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> I tell them that Republicans have no room for moderates. Consider that the Democrats want no restrictions on ultra-late-term abortions. I think there's plent

> I tell them that Republicans have no room for moderates. Consider that the Democrats want no restrictions on ultra-late-term abortions. I think there's plenty of blame to go around here.

rwmurrayVT 11y ago
I think you're looking at that very wrong. They want people to be able to decide what they do with their own bodies. That's leaves the maximum amount of room for everyone's opinion. You don't want it? Don't do it.
- augb 11y ago
  Except that there are two bodies, one is just attached with an umbilical cord.
  - baldfat 11y ago
    You can rip that baby out (AKA C Section) and that baby lives. There has to be an issue when a 30+ week old fetus (Latin for little one) can be ripped apart piece by piece inside a mother's womb but if anyone did that to a new born outside the mother's womb that would be INSANE.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  > They want people to be able to decide what they do with their own bodies. I actually understand the argument. For all the rest of you know, I actually wrote the above response myself (I didn't, but I could have). The counterargument is that there are absolutely two people involved if a woman decides to abort on her due date. Even in liberal Western Europe abortions must be performed before certain gestation dates. Now, this sort of absolutism makes a kind of logical sense. The kind that also makes legalization of heroin a defensible position. And there are smart, compassionate people who want to legalize heroin. Just not the President and every candidate in the Democratic primary. Point being, there's no room for compromise on the abortion issue from the left. We could be talking about eight months versus seven months, what counts as a "medical exception", what forms of enforcement are fair, etc. But we're not. There's absolutely no room for compromise.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    > Point being, there's no room for compromise on the abortion issue from the left. Did you mean left? There's lots of discussion on the left about what time limits should be set; or how many doctors you need to persuade; or what conditions could extend the time limits; etc. But from the right there's a blanket "no abortion, ever, for any reason", with fucking stupid comments like "First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child."
    - humanrebar 11y ago
      My actual point was that the left is uncompromising as well. There are certainly absolutists on the right. The fact that you brought up a foam-at-the-mouth comment from a disgraced former politician seems like a point for the there's-too-much-partisanship-on-the-left-too column. There is actually common ground on the abortion issue, perhaps counter-intuitively. There is overwhelming support for reducing abortion rates, for example. The American people would absolutely be OK with a compromise that includes education, increased access to birth control, and bans on abortions after, say, 8 months of gestation.
      - DanBC 11y ago
        You've mentioned this 8 month thing a few times. You probably need to know that there are good reasons why a woman might need to get an abortion at 8 months. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129580-200-the-world-needs-to-talk-about-child-euthanasia/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129580-200-the-worl... Listening to anti-abortionists you'd think the woman just found the pregnancy inconvenient, when the reality is that the woman is going through an intensely traumatic time and having to cope with the loss of a much wanted child.
baldfat 11y ago
MYTH = Republicans are Pro-Life Abortion is not a Democrat or Republican issue Don't fall into that lie. The Republicans had the White House and both Houses and did ZERO over the years they had this. The Connecticut Republican Platform is Officially Pro-Choice if a party wants to say they are lying for your vote. With Obama and a divided house the number of abortions are at a all time low since Roe v Wade as well as Teenage pregnancy. There are 3 Republican US Senators who and 4 Republican Representatives who get 100% funding from the Republican Party. Where I live Charlie Dent is (R) and is Pro Chose and got everyone's backing when he ran against a Pro-Life Democrat. Think that will happen here is we will have a Pro-Life Democrat running for US Senate and he will have zero support from "Pro-Lifers" even though his record is much better then his opponent. I am a Pro-Life Democrat and we have a Pro-life Democrat Senator and a Pro-Choice Republican. My "Pro-Life" friends supported the Pro-Choice candidate due to the Myth that Republicans are Pro-Life.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  > Abortion is not a Democrat or Republican issue Don't fall into that lie. The Republicans had the White House and both Houses and did ZERO over the years they had this. They're doing stuff in Texas and liberal groups are suing to overturn the rules. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions. If abortion was an issue in the Democratic party, it would have come up in the debates. Not a single question in the Democratic debates had to do with abortion. > MYTH = Republicans are Pro-Life This kind of proves my point, actually. There are many more than two political positions here. You can be mostly pro-choice but think abortion at 8.5 months is a travesty.
curun1r 11y ago
I've never understood why so many people allow abortion to so heavily influence their choice of party/political candidate. So few people will ever have abortions in their lives and yet everyone will pay taxes, receive health care and most of us will know someone in military service. These issues affect our lives in ways that are so much more profound than abortion does and yet we continually allow the two parties to distract us from these issues with the issue of abortion. Note: I say this as the grandchild of someone who attempted to abort my mother after being raped by my grandfather. My grandmother's life was basically ruined when she was forced to marry her rapist after the then-illegal abortion failed. My mother, and transitively, me, would not exist had safe, legal abortions been available in 1940. Even with this intensely personal connection to the abortion issue, the issue has zero influence on how I vote. It boggles my mind that those with almost no personal connection to it let it influence their votes to the degree that they do.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  > So few people will ever have abortions in their lives... 1. Few people are killed by cops. Does that mean the issue isn't important? 2. Abortion rates are higher than you probably realize. For example, in NYC over 1/3 of pregnancies are terminated [1]. And that's after it's been getting better. There are on the order of a million abortions every year, depending on how you count. You know a lot of people that have had terminated pregnancies. They just haven't told you about it. 3. Is it fair to be a single issue voter? If your perfect candidate in every other respect also planned to take away the right to vote from Native Americans, could you vote for her? Of course not. The reason it's a controversial issue is because both sides see it as a human rights issue (like universal suffrage). pro-choice: * Women deserve autonomy * They don't deserved to be punished and have their lives ruined due to mistakes and oversights in birth control * Women are intelligent and deserve the benefit of the doubt about when abortion is a good choice or not * Government should support women and their goals in their healthcare, not dictate their lives pro-life: * Unborn humans are humans, too, and deserve to be recognized as people with rights * This is literally a civil rights issue on the order of importance of slavery, suffrage for women, or black civil rights * Erring on the side of not killing is the right way to balance 'choice' with 'life' * Bodily autonomy has limits in extreme circumstances (having sex in public, taking illicit drugs, wearing seatbelts) * The sexism argument is a red herring. Half of children are women, and the most vocal pro-life proponents tend to be women as well. Additionally, the pro-life side has procedural objections since there was never a democratic process for expanding the right to abortions. I agree with this point, which means I blame the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade for all this animosity. [1] http://nypost.com/2014/02/17/abortion-rate-plummets-in-new-york-city/ http://nypost.com/2014/02/17/abortion-rate-plummets-in-new-y...

