Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Covering Up The Killing

How many times have you read about enemies so bad “they picked up babies by their feet and smashed their heads against trees?” A 2006 CBS report describes the Khmer Rouge soldiers doing exactly that in Cambodia. ISIS has been killing babies born with Down Syndrome and Nazis euthanized handicapped children in the 1930s. These are credible accounts, but fictitious portrayals of infanticide abound throughout history as well. They include accusations against WWI Germany, against 17th century Irish rebels, but most frequently against Jews accused of killing babies during more than a thousand years of blood libel accounts in which Jews allegedly use blood of Christian babies to make matzo for Passover.
Baby killing accusations have always stirred up popular outrage or they would not have been used for so long. Twice they came up in recent debates: first between Pence and Kaine, and then during the third debate between Trump and Clinton when the partial birth abortion procedure was discussed. Any neutral witness to the procedure could only conclude that a human baby is killed, yet both Kaine and Clinton used their finely-honed, double-talk skills to deny it.
Donald Trump had claimed: “Hillary is saying in the ninth month you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth…” To which Hillary replied: “Well, that is not what happens in these cases and using that kind of scare rhetoric is just terribly unfortunate.”
She’s right in one way: the baby is not ripped out. It’s more gruesome than that. The abortionist pulls the baby’s body out of its mother but leaves its head inside. Then he/she punctures the back of the baby’s neck at the base of its skull, inserts a tube, and sucks out its brain. If Trump had described that, could Hillary have called it “scare rhetoric”? It’s the truth, but Hillary and truth are not acquainted. If a baby is fully delivered, it’s a citizen with legal rights and killing it is murder. It’s not murder, however, to suck out its brains a minute earlier. As Hillary said on Meet The Press last April: “the unborn person doesn’t have constitutional rights.” 
Back in the 90s, Congress twice passed a ban on partial birth abortion and twice Bill Clinton vetoed it. It became law when George W. Bush signed it after Congress passed it a third time. Hillary would obviously like to reverse that, and she can depend on Democrats in Congress to help. It is, after all, the party of abortion without limits. They even support abortionists who kill babies surviving abortions! Back in September of last year, the House passed a bill that would penalize any abortionists who kill babies born alive after a failed abortion attempt. The vote was 248-177 with every vote against from Democrats. Now it goes to the senate as S5506 sponsored by Senator Ben Sasse. President Obama promised a veto because it would “limit women’s health care choices.” Huh? Killing babies after they’re born is “women’s health care” and “choice”? What has become of us?
When Planned Parenthood was caught selling aborted baby parts last year, they were in real trouble. They were caught dead to rights on video and their funding was drying up. George Soros and the whole Democrat stonewalling, obfuscating, lying machine went into battle mode with the Mainstream Media leading the charge. In an awesome display of power, every MSM outlet said the same thing: “The video was edited.” It was like an echo chamber. When Carly Fiorina brought it up at a presidential debate and started rising in the polls, the MSM virtually destroyed her candidacy by accusing her of lying.
Then Democrats really flexed their political muscle:

When a grand jury in Houston, Texas was formed to investigate Planned Parenthood for selling baby parts, it instead indicted David Daleiden, whose team exposed the gruesome sales. Pro-abortion District Attorney Devon Anderson persuaded them to charge Daleiden for using false IDs in his under-cover investigation!
Houston DA Devon Anderson

Daleiden lives in California where the most damning of his undercover videos were filmed. Pro-abortion California Attorney General Kamala Harris — who got $81,000 in campaign contributions from Planned Parenthood — refused to investigate. Instead, she invaded Daieiden's home seizing all his remaining unpublished videos, his laptop, and his phone.
Democrats are the party of abortion. It is their single most important issue. Obama was willing to shut down our entire government if Congress submitted a budget without $500 million for Planned Parenthood. Support for Roe V Wade is the biggest Democrat criterion for appointing or approving justices to the Supreme Court. As Pogo put it years ago: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” We’re the ones killing babies, and Democrats do whatever is necessary to cover up and keep the slaughter going.

54 comments:

claire said...

You are courageous. I have personally found out that speaking the truth about abortion brings a lot of backlash. If abortion was not the killing of an unborn child then abortion would be ok. The people I know who want to research the truth about the living, growing and valuable human from the moment of conception are those who want to defend life. The pro-choice people do not want to hear anything about it. I also want to say that I believe the mother who has an abortion is also a victim. Good for you Tom McLaughlin

Anonymous said...

