A Genius Speaks On Abortion...

I wish I had written the below. It is long, but exquisite, and I am not going to italicize it as usual. It was written over on Right Thinking From The Left Coast by a poster who calls himself John Quincy Public, who does not post nearly enough.
Now, get to it:

Update:

There is continuing discussion between these two protaginists at the above link...go, read and enjoy the nicest, most civil 'fuck you fest' I have ever witnessed.
Really.

[the italicized below is the part of some liberal assholes comment that caused the entire post. I will italicize all of the liberal quotes JQP rebuts.]
Of COURSE the solution is the death penalty. Kill EVERYBODY

Disingenious. As a strict issue, the questions surrounding abortion revolve around when a new life becomes a person and is imbued with the rights and protection of society as granted all other "viable" members of that society.

If you take the tack that abortion is murder, on secular or religous grounds, then imprisonment and/or capital punishment is definitely appropriate and is a "rational" (more on your rationality below) legal consequence.


(Your next 2 quotes are placed in reverse order)

Additionally, does abstinence education really work as a practical matter? Data, please.

Too many pregnancies occur because there's a lack of education

You make the supposition about a lack of education (birth control) being responsible for pregnancy without providing data. I'm hoping you will see fit to rectify that post haste. On your point of abstinence education - an equal number of studies that I'm aware of (1 each) have shown that it does and does not work depending on which account you read. As a practical matter the methodology of one or both studies is flawed though I couldn't attest to which one. Anecdotally, there is a study that shows that teaching abstinence as well as prevention shows a decline in pregnancy rates as opposed to teaching abstinence alone. Now, I've seen your unsupported hypocritical assumptions and raised you 3 unprovided contradictory studies - care to up the ante?


If something's being driven into YOUR kid's head, isn't it your responsibility as a parent to drive it out?

I felt relevant to follow up your education quotes with this delicous snippets you shat into one of your later posts. If it is the responsibility of the parent to manage the education of these issues then why is the school educating children at all; be it prevention or abstinence?

It'd be nice if parents always provided that, but they don't.

Ah, but the public school system does (prevention anyways). Since that education is only partial contentious and unltimately nothing more than a moral issue (see your bit on governmental morality intrusions below) then shouldn't you either choose to support such intrusions (cause them parents are dummies) or oppose it (since them govt are intrusive)? 'splain.

Though I'll defer to scientists on the queston of viability

The general consensus seems to be 24 weeks. Note, however, that a consensus is a political point, not a scientific one.

Eliminating abortion would be the ultimate intrusion of government into citizen's moral decision-making. Additionally, it's illegal.

Abortion's not murder until the fetus is viable. According to the law, that's first trimester, and a little into the second.

On one hand you state banning abortion would be an intrusion and on the other have no problem restricting abortions once the fetus is past viability. Given that you accept viability as a useful cutoff point what would be the relevant difference in picking any other viable cutoff point up to and including the point of conception? The law on this point, as well as your opinion, is damnably schizophrenic and dare we say... irrational. (more below)


Eliminating parental consent for minors can allow for earlier access to pre-natal care.

Disingenious. Parental consent is required for all other (and indeed safer) elective medical procedures. Parental consent is a general way of protecting those kids who are "so dumb and scared" from making a bad call in all things in life. If you haven't noticed the prevailing justification for all child related protection laws (such as statutory rape and general child abuse) are basedon the concept that because they are still children they are "dumb and scared". Given that all other child based laws (especially those that affirm parental consent) are based strictly on the fact that children are "dumb and scared" how can it be rational for this one issue above all others disallow parental guidance on the same condition - that being immaturity.


Kids today realize that, for the most part. One of the decisions they can make is to have an abortion, a perfectly legal, rational procedure.

Now to the "rational" bit. Legal it may be, but it is most certainly not a rational piece of law.

