Pro-Choice and Anti-Capital Punishment?

I sure hope you read the rest of the thread before posting. Like that it costs over 2 million more dollars for all the court costs involved in the many appeals permitted to death row inmates over the fewer appeals a life without parole inmate gets (which are spread over more years). The point here is you are paying MUCH, MUCH more to kill someone than you are to just shut them away for the rest of their life.



That's the problem, you're gonna KILL someone. If you find out later that you screwed up and he was completely innocent he's STILL dead. If he's serving a life sentence and you find out he was completely innocent (perhaps due to improvements in forensic technology), you can go ahead and let him go. Now if the guy is guilty as sin he just stays there his whole life and that's cheaper for everyone.

I don't think any victim is going to be able to pony up the 2 million plus that they'll need to cover the criminal's court costs in appeals/lawyers/etc. Nor do I think that would even be any fair way of doing that. The worst part of that is it makes the victim look really, really bloodthirsty. We don't need to be as bad as the people we lock up.

I also had a change. In college we were to debate the issue of the death penalty. As I listened to the arguments my opinion changed from the original opinion I had for my argument. I had to speak without notes because my opinion had just changed. It was very interesting to say the least.

Anyhow, I am now truly pro-human. I understand the desire to see justice for a heinous crime, but as a civilized society we must not commit the crime to teach the lesson a crime is wrong. Taking the life of even a confessed killer doesn't teach the killer killing is wrong, nor does it teach others killing is wrong. The government shouldn't rape rapists either.

As the student who changed my mind said, let the killer spend life producing to pay the family of the victim.

Good links. My favorite threads are ones that are informative.

~Ulrika~

You went to college?

~Ulrika~

Be nice, Ulrika, this thread is staying remarkably civil.

I disagree that having an abortion is treating anything.

I support the right of adults to use drugs. Drugs should absolutley be legal. But as cigarettes and alcohol are illegal to children, so should drugs be illegal to kids.

Drug treatment for those seeking it should be made avaliable to all. Treating pregnancy as an illness in need of treatment (abortion) is wrong in my opinion. Pregnancy should be veiwed as a special gift. If the mother can't care for her child, perhaps adoption is an opinion that could work for all. There is no need for either the mother or the child to die.

well said rose. education is the key. i love hearing about planned parenthood supporters. i volunteer for them on a regular basis, usually as a clinic escort during protests (which we get a lot of here in DC). the funny thing about the protests is that the majority of people that come to planned parenthood are NOT getting abortions, they are getting routine medical treatments (gyn exams, birth control, pregnancy tests, etc.). the protestors are preventing people from getting the information and treatments that will make them much less likely to ever consider having an abortion. ok, i'm getting way off topic...

/sits on hands

No, I cannot assume that everyone will be pro death penalty.
I cannot assume what anyone will choose.
I know that I believe in an eye for an eye...and besides that I am a very compassionate person.
I just know where to draw the line for compassion.

Yes, there is always a risk with the death penalty, just as there is with a life sentence.
It takes a lot of compelling evidence to sentence someone to life and the responsibility for the people making that choice is overwhelming...so they had better be damn sure.

But what do you do when you put someone away for life, they die in prison and you later find out they were innocent? Is that any better? Is life in prison really a life? Have to you ever been there or know anyone that has been?

I understand that the appeals process is very costly and very slow and you cannot tell me that someone with a life sentence doesn't try to appeal the same way. Nobody wants to die or serve a life term.

But I will put it like this, if someone murdered someone close to me in cold blood, I would not hesitate to have them executed...if I didn't already try myself.

People have very little respect for life these days and I believe it has a lot to do with the fact that they do not fear the loss of their own for their crimes. Criminals mock our justice system because it has too much compassion.

I don't expect many people to agree with me, but that is how I feel.
I have no compassion or respect for those who harm others, call it what you will, but I am at peace with my beliefs.

I don't think you can seperate the word "Sin" from the word "God".