> I tell them that Republicans have no room for moderates. Consider that the Democrats want no restrictions on ultra-late-term abortions. I think there's plenty of blame to go around here.

rwmurrayVT 11y ago

I think you're looking at that very wrong. They want people to be able to decide what they do with their own bodies. That's leaves the maximum amount of room for everyone's opinion. You don't want it? Don't do it.

augb 11y ago
Except that there are two bodies, one is just attached with an umbilical cord.
- baldfat 11y ago
  You can rip that baby out (AKA C Section) and that baby lives. There has to be an issue when a 30+ week old fetus (Latin for little one) can be ripped apart piece by piece inside a mother's womb but if anyone did that to a new born outside the mother's womb that would be INSANE.
humanrebar 11y ago
> They want people to be able to decide what they do with their own bodies. I actually understand the argument. For all the rest of you know, I actually wrote the above response myself (I didn't, but I could have). The counterargument is that there are absolutely two people involved if a woman decides to abort on her due date. Even in liberal Western Europe abortions must be performed before certain gestation dates. Now, this sort of absolutism makes a kind of logical sense. The kind that also makes legalization of heroin a defensible position. And there are smart, compassionate people who want to legalize heroin. Just not the President and every candidate in the Democratic primary. Point being, there's no room for compromise on the abortion issue from the left. We could be talking about eight months versus seven months, what counts as a "medical exception", what forms of enforcement are fair, etc. But we're not. There's absolutely no room for compromise.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > Point being, there's no room for compromise on the abortion issue from the left. Did you mean left? There's lots of discussion on the left about what time limits should be set; or how many doctors you need to persuade; or what conditions could extend the time limits; etc. But from the right there's a blanket "no abortion, ever, for any reason", with fucking stupid comments like "First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child."
  - humanrebar 11y ago
    My actual point was that the left is uncompromising as well. There are certainly absolutists on the right. The fact that you brought up a foam-at-the-mouth comment from a disgraced former politician seems like a point for the there's-too-much-partisanship-on-the-left-too column. There is actually common ground on the abortion issue, perhaps counter-intuitively. There is overwhelming support for reducing abortion rates, for example. The American people would absolutely be OK with a compromise that includes education, increased access to birth control, and bans on abortions after, say, 8 months of gestation.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      You've mentioned this 8 month thing a few times. You probably need to know that there are good reasons why a woman might need to get an abortion at 8 months. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129580-200-the-world-needs-to-talk-about-child-euthanasia/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129580-200-the-worl... Listening to anti-abortionists you'd think the woman just found the pregnancy inconvenient, when the reality is that the woman is going through an intensely traumatic time and having to cope with the loss of a much wanted child.