An example: Taking the stance that abortion is not murder (regardless of viability). What is it? It cannot be property, otherwise the father would have a vested and equal interest in it regardless of the relevant risk of injury imposed upon the mother or father. But if the fetus isn't property how can the state force child support from a father post birth? In any other case of property law if one of 2 parties abrogates further interest in the property to the other owner then the first party is no longer responsible for the maintenance of said property. That is irrational. Additionally, if it were property and the mother chose to abrogate rights to the father then how can she possibly destroy that property (the fetus) without the father's consent? In any other case of property that would simply be a criminal charge of vandalism or property destruction levied against the mother.

So we can conclude that as a matter of rationality that law does not consider a fetus to be proprerty.

If then "it is her body" then we face a similar problem. Now we have created an instance where, should I meet you on the street and we engage in the physical act of shaking hands, that I may attach your wages for the warts you then transmitted to me through that handshake. This is reasonably identical as to this end you deposited on me something akin to an affliction that is not "property" and is "my body". In such a case, if I can prove your culpability in the transmission of this infliction, I may attach your wages and hold you responsible for damages due up and until the point that the infliction is removed from my body. Fair enough. But how do we then justify under existing law furthering the maintenance you owe after the infliction is removed? Or furthering maintenance should I choose to stay in good company with the given infliction once it is removed and I choose to feed and care for it, thus continuing its existence through care and feeding? Or can we then only account for child support payments as being of different name but functionally identical to awards made for "pain and suffering"? An award that would be nonsensical as the furtherance of pain was made by my choice alone. Even worse that should I not remove the infliction rapidly enough that the state now demands that either of us is now mandated and barred by law from discontinuing the nuturing of the wart you deposited on me.

So it can not be rationally, under law, "my body" and a non-property, non-human.

Which leaves the concept of murder. And if that's all that is left, then by necessity, abortion must be murder. But that must be equally irrational under law as we do permit abortions, but do not allow the murder of human beings except in the case of self defence. Is bearing a child then an agressive attack? If so, then abortion is fine and rational (even post viability, but not post birth). But of course, if aboriton is self defence then of necessity every man that joins in consensual sexual congress is thus a rapist; for if he were not, the pregnancy would be consensual and thus the fetus could not be considered the consequence of being under assault and in "common man" fear of imminent mortal peril (the usual requirement for a claim of killing) as a means of self-defence, not the least of which because if pregnancy were indeed a mortal peril then the human race would never have swollen to the billions of members it has, and because the act that led to that pregnancy was consensual. Clearly under this guise, if all men are rapists in consensual congress then all women must of necessity be incapable of judgement relating to their own preservation and thus be conferred to be wards of the state as there is then no doubt that they must be severly stricken by mental illness to agree to put them in such mortal peril, no less so than an attempt at suicide.

Now that we can see that under law a fetus is neither an affliction, nor property, and we can state with utmost assurance that all sexually active men are not rapists, nor women suicidal; and that in this one case among all others the law declares that children are mature enough to make a sound decision about the course of their life in engaging in the act of a destruction/murder of a maybe-not-yet-but-will-be-soon-person - can you still call the law rational?

Aside from my own opinions on the subject of abortion, if you find justice and equity in the current state of law regarding abortion then it is incumbent on you to address solutions to the host of other injustices incurred by the allowance of such an act. Or, like me, you can accept that in civilized society that abortion is no different than murder, as a practical matter if not a historic and moral one, as the only way to address the various irrationalities under law as it exists is to destroy the very foundation of civiliation itself. That is a ncessary outcome as you must either consider pre and post humans thus an affliction and cleanse society of them for the public health, or state that all humans are non-humans and thus have no right to life or liberty and simply are the cattle of the state to be bought and sold and butchered as best befits the state's economic whims. Neither condition may exist under the rule of law or our society in particular; though I certainly know some who engage in Pavlovian drooling at the anticipation of such a society coming to be.

Update:

There is continuing discussion between these two protaginists at the above link...go, read and enjoy the nicest, most civil 'fuck you fest' I have ever witnessed.