THE FACT CHECKER | Trump suggested that abortions can take place just two or three days before birth. That doesn’t really happen.

Most abortions take place early in the pregnancy. One-third take place at six weeks or pregnancy or earlier; 89 percent occur in the first 12 weeks, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. Only 1.2 percent of abortions—about 12,000 a year– take place after 21 weeks. (The Supreme Court has held that states may not prohibit abortions “necessary to preserve the life or health” of the mother.)

On top of that, Guttmacher says that 43 states already prohibit some abortions after a certain point in pregnancy, such as fetal viability, in the third trimester or after a certain number of weeks. So this is already a rare procedure that is prohibited in much of the country.

Brian said...

You still haven't crawled out from underneath your rock of lies concerning Planned Parenthood? Astoundingly ignorant or astoundingly dishonest, not sure which.

http://www.factcheck.org/2015/07/unspinning-the-planned-parenthood-video/

Anonymous said...

I know many, many Democrats and I can't think of a single one for whom abortion is, as you claim, their single most important issue. Corporate crime and corporate welfare, climate change, college affordability, and many other issues are higher up the list. Where did you get that notion from? It sounds like something Trump would make up.

Tom McLaughlin said...

Factcheck.org is funded by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. I've done work with the Annenberg Foundation and I know it's controlled by the left.

I've also seen every video and I know they're genuine. Have you? It takes hours and it takes a strong stomach too.

I do not allow my thinking to be controlled by dubious "fact checkers," especially progressive ones. You obviously do.

Anonymous said...

The video's against planned parenthood were flat out lies. They cherry picked bits and pieces from multiple conversations to create a lie. Medical companies used the tissue to save other people's lives. Planned Parenthood charged shipping and handling for the shipping of the donated tissue. They did not make a profit. They used the standard procedure for organ donation. If someone dies and the next of kin agree to donate the organs the hospital takes out the donated organs and charges the person getting the organ transplant the cost of taking the organ out and shipping it to the person receiving it.

Fetal tissues are used to treat various medical issues such as Parkinson's disease, diabetes, and spinal cord injuries. If some tissue from an abortion is intended to be used in an attempt to help a person trapped in a wheelchair walk again, who should be responsible for the cost of properly packaging and shipping the tissue, the woman having the abortion or the person who may be able to walk again?

Who do you believe should be charged the cost of taking out a lung, or heart or other body organ and shipping it to the person who will be saved? Should the grieving loved ones bear the cost or should the person whose life is saved by this wonderful donation bear the cost?

Abortions in the last month of pregnancy are extremely rare. The problem with outlawing them is that there have been multiple situations were the fetus has died inside the mother and the doctors refused to perform an abortion on the dead fetus because the possible legal and financial problems. Many women have died in Catholic run hospitals in the U.S. because of this. The most common reason for a late term abortion is that doctors have discovered that the fetus is so badly deformed that it will die as soon as the cord is cut. Fetus's without lungs for example. In some of these cases, it is best to just let the baby be born and immediately die. But in other cases, there is a real chance that both the baby and the mother will die if she tries to give birth to the baby naturally.

Would you be willing to tell a husband that because of a new abortion law we are going to have to let his wife unnecessarily die so that his dearly wanted child can have two or three minutes of life?

Anonymous said...

Blaming the messenger? I'm sure you have something against all fact checkers that rely on facts, disrupting your made up reality.

http://www.politifact.com/personalities/planned-parenthood/statements/



Anonymous said...

Right now it is "women's rights." What happens, as it is now done in china, when it is Government's rights?

Barb Miller said...

Hi Tom, God's blessings on you and your family. What is the opposite of pro-life? It is not pro-choice, it's anti-life. I'm a one-issue voter; I will only listen to your position (on just about everything) depending on your stand on life of the pre-born and beyond to old-age. So thank you again for standing for the truth despite those anti-life voices that criticize you. Yesterday I watched a short video that captured the spark of light that occurs when an ovum is fertilized-"God said Let there be light". It was marvelous! God is Love. God is Light. God is Life. Pray that the anti-life lefties see the Light! God will always have the last word.

Tom McLaughlin said...

At every stage of pregnancy, from the earliest to the latest, abortion stops a beating human heart.

neal said...

I am becoming an old man. When the twins were born, they tried to flush us down the toilet. If not for grandma with a shotgun, we would have never breathed the free air. I know a guy that had to get snuck into Egypt to escape the ones in charge.

