BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist

Subject: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 02:36 PM

Does anyone besides me find the circus that surrounds US executions a bit distasteful? Is it necessary for instance to parade the condemned at press conferences? I would have thought that, in terms of pandering to the ghoulish in our natures, this was about one step better than full-blown public executions a la Saudi Arabia etc.

I realise that an audience of sorts is accommodated at US executions. A Death Row lawyer on UK tv the other night recalled a recent "performance" at which the official pronouncement of death was greeted with laughter from the victim's relatives. One wonders how long such relatives manage to trip out on such an experience. As the lawyer said, they probably wake up next morning and find that the world hasn't changed much after all.

Paul Hill seems to pose the US a real quandary, being a fundamentalist Christian of some sort, convinced that the state of Florida is speeding his passage to heaven. This is exactly the mentality that fills so many in the west with dread, particularly in the states, when it comes packaged with Islamic fundamentalism. When will America wake up to the reality that this kind of madness is a pestilence whatever religion it comes with?

In the meantime, executing people like Paul Hill seems like a shabby cop-out to me. He might have lived to regret his hideous crime and shake off the nonsense he's been brainwashed into believing. And even if his death means momentary gratification for relatives, the law should not be steered by the gut feelings of people who are emotionally vulnerable.

If what he did is sanctioned by the codes of his church, then I would have thought that his church should be put on trial. And that should hold regardless of whether abortion is right or wrong (on which matter I'm afraid I continue to vacillate).

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 02:47 PM

Many in the US find the "circus" distasteful in the extreme. If the State is going to execute someone, it should at least be done with as much dignity surrounding such an act as possible.

Personally, I think that Hill and others of his sort would be better served by being kept in solitary confinement -- never seeing or hearing another human being -- for the rest of their lives. Give them time to think about what they did. Comfortable, but spartan, accomodation; NO outside noise, nothing to distract them from their thoughts.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Leo Condie
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 02:53 PM

as far as i'm concerned the death penalty is never defensible, even with monsters like this.

now, if you want to be really scared, check this out...

http://www.armyofgod.com/PHillMessageBoard.html

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raptor
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 02:57 PM

Forgive me

Who is Paul Hill?

Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: mack/misophist
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 03:02 PM

It's not an audience. US law requires witnesses that the execution was properly carried out. Later laws have given the next of kin the right to attend.

As much as I agree with Rapaire, there's no chance of that happening. It was tried at Sts Peter & Paul Fortress Prison in the Czar's time. Many went mad. In the US some apellate judge would probably turn the bastard loose.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: mack/misophist
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 03:06 PM

Paul Hill is an unrepentent murderer.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 03:11 PM

Like so many others.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 03:11 PM

Thanks for the link Leo. Here's a Blue Clicky for it.

I find it more saddening than scary, to be honest.

The posters quote the bible endlessly, but seem to forget four of the most important words contained therein:

Thou Shalt Not Kill

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 03:12 PM

I wanna see executions put on Pay-Per-View... I wanna see the 24/7 security video feed from major prisons... I wanna see armed bands of death row inmates, dropped into mazes and made to fight their way out...

You don't wanna know what else I wanna see...

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 03:16 PM

Click here for what god thinks about the entire mess

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raptor
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 03:35 PM

I wanna know Clinton

I really want to know!

Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 03:48 PM

Here is an article from ABC about Hill.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raptor
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 04:22 PM

So they are going to murder a murderer for murdering someone who he considered a murderer?

What is That?

Raptor

(pro-Choice BTW)

(but Against Death Sentance)

(Bring it on)

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raptor
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 04:25 PM

They are going to abort Paul Hill in his 147TH Tri-mester!

Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: katlaughing
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 04:31 PM

He should be kept in prison until he dies. His execution will give the anti-choice people a martyr to emulate and does nothing to bring back his victims. Murderers should be sentenced for life, no parole, barring any new evidence of DNA, etc. which may prove innocence.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,irishajo
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 04:49 PM

When will America wake up to the reality that this kind of madness is a pestilence whatever religion it comes with?

Many of us are quite well aware of it. Particularly those who were once part of a fundamentalist sect and are trying to learn to live normal lives. Please don't paint with such a broad brush.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 04:51 PM

"He should be kept in prison until he dies."

What a serious waste of money!

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 04:58 PM

Clinton,

Do you mean what you've said in this thread, or are you comments a joke?

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 05:10 PM

They might be 10-20% joke...

I see death sports being a thing in the future, and really I have no problem with it at all... It worked for the Romans, and theirs was the longest lasting 'civilisation' to date (except maybe the Egyptions, except that getting the 'experts' to agree is too difficult at this point... but I digress...) With Real TV, and Darwin Awards as entertainment, can "The Running Man", and "Car Wars" really be that far away? I don't think so...

I also think that flat out, there are people who need killin'... Paul Bernardo, and that psycho-bitch wife of his who's name escapes me as an example just off the top of my head... If they ever catch the guy whose story I saw on last nights "Cold Case Files"... currently known as The Real Nightstalker, in California.. responsible for over 50 rapes, and more than 10 murder/rapes... I say he needs to be put down like a rabid dog...

In all seriousness, I don't know much about the specifics of this Paul Hill guy... I am speaking in more general terms than him...

And yes... I think that over all prison is a waste of money... It's simply NOT effective as a deterrant...

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: alanabit
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 05:36 PM

I was wondering whether to start this thread myself earlier to debate exactly those issues and paradoxes which Fionn raised. It has not been one of Mudcat's better ones so far.
    For us Liberals/Lefties/Do Gooders or whatever we can be called, it has been a good test of conscience. Paul Hill is an unrepentant murderer. He is also what I would call a moral fascist. He gives himself the right to make other people's moral choices for them - and then to kill them if they make a different choice to his own. He can hardly expect sympathy from us - and indeed he doesn't have it. It is still quite wrong - and foolish - to execute him.
      Perhaps the most striking aspect of Paul Hill's case was that the likes of myself and other Lefties did so little to save him. It would have been a very good opportunity to demonstrate who is really concerned with saving human life and who really has a more optimistic view of human nature.
      As one who has occasionally been on the receiving end of chastening comments from Clinton Hammond, I would urge our anonymous guest to at least credit the man with a sense of irony!

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 05:52 PM

I have so many different opinions about the death penalty and criminal justice in general, I end up arguing with myself!

There flatly IS no easy answer, as harsh penalty systems get abused sometimes convict the innocent, and weak ones keep the prisons filled with an array of the worst of society and cost way too much for what they achieve.

I think I'd like a system where hard-core anti-social misfits are simply weeded out, as we identify them, like bad apples in a barrel, 'without prejudice', leaving the streets safer for those who at least TRY to be decent citizens.....but I have no idea in hell how to administer such a system fairly.

The universe in general has no 'reverence' for life, we humans (some of us) created it a practical concept to codify behavior and avoid the worst of the chaos that ensues when no rules are enforced.

I think that gratuitous killing is a bad idea, and would NOT like Clinton's semi-tongue-in-cheek call for televised executions, as it would numb us until we were too jaded to care(getting close already).....but there ARE people who are simply beyond salvage. If I were in charge of that aspect of it all, I think that executions would happen quietly, simply, behind closed doors, and with NO announcements to the press...just a call to relatives that the departed was available for burial, if they wished.

..and yes, I would worry constantly about the occasional conviction of an innocent person....so maybe I'm not the right man for the job, hmmm?
See? NO good answers.....

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 05:58 PM

" See? NO good answers....."

That's the best post so far in this thread, Bill!

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 06:20 PM

Seems to me there are three sorts of killing involved in this. There is the killing carried out by Paul Hill. There is the killing carried out by the abortion clinic. And there is the killing of Paul Hill carried out by the state.

There are some people who think one of these types of killings are OK, and the other two are wrong; and some people who think that two out of the three are OK, and the other one is wrong. There are of course differing opinions as to which of the types of killing are OK and which are wrong.

And there are some people who think all three are wrong, which seems to me to be the most consistent view.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 06:31 PM

What's so bad about worrying over "occasional" wrong convictions, Bill? Sounds like you'd be a better state governor than some others (the republican governor of Illinois being an obvious and honorable exception of course).

irishajo, if I undertand you right, you are definitely not among those I was intending to splash with my broad brush. I just think that where fundamentalism takes people to Hill-type extremes we need to be clear that their first responsibilities are to those they share the planet with, rather than any particular god/code they might have got into their heads.

