Posted on 12/06/2009 3:25:47 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
Sorry wags, I meant to ping you to #280
I doubt that people seek or physicans perform abortions with the intent of creating a master race.
Or are you one of these types who considers abortion to be a form of birth control?
No. I believe that idea was first established in law by Comstock, but I never agreed with it.
No, they are provided with the opportunity to abort their children because the eugenicists have manipulated certain groups into thinking that abortion is the best course of action.
Nobody had abortions before Darwin?
Were abortions performed before the eugenicists came along? Yes, but they were very, very rare and they WERE NOT marketed by eugenicists.
*encouraged* might be a better term.
While the mother who is pregnant isn't necessarily thinking along the master race lines, the huge push for prenatal genetic testing and pushing for people to abort the imperfect ones, is eugenics, no matter how it's packaged.
The eugenicists just present it differently to try to dupe the parents into making that decision.
And when those parents do go in for genetic testing and choose abortion, they do it with the full knowledge that they are trying to not pass on harmful genes, not necessarily for the allegedly more altruistic sounding reason of improving the race as a whole, but based on the appeal to them of convenience for themselves and/or alleged quality of life for the child.
How do you know how rare they were, and what does "marketed by eugenicists" mean? Are you saying there are organizations out there working covertly to create a master race?
Abortions were apparently common enough in ancient Greece for Hippocrates to address the issue directly in the Hippocratic oath.
It's hard to find accurate statistics anywhere prior to the mid-20th century. But nothing indicates that there were one million abortions per week.
and what does "marketed by eugenicists" mean? Are you saying there are organizations out there working covertly to create a master race?
Why do you think a poor black woman in an inner city is likely to have an abortion facility within walking distance when a upper middle class white woman in a suburb doesn't?
Abortions were apparently common enough in ancient Greece for Hippocrates to address the issue directly in the Hippocratic oath.
It's more likely that Hippocrates was deeply offended by the knowledge that even one had been performed.
Because in the inner city virtually everything is squeezed together and stacked up, in instead of all spread out, like the suburbs? There's more likely to be a restraunt within walking distance, too. What does that mean?
So, in the absence of evidence there were a million a week, the reasonable conclusion is that they were "very, very rare"?
Abortion facilities are nearly always found in inner cities and they target minorities.
Until the early part of the 20th century, abortions were illegal everywhere. So yes, there were very rare. Aside from the legality there was a general hesitation to perform any elective surgery due to the risk of infection.
There were about 1.65 billion people in the world in 1900 and two-thirds of those were in Asia and Africa. There weren't enough doctors to perform a million abortions a week and there certainly weren't over 50 million women a year who wanted them.
Hi Electric Strawberry!
RE the above: No. I don't. What I think they're thinking about is that's it's okay, perfectly rational, to kill genetically defective fetuses. Somewhere upwards of 80 percent of Downs babies are in fact killed by their mothers in utero — and with a good conscience, I might add. After all, these babies are genetically defective; they are, in other words, not "fit"....
Why do you think Sally Quinn bears such implacable loathing for Sarah Palin? Palin stripped the mask off this little game and in effect said that genetic fitness or lack thereof is not a criterion that bears on the right to life, either at the inception of life (at conception), at its end, or any place in between.
Of course you are right: "One currently does not need a justification to have an abortion, under the law for ANY reason, let alone a DS baby." Yes. But what Sarah did was to "take off the fig leaf of 'respectability'" that so many women crave.... This is unforgivable to the Sally Quinns of this world, who — though they'd never admit it — are closet eugenicists.
You want to make "eugenics" about "gene pool considerations," and only that. You seem to be saying if someone does not directly invoke "the gene pool," then that person is not a eugenicist. Unfortunately, the logic of eugenics is not confined to manipulating the gene pool; it is ever more deeply subversive than that. It says that man, or a group of men, determine the criteria of what constitutes a "worthy" or "fit" human life. Lives that do not meet these criteria can be destroyed without remorse.
You wrote:
As a matter of personal belief....apply your God's standard all you want. Public policy? So long as you applying your God's standard without establishing religion....have at it.But that's exactly what the Declaration of Independence did, ElectricStrawberry — which holds as self-evident that you have certain God-given rights — life, liberty, property ("happiness") — because they are vested directly in you by your Creator.