Stuff that needs to live. To preserve life is not for the weak.

I do not understand death cults. Probably something to do with choosing Mammon over most anything else.
Probably a very warped cognition of time.

I thought there were rules.

Brian said...

"At every stage of pregnancy, from the earliest to the latest, abortion stops a beating human heart."

Your weak grasp on reality is again showing. The human heart is not even formed until the second month of pregnancy. You can't stop something that hasn't started. Your not knowing this fact helps me understand why you don't accept other well known facts, like with Planned Parenthood and climate change.

Baby-lives matter said...

"Americans the nicest, most generous, and sentimental people on earth. Yet Americans have killed more unborn children than any other nation in history.
Now Euthanasia is beginning." - Walker Percy

And those Catholics (in name only) who think they know more about the issues than their priests....what a hoot they are. Sell-outs.

Baby Lives Matter said...

Brian who is hung up on a 2 months: plenty of abortions take place after the 2nd month. Abortions do stop beating hearts.

Brian said...

"Hung up"? No, just pointing out a fact versus a melodramatic soundbite, that first month abortions certainly do NOT stop beating hearts. That being said, I hate abortion, as do most on the left. You see, it is possible to hate something, like abortion or hate speech from the KKK, and still come to terms with the rights of these people to do such things.

As for Trumps melodramatic scare tactics, here are the facts.

http://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/10/21/13352872/donald-trump-abortion-wrong

Baby Lives Matter said...

Brian said: "That being said, I hate abortion, as do most on the left. You see, it is possible to hate something, like abortion or hate speech..."

Why do you hate abortion?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdwT5tXvGUw

Tom McLaughlin said...

Nearly very abortion procedure dismembers a human baby. Exceptions are the earliest chemical abortions using RU-486, and the latest chemical abortions during the ninth month which involve a series of injections inducing a heart attack in the child who is then born dead. In every other case, the baby is literally torn apart and removed in pieces.

Thousands of third trimester abortions are performed every year.

Michael Moore said...

Realize that many excuses for dishonesty are dishonest in themselves. Your nation is fast approaching that point in time when those in power will no longer be held accountable. This is possible as a direct result of corruption in the legal and judiciary systems. Soon the future of your country will be only in the hands of a corrupt few, if you do not choose wisely in this election.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqZpJkC6gqQ

Anonymous said...

I'd like to know why Brian "hates" abortion. Brian, would you please explain?

Brian said...

I guess I would say that I hate the fact that there is a need for it, that women get pregnant when they didn't mean to, be it rape or carelessness, or that medical conditions arrive that make abortion a necessity for the sake of the mother's life. It is something that always comes along with pain and tormenting decisions - what's to like about it?


It seems an odd question. Why do you ask?

Anonymous said...

You didn't answer my question, Brian. You just reiterated why you believe it's necessary to kill the unborn. What is it about killing the unborn that you find offensive? Or do you not find that offensive? I find it very offensive. Don't you?

Brian said...

I think I did answer the question. I hate it much the way I hate war, which is sometimes a necessary horror which results in overall benefits, and sometimes just an avoidable horror. I find war and abortion offensive, but in some rare instances I believe it to be the best.

Anonymous said...

best choice

Brian said...

Huh? It is possible for abortion to have some overall benefits. For example, it is a fact that mother's lives have been saved due to removing a fetus with complications. What does that fact have to do with Hitler? Nothing he did saved lives. It seems like he is the go to guy for when one has run out of valid points.

I also think it is the woman's choice whether or not to put herself through the mental torture of bringing to life the child of her rapist.

Perhaps you would like our country to be more like El Salvador, a place where 9-year-old girls impregnated by rape are forced to bear children, where women have no choice but to continue potentially deadly ectopic pregnancies, where women who have miscarriages are routinely accused of trying to abort their fetuses and imprisoned for murder if found guilty.

Then there is the story of Beatriz, a 22-year-old pregnant woman whose case became an international cause celebre among reproductive rights activists last year, when she was denied a potentially life saving abortion. Beatriz, pregnant with her second child, had lupus and kidney disease, a complication of lupus. Early in her pregnancy, her baby was discovered to be anencephalic, lacking a portion of brain and skull, a condition incompatible with life.

For months, Beatriz and her advocates fought to end the pregnancy in order to save her deteriorating health. The case dragged on, despite interventions by the United Nations and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

In her seventh month of pregnancy, the Salvadoran government permitted Beatriz to have an early caesarean section. (Which is what late term abortions are, not as melodramatic as "ripped from the womb") The baby died hours later.