I hold Hill's supporters every bit as guilty as he is (was? not sure if his hour is come), but equally I believe that in many cases such people are victims of brainwashing, where but for the grace of God.....

If you have been anywhere near there, irishajo, then I wish you the very best in reclaiming your life. Your experience tends to support my point that if he had lived, Hill might have got his head sorted out and "repented," as the believers would say. Although I am a believer, I don't like seeing people being denied that chance, any more than I like seeing people being murdered. (And people will be murdered with or without a death penalty, Clinton.)

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 06:41 PM

Hadn't seen that post, McG. I don't think the rights and wrongs of abortion come into this particular case, in that Hill would be deemed a murderer by anyone in his right mind.

Just out of curiosity,though, can I take it you subscribe to the "consistent" view? Or are you with Churchill, who said he'd "rather be right than consistent"? If the former, are their any exceptions? And if you do acknowledge exceptions, would you still call abortions "killings" in such cases?

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 06:46 PM

"Sounds like you'd be a better state governor than some others?"

that's because you haven't seen my entire platform *grin*...The job I want is "Emperor of the Universe", but once I explain ALL my plans I will get NO votes.

Actually, I think I'd be a decent governor if I had the job, but I'm too lousy a politician to ever be elected.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Leo Condie
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 07:03 PM

Uhh Clinton, it didn't really work that well for the romans, as they had a barbaric and chaotic society rampant with murder and rape.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raptor
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 07:10 PM

I'm gonna be real crass here Take that as a warning!!!!!





I just saw one of those web sights that claim to be pictures of aborted fetuses! What a load of shit! Abortions do not have reconizable features. These pictures are sick! put out as propeganda, to further the belief that abortions happen to fully developed fetuses!

If abortion is murder so is jerking off cause you didn't let the baby live when you washed your hands!

Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Ebbie
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 07:41 PM

Well, it's done; he's gone. (For those who belief in spirit, where does it go post release??) Buddy Tabor, in one of his songs, wrote:

Like the wind- where does it come from?
And like the soul of man- where does it go?

I agree with those above who tend to think that killing-by-state is unjustifiable- you gotta admit that in some cases, killing is simply too good for them. Incarceration without possibility of parole seems a greater punishment. (And Clinton, they've done studies that show that prison is much cheaper than execution, given capital punishment's appeals.)

Has anyone else heard Sister Helen Prejean speak? She tends to make a believer out of one.

McGrath, I agree that it seems like some people cannot be salvaged- but where does one draw the line? I've seen and heard of youngsters one would be willing to bet will come to a very sad end, and taking others with them. Should we erase them, before they do their stuff? Or do we wait, giving them more chances, until they are, say, 35 years old when they've reached an age where they're not likely to change? What about those who, against all odds, do?

I agree that there don't seem to be any definitive answers. A moratorium on state-sanctioned killing seems a good start.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 07:44 PM

"Hill would be deemed a murderer by anyone in his right mind."

I'm not so sure about that, Fionn. For anyone who thinks abortion is a kind of murder and who also believes it's a good thing to kill murderers justifying Hill's action is just a step away.

Whether that counts as being "in his right mind" is another matter, but I'd suspect it might be a view held by a good number of solid citizens.

Mind I think anyone like that would have one hell of a nerve saying they were "pro-life".

I think that a society which accepts the death penalty damages itself in all sorts of ways, and this is just one of them.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Gareth
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 07:50 PM

Mmmmm ! The problem is that Capital Punishment is final - and not applied with any equity. A little digging on that period between 1800 and 1840 (circa) when the "Bloody Code" was the main feature of British Justice will indicate that - If you were poor and 'friendless' you choked, in public, whilst you danced the "Tyburn Jig" - Interestingly some juries would not convict, or took conveluted paths to find the value of goods stolen less than the "Capital" ammount.

Does this sound familiar to our US of A members ?????

Personally I have no difficulty with the concept of a judicial system having the right to kill a convicted culprit, provided it is done humanly (SP) and with dignity. ie NO T.V. spectacle etc.

The problem is in the UK (and US of A) is the adversarial (SP) system of a trial. "Discredit" evidence, and may the best paid Lawyer win.

The Police are not infailable, and there have been some spectacular miscaridges of justice in the UK, possibly due to "pressure" on the police to get a result or smooth public disquiet.

A more investgative approach by the courts might have produced different results.

For instance - In the case of the Birmingham Six I have no doubt that they were inocent of the bombing of the Mulberry Bush Pub. I am not convinced that they were not set up by the perpertrators to act as decoys whilst the real facists escaped. Unfortunatley this aspect seems to have been ignored. And I would also venture to suggest that it is possible that some senior police may have realised this, hence the non objective evidence produced in court to secure a conviction, to save Police faces.

My objection to capital punishment is more practical - It puts a pressure on the Jury, and may result in the aquital of the guilty, which is an equal a miscarridge of justice as the conviction of the innocent.

Possibly an unfashionble view, but I will stand by it.

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raedwulf
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 07:56 PM

Not "Farewell..", but "Good riddance to a self-righteous murderer".

I *definitely* side with Clinton on this one. You can be as smug & self-righteous as you want, but when you go *that* far across the line that society draws...

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raedwulf
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 08:01 PM

Incidentally, (And Clinton, they've done studies that show that prison is much cheaper than execution, given capital punishment's appeals.) isn't an argument against CP, it's an argument against the judicial process that allows endless appeals & 20-odd years on Death Row! CP is quick & cheap, "justice" is slow & expensive, and (as Gareth says) usually belongs to the bloke wot has the most money! :(

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 08:17 PM

And of course, once they are dead the chances that they might be shown to have been unjustly convicted diminishes greatly, which saves a lot of embarrassment as well as a lot of money.

True enough locking up innocent people for years isn't that much better than killing them. But I think the Birmingham Six and the Guildhall Four and all the other cases like that would confirm that it is preferable.

The American system of locking people up for years and then eventually killing them, when they are in many ways completely different people, appears to provide the worst of both worlds.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Gareth
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 08:24 PM

Err Kevin - don't yer mean the Guildford 4 ????.

Now I may have a difficulty, if the London Guildhall had been blown up, as considering that a crime, but please !!!

Gareth

With Moscow Gold and Dynamite, we'll set the masses free,
Oh tis' my delight on a Friday Night, to bomb the burgousie.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 08:34 PM

Quite right, I meant Guildford - it's late at night. Mind I was always surprised the Guildhall never got blown up. It did get gutted in the Blitz, mind.

I think it's a great building. Pity it isn't used for some more useful purpose by some more useful people. It'd make a great pub. Musicians' galleries and all. The Friends of Mudcat, that's what it needs.

This thread is drifting rather far from shore...

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: kendall
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 08:36 PM

There are so many misconceptions around this issue.
First, murder is a specific legal term, and it is not adjustable according to some fanatics outrage.
Legally, abortion is not murder, like it or not.

Two, According to the recent translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls, "Thou shalt not kill" is a mistranslation. The real meaning is, thou shalt not commit murder.

Who, in his right mind thinks that this asshole is going to be rewarded in heaven? Who thinks he is not even going to heaven?

In any case, the state is going to set him free, and he belongs in prison for life.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Susan from California
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 08:52 PM

I am pro choice and anti death penalty and it makes me mad every time the govt kills someone for me, without exception. Someone asked up there who Paul Hill was. He was a virulently anti-choice man who murdered an abortion provider.

Some say that being pro choice and anti death penalty is inconsistent. I don't believe that it is. I am pro choice because there is no way to prove that what I believe (that life begins at conception) is the truth. Since the time when life begins cannot be proven, it is a decision best left to women in consultation with their doctors and their spiritual advisors. But Paul Hill was clearly alive, and I for one, am saddened by the loss. Killing someone for killing someone else makes about as much sense to me as a parent who smacks "Johnny" for hitting his sibling.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Bobert
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 09:01 PM

Well, ain't this somethin'???

Here a confessed premediated murderer gets a *45-mics-'n-cameras-in-yer-face* heros send off while down in Texas, the innocent Willie Brown's are still be murdered by the state with not a single peep...

Screwed up!!! No, very screwed up!!!!

Bobert

p.s. The entire capital punishment thing is screwed up! It violates humanity....