U.S. constitutional law follows "God's standard" already. If you doubt that, we can have further discussion on that point.
Thanks so much for writing, ES!
There were about 1.65 billion people in the world in 1900 and two-thirds of those were in Asia and Africa. There weren't enough doctors to perform a million abortions a week and there certainly weren't over 50 million women a year who wanted them.
Being rarer because they were illegal is probably a valid assumption. The conclusion that this means "very rare" is speculative and subjetive.
The point about it being rarer then than today because of advances in medical technology and availablity are valid, but also true of virtually all medical procedures. The arguments that there were fewer abortions in the past because there were fewer people and fewer doctors is also a reasonable assumption, but also not unique to abortion as medical procedure.
So, we are in agreement that, compared today, abortion was very rare prior to the early-to-mid 20th century.
Moreover, abortion statistics take on a whole different dimension when they are taken as a percentage of live births in a given nation.
No, we are not. We are in agreement that it was rarer than it is today.
What does a low percentage abortions to live births tell you about a nation?
I think I can agree with much of what you say on abortion/DS.....especially concerning Palin and her opening the eyes of those that have a DS fetus and might be thinking of abortion as an option.....might turn that percentage around a little and save some lives.
BUT, "eugenics" already has a definition and I will stick with it. It is the purposeful improvement of the human species by improving the genetic pool......either voluntary or forced.
If this was just "My baby tested positive for the BRCA1 gene, so I killed it in-utero" (or any other disease)......THEN it would be "eugenics" because the BRCA1 gene doesn't typically lead to breast cancer and potential death until after reproduction. So, the argument would be that one is improving the genetic fitness of the species by disallowing bad genes.
Concerning specific genetic defects like DS that leave the afflicted incapable of being part of the gene pool, it cannot be eugenics......so I must lay it on the parents simply not wanting to deal with what is going to be an unexpected ordeal for decades....when what they want is a normal healthy child and society has allowed the choice.
That society allows such a choice is the other half of the coin.
But that's exactly what the Declaration of Independence did
This is referring to "public policy" and "God". Well, the Declaration is not a governing document that sets public policy and governance. It is a statement of out intentions at the time, nothing more.
There's a reason why the very same people that talked of the Creator in a statement to an oppressive governmnet....purposely went and left God out of the governing document....public policy and governance.
BUT, I'll note that "among them" are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.....not the right to own a firearm as the argument was going. I wonder where this God-given right to own a firearm was before there were firearms.
I'd love to hear the short-version of "God's standard being in the Constitution" though. (probably won't get to it til tomorrow)
That they value life more than nations with a higher number.
ES, your view of the Constitution is, ahem, anhistorical.
The Framers believed that individual rights could never be "grants" of the State. For what the State has the power to grant, it has an equal power to rescind. Therefore, to the Framers it was "self-evident" that certain rights had to be unalienably vested in human nature itself by God Himself, and the State [Leviathan] cannot in any way abridge, interfere with, modify, or revoke these natural (God-given) rights. That's what makes them "unalienable."
So the Second Amendment is not the grant by the State (i.e., by the Constitution) of a RKBA. It is the recognition of a pre-existing (i.e., God-granted) right to self defense — perfectly consistent with the DoI's language of the rights of life, liberty, and [defense of] property.
If you think that the Second Amendment is in any way a "positive" act of the State, establishing an individual right, then pray tell me: What "positive" rights do the 9th and 10th amendments establish?
ES wrote: "If the government removes your Constitutional right through the Constitutional Amendment process, you no longer have that Constitutional right."
Again, your view is anhistorical. [Are you of the legal positivist school by any chance?] Not even the Constitutional Amendment process can legitimately interfere with rights that are unalienable. The defense and preservation of the sovereign rights of We the People is the entire raison d'être of the Constitution in the first place.
The Framers believed that there is nothing in the world that any government can do legitimately, or with justice, to interfere with the unalienable rights of its citizens — BECAUSE they are not the grants of government, but of God!!!
For the State to transgress against the natural unalienable rights of their citizens would be prima facie proof that the State is operating as a tyranny.
ES seems not to have considered the worldview, reasoning, culture/education, and intentions of our Founders/Framers in making his claims.
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