Last week, NPR told the astonishing story with video, of a Salvadoran woman, Christina Quintanilla, who served four years of a 30-year sentence after being convicted of murder at age 17 for giving birth, prematurely, to a stillborn baby.

“The hospital had found no evidence that she had intentionally aborted the pregnancy,” NPR reported. “But the district attorney pushed forward anyway, arguing that Quintanilla had terminated the pregnancy because she couldn’t support another child.”



Even Ireland is so backward when it comes to abortion rights that in 2012, doctors essentially let a 31-year-old woman die of infection after she miscarried and they refused to remove the 17-week old dying fetus from her body until it was too late.

Savita Halappanavar’s husband said later he was told that no abortion would be performed because “it was the law, that this is a Catholic country.”

This is what happens when religion trumps women’s choices, women’s health and women’s lives – in El Salvador, in Ireland and increasingly in the United States.

Anonymous said...

When Trump suggested that “you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the final day,” he appears not to realize that the term for that — and it’s done considerably less violently — is a Cesarean section, a common, safe procedure by which about a third of women deliver their babies every year. In other words, Trump described how more than a million women every year give birth. It’s quite legal, and generally a cause for celebration.

If that sounds a bit flippant, that’s because, as Jen Gunter, an OBGYN who trained in late-term abortions, pointed out on Twitter, “There is no such thing as a ninth month abortion.” Those who seek late-term abortions are seeking them before a pregnancy reaches full term but often and unfortunately after they have discovered in the second or third trimester some problem with the fetus or danger to the mother.


But the inaccuracies started before Trump even responded: Wallace’s question was problematic right out of the gate because of the term he used. “Partial birth” is a political, not medical, term, and it does not refer to all late-term abortions. It refers to a very specific and rare procedure called dilation and extraction*, in which a fetus is partially pulled through the birth canal and then aborted, nearly always when the fetus cannot live outside the womb and typically when the mother’s health is in danger, the fetus has a serious abnormality, or both. Such a procedure is not conducted lightly: the fetus has a fatal defect and will not survive, or the mother is at risk of death herself.


“The kinds of cases that fall at the end of pregnancy are often the most heartbreaking, painful decisions for families to make,” Clinton said at the debate. “I have met with women who toward the end of their pregnancy get the worst news one could get, that their health is in jeopardy if they continue to carry to term or that something terrible has happened or just been discovered about the pregnancy. I do not think the United States government should be stepping in and making those most personal of decisions.”

If you have any question about whether the harrowing stories Clinton referred to are really the case, you can read the details of one woman’s story yourself. Despite being “overjoyed” at her pregnancy, a discovery of a fatal defect in the fetus led her to the painful decision to have an abortion at 32 weeks — for which she was fortunate to have the resources to seek by flying across the country to Colorado. (She specifically notes, “if the doctors thought there was any way he [the fetus] might make it, I would have taken that chance.”) A number of fetal abnormalities that lead to death or extremely severe disability in a fetus — including the majority of problems caused by a Zika infection during pregnancy — are not identified until after the 20th week of pregnancy.

When it was Trump’s chance to respond, his answer went far afield of any medical procedures that actually take place in the real world: “Well, I think it’s terrible. If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby.”

Clinton correctly responded that “that is not what happens in these cases.”

From Forbes Magazine

Anonymous said...

Plenty of women have abortions because the condom broke or their pill failed. I'm most cases, the unborn are killed not to save the mother's life but to exterminate the unwanted baby.

Stop looking for excuses & phony compassionate anecdotes.

Life has a very short window for figuring out the truly important things. Miss it and you're pretty well screwed.

Brian said...

And in those cases abortion is a horrible thing and shouldn't be. The anecdotes are not phony, that is just a lazy and ignorant way to convince yourself that abortion should never be a choice.

Anonymous said...

Brian, you never answered the specific question why you hate abortion. You've compared it to war, and said it offers more good than bad, essentially. You see the GOOD in killing the unborn. You haven't yet explained why you "hate" it. You might say you have, but you have not. And that, is lazy, ignorant and dishonest.

The limited extreme cases do no warrant mass wholesale abortion or tax-payer funding nor religious objector funding. They offer no legal legitimization for the majority of cases where the mothers don't want to be burdened with the responsibilities.

scenario said...

Anti abortion people need to look at late term abortions in the real world. In almost every case the doctors tell the people who want to be parents that their dearly wanted baby will die either in the womb or shortly after birth. The parents have two choices.