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 09:59 PM

Well, okay. I believe in the concept of the "bad seed" -- you know, where folks say "All his kin were good, God-fearin', law-bidin' people who never did nothin' but good, and he went a took a chainsaw to his mother, a woodchipper to his daddy, and then got a speedin' ticket to top it all off!" Or, "He was a good kid, an honor student, taught Sunday School! How could he do this?"

You've heard those sorts of statements. You can't explain it; something is rotten inside those people.

What does society do with such people? What does society do when ANYONE has shown themself to be a danger to the social fabric?

We "cast them out" -- put them in jail. If what they have done is judged evil enough, society does the ultimate "casting out" by executing them.

We'd better be as certain of their guilt as it is possible for a human to be -- "beyond a reasonable doubt" and probably the best that fallible humanity can hope for.

I favor the "no human contact approach." So they go mad, so what? But if we MUST kill them, then let's do it quickly, humanly, quietly, and economically. I myself prefer that they be hanged, as was done in England: 13 seconds from the time the executioner took hold of the condemned to the time the vertebra was snapped in one case.

We have to get over the idea that this is "vengeance" and realize that it is something that should be done as quietly and quickly as is consistent with humaneness.

And it should be infrequent....

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 10:03 PM

Well I do occasionally stick my head above the parapet to say a word on behalf of the Willie Browns too, Bobert. Raedwulf, you might like to check out why the governor of Illinois put a stop to all executions in that state back in, I think, January this year.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 11:06 PM

"as they had a barbaric and chaotic society rampant with murder and rape"

Lemme quote Ghandi, when he was asked what he thought of Western Civilisation, he said, "I think it would be a wonderful idea."

"prison is much cheaper than execution, given capital punishment's appeals"

That tells me that there's a serious problem with your appeals process...

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Bobert
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 11:09 PM

And good on the Governor of Illinois! He realized that after a bunch of law students found that lots of folks on Illinois death row were, ahhh, innocent, that continuing to put innocent folks to death was, ahhhh, like purdy danged wrong. Like, I said, good on him. Now, how about the rest of the governors....

Death is irreversable....

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Kim C
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 11:23 PM

I guess my question is... should a multiple murderer get the same sentence as someone who's only committed one murder? It seems to me like there needs to be something beyond life in prison for people who do the most heinous deeds. I just don't know what it is.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: NicoleC
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 11:56 PM

I used to be strongly pro-death penalty. I still have little sympathy for people who find that kind of anti-social behavior acceptable or even pleasant. (I may believe that the concept that murder is wring is a social one, and not a universal truth, but it's still our society, our rules, and those rules makes for a more orderly one.) Over time, I have become very anti-dealth penalty, at least in the practical application if not the moral application.

The truth is, justice is not certain and innocent people die. Even one is too many. Being fallible humans, this uncertainly about applying the death penalty isn't going to change short of some major evolution.

Secondly, I don't believe it's a deterrant. Instead, I think it has the opposite effect. By sanctioning killing as a penalty for killing, it blurs the moral issue, particulary for the very young (and impressionable) or those of defective intelligence -- and many murderers are.

Making a sport and spectacle of it is even worse, like the attempts to televise McVeigh's execution. Ironically, those who champion this are often the first ones to whine about how violent video games and movies are corrupting youth.

And third, I think the vast sums of effort and money spent trying to be sure the guy is really (or is not guilty), plus the huge cost of the execution itself, could be better spent on prevention. Very little effort goes into determining WHY these people are they way they are and how they get created. Maybe it's mental illness. Maybe it's physical illness.

Detour: About 80 years ago, a dentist by the name of Weston Price was searching for the cause of cavities and came across some astonishing correlation between the diet of both parents preceeding conceptionand the proponderance of both cavities and facial deformities in their children. Some of his research compared common facial deformities in mug shots of notorious criminals with those caused by nutritional deficiencies in parents -- many matches. Correcting facial deformities in children with Down's Syndrome (by using a new-fangled technique called 'orthidontry') improved behavior and brain function. Even he recogonized that these coincidences needed further research. (At the time, the theory was that physical deformities were caused by racial mixing, but the deformities he is speaking of are ones that wouldn't be obvious to the average layman as such. The photos in the book are most illuminating.)

And yet, no one every dicusses criminal behavior as a potential disease that can be a) prevented or b) corrected. It's always "the upbringing" or the person is "just bad." Some might be one or either -- but what about other triggers and causes that might substantially reduce violent crime? Isn't that better than killing the guy AFTER he's made comeone a victim?

Then again, we could tell potential parents that eating ice cream definately caused mass-murdering children, and sales would probable still tick along. End Detour.

And finally, I have no desire to kill anyone save in a last ditch self-defense. We live in a democracy (still, I think), so when the government kills someone I think the blood is on every citizen's hands. It's like folks who eat meat but wouldn't kill to survive. Just because someone else does the dirty work, it doesn't you aren't responsible for it.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 12:02 AM

He was a brave man of God fighting for what he knew was right....may Heaven's Gate swing wide to welcome him home.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Troll
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 12:17 AM

Ok, so we should keep the bastards alive because executions are "barbaric" etc.
Now one of you social theorists explain to me why it is ok to use the tax money of the victims and/or survivors to support the person who deprived them of a husband, wife, or child. Absobloodylutely NOTHING is done for the victims and, to add insult to injury, they are FORCED by the state to assist in the upkeep of the one who victimized them.
This support includes food, shelter, medical care, free educational opportunities and entertainment in the form of satelite TV and shows. Some prisons even allow conjugal visits.
In the meantime, the victims struggle with trying to raise a family with one parent, trying to make ends meet and scrimping on things like medical insurance, adequate food and shelter, etc.
In the meantime, the author of this misery has his or her every need supplied and all the bleeding hearts cry about "injustice" and "inhumanity".
You want injustice and inhumanity?
Look at the plight of the victims for a change. Write letters about THEM. Hold candlelight vigils for the child who will never know his father; the mother who will never see her daughter blossom into young womanhood.
But we don't see any of this happening. I guess it doesn't make good copy. Victim stories don't make good sound bites.
It makes me want to puke.

troll

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: katlaughing
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 12:58 AM

I forgot to say, as I have in long-ago threads, that I believe prisons should be self-sufficient, at least as far as the inmates growing their own food, etc. I do not think it should be a pleasant place to be and making them work to shoulder the responsibility of their own upkeep would not only free up some taxes, but also help them, those who can be helped, to feel more self-confident, etc....perhaps even be rehabilitated. Regardless, I still think murderers should remain without parole unless new evidence comes to light such as DNA which proves their innocense.

Now we know why Clinton makes all of that chain maille...

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 01:07 AM

I'm against the death penalty because I think it lets them off too easily. I think heinous criminals should be kept alive and exhibited to the public. The state could charge admission and thus defray the cost of incarceration. Five bucks to look. Ten bucks to verbally abuse via one-way intercom. Twenty bucks to spit on 'em. Hell, if Florida had kept Ted Bundy alive he would be as big a draw as Mickey Mouse. Talk about a boost for tourism. The parking lot of the State Prison in Starke would look like a Winnebago dealership.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 05:35 AM

Earlier in the thread (Clinton I think) -

I also think that flat out, there are people who need killin'

I agree totaly. But what about the other side of the equation?

I also think that flat out, there are people who need resurectin'

To do one without the other is very unfair isn't it? Who makes the decision as to who should be alive and who should not? Not me for one!

I am not copping out here. I don't accept that it is divine will or any such that should make these choices. I am just saying that I am not capable of making that sort of decision. Even if I was I could only do something about half of the puzzle.

To my mind anyone who thinks that they can decide what is right for someone else is not playing with a full deck. Yet every year millions of you vote for such people! I gave up years ago. The sooner the dictators take over the better. They cannot be any worse and at least we we be absolved of all responsibility...;-)

Cheers

Dave the Gnome
(Partly serious. You decide which parts)

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Grab
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 06:30 AM

"Farewell" is an interesting word. The last thing I'd want to do is wish him a pleasant journey! "Bugger off - the human race is better without you" would be more accurate - mind you, that wouldn't all fit in a Mudcat thread title. ;-)

I'm generally against capital punishment, so a better use of his time would be a life sentence. However, I'm also on the side of kat in that prisons should be self-sufficient (at least in terms of food). Prisoners decide they don't want to work in the fields, the whole prison gets less food. Harvest etc would be done using manual labour rather than mechanical. This would have the additional benefit of helping wildlife by returning to the "traditional" methods of farming.

