe a woman should have the right to kill her child( and the taxpayers should pay for it) makes me a pro-life zealot and a single issue voter. I wear the title proudly. . I stand with the Church-as always

 

[estesbob]

I like that phrase

Here’s a tangential point though: if a fund manager makes a corporation fire 10,000 women, it is a statistical certainity that this decision will drive some of these women to abortion. Is the fund manager in question morally culpable for these? Should he account for it when he makes decision?

Because from where I sit, he has more responsibility than a pro-choice politician or a pro-choice voter. The latter does not give the woman incentive to abort, while the former does.

One can always come up with some bizarro scenario to rationalize supporting evil. Losing one’s job is not valid reason to kill one’s child. I am not aware of any candidate who campaigned on a platform of supporting fund managers who wanted fire 10,000 women. .

There simply is no moral equivalence between political differences on how to best address helping the poor and needy and stimulating the economy and supporting unrestricted taxpayer funded abortion on demand. All rights flow from the right to life. There is absolutely nothing a pro-abortion candidate can do to mitigate their support of this abject evil. Nothing,.

 

[Allegra]

You have to recognize that ultimately a woman is able to kill her unborn child. Once she wants to, the issue boils down to technicalities, money and determination. Messing with legality and funding of abortion services basically amounts to throwing hurdles in front of the woman, to prevent her from carrying out her decision. But what kind of world do we live in that women decide to kill their children? How about we arrange the world so they don’t want to?.

What really bothers me about the pro-life movement is that all the effort directed at preventing women from obtaining abortion clouds the real issue: why the women want to abort in the first place. Also, the pro-life movement apparently believes that a woman who wanted to kill her child and is forcibly prevented from doing so will somehow make a great mother all by herself – as women who gave birth drop off average pro-lifer’s radar. That’s a great leap of faith right here.

A legal ban on abortion in today’s world is fiction, pure and simple. Cheap international travel allows access to surgical abortion abroad, which cannot be prevented without screening every travelling woman for pregnancy. The Internet and cheap international shipping allows chemical abortion, which cannot be prevented without inspecting each and every package which comes into the country.

(Interestingly though, when I pointed the above to a pro-lifer, the reaction I got was something like Yes, but the ban on abortion is not meant to effectively prevent abortions. It’s meant to embody an axiom that all life is sacred. Abortion is evil and so must be banned!. Sheeesh. )

Abortion ban cannot be effective. Period. The battleground should be about women’s conscience, living conditions, supporting full families and adoption.

This is why I will not vote for a politician who, while paying lip service to pro-life voters and the Church, will enact economic doctrine which will throw more women into financial hardship, effectively giving more women more incentive to abort – which will statistically translate to more abortions (either legal or illegal). Been there, seen that.

That’s like saying laws against murder are a waste of time because anyone who really wants to kill someone is sure to find a way to do so. Obviously, if there was a ban on abortion and people chose to get one or perform one anyway, they would be charged with murder and put in jail. It’s pretty hard to kill babies in jail.

 

[St_Francis]

You have to recognize that ultimately a woman is able to kill her unborn child. Once she wants to, the issue boils down to technicalities, money and determination. Messing with legality and funding of abortion services basically amounts to throwing hurdles in front of the woman, to prevent her from carrying out her decision. But what kind of world do we live in that women decide to kill their children? How about we arrange the world so they don’t want to?.

Mere humans will never be able to make the world that perfect. As someone else once told me, in a community of billionaires, the millionaire is poor.

[quoye]What really bothers me about the pro-life movement is that all the effort directed at preventing women from obtaining abortion clouds the real issue: why the women want to abort in the first place.
Since shortly before the legalization of abortion throughout the US, we have been increasing the aid we give to the poor. A poor woman can get a more comprehensive health insurance program than offered to employees, funds for food, housing (and furniture), utilities, and some cash. She can get job training and help with daycare.

Sure, her life would be different than if she had not decided to have sex when she wasn’t ready to have a baby, but it’s not like she’d be destitute.

Moreover, she always has the option of putting her baby up for adoption.

I cannot imagine what more the government could do?

Also, the pro-life movement apparently believes that a woman who wanted to kill her child and is forcibly prevented from doing so will somehow make a great mother all by herself – as women who gave birth drop off average pro-lifer’s radar. That’s a great leap of faith right here.

Sometimes when people are under a great deal of pressure they behave one way, but when push comes to shove, they rise to the occasion.

A legal ban on abortion in today’s world is fiction, pure and simple. Cheap international travel allows access to surgical abortion abroad, which cannot be prevented without screening every travelling woman for pregnancy. The Internet and cheap international shipping allows chemical abortion, which cannot be prevented without inspecting each and every package which comes into the country.