1) Try to have the baby and if they are lucky they will get to watch their baby die within a few hours after birth. If they are unlucky, they mother will be severely injured and have to spend months to recover and there is a real possibility that she might die. Even if she lives the damage may make it impossible for her to ever have another child.

2) Chose to abort the dearly wanted but doomed baby and leave the mother alive and healthy enough to try again if they decide to.

Anti abortion people want to take couples choices away from these parent. This is a medical decision and third parties have no right to tell people that it is better to let a woman and maybe mother of other children die because the rights of a doomed child are more important that this woman's right to live.

Brian said...

Yes, I DID say why I hate abortion. Because it causes agonizing and painful choices, and it is a horrible experience for people that go through with it due to rape/incest. Those are reasons, I can't help it if you don't like them.

The "limited and extreme" cases I mention are matched by the "limited and extreme" cases fear mongers like Trump bring up about 9th month abortions.

Anonymous said...

I can see why you think their is a left leaning bias in the media if you really believe that the press was not fair about exposing Fionna and her spin on the edited Planned Parenthood tapes. TO the real world, that is good, straightforward, honest reporting.

Anonymous said...

Only Americans can be so absorbed in themselves that they cannot realize the horror of their foreign policy in other nations, that rips the lives out of everyone both prenatal or post.

We came we saw they died lol

scenario said...

I really don't get the idea of liberal facts. Opinions can be liberal, conservative or many other things. But facts cannot be liberal or conservative. Let's say that Trump says that he never said something or other. Someone looks it up and finds five different youtube video's of him saying exactly what he said he never said. They post a link to the entire video and tell you the exact time to look. You can listen to the entire video to be sure that the comment was not taken out of context.

Now the website may be run by liberals but the youtube video is not in of itself liberal. It is evidence that Trump lied.

I also don't understand liberal science. If someone uses tools like rulers and thermometers and scales, how can they tell if they are liberal or conservative rulers or thermometers or scales? If twenty different groups of scientists in different countries run the same experiment and they all come up with the same result that conservatives do not like, they are not liberal scientists, just scientists. It is also very unlikely to be a massive conspiracy of hundreds of scientists. It is just a fact. You can argue with opinions. But you can't argue with well established facts.

Tammy Stahlecker said...

Bodily autonomy means a person has control over who or what uses their body, for what, and for how long. Its why you can't be forced to donate blood, tissue, or organs. Even if you are dead. Even if you’d save or improve 20 lives. It’s why someone can’t touch you, have sex with you, or use your body in any way without your continuous consent.

A fetus is using someone’s body parts. Therefore under bodily autonomy, it is there by permission, not by right. It needs a persons continuous consent. If they deny and withdraw their consent, the pregnant person has the right to remove them from that moment. A fetus is equal in this regard because if I need someone else’s body parts to live, they can also legally deny me their use.
By saying a fetus has a right to someone’s body parts until it’s born, despite the pregnant person’s wishes, you are doing two things.

1. Granting a fetus more rights to other people’s bodies than any born person.
2. Awarding a pregnant person less rights to their body than a corpse.

Making abortions illegal is not going to stop women from having abortions. It is only going to force women to do what they did before abortions were legal. DIY abortions with coat-hangers, poisons, throwing yourself down the stairs or going to back alley abortions where they will either kill the woman or make her sterile. So the choice is up to you, do you want your wife, mother, sister, aunt, cousin, girlfriend to have an abortion in a safe, sterile environment or do you want her to decide between DIY or back alley abortions? The choice is yours, but abortions are going to happen either way.

Tom McLaughlin said...

"Bodily autonomy means a person has control over who or what uses their body..." writes Tammy.

Interesting that Hillary said: "the unborn person doesn’t have constitutional rights.” She didn't say fetus. A Freudian slip, no doubt, a random utterance of truth from a woman not well acquainted with it.

"A fetus is using someone’s body parts. Therefore under bodily autonomy, it is there by permission, not by right. It needs a persons continuous consent," writes Tammy.

Planned Parenthood uses a baby's body parts without its permission. As with a dead person, (which the baby become after Planned Parenthood and its mother have their way with it), the baby is unable to grant permission for its body parts to be sold for profit by PP and its affiliates.

"Bodily autonomy means a person has control over who or what uses their body, for what, and for how long," writes Tammy.