Of course, there is the problem of how to control prisoners armed with scythes and pitchforks... :-)

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Teribus
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 06:57 AM

Good points from Kendall above particularly the distinction between "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not commit murder".

Gareth above refers to the period in the UK between 1800 and 1840. Lots of people were sentenced to death by hanging, some for what could be considered fairly minor crimes. Within that period only one in ten were actually executed. The sentences were normally commuted to transportation for life, others transported were sentenced to either seven or fourtenn years depending on the crime. If sentenced to transportation for life, the convict then returned to England, his death sentence would stand and he would face execution (The fictional character Magwitch in Dickens Great Expectations is an example of this). Bernard Cornwell's book "Gallows Thief", has a very good postscipt on the subject. Another facet of the English legal system of that time was that the accused were not allowed to speak in their own defence, that had to be done by what was termed as "the accused's friend". That term still holds good under current UK military justice.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: kendall
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 08:22 AM

Is this, or is this not a Christian nation? If not, then, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. (Of course, all that leads to is a world full of blind and toothless people)
On the other hand, if we really are a nation founded on Christian beliefs, then supporting the killing of another human being is wrong. How can you condone the legal homicide of the state and still claim to be a Christian? What some of you advocate is not justice, it is revenge. Nothing more than the same mentality that fuels the feud.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raptor
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 10:03 AM

Here is a story about a man who believed in the death penalty but probably changed his mind!

http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/09/03/vigilante.killer.ap/index.html


Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raptor
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 10:09 AM

So what would you do if your child came home, told you he was buggered, pointed out someone, and after you did what you thought was right to the perpatraitor your child admitted to making it up?

This was todays news!

Still believe in capital punishment?

Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Pooby
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 10:19 AM

Good riddance, Paul Hill. Having said that, I remain firmly anti-capital punishment even in a world where there are so many dirtbag lowlifes that seem to deserve it. When a situation like Hill arises (or others of similar ilk), I find myself thinking of good ol' Clarence Darrow and his observation that "I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure."

So what to do with such unrepentant, unreformable human dregs (even those who think they were acting on orders from the Almighty)? At a campaign forum on crime issues some years ago, during one of his short-lived flirtations with running for President, New York Gov. Mario Cuomo (staunch anti-CP) caught the crowd by surprise when he said something like, "For some criminals, I favor death..." After the pregnant pause, he added, "...by long, slow, hard imprisonment." So, like Katlaughing said, put 'em away for good, deprived of human contact, with only their twisted minds for company. No messy executions, no martyrs. May not be perfect, may not be pretty, but it works for me.

Poobs

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raptor
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 10:33 AM

Why kill this guy?

Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Midchuck
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 10:41 AM

I kind of like the Larry Niven approach.

Lock 'em up and let them be (involuntary organ donors until you've cut off so many pieces that it's no longer possible to keep them alive.

That way they do some good for someone, whether they like it or not.

The funny thing is, that many people, including a lot who support plain-vanilla capital punishment, would consider this idea cruel and barbaric.

But I never claimed to understand people.

Peter.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Bobert
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 11:48 AM

Good point, Nicole!

There must be some reasons behind such anit-social behaviors and we certainly would be wise to make a greater effort in finding those reasons and trying to correct them. We are not doing that. Qutie the opposite in that we lock folks up in a very hostile environmnet and if they weren't anti-social when they go in, you can bet they will be when they come out...

Another good point, troll...

The system certainly does not go far enought to compensate the victims. Heck, the United States goverment spends lots of money to to companies that supply office equipment, paper, automobiles, ect. Why not turn prisons into manufacturing plants thru a public/private partnership? Instead of the private end of the partnership paying the inmate, the money goes to the victim or families of the victim?

Also, back to Nicole's thoughts. What is possible is a prison that makes a concerted effort to take the terror out of incarceration, inject a level of humanity, and work toward an end of *habilitation* or *rehabilitation*... Then when folks are released they come out better prepared to cope with the real world...

Like I've said before, Einstein said that "Insanity is repeating a behavior and expecting different results". What we're seeing now isn't working with the highest incarceration percentage of and industrialized country on Earth...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 11:58 AM

I do not think death is too cruel for a murderer, but even if a murder 'deserves' it, the death penalty is wrong because the court may be mistaken; then we all have killed an innocent person and let a murderer go free.

That's not right.


clint

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: kendall
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 12:50 PM

Read ISHMAEL by Daniel Quinn.

What about this theory that medical science came up with that says the brains of criminals lack something that is present in non criminal brains? If this is true, they are sick. If they are sick, should they be punished? Would you execute a person for haveing a bad heart? or a diabetic?

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 01:07 PM

Ah religious zealots who are happy to die for their beliefs.
That should ring a few bells in Palestine/Iraq/Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan. Strange bedfellows indeed.
Giok.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 01:21 PM

"Is this, or is this not a Christian nation?"

I don't see how it CAN be...

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: kendall
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 02:30 PM

It's more like a nation of hypocrites.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 02:35 PM

So you're saying they are Christians then, Kendall?

LOL

(I'm KIDDING!!!!!)

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 02:44 PM

Gee are the pro-death crew ignoring my posts?

Suprise!

Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 03:29 PM

Well Raptor, without ghosting the URLs you posted, I think I get the drift...

No system is 100%, nor will it ever be... mistakes are gonna happen, and I don't agree that one is too many... I suppose it's a matter of acceptable errors...

And well, if you're gonna post such 'reputable' sources as holisticpolitics.com, then I think your posts have already been given more attention than they deserve...

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 03:43 PM

Seems quite a lot of people think that it's a good idea to kill people who kill other human beings. Which is what Paul Hill evidently thought.

There might be some disagreements about important definitions, such as who counts as human beings, but essentially anybody who believes in capital punishment is agreed on the point of principle involved.

Thannk God no country in the European Union can reintroduce the death penalty, and encourage that kind of thinking.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: The Walrus
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 03:49 PM

I'm afraid I'm with Midchuck - Break them for spares!
It costs more to keep two active 'innocents' on dialysis than one (full) 'lifer' in prison (and with more than one prisoner, the costs drop as the machine can be shared).
It should be fairly easy to teach the prisoner to read Braille (especially when he/she is up against a deadline).
That's the kidneys and corneas redestibuted (and such other bits as can be used), this also means that there needn't be a mad rush to match donor and recipeant as the donor won't be going anywhere.
I say make the ba*d pay his/her 'debt to society' with their body.

Walrus (in a militant mood)

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 03:51 PM

So most of the poeple we kill will deserve it. And youre o.k. with that Clinton.

Thats Great!

Raptor

(I don't go for holisticpolitics stuff either but a good story)

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 04:07 PM

Ya... more or less Raptor...

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 04:09 PM

Oh, I just might have known you'd diss "holisticpolitics.com", Clinton, you heartless swine! :-) You'll get your comeuppance when we come to Windsor and picket your musical performances.

Now, I'm not gonna get myself all worked up over the fate of Paul Hill...one way or the other. I've got better things to do today. But...I will make a few brief observations.

1. All the people who enthusiastically favour capital punishment should get to experience it firsthand themselves (at least once), after spending a few miserable months or years on death row. I figure this would give them a new slant on the subject, and it would also eliminate the more paranoid and vicious segment of the population handily. The sentences could be carried out by other people who also are in favour of capital punishment, on a lottery system. The last one left would then be given a chance to off him/herself, providing he/she was still in favour of the general idea. A refusal to do so would indicate that the subject's opinion of the matter had changed.

2. Those who freely give a government the power to execute people may one day live to bitterly regret it.

3. If you think it's too expensive to imprison people, then I guess you value money more than life. Nice set of values there, Bubba. The mafia is looking for guys just like you, so you'll never be out of work!

4. The concept of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is not a Christian concept. It was a Jewish concept (as expressed in the Old Testament), and may still be, but then Jesus gave his teachings which cast out those very ideas (among many others). For his doing so, the pro-capital-punishment crowd of his time (scribes and pharisees) had him executed. Jesus never physically harmed anyone. That many so-called Christians have ignored Christ's teachings of mercy and forgiveness is obvious, and says much about them but nothing about Jesus.