To me, the concept of "sin" isn't about control. In fact, I find it personally offensive any time someone makes that comment. Instead, I believe that there are certain absolutes of right and wrong in the world. Sin is the violation of one of those absolutes.

What are those absolutes? Well, that is the subject of much debate. Personally, I would sum up my system of ethics as such:

1. Life is sacred. The unnecessary taking of life is wrong.
   
2. Perform no action that would harm another human being.
   
3. Perform no action that intentionally harms yourself.
   
4. Treat other human beings with respect, decency, and generally the way you would wish to be treated. Do this even if they are rude or violent to you.
   
5. If it "feels" wrong, it probably is.
   
6. Children are innocent, and harming a child is abhorrent and should never be tolerated.
   

I don't see abortion as an issue of rights, but one of convenience. Objectively speaking, you lose nothing by birthing a child. It may take time. It may take certain resources. But I can't see many situations where a mother is actually harmed by the act of carrying a child. (Yes, those situations exist. I'm not talking about those, though.)

However, there are SOCIAL situations that occur when a woman is pregnant outside of the socially accepted norms. However, I find myself wondering at what cost we value human life if we are willing to place the censure of a social group above the sanctity of a life.

Medical necessity and maybe even rape aside, I have yet to meet a single person who can give me an objective reason that abortion must be allowed in our society.

Why do women abort their unborn children?
The most popular answer: I just don't want a kid right now.

It seems to me that abortion isn't the "medical recouse of last resort" that pro-choice advocates claim. Rather it's the birth control measure of first resort.

Aurael,

Excellent post - I agree with everything that you said.

I'm just sayin'.

~Ulrika~

Yes, but some people don't want the special gift of pregancy, even bringing a child to term might endanger thier lives. And never mind the cost in terms of lost education because schools won't teach pregnat girls. Also a woman who is pregnat as a result of rape shoud be forced to carry the baby to term. Yes in a perfect world there would be no unwanted babies, and no abortions. But our world is not perfect, and we must havea society whose laws reflect and protect the rights and welfare of all of its citizens.

The place to teach morality is the home and the church, not the courts, and certainly not the doctors office. If you don't want little suzie to have an abortion spend you tine amd effort educating here about absitinace, instill your values in her, and for god sakes make condoms available to her and her boyfreind. You can also teach little suzie our values on the sanctity of human life, and hope she adopts them as her own.

Put all the effort spent on fighting aborition and plotting to kill doctors who perfom abortions and blowing up medical clincs where abortion procedures are performed inot educating your kids to be responsible about sex, and you will be doing a lot more towards fighting abortions.

But shoving your head in the sand and relentlessly shouting knee-jerk judeo-christian platitudes about the sanctity of life, and pretending your kids don't want to have sex accoplishes nothing.

What is the support for this? How many people have you personnaly talked to who have had abortions? How many people do you think have had four or five abortions casually?

As a buddhist I agree with your basic principal that life is scared. But descision fo morality should be made by the inidividual and not by the courts, or by a doctor.

Sin is a construct created by organized religion to control behavior using shame. To me there is no "sin" involved in making a personal reproductive choice, whether it be birth control, contraception, abortion, or adoption.

I should also add that the threat of taking offense at differing opinions is also a method of behavioral control and signifies intolerance and inflexibility of the speaker.

~Ulrika~

What is the support for this? How many people have you personnaly talked to who have had abortions? How many people do you think have had four or five abortions casually?

As a buddhist I agree with your basic principal that life is scared. But descision fo morality should be made by the inidividual and not by the courts, or by a doctor. And It certainly should not be made on her behalf by people she does not know.

So knee-jerk buddhist platitudes about the sanctity of life are ok though, yes? Just checking.

Touche. Well put. my only response is:

There is no such thing as a knee jerk buddhist platititude, of course.

Decisions on morality made by the courts, and not the individual, are the entire basis of our legal system and of a civilized society.

