OMG this page was annoying to read today... there is a complete and utter inability by the liberals on this board to realize how many conservatives or libertarians can be anti-abortion and not hate women. I suppose that abortion is an easy topic if you assume life begins at delivery. For most other people, it's not about hating women or shaming sluts or legislating morality (which we do all the freaking time when we outlaw things like murder and stealing). It's about the struggle to define life and when a fetus starts to have rights that the government should start protecting, and weighing the relative rights of a developing fetus versus the rights of the mother to kill that fetus. To seriously suggest that people who oppose abortion -- women included! -- hate women is both ridiculous and appalling.

What defines life? The ability to feel pain? The ability to reason? The ability to sense changes in one's environment? These all happen at different times, and none of them start at birth. The liberal logician Peter Singer has offered some biting commentary on this, but I won't rehash since it will sound callous coming from a conservative.

TV, I think the reason that the 20 week abortion limit is so popular, even among people who are pro-choice, is because many people do not presume to know when life begins, and do not want to mistakenly support murder.

(Contraceptive stuff is way way way (way) different from abortion stuff, in my opinion.)

I gather the next page will be just as fun for you, then.

Right--you're anti-abortion, not anti birth control. Hence my differentiation of you from Ken Cuccinelli.

(I still think it's illogical for a self-professed libertarian to assert grounds to invoke state power in support of one opinion on an answer to an essentially unknowable question that itself comprises only one facet of an issue of wrenching moral complexity. But that's a different subject.)

More to the point, I think in the case TV and jh were arguing, it seems very likely that most of the antis are in it for the slut shaming. If they were truly interested in fewer unwanted pregnancies, rather than "less sex cuz it's bad," wouldn't they support family planning and access to contraception?

I think there's a big distinction that you guys are blurring or just ignoring completely.

The actual employers who do not want to provide insurance to their employees do think contraception and premarital sex are immoral, so they don't want to buy or provide insurance that goes against their beliefs. If you want to go with slut shaming to describe that, knock yourselves out.

The majority of people opposed to the mandate are perfectly fine with employers providing insurance that covers birth control and probably do if they have employees of their own. An overwhelming majority of Americans of all parties think birth control is morally acceptable, whereas the results on feelings about the mandate are mixed, and vary a lot due to question wording. If you think it's very likely that most of the people backing Little Sisters of the Poor and Hobby Lobby in their court fights are taking that position for the slut shaming, you're just assigning people ridiculous motives because you disagree with them. There are many things in life that are good that people should have access to that the government doesn't need to mandate that they're provided at no cost.

I wasn't specifically speaking to the mandate, though I really don't see how requiring health insurance to provide access to contraception (which isn't always used so sluts don't get pregnant but has other uses as well) violates the free exercise clause. Our fat (former governor) even once upon a time signed legislation that in fact required health insurance in Arkansas to provide such coverage. Then he found out slut shaming pays better.

I was specifically referring to the way in which policies promoted by the anti-abortion crowd have a lot more to do with punishing women than preventing abortions, and that includes things like a 20 week limit, which might actually have as a consequence increasing the number of abortions. I further speculated that many so-called pro-lifers aren't really sincere about reducing abortions, their primary objective is in fact to punish women. Given that they also generally seem to want to make it harder for many women to access prenatal care and be able to actually feed their children and generally support policies that result in a high infant mortality rate, the claim to being "pro-life" seems rather thin.

There's no doubt in my mind that the Republican Party would hate to see Roe v. Wade overturned, because losing that issue would further fragment their already shaky coalition.

Ir doesn't matter their opinion on a specific medical procedure or pill. If contraception, why not any pill? Businesses do not have religious views, either. And religious organizations are not expressely religious when they decide to open up hiring and business to the public at large, such as wirh a hospital.

The sisters have every right to not use contraception themselves. They don't have a right to dictate to emmployees what medicines they have easy access to.

Werthless wrote:OMG this page was annoying to read today... there is a complete and utter inability by the liberals on this board to realize how many conservatives or libertarians can be anti-abortion and not hate women.

You've been reading someplace else & gotten confused again. Everyone's anti-abortion. There's your complete & utterness. Much as it may pain you, you're part of our club on this one.

What defines life? The ability to feel pain? The ability to reason? The ability to sense changes in one's environment? These all happen at different times, and none of them start at birth. The liberal logician Peter Singer has offered some biting commentary on this, but I won't rehash since it will sound callous coming from a conservative.

Why not get radical and consider that life starts before conception, and doesn't end when physical apparatus wears out. Or another angle; every individual is "dead", and "all of life" is "other".

But people do what people do, because they are what they are

jerseyhoya wrote:I think there's a big distinction that you guys are blurring or just ignoring completely.

The actual employers who do not want to provide insurance to their employees do think contraception and premarital sex are immoral, so they don't want to buy or provide insurance that goes against their beliefs.

They fundamentally misunderstand health benefits, health insurance, and, probably, insurance generally, and hell, while we're - and they're - at it, compensation, and all the way down, money.

The resources their employees use to buy these products of depravity, to engage in these activities for which they will surely burn in hell, have been earned by their employees. The employees have exchanged their labor for that compensation. It's not the employer's money. It doesn't matter what the employer wants to buy, or not buy, with the employees' money.

The employers' protest is a bit like them protesting that they have moral issues with the US banking system, so aren't obliged to pay their employees in anything but the horse chestnuts their deity prefers as a form of currency.

Therefore, the employer isn't buying a damn thing. Each employee is - or isn't - buying those instruments of Satan, and neither Hobby Lobby, nor the Little Sisters, can do fuck all about that.

It's not like they're forced to purchase the goods and stock them on shelves in the company warehouse.

GO OBAMA! SPEAK WELL!

I didn't want to watch this, but have found a bunch of rude puppets on a show called "No, You Shut Up!" basically live-snarking it, which seems to make it tolerable.

If it weren't for all the applause, this speech would take 10 minutes.

ABC News has a SportsCenter-style agenda on the left side. Don't remember seeing that before

Starting out with the valence issues.

Totally want a natural gas vehicle.

Boehner looks like a Slim Jim

Biden gets another board to lead. This one is about jobs. The last one worked out so well too!

He just took a dump on the Rs collective chests.

too bad he can't just drop the mic

C, C+ on the speech.

Guns. Thought he was going to skip that. Wanted more. Barely touched it.

Still can't believe nothing happened last year. Republicans suck.