4. It is always possible to come up with particular stories that appear to support either the pro or anti-capital punishment position. That is because we are highly emotional creatures...and it's also because to every apparently rock-solid rule there are a few particular exceptions!!! And this is what people tend to overlook when they try to establish rock solid rules about life.

What's my solution? Try to come up with a generally workable rule, and apply it generally, but stay flexible at the same time and think creatively in each situation.

So, although I am nominally against capital punishment, and am not inclined to give a political system that authority, I am open to the fact that a situation might arise where I would feel it was necessary or advisable to kill someone. Such situations are rare, but they can and do happen. I try to judge each situation on its own merits rather than relying on some Absolute rule. This makes me (I hope) a thinking creature rather than a robot who lets others do his thinking for him.

Society would much rather have robots who simply follow rules. Thinking people are considered too unpredictable and dangerous...

The reason I am reluctant to give governments the official power of capital punishment is that they are unpredictable and dangerous, and are usually run by the immature and unscrupulous to boot. I trust myself. I don't trust governments, churces, or other such organizations.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 04:18 PM

" I just might have known you'd diss "holisticpolitics.com", Clinton, you heartless swine! :-)"

Anything with the word "Holistic" in it immediately gets written off as New Age clap-trap in my book, and anybody who believes it is automatically suspect of being an idiot!

And that goes double for you LH!

So... :-P

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 04:29 PM

I figured you'd see it that way, Clinton. Tell you what, I'll bring all my New Age literature to Windsor when Raptor and I come and we'll throw self-help books, books on rediscovering love, books on chakras, books on soul journeys, books on auras, and other great stuff like that at you until you are driven gibbering off the stage! You "partistic" types deserve no mercy, I say.

We can't do it this weekend, though, cos we're taking a canoe course instead.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Candyman(inactive)
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 04:37 PM

Is this, or is this not a Christian nation?

No, the United States of America is NOT a Christian nation. Many Americans are Christians, others are Jews, Muslims, Unitarians, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and any number of other religions. Many others athiests and agnostics who do not practice any religion. But the nation itself has no religion. By law, there is a separation of church and state.

I am pro-choice and anti-capital punishment, but I must admit to mixed feelings about this execution. I wouldn't have sentenced him to death, but aving seen Paul Hill's final press conference, I do not care that he's no longer with us.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: M.Ted
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 05:15 PM

I don't care for the death penalty, but will not miss Paul Hill all that much.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: katlaughing
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 05:34 PM

I tried to post this earlier, but hit a glitch and apparently it didn't take.

Someone posted something earlier which I agree with...make the prisoners work for wages which go directly to their victims as "life" support, and, like child support, be administered legally. That would be a good way to "make them pay" while they do time, IMO.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 05:34 PM

" I'll bring all my New Age literature to Windsor when Raptor and I come and we'll throw self-help books, books on rediscovering love, books on chakras, books on soul journeys, books on auras, and other great stuff like that"

Think of the money I'll save on Bog-roll!!!!

LOL

September is a bad month to come see me anyway... see -THIS- thread for more info and PM me if ya want...

:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Bobert
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 05:56 PM

Good point, Little Hawk. There are way too many so-called Christains that never quite make it into the New Testament. Just doesn't serve their particular biases and opinions. Yeah, Jesus was a mid course correction where the message of forgiveness is the centerpiece and where God loves us and blesses us and we in turn love Him and the Son and try to live as Jesus would have us live. No need to fear this God.... But, no, seems that lots of so-called Christains just don't get it yet they continue to think of themselves as Christains...

But, bottom line, they can say they are men and women of Faith but God knows... Fir sure... Yeah, they can say all they want but God knows... Can't bluff the Big Guy...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 06:18 PM

" Can't bluff the Big Guy..."

Some say the "Big Guy" is the biggest bluff of all...

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 06:54 PM

That paragraph of NicoleC's is worth repeating, many times:

Secondly, I don't believe it's a deterrant. Instead, I think it has the opposite effect. By sanctioning killing as a penalty for killing, it blurs the moral issue, particulary for the very young (and impressionable) or those of defective intelligence -- and many murderers are.

Guest Ed, those four words "Thou shalt not kill" were merely repeated in the bible. They were actually written on a lump of stone by God, no less, oh.... way back. Apparently thought worthless at the time, the stone disappeared from view until eventually turning up at a courtroom in Alabama. The state's chief justice drags them round with him to this day.

Pooby, would Clarence Darrow be the guy who was involved as prosecuting attorney in the disgusting conspiracy that stitched up Richard Hauptmann for the murder of the Lindberg baby?

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Gareth
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 07:12 PM

As usual Terribus translates my post into usable English - Sorry for any confusion but the years of the "Bloody Code" were marked by a 9 to 1 failure to carry out a death sentance providing that the condemed was either rich, or influential, or had respectable friends to interceed on thier behalf.

Still the gallows loss was Australia's gain.

Hughes book "The Fatel Shore" is an educational read.

Or for it updated, try Heinliens (SP) "The Moon is a Hard Mistress"

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raptor
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 07:26 PM

Clinton

I'm bettin that between your Cheerfull outlook, The fact that youre willing to kill a few innocents to kill more criminals, and your tastless jokes about Battered women You are "Lucky With The Ladies"

Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: NicoleC
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 07:43 PM

It's good to know that those who support capital punishment despite the ever-present liklihood of executing innocents would be willing to take a few thousand volts themselves in favor of the cause, should they themselves be wrongfully convicted.

There are two major theories in justice: Punishment and Rehabilitation.

The problem with punishment alone is that it doesn't solve anything. Victims don't cease being victims and the perpetrators don't stop being criminals when they have lived up to their punishment. The only thing it does is contribute to a sense of vengeance. The death penalty is the supposed ultimate punishment -- but what does it solve? Nothing.

The problem with rehabilitation is that we just haven't figured it out. Some prisoners who work hard and better themselves while is prison DO turn their lives around, but I suspect that we only achieve this with the borderline cases -- criminals of circumstances like poverty and ignorance, not those who are truly bad or sociopathic.

I agree that it's perhaps time that we approach justice from a different standpoint, and I think Restitution might be a better strategy. Those who are victims might receive some small measure in return for their loss, the criminals are "punished" with work, and hard work and getting to know one's victims' point of view could certainly be rehabilitative. Meanwhile, the criminals are still secure from society and prevented from committing more crimes.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Troll
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 07:51 PM

Fionn, "Thou shalt not kill" is a mis-translation. The correct phrase is "Thou shalt not do murder."
Murder was killing one of your own clan or tribe. The proscription did not apply to those outside the tribe.
There are numerous places in the Bible where God commanded the Israelites to kill their enemies.
So if "Thou shalt not kill" is the correct translation, then God is inconsistant.
This is not a good trait in a Diety.
I believe Darrow was dead by that time.

troll

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 07:54 PM

"and your tastless(sic.) jokes about Battered women "

Hey! I never said I endorse that behaviour did I??   I warned that it was a tasteless joke, in a thread ABOUT tasteless jokes...

And as far as battered women go, I prefer 'em in beer batter...

(Don't take THAT seriously either!)

"The fact that youre(sic.) willing to kill a few innocents to kill more criminals"

I never said I was willing... I said I'm resigned to the fact that mistakes happen, and will always happen no matter WHAT system is in play... And yes... I think the benefits outweigh the few mistakes that will happen...

I don't expect you to agree... Just be glad that -I'm- not in power eh!

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 08:41 PM

One reason that executing Paul Hill was a mistake is that in the view of his supporters, this makes him a martyr. Another reason is that if he were moldering away in a cell someplace, many of those same supporters would spend some of their time picketing the slammer and/or various government offices, thereby drawing at least some of them away from the women's health clinics.

…mistakes are gonna happen, and I don't agree that one is too many... I suppose it's a matter of acceptable errors...

All well and good, Clinton, but what if strange circumstances conspire and you turn out to be one of the "acceptable errors?" Would that really be "acceptable" to you?

Some random contemplations on what a moral society can do with extreme criminals:—

When a person like Paul Hill does what he does, he gives notice that he is resigning from humanity. He has proved by his actions that he is no longer fit to live among humans. To execute him for his crimes does indeed get rid of him, and it may bring a certain kind of primitive satisfaction, but it puts that society on the same moral plain as the murderer. Murder for murder, an eye for an eye. Subject to irreversible mistakes and subject to all kinds of possible abuse. Not the mark of a moral society. And to a truly moral society, no such errors are "acceptable."