You said what I couldn't figure out how to. Thanks !

Hmmm...

A) A woman who got AIDS from her cheating husband? Endangers her own life and possibly passes it onto her child.

B) A woman addicted to drugs or alcohol? Endangers the life of her child, delivers a child addicted to the drug and with mental and possible physical handicaps.

C) A woman who has been told her baby will only have half a brain or half a heart and will be born in severe pain and will only live in a coma?

D) A woman who has schizophrenia - has no family or support system, will have difficulty raising a child, is on Anti-psychotics.

E) A woman with epilepsy or lupus or cancer and who has had chemo and is concerned about the effects of the drugs on the baby and of the delivery on her own health.

It's SO easy for someone to judge until you walk in those shoes and had to actually make the decision and had to watch them give your two year old dialysis treatment and listened to them scream "please - no more needles".

Go into a pediatrics ward sometime and look at the children there and ask yourself if you could knowingly bring a child into this world destined for only eight or ten years of life and all of that spent in hospitals.

Unless you've done that or unless you yourself have decided to give birth to a special needs child, really, I don't see how you bring much to the argument outside of judgmental rhetoric.

No problem.

No offense Aurael, but most of your comments here are just standard pro-life ones that have been disproven before. You are also mixing up "child" with "fetus" (in fact you never mention the word fetus), which makes me think that you are a pro-lifer yourself.

These assumptions you are making (abortion is done for convenience and is a form of birth control) have no factual basis or evidentiary support. Also there are many thigns you can lose by giving birth, one of which is your life!

I respect your personal opinion on the subject, but none of these arguments make any sense to me. I think you maybe havent met anyone who can give you what you call an objective reason for abortion because your mind is maybe already closed on the subject.

"...... written by the former Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. C. Everett Koop.

Abortion [killing infants before birth], infanticide [killing infants after birth], and euthanasia [killing adults] stand before us like dominoes; the first to fall has been abortion on demand. It is a grave issue. Nothing like it has separated our society since the days of slavery.

It simply isn't true. Abortions in the United States for rape, incest, to protect the life of the mother, or to void a defective fetus comprise less than five percent of all abortions. The rest are performed just for convenience. And we're talking about one million abortions a year.

Rape practically never results in pregnancy. Studies in Pennsylvania and Minnesota concerning rape and pregnancy show that as many as five thousand rapes have occurred successively without a single pregnancy . .

Most people do not know that the younger the mother is the more likely she will suffer sterility later if she has an abortion. Studies in Canada indicate that sterility is as high as thirty percent among women fifteen to seventeen years old who have had abortions . .

Protection of the life of the mother as an excuse for an abortion is a smoke screen. In my thirty-six years in pediatric surgery I have never known of one instance where the child had to be be aborted to save the mother's life.

When a woman is pregnant, her obstetrician takes on the care of two patients—the mother-to-be and the unborn baby. If, toward the end of the pregnancy complications arise that threaten the mother's health, he will take the child by inducing labor or performing a Caesarian section.

His intention is still to save the life of both the mother and the baby. The baby will be premature . . The baby is never willfully destroyed because the mother's life is in danger.

Infanticide was the second domino, and it fell very silently. Unless you know someone who talks about his work in an intensive care unit for newborns, there is no way the public would know about this. Abortion is legal. Infanticide is murder.

It is still illegal in every state in the union; yet for some reason when a newborn baby is starved or in some other way allowed to die, the law turns its back. It isn't that the law doesn't know about it because reputable medical journals publish papers where authors acknowledge that they have engineered the deaths of babies under their care . .

Corruptive forces are exerting an influence on medical men and women in this country. Some obstetricians admit that they abort because the patient wants them to, even if it is not medically required . ."

http://www.pathlights.com/abortion/abort08.htm

Abortions in the first trimester for reasons of convenience are perfectly acceptable. It is a choice the parent (not the state) makes for themselves.

~Ulrika~