True, but knowing something is illegal will still affect the behavior of many people, because a lot of people don’t really know how to go about doing illegal things.

Of course, people who see abortions occurring when there is no evidence for that usually don’t comprehend that sometimes people decide to forego sex when they are not ready to have a baby.

(Interestingly though, when I pointed the above to a pro-lifer, the reaction I got was something like Yes, but the ban on abortion is not meant to effectively prevent abortions. It’s meant to embody an axiom that all life is sacred. Abortion is evil and so must be banned!. Sheeesh. )

A ban on abortions will not stop every abortiin, but given that in the US there were few abortions before legalozation and afterwards there were many, bans do have the effect of reducing the number of abortions.

We have bans on rape and murder and theft, and yet these continue to happen. Would you think it right to say, these laws are not stopping these crimes, so we might as well legalize murder and rape and theft? I don’t think so.

Abortion ban cannot be effective. Period.

You see abortion where there is no evidence; therefore you think a ban does not work. But that is just an unsubstantiated opinion you hold.

The battleground should be about women’s conscience, living conditions, supporting full families and adoption.

And the last three of these are currently implemented. When the law is changed, more and more people will have come to see that abortion is wrong and hopefully an education campaign will help the rest of those who do not understand the reality of abortion.

This is why I will not vote for a politician who, while paying lip service to pro-life voters and the Church, will enact economic doctrine which will throw more women into financial hardship, effectively giving more women more incentive to abort – which will statistically translate to more abortions (either legal or illegal). Been there, seen that.

 

[kama3]

Obviously, if there was a ban on abortion and people chose to get one or perform one anyway, they would be charged with murder and put in jail.

If they are caught.

It’s pretty hard to hide a murder, as other people can notice a person missing (or find a body) and alert the authorities. In contrast, an abortion which did not result in complications will leave no trace of the crime. Consider a woman who buys needed drugs online from a foreign supplier, consumes them invoking a miscarriage and recovers by herself without any complications. How can the state know that the crime has been committed in the first place?

This is precisely why anti-murder law is an effective deterrent and anti-abortion law is not.

It’s pretty hard to kill babies in jail.

After one gets there, yes.

I am actually familiar with two cases of abortion doctors in Poland – in each case the prosecution documented that they have performed several tens of abortions, before they were busted. Note that these were only the cases the prosecution cared to document, which means that actual count was much higher. One was caught after she botched the job and had to take the bleeding patient to the hospital to save her (*), the other because a former patient turned him in due to dispute over payment (**). On the flip side though, I doubt either of them would return to business after getting out of jail.

Compared to other kinds of illegal activity, performing abortions seems to be a relatively low risk business: both patient and provider want to keep the secret, and no evidence of the crime is left.

(*) Interestingly, she probably did this because the sentence for abortion is low compared to murder. If both had the same qualification, then quietly disposing of the patient would be a better strategy…

(**) This likely happened because the law in question does not punish the patient, only the provider

 

[kama3]

You see abortion where there is no evidence; therefore you think a ban does not work.

I see no evidence that the ban in Poland does work (i.e. there is no expected increase in fertility rate compared to other countries, as shown in the other thread), which is why I think that it does not. If it does not work, that means the effort should be directed elsewhere, where it can actually make a difference.

I do acknowledge however that I may be wrong and will welcome any evidence to the contrary.

 

[St_Francis]

I see no evidence that the ban in Poland does work (i.e. there is no expected increase in fertility rate compared to other countries, as shown in the other thread), which is why I think that it does not.

You base your opinion that the ban in Poland does not work on no evidence. The lack of evidence is not evidence. The fact that the result which you expected did not show up is not evidence that the ban is not working.

The reality is that there are many factors which go into fertility rates, and abortions either occurring or not occurring are only one small factor.

If it does not work, that means the effort should be directed elsewhere, where it can actually make a difference.

But there is no evidence it does not work, sk why should effort be expended in an apparently unnecessary direction?

I do acknowledge however that I may be wrong and will welcome any evidence to the contrary.

It may be that you are correct and many abortions are occurring; it’s just that the evidence you have provided does not show that there are abortions occurring.

The problem is that you want evidence that abortions are not occurring, and a negative cannot be proven. You did offer evidence that some abortuons did occur, and it seems that the way the ban is set up is working, since the penalty is such that the doctor took the ailing patient to the hospital, and in the other case, the patient was able to help authorities find an abortionist, albeit due to a billing dispute.

While I agree that there is probably more abortion going on than these two situations provide evidence for, that does not mean the ban is not working, just as murder rates do not mean that laws against murder are ineffective. You propose that a problem begin enough to need a solution is occurring, but provide no evidence foe that.