Yes, and the woman had control, and gave permission for sex, which she knew could result in the creation of another human being. She has no moral right to then kill it. She has the legal right after Roe V Wade, but that's tenuous in today's political climate.

Yes, some women will have abortions if Roe is repealed, but that doesn't make what they do morally right. They can also bring it to termed and put it up for adoption. Inconvenient maybe, but better than killing it. Democrats want to make the rest of us pay for abortions we know are morally wrong.

You call it a fetus, Tammy. I call it a baby. "I'm having a fetus!" said no mother ever. A pregnant woman is "with child," not "with fetus." A pregnant woman has another person with its own DNA and its own heart in her body, and she consented to the act from which it resulted.

scenario said...

The concept of consent is not particularly important to many conservatives. When people discovered that Josh Duggar had molested several much younger sisters the reaction of many conservatives was that 15 year old (at the time) Josh shouldn't be punished for committing a felony, he was just curious. The rights of the boy were much more important than the rights of the girls.

Whenever a topic concerning consent comes up, conservatives come out of the wood works to deny that women have any right to say no.

What is morality depends to some extent on the individual. I do not consider abortion to be immoral. I do consider religion immoral. Do I believe that religion should be banned? No. I do not think that my personal morality should be enforced on other people.

Abortion is one of the subjects that is totally based on a persons particular moral outlook. I look at an embryo in the first couple of months of pregnancy as a bunch of cells that have the potential to become a baby if everything works out right. Others look at them as a baby.

My concern is that to many anti abortion people it is perfectly okay to repeatedly lie in order to make abortion illegal. What happened to Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness? Why is it okay for religious people to repeatedly lie in order to push their political position? Do conservatives really understand the concept of lying? Just because you really, really want something to be true,doesn't make it true.

Anonymous said...

"Yes, and the woman had control, and gave permission for sex, which she knew could result in the creation of another human being."

This is obviously not always the case.


"You call it a fetus, Tammy. I call it a baby"

Call it what you want, but words have meanings. Webster's definition of fetus: an unborn or unhatched vertebrate especially after attaining the basic structural plan of its kind; specifically : a developing human from usually two months after conception to birth.


So many abortions are not even a fetus, let alone a baby. They are a part of the mother's body , a bunch of cells that can't survive on it's own. They have no legal right so Planned Parenthood does not need their permission.

Tom McLaughlin said...

Words have meaning, yes. So Webster calls it "a developing human from usually two months after conception to birth."

A developing human is a human. As someone who conceived and raised four humans, I can tell you they're still developing for many years after birth. As with the pre-born, they could not survive on their own without constant care in the early years and gradually declining levels of care for many years thereafter.

That a pregnant woman finds its residence in her body inconvenient and unintended does not make it any less human, or to kill it any less wrong.

Scenario considesr religion immoral. However, all law is based on prevailing morality, which in the case of US law derives from Judeo-Christian morality. So is all of western civilization derived from it. You may not like that, but it is no less so for your dislike. It's the sea in which you are swimming.

scenario said...

Abortion is a difficult topic because it is purely an ethical argument. When is there a new human being? Some religious people say that it is when there is a soul. But there is no way to measure it.

Some hunter/gatherer tribes believed that human life came at the first birthday. Before the first birthday, babies did not have a soul so they were not human.

The most common view is that birth is the dividing line. This is the viewpoint of the bible.

There are newer cut off points such as viability of the fetus or when the embryo develops a nervous system.

Many religious groups have chosen the moment of conception.

Other groups believe than sperm and eggs are humans. As Monty Python says, "Every sperm is sacred."

Different moral values place the line at different points. The only point that is indisputable is birth. Once the baby is born it is an independent being.

In the end the question becomes, should laws be based strictly on moral values without any secular basis?

I don't have any problem with many conservatives moral belief that abortion is wrong. I do have a problem with the incessant lying about it and with the idea that it is okay to force your particular moral beliefs on everyone.

One example, when my father was growing up it was a common belief where he grew up that being left handed was a sign of evil. This was quite common back in the 1930's in rural areas. If the majority of people in a state believe that being left handed is immoral, is it okay to make it illegal? Should the moral values of the people in the area be encoded into law when there is no valid secular reason to back them up?

Anonymous said...

So you agree with Webster that it is not human until after 2 months, and that it is still a fetus until birth. Good.

As for surviving "on their own", until about 6 months they can't survive without their mother. Period. Once born, they could survive without the mother because they could be taken care of by others.