Everyone has the right of self-defense. If someone attacks me, I have the same right as any living creature to do whatever is necessary to defend myself: physically restrain the attacker if that will suffice, or even go so far as to kill the attacker if that's the only way I can protect myself. I also have the obligation as a human being similarly to do all in my power to attempt to protect someone else who is under attack.

[By the way, the same holds true for entire nations. If a nation is attacked, it has the right (indeed the obligation) to defend itself and its people. But—against the immediate attack. And I would say that depending on specific circumstances, it has the right to launch an immediate retaliatory strike, not out of vengeance, but with the object of forestalling further such attacks from that aggressor. This does not include acts of foreign policy fobbed off as defensive actions months or years later, and certainly not against a different country. Pre-emptive war is murder on a national scale. But so much for that! I'm speculating about a hypothetical moral society here.]

In times past, as an alternative to killing the offender (someone who disobeys the mores of the tribe), the offender could be exiled. In a way, transportation was a form of this. Unfortunately, until we can establish a penal colony on Pluto, the only way we can do this is relatively local incarceration. This, I am told, is expensive—an expense to society as a whole that some feel is too high, and can be avoided if we simply off the offender. But in the long run, because of the appeals system, especially in capital cases, this turns out to be even more expensive. Larry Niven's system of using convicts as organ donors has a certain appeal for the vengeance-minded, and one can see the possible medical benefits to those in need, but it does seem somehow rather grotesque—a sort of "piecemeal" execution—and ethicists could argue 'til Sunday breakfast over this question!*

Perhaps our current prison system attempts to be a bit too humane toward unrepentant murderers and those who commit other heinous crimes. My thought still leans to the idea of exile. Let them live, but separate them from the rest of humanity. Maximum security, minimum perks. Spend no money on anything except the upkeep of the physical building, food, sanitary considerations, medical necessities, and the minimal personnel necessary to run such a place. I have visions of a dungeon, or someplace like the Chateau d'If, or Devil's Island, or Alcatraz. Lock them in a cell and, to all intents and purposes, throw away the key. Complete isolation. No books, no television, nothing. No form of human contact except when a silent jailer opens the slot at the bottom of the door and slides in a tray of life-sustaining but bland food. Nothing to occupy their mind accept their own thoughts and whatever mental resources they might have.

Some would go mad. Some would spend the rest of their lives in contemplation and meditation, and possibly become better persons. But no matter. The point is, they would be removed from the rest of society (or any society at all) and could no longer do harm. To all intents and purposes, they no longer exist, but society would not have their blood in its hands.

AND—should new evidence turn up establishing the person's innocence, they are still alive and can be "resurrected" and released. And, under such circumstances, they should be given whatever reparations might be deemed appropriate (not just twenty bucks walking money and a new suit; something fairly lavish; an honest and apologetic attempt to compensate them for the injustice done to them).

Don Firth

P.S:— On the matter of expense, when you consider the huge percentage of prison inmates who are serving ridiculously long sentences for relatively innocuous drug crimes, if we were to embrace the kind of civilized behavior that many European countries do regarding drug laws and such, we could cut costs drastically and at the same time, free up a lot of cell space for some real baddies.

*Footnote: by the way, in Larry Niven's stories of "organlegging," a condemned criminal's organs being parceled out to those in need of transplants was considered capital punishment (death of a thousand cuts, perhaps?). I remember reading one of the Gil "the ARM" Hamilton novels about twenty years ago, entitled The Patchwork Girl, in which a young woman who was convicted was later released—after she'd had some of her body parts "harvested." They had to put her back together, and once reassembled, not all of her parts (her legs, for example) matched. Nice thought, eh? No matter how good the judicial system gets in the future, don't be too sure that mistakes or nobbling will be a thing of the past.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Cookieless Rapaire
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 09:43 PM

I agreed with Don Firth earlier: put them away, away from all human contact, for all human stimulus (I really like the bland food idea). But I go a step further: they disappear. After the sentencing there is nothing more heard about them, from them, to them. After death they are cremated and the remains used for fertilizer. Only if they are found innocent do they again become "real."

As for those who do less than murder: "do unto others as you would others did unto you." Beat someone, you are beaten in the same way and to the same injuries, and your medical treatment is delayed for the same length of time. Steal, and your property is sold and the value given back to those you stole from (no property? Well, bucko, looks like you're going to do some work for the community, at minimum wage, and THAT will be given directly to the victim after costs of maintaining you are deducted.). Hit and run? -- no problem, you're hit and nobody stops. Rape? -- well, you'll know what a "power crime" is, won't you?

If someone kills, that person is killed. Not by the state, but by the victim's next-of-kin, and in the same manner that the victim died, IF the n/o/k wishes to do it. Otherwise, the killer quietly disappears....

Or go back the Brehon Law and give everyone an "honor price." Kill someone and upon conviction you pay the victim's "honor price" -- or your relatives have to.

Lots of different things can be done....

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: NicoleC
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 10:21 PM

What Don is describing is the premise of a Heinlein story, "Coventry." Essentially, those who refused to live by society's rules were banished from society to a wasteland where they could form their own society. (Kinda like transport to Australia -- except look at Oz now!)

Not a bad concept; or at least not worse than our current system which clearly does NOT work -- if it did, crime would have essentially died out long ago. Surely we could come up with an empty chunk of Nevada for a trial run?

Online version of the story

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 10:59 PM

Troll - You correctly point out that...

""Thou shalt not kill" is a mis-translation. The correct phrase is "Thou shalt not do murder."
Murder was killing one of your own clan or tribe. The proscription did not apply to those outside the tribe.
There are numerous places in the Bible where 'God' commanded the Israelites to kill their enemies.
So if "Thou shalt not kill" is the correct translation, then 'God' is inconsistant.
This is not a good trait in a Diety."

Right. Now my thoughts about all of that are that it tells us plenty about the ancient Israelites and perhaps less about God (which is why I put the ' ' marks around God). The Israelites were a barbarous lot (much like the other tribes with whom they fought) and felt free to commit mass murder or individual murder on anyone "outside the tribe". Being a barbarous lot, they conceived of a barbarous deity, who sanctioned genocide and was favourable to one miserable little lot of people on this planet and merciless to all the rest. That is not what I call "God", it's what I call some kind of imaginary monster. If the Israelites did indeed receive some communication from God, they twisted it to their own purposes.

Now, Jesus (and Buddha, and Krishna, and numerous other great teachers) conceived of a spiritual order that did not play favourites among human beings, but considered them all of one "tribe", one humanity. All the more enlightened religious philosophies see humans as a single humanity. Given that understanding, the commandment "thou shalt not murder" extends to include all human beings, and possibly some other living beings as well.

It just depends on what you think is murder and what you think is not murder.

I regard unnecessary killing as murder, and I would extend that to the unnecessary killing of various animals and maybe even certain plants (endangered species of trees, for example). Wanton killing, merely for some personal gain...without real need...and killing for pleasure or revenge. Those are murder in my book.

So I've got no problem with "Thou shalt not murder", just with the way the Israelites interpreted it to their own exclusive advantage. It's a sorry tale, and I wonder that anyone can take it seriously.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: LadyJean
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 12:27 AM

The fact is that those states without capital punishment have lower murder rates than those with.
Paul Hill is no great loss to the world, but now the smug bastard is a martyr for some people. Women's clinics all over Florida have had to beef up security, because of the execution.
I would be just as happy if the louse had been obliged to spend his life doing disagreeable jobs, changing adult diapers, cleaning public restrooms, scrubbing garage floors, without any possibility of parole.
I'm a freelance writer. I've been plagarized. I've had pieces rewritten so they weren't my work anymore. I was done serious dirt by a friend who asked me to write the book for her musical. Outside of threatening people with my sister the lawyer, there isn't much I can do. There's a lot I'd like to do, but it's mostly illegal, and rightly so. Revenge just isn't a good idea.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 05:34 AM

I find it worrying the way people seem to enjoy fantasising about vengeance.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 05:51 AM

Good post, Little Hawk. LadyJean, I do like your idea of having the malefactor assigned to disagreeable jobs, especially in a social service capacity, as a possible alternative to complete isolation. That way, he gives back something to society and possibly earns his keep, helping to alleviate the "expense" problem.