baldfat 11y ago

MYTH = Republicans are Pro-Life Abortion is not a Democrat or Republican issue Don't fall into that lie. The Republicans had the White House and both Houses and did ZERO over the years they had this. The Connecticut Republican Platform is Officially Pro-Choice if a party wants to say they are lying for your vote. With Obama and a divided house the number of abortions are at a all time low since Roe v Wade as well as Teenage pregnancy. There are 3 Republican US Senators who and 4 Republican Representatives who get 100% funding from the Republican Party. Where I live Charlie Dent is (R) and is Pro Chose and got everyone's backing when he ran against a Pro-Life Democrat. Think that will happen here is we will have a Pro-Life Democrat running for US Senate and he will have zero support from "Pro-Lifers" even though his record is much better then his opponent. I am a Pro-Life Democrat and we have a Pro-life Democrat Senator and a Pro-Choice Republican. My "Pro-Life" friends supported the Pro-Choice candidate due to the Myth that Republicans are Pro-Life.

humanrebar 11y ago
> Abortion is not a Democrat or Republican issue Don't fall into that lie. The Republicans had the White House and both Houses and did ZERO over the years they had this. They're doing stuff in Texas and liberal groups are suing to overturn the rules. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions. If abortion was an issue in the Democratic party, it would have come up in the debates. Not a single question in the Democratic debates had to do with abortion. > MYTH = Republicans are Pro-Life This kind of proves my point, actually. There are many more than two political positions here. You can be mostly pro-choice but think abortion at 8.5 months is a travesty.

curun1r 11y ago

I've never understood why so many people allow abortion to so heavily influence their choice of party/political candidate. So few people will ever have abortions in their lives and yet everyone will pay taxes, receive health care and most of us will know someone in military service. These issues affect our lives in ways that are so much more profound than abortion does and yet we continually allow the two parties to distract us from these issues with the issue of abortion. Note: I say this as the grandchild of someone who attempted to abort my mother after being raped by my grandfather. My grandmother's life was basically ruined when she was forced to marry her rapist after the then-illegal abortion failed. My mother, and transitively, me, would not exist had safe, legal abortions been available in 1940. Even with this intensely personal connection to the abortion issue, the issue has zero influence on how I vote. It boggles my mind that those with almost no personal connection to it let it influence their votes to the degree that they do.

humanrebar 11y ago
> So few people will ever have abortions in their lives... 1. Few people are killed by cops. Does that mean the issue isn't important? 2. Abortion rates are higher than you probably realize. For example, in NYC over 1/3 of pregnancies are terminated [1]. And that's after it's been getting better. There are on the order of a million abortions every year, depending on how you count. You know a lot of people that have had terminated pregnancies. They just haven't told you about it. 3. Is it fair to be a single issue voter? If your perfect candidate in every other respect also planned to take away the right to vote from Native Americans, could you vote for her? Of course not. The reason it's a controversial issue is because both sides see it as a human rights issue (like universal suffrage). pro-choice: * Women deserve autonomy * They don't deserved to be punished and have their lives ruined due to mistakes and oversights in birth control * Women are intelligent and deserve the benefit of the doubt about when abortion is a good choice or not * Government should support women and their goals in their healthcare, not dictate their lives pro-life: * Unborn humans are humans, too, and deserve to be recognized as people with rights * This is literally a civil rights issue on the order of importance of slavery, suffrage for women, or black civil rights * Erring on the side of not killing is the right way to balance 'choice' with 'life' * Bodily autonomy has limits in extreme circumstances (having sex in public, taking illicit drugs, wearing seatbelts) * The sexism argument is a red herring. Half of children are women, and the most vocal pro-life proponents tend to be women as well. Additionally, the pro-life side has procedural objections since there was never a democratic process for expanding the right to abortions. I agree with this point, which means I blame the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade for all this animosity. [1] http://nypost.com/2014/02/17/abortion-rate-plummets-in-new-york-city/ http://nypost.com/2014/02/17/abortion-rate-plummets-in-new-y...