Your saying it is wrong to remove the cells from her body that has the potential, with her help, to become human, does not make it wrong. it is your opinion. And that is a fact. I know you have trouble comprehending facts from strongly felt opinions.

You say all law derives from Judeo-Christian morality. That also is an opinion, but here is another fact......US law says abortion is legal.

Anonymous said...

Suppose a building were on fire, and you could save either a five-year-old child or ten frozen embryos. Which would you pick?

How could you pick the child if the embryos are also "babies"?

And why do anti-abortionists focus on the horror of a late-term abortion? Did you ever wonder why they don’t focus instead on a woman swallowing a Plan B (emergency contraceptive) pill? Or a drug-induced abortion (the most common procedure for first-trimester abortions)? If way more "babies" are being "murdered" early on, why not focus on that?

There is certainly a spectrum from a single cell (not a person) to a newborn baby (a person). Consider a continuous spectrum from blue to green. Where’s the dividing line? Where does blue end and green begin? We can argue about this, but we agree that blue is not green. The two ends are very different.

What age is the dividing line between child and adult? Twelve years? Eighteen? Twenty-one? It’s a spectrum, and there is no objectively correct line. Again, the line is debatable but no one doubts that a child and an adult are quite different.
An acorn is not a tree, a silkworm is not a dress, a water molecule is not a whirlpool, a piece of hay is not a haystack, and 20 chicken eggs are not a henhouse of chickens. Similarly, a single fertilized human egg cell is NOT a baby.

If eager expectant parents want to use the term “baby,” not a problem. It’s when pro-lifers want to impose that term on others to constrain their rights that we have a problem.

Now, back to a common pro-life argument: (1) human life begins at conception; (2) it is murder to take a human life; therefore (3) abortion is murder and should be considered immoral. This argument fails because it is oblivious to the spectrum.
Pro-lifers claim to be celebrating life, but equating a newborn baby with a single cell and demanding that everyone else be bound by their beliefs doesn’t celebrate life, it denigrates it.

scenario said...

I really would like to see a conservative answer the question above. If you are in a position where you can save either a 5 year old child or 10 frozen embryos and you cannot save both which would you save?

In my experience, this type of question is rarely answered by conservatives. Many if not most conservatives live in a very either/or, black and white world. There is no grey area. If someone tries to point out the grey area, they are dismissed as liberals and the question is ignored. That is really a problem in the real world.

Anonymous said...

Tom is not known for trying to answer tough questions involving gray areas. I could list dozens of unanswered questions just over his last 5 posts. When he feels cornered he tends to hide. But I'm thinking if he is called out enough he might eventually step out of his comfort zone and give it a wack. This may be one he feels he can handle. Tom....?

scenario said...

I'm sure that Tom is not the only conservatives here. I've lived in New England for my whole life and I have found that many of the conservatives here are more old school conservatives rather than the newer tea bag/alt right/religious right types. Old style conservatives didn't make a fetish out of denying reality.

Old school conservatives are more like, "Yes there is a problem but we can't drive ourselves to bankruptcy to solve it." New school conservatives are more, "There is no problem. Only liberals say there is a problem." And when the problem turns around and bites them, they say,"We've wanted to solve this problem for years but the liberals wouldn't let us." And the followers nod their heads and ignore all of the books and papers and web pages and videos that prove than the conservatives had a totally different opinion just a few years ago.

"We're at war with Oceania. We have always been at war with Oceania."

Anonymous said...

My my...as I read above I see how liberals have been busy covering up the lies & the killing.

Anonymous said...

My my...as i read above I see how conservatives have been busy using lies and spin, and avoiding answering questions that go deeper than a shrill "AHHH...MURDER!"

scenario said...

Ah yes, the new conservative conspiracy fetish raises its head again.

The person who created the planned parenthood video was indicted by the Republican Lt. governor of the State of Texas on criminal charges related to the video. The video's are fraudulent. This is not just the belief of a bunch of liberals, its the belief of the Conservative Republican Lt Governor of one of the most conservative states. No attorney general is going to file charges on a whim against someone who is a hero for their party.

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/266958-creator-of-planned-parenthood-videos-indicted-in-texas

"A grand jury in Houston, Texas announced criminal charges against a pair of anti-abortion activists, David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, for their roles in creating now-viral videos attacking Planned Parenthood, according to multiple local reports.

The jurors had spent two months reviewing undercover footage produced by Daleiden’s group, the Center for Medical Progress, at the request of Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R)."