Rapaire, I'm afraid I can't agree. That's literally back to the "eye for an eye" thing. Pure vengeance. Although it may not seem so beforehand, oftentimes the aftermath of a successful vendetta has some pretty negative psychological effects on the person or persons who so passionately wanted revenge. Unless they have a pretty vicious streak themselves, most people almost always feel further traumatized. It seems to add a sense of guilt to everything else they've felt as a result of the whole incident. Not good.

Have you ever seen film of people who have just watched the execution of someone who murdered one of their loved ones and whom they sorely wanted to see be put to death? From the expressions on their faces, it's obvious that what they thought was going to be the satisfying experience of watching the person who had killed their loved one "get his" has turned out to be pretty hollow. In fact, rather than looking satisfied, they usually look a little sickened by what they have just witnessed.

Many people don't really understand the concept of forgiveness. Those sages who counselled forgiveness way back when had a pretty good grasp of psychology. Forgiveness is not for the benefit of the person who has offended you, forgiveness is for your benefit. Consider: how often has it happened that someone carries a grudge for years over something that was done to them, agonizing every time they think of it, having it eat them up inside and wanting to get even with the person who did it, or at the very least, have the person acknowledge their offense and show the proper amount of remorse for what they have done. Then an opportunity presents itself and they confront the person—only to learn that the person they've held the grudge against all this time doesn't even remember the incident? Was not even aware they had offended someone? Had the offended one let his or her anger go and had forgiven the person, they would have lived a much happier life all that time.

Forgiving someone doesn't mean that you have to forget. You simply take steps to make sure the person doesn't have an opportunity to do it again. Or in the case of crimes of violence, the moral society's primary function is not to punish the felon, it is to take steps, short of yet another act of violence, to prevent the felon from having an opportunity to commit violent crime against anyone else.

Look at the Israel / Palestine situation: each side maintains (and quite probably believes) that it is retaliating for a previous offense. Like and infinite game of leap-frog. When will it ever stop? Never, considering the "eye for an eye" dictum they both seem to be following. In the meantime, innocent people keep dying violently.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: kendall
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 07:52 AM

Sorry L.H. but murder does not and can not apply to animals or plants. It is a specific legal term meaning to deliberatly take the life of another human being. It can not be adjusted to suit anyone's outrage.
That's why we have other words to cover different kinds of killing, such as manslaughter. Manslaughter and murder are not the same thing.Legally, abortion is not murder under our present laws.

We need another word to cover the wanton killing of animals. I agree with you that something should be done to stop our headlong rush toward us being the only animal on the planet.

READ ISHMAEL by Daniel Quinn

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 08:49 AM

Murder has two meanings. It can refer to killing which falls within a legal definition of murder at a particular time and place, which can vary widely. Or it is used to refer to other killings, with the sense that the person using it believes it to be wrongful killing.

Somtimes the two meanings can merge retrospectively - we would have no difficulty in referring to what Hitler or Saddam did as murder even if it turned out that the laws had been adjusted so that it was all nicely legal at the time.

I don't think it's legitimate to try to restrict the use of the term to situations where the law is in line with our understnading of morality.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Rapparee
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 08:50 AM

Oh, I don't think the "do unto others" thing is a good idea, but I have heard it suggested. Whatever is done, it cannot be vengance, but either punishment (with the opportunity for the person to rehabilitate) or putting the criminal away from society because they are too evil and are deemed as someone who can never change.

But I have to admit that I'm not at all sorry that Paul Harris, Idi Amin, Heinrich Himmler, Pol Pat, and similar sorts are dead from whatever reason. They're not the sorts I'm missing.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Wolfgang
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 08:57 AM

Come on, Little Hawk, you can do better than that. Remember the 'UFOs and the Bible' thread, where you did blur the distinction between animate and inanimate matter? He who cuts a stone unnessessarily is a murderer as well!

And why stop at death penalty in your wish that those who support a type of punishment should get a first hand experience of it themselves? She who supports lifelong jail with hard labour for murderers should first experience it herself. Perhaps each one who supports any type of sentence for any crime should first experience it herself. That would have the advantage to make threads as this much shorter.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 08:57 AM

Don, I'd go a step farther and say that those who rejoice in what Hill did have equally resigned from society, as have all fundamentalists, of whatever persuasion, who believe that their crimes against humankind will be rewarded after death.

Near the top of the thread Leo Condie linked to a messageboard that gives a flavour of what I've got in mind. Here it is again as a clicky: Scary. (They're still offering to forward messages to Hill, so they are obviously well connected.) Churches and ministers who brainwash people into this rubbish should be monitored and where necessary prosecuted for incitement.

Now...

HUGE apology to Clarence Darrow. I'd misremembered completely his involvement in the Lindberg case, which was simply to express his views on it. Moreover his view was that the evidence against Hauptmann was feeble if not fabricated and no basis on which to execute someone.Many have taken that view since; not so many spoke out as Darrow did at the time. Sorry to you too, Pooby.

Troll, I'm with you when you advance the cause of relatives/victims. But it makes no sense to use that as an argument for capital punishment, because CP is already there in the system you're criticising. I take your point that "Thou shalt not kill" (but not the narrow construct you put on "murder), but I was quoting Guest Ed. I assume the definitive source is that lump of stone in Alabama....

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raptor
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 09:38 AM

I say we make a Martyr out of Paul Hill! We can name 1 abortion clinic after him in every state and province!

The Paul Hill Abortion Clinic!

That'll Teach the F#*ker

We could Make T-shirts

Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Pooby
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 11:29 AM

Fionn:

I was just about to post up and say that the Darrow I cited was the one who defended Scopes in the "Monkey Trial" case and thrill-killers Loeb and Leopold, among others. You beat me to the punch with the clarification, but what the heck, why waste a perfectly good posting?

Raptor:

I LOVE the idea of naming an abortion clinic after Hill. Hopefully it would add to his misery in the afterlife.

On that note, cheers!

Poobs

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 12:30 PM

Well, Wolfgang, I am generally in support of forgiveness, negotiation, and accomodation between parties who disagree on a given subject. I have no fear of getting a firsthand experience of my beliefs, none whatsoever.

As to cutting stone unnecessarily...it's all a matter of degree. People who wantonly devastate nature or property (animate or inanimate) are in fact committing a type of immorality, what I would term a crime, against the general community and against the planet. Whether you call it murder or not is entirely up to the individual, I suppose. I don't know that I necessarily would call it that, but I would call it a crime.

I was simply making a statement to suggest the notion that it is not just human life that is sacred, but all life. Humans are usually egotistical enough to think otherwise.

On the other hand, I'm not suggesting that it is possible to survive without taking some life (plant or animal, depending) in the process. It's the unnecessary and inappropriate taking of life that I object to.

Spiritual philosophy is a real pain to you, isn't it, Wolfgang? (presumably because you believe it to be based on fiction?)

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Troll
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 02:06 PM

Lh, several years ago, I believe that you would kill to protect your family. Have you changed your mind?
Don, in my view, we have the right to take the life of another if we do so to protect our own life or the lives of our families. This has been discussed before with much hair-splitting about how a non-lethal way should be found. Some people simply cannot conceive of a situation where the death of a predator is the onlyway to prevent further predation.
Be that as it may.
The state acts as a proxy for the citizens that it is protecting. When it executes a murderer, it does so to protect those citizens from further murders.
This is the ONLY way that protection can be guaranteed.
Prisoners escape. Appeals judges with rocks in their heads let them go. (I'll get heat for that one).
We, as citizens, are not allowed to execute those who have harmed us except at the moment of the commision of the violent act. After that, it is up to the State to mete out punishment. In the case of violent murder, the only way to guarantee that the murderer does not escape to do violent murder again, is to execute him/her.
If you know of another, foolproof way for the State to protect it's citizens from murderers like Paul Hill, speak out.

troll

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 02:37 PM

I'm willing to kill someone who is trying to kill me or my family. You can tell who it is, it's the one shooting at you or hitting at you with the hatchet.

But the courts can't always tell who committed a murder in the past, and innocent people have been convicted and executed, and the guilty man goes free.

And much as I hate to disagree with anyone named Clinton, I think that executing one innocent person is too many.

If it's not too many, I hope that one person executed is your child.

That sounds cruel, doesn't it? But it's going to be somebody's child, might as well be the child of somebody that approves of it.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 03:18 PM

Don, in my view, we have the right to take the life of another if we do so to protect our own life or the lives of our families.