 

[Allegra]

If they are caught.

It’s pretty hard to hide a murder, as other people can notice a person missing (or find a body) and alert the authorities. In contrast, an abortion which did not result in complications will leave no trace of the crime. Consider a woman who buys needed drugs online from a foreign supplier, consumes them invoking a miscarriage and recovers by herself without any complications. How can the state know that the crime has been committed in the first place?

This is precisely why anti-murder law is an effective deterrent and anti-abortion law is not.

After one gets there, yes.

I am actually familiar with two cases of abortion doctors in Poland – in each case the prosecution documented that they have performed several tens of abortions, before they were busted. Note that these were only the cases the prosecution cared to document, which means that actual count was much higher. One was caught after she botched the job and had to take the bleeding patient to the hospital to save her (*), the other because a former patient turned him in due to dispute over payment (**). On the flip side though, I doubt either of them would return to business after getting out of jail.

Compared to other kinds of illegal activity, performing abortions seems to be a relatively low risk business: both patient and provider want to keep the secret, and no evidence of the crime is left.

(*) Interestingly, she probably did this because the sentence for abortion is low compared to murder. If both had the same qualification, then quietly disposing of the patient would be a better strategy…

(**) This likely happened because the law in question does not punish the patient, only the provider

Are there not murders that go unsolved? If there was such a law, there would be abortionists who were caught. Others who are legitimate doctors would stop providing them because they wouldn’t want to face the penalty of getting caught. Besides, if such a law prevented any percentage of abortions, it would be a good thing.

 

[Wowbagger]

If a politician is pro-choice I won’t vote for them… But at the same time I won’t vote for a pro-life person who doesn’t support the welfare system, someone who supports lower taxes, war etc…

Huh. This is refreshing.

From your OP, I assumed – and I’ll bet most everyone else did, too – that you were just another liberal Catholic trying to manufacture an excuse for having voting for a gang of abortionists. Virtually every liberal Catholic is, and we get a ton of those around here. It gets quite wearisome.

But in fact you’re willing to stand up for all your beliefs, and won’t vote for anyone who fails to conform.

I disagree with you on many (most) of the prudential points, and I do in fact vote Republican, but I respect your position. It’s at least as authentically Catholic as the consensus here in favor of voting the anti-abortionist no matter what (which I agree with).

Thanks for explaining.

 

[JimG]

I would like to be a single issue voter. Life issues clearly outweigh all the rest. Abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell destruction. The current administration fails on all these counts.

But there are other issues as well: The promotion of gay marriage, forcing Catholic institutions to provide contraception and other morally illicit procedures, forcing Catholic adoption agencies to place children in homes headed by homosexual parents, the weakening of conscience protection for health care workers. Refusal to enforce the Defense Of Marriage Act which was enacted into law. The current administration fails on all these counts as well.

And still other issues. The unprecedented and exponential increase of the national debt so unsustainable that it threatens world financial collapse, the fomenting of class warfare, increases in federal control and radical activism by regulatory agencies. The administration fails here as well.

 

[Swiss_Guy]

I would like to be a single issue voter. Life issues clearly outweigh all the rest. Abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell destruction. The current administration fails on all these counts.

But there are other issues as well: The promotion of gay marriage, forcing Catholic institutions to provide contraception and other morally illicit procedures, forcing Catholic adoption agencies to place children in homes headed by homosexual parents, the weakening of conscience protection for health care workers. Refusal to enforce the Defense Of Marriage Act which was enacted into law. The current administration fails on all these counts as well.

And still other issues. The unprecedented and exponential increase of the national debt so unsustainable that it threatens world financial collapse, the fomenting of class warfare, increases in federal control and radical activism by regulatory agencies. The administration fails here as well.

You can still be a single-issue voter. The issue is called life. And all of what you talked about centered around life.

 

[the_phoenix]

Please don’t be frustrated. There are others who show up at the Right to Life March in Washington, DC. Here is one lady I met in the photo below:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

This beautifully inspirational young lady and her father carried the message that along with saving the lives of the unborn, the elderly and the handicapped also need protection when it comes to respecting their right to life. Her sign was furnished by The Climb Organization, which you can visit at the following website:

theclimborganization.com/

I’m the photographer.
Photo taken in January, 2010.

 

[SpectatorX]

What he means is that refusing to vote when there is no reasonable candidate and in that way looking to subvert the electoral system, is no worse and maybe better than voting for an inadequate candidate and supporting a system that is only offering inadequate candidates.

If I had money, I’d offer to put you on payroll.

 

[estesbob]

If I had money, I’d offer to put you on payroll.

Problem would be paying for his health insurance.