Someone who still believes in the PP tapes is like someone who still believes that martians invaded the earth in 1938 because their grandparents told them about the Orson Wells broadcast on the radio. Its old news that was disproved years ago.

Tom McLaughlin said...

You're correct, Scenario, the Republican Lt. Governor Patrick was involved in the initial stages last January. He did not indict, however, as that is not in his power. But he did ask for an investigation by the Houston District Attorney -- a pro-abortion woman named Devon Anderson -- whose job it was do put evidence before the grand jury which can indict. Patrick expected an indictment of Planned Parenthood, but Anderson seems instead to have covered up for that organization.

We cannot know what evidence Anderson presented before the grand jury because that is forever confidential. I did write about the investigation last February here: http://tommclaughlin.blogspot.com/search?q=Devon+anderson and I talked about it on my TV show as well and there's a clip at the bottom of that article. As one judge put it: the DA can convince a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.

Anderson has previously led a grand jury investigation into abortionist Dr. Douglas Karpen after three women working at his abortion clinic testified they saw him twist the heads off babies born alive. Karpen was at least as bad as Dr. Kermit Gosnell in Philadelphia who is now serving a life term for similar practices. Somehow, Anderson convinced the grand jury not to indict Karpen either.

The filmmaker, Daleiden, was indicted for using a fake ID. Those charges were dropped just this month.

Tom McLaughlin said...

Human life begins at conception. That's when a human being -- with its own DNA -- is created. Eggs have the DNA of the mother. Sperm has the DNA of the father. The baby has its own because it's a separate and distinct person.

It's morally wrong for doctors and lab technicians create embryos artificially in the opinion of many, myself included. Lately they're doing so with three "parents." They're also very likely cloning human embryos. Maybe there are human clones among us, I don't know. It's possible. Some are experimenting with human/animal crosses. The law has not weighed in on these practices, but I wish it would.

Anonymous said...

More of the same "no gray area" talking points from Tom, but what do you know, he once again avoids the tough question asked directly of him.

scenario said...

As the old saying goes, where there's smoke there's fire. The fact that the PP video people were indicted means that more than likely something was there. Other credible people have looked at the evidence and came to the same conclusion, the recordings were faked. There is just way to much evidence that the recordings were faked to take them seriously.

I understand why someone would be against abortion. But I feel that the fact that the anti abortion people have been repeatedly caught in bald faced lies like the PP recordings tends to damage their credibility.

When organ transplants first came out, many conservatives felt the same way about transplanting a human heart that some conservatives now feel about external fertilization.

I am actually in agreement when it comes to human cloning. Cloning mammals is in the experiment stage. I don't believe that it is any where near the stage where we should even consider cloning a human. Maybe in twenty or thirty years, maybe. But not now. Cloning tissue or organs I have no problem with. Cloning an entire human is ethically wrong now and something that we have to have serious discussions with before it should be allowed, if ever.

Let's change the question. It's not a fire. You are in a car carrying medicine. There is a fast moving disease that will kill anyone under the age of 6, including embryos in the womb, but have no effect on anyone older,. There are two outbreaks at opposite ends of the city.

Outbreak one is a 5 year old child.

Outbreak two are twenty five women pregnant for less than a month.

You can choose to save either the five year old child and let the twenty five woman have a natural miscarriage because the 25 embryos will die or

You can choose to save the 25 pregnant women's embryos and let the 5 year old child die.

You cannot save both groups.

Which do you choose?

scenario said...

God has ordered the killings of plenty of babies. One of the most beloved biblical stories that is told to children is the killing of every baby on earth. When I was a kid, I always pictured a woman in a tree holding a 1 month old baby over her head screaming to Noah, "Please save my baby," and Noah just spitting in her face.

rhondajo said...

To Anonymous: What you don't comprehend, is that the verses you quote are all in the Old Testament. Since that time, Jesus has come to us, and we are no longer bound by Old Testament Law. Jesus brought the Way, the Truth and the Light. He bought, and paid for the New Testament with His precious Blood, which He spilled, and gave freely to all men, the forgiveness of all of their sins. May the scales of your blindness be removed, and may you see, spiritually, from this day forward, the Truth.

Stopp Planned Parenthood of Southern New England Representative said...

Hillary will not only pander 100% to Planned Parenthood Federation Of America, now that she's poster girl of Emily's List, she will also commit herself to repealing the Hyde Ammendment, so federal dollars will flow easily into their coffers and Medicaid will force taxpayer $$$ to pay for Surgical Abortions as well.