Troll, if you read my post of 04 Sep 03 - 08:41 PM, you will see that this is exactly what I said. I furthermore mentioned certain stipulations which pin this down a bit more tightly.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 03:25 PM

"I think that executing one innocent person is too many"

Yer not alone... and I'm not saying you're wrong... I just don't agree...

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: M.Ted
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 04:05 PM

I don't know why everyone is so worried about murderers--at least in the US, most people aren't killed by murderers--many more are killed by freaking idiots who are driving drunk, by incompetent caregivers who gave them the wrong medicine, by clods who were talking on cellphones, by idiots who came to work with influenza, and perhaps the most of all are killed by their own bad habits--Is it worse to be killed by a murderer than by someone who is just an idiot?

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 04:11 PM

MT is right... more people have been killed in car accidents than were killed in all the wars of the 20th century... and 98% of all car accidents are driver error...

So let all the murders out, and send them to Drivers Ed... so they can come back and teach people how to be better drivers...

:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 04:27 PM

Yeah, troll, sure I'd kill to protect my family...or someone else's...if it was (or appeared to be) the only feasible response to the situation. Executing people who are already safely behind bars is not the only feasible response to that situation.

You see, there is no moral behavioral law that you can set down in stone (at least I don't think there is) which will infallibly cover ALL given situations.

Such laws are general guidelines, that's all. You still have to measure each circumstance according to its own merits and use your own intelligence to decide what to do about it. Lazy people don't want to be bothered thinking, so they just get someone else to do their thinking for them, write down a law for them to follow, and then they obey it like robots. That's what you generally see happening in both civil law and organized religion.

Ted - People are worried about murderers because murder is unusual and makes a spectacular news story. People habitually worry about dramatic stuff that will probably never happen to them, while ignoring the ordinary boring stuff that they ruin their health with every day. It's one of the humorous aspects of human psychology.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 04:38 PM

Well . . . here's one way of looking at it. From watching nature programs on PBS, one learns that all species on earth have other species that act as population controls. For example, if it weren't for lions and cheetahs and such, we'd be ass-deep in gazelles. Being the very apex of the chain of evolution and superior to all the other species on this planet (or so we are told), there is nothing out there to control our population.

So we have to do it ourselves. Perhaps that's the natural order of things. . . .    :-/

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 04:53 PM

"ass-deep in gazelles"

That is, without a doubt, the funniest thing I've EVER read on Mudcat!

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raedwulf
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 05:38 PM

3. If you think it's too expensive to imprison people, then I guess you value money more than life. Nice set of values there, Bubba. The mafia is looking for guys just like you, so you'll never be out of work!

As a rule, I laugh & applaud your posts in equal measure, Hawk. Occasionally I want to spit, & this is one of those moments... No, I don't value money more than life. I also don't live in Utopia, where money is in endless supply. I do not believe that the likelihood of mis-convicting a Ted Bundy, a Peter Sutcliffe, a Dr. Crippen, a Jack The Ripper, is worth the expense of keeping these scumbags in prison for life.

There are many debatable convictions on Death Row in America. But when the conviction is "beyond reasonable doubt", as Rapaire says, what do you do with them? Do you think that any salutary lesson is set by keeping them in prison? Because I don't!! So it's wasted money that could be better spent on something more useful... Making the world a better place so that people don't turn out this way... Spending it on healthcare so that people *don't* die, or have a better quality of life... Etcetera...

In times past (& times current, if American legal proceedings are anything to go by), Justice is observed more in breach than practice. What did I say earlier? ..."justice" is slow & expensive, and (as Gareth says) usually belongs to the bloke wot has the most money!

So your system is f***ed? What does that prove? That your system is f***ed, nothing more, nothing less. Sort your system out... When the evidence is incontrovertible (& modern standards are many times more exacting than even 25 years ago), then execute. If there might be the slightest shred of doubt, then hold off & look for more evidence. Nothing I see here argues against CP, but only illuminates the weakness in the application of the system as it exists now.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raedwulf
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 05:48 PM

but it puts that society on the same moral plain as the murderer

As to the worst of arguments, I will say, to all those who have tried the "moral" argument, only this - Your morals are not my morals. If you don't moralize over me, I won't moralize over you. If the only argument you can manufacture is morality, your argument is built on quicksand because you cannot logically justify your position. The only way you can defend "morality" is if someone sees the world the same way you do, & that is an entirely emotional point-of-view.

Now try to tell me why your emotions are better than mine. You will fail, & this is why Paul Hill is dead!

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: alanabit
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 06:02 PM

Raedwulf, who is more likely to escape the gallows do you think? Is it the rash, impetuous, maybe mentally ill killer who kills because he is either mentally ill or loses control for a minute? Or is it the clever, devious, calculating criminal, who plans carefully and leaves a minimum of evidence? Now the really unfair question: Which of those more deserves to go to the gallows?
   I don't have much sympathy for most executed criminals on a personal basis. However, my opposition to capital punishment (which is implacable) has nothing to do with sentiment. It is a travesty of justice and can only diminish respect for law and order.
   For the record, some of the states which currently practice capital punishment include Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China and Kuwait. Countries which have abolished it in recent years - or imposed a moratorium - include South Africa (after the fall of Apartheid), East Germany (shortly before the Berlin Wall fell) and Russia (after the fall of Communism). I know what sort of a country I would prefer to live in!

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Gareth
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 06:14 PM

Actually - I missed it on my last reading but Raptor has it dead on,

Name the Clinics for Paul Hill - It's beutifull (SP)!!!!

Mmmmm ! In exream cynical mood tonite

"I dreamt I saw Paul Hill last night ....."

"From Florida to far L A, in clinic, home or ill,
Where women have the right to choose,
Paul Hill's name lives on still,
Paul Hill's name lives on still"

Gareth

<

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: alanabit
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 06:23 PM

Gareth, I am ashamed of myself for laughing at that... but I did...

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raedwulf
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 06:23 PM

Alan - funnily enough, that was the bit of the argument I edited out...

CP is no deterrent. This is not an argument against it. It merely proves the point that any argument that tries to posit "deterrence" in relation to "justice" is utter bollocks.

Criminals broadly fall into two categories. 1) They commit crimes on the spur of the moment - In which case they're not thinking about potential punishment. 2) They plan their crimes in advance - In which case they don't plan on being caught.

Either way, the deterrent effect of any possible sentence is zero.

As to your remarks about practitioners & abolitionists, I refer you to my previous post - "What does that prove? That your system is f***ed, nothing more, nothing less. Sort your system out..." Their systems are suspect & need to be reviewed. Nothing from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China or Kuwait tells me that CP is wrong, only that the concept of 'justice' is not as rigorous as you or I would want...

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,pdq
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 06:29 PM

"beyond reasonable doubt" is not the standard in a capital case. The standard is much higher. Plus 10-15 years of appeals? 99%+ of these people are guilty and 99%+ of their victims are innocent. The fact that Hill killed a doctor who did abortions has nothing to do with anything, as far as his conviction or punishment go.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: alanabit
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 06:52 PM

Raedwulf, I agree that justice is not rigorous enough. You are also quite right to say that positing deterrence against justice is bollocks. In fact, efficient efficient law enforcement and a thorough justice system are much better deterrents.
CP will never return to Britain. After the experience of the seventies - when bomb explosions were followed by arrests of hapless Irishmen - most of us know that justice can effectively quickly be surrendered to a lynch mob mentality. It took me a long time to realise that the Maguires were innocent, that the Guilford Four were innocent and that the Birmingham Six were innocent. I am not proud of that. Thank God we didn't top them.
Justice is always administered by fallible people. There always have been mistakes and I can't see that changing. In the USA, student lawyers and journalists have freed people from Death Row whom the professionals failed to save. I would oppose the death penalty anyway - even if the system did not make mistakes. It does though.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: katlaughing
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 07:22 PM

As far as whinging about the cost of keeping them in prison and the money being better spent somewhere else...that can be said about almost anything the government spends money on, i.e. funding for so-called wars, pillaging of natural resoruces, etc...so much more has been spent/lost by incompetents/criminal politicians that comparisons fail. And the pity of it is, most of them never do any time or even go to trial.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raedwulf
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 07:35 PM

Alan - I would never mock your sentiment. I'm not quite old enough to remember the 4 or 6 first-hand (I was alive, just not old enough to notice!).

Again, though, I would say that they prove my point. The 4 & 6 were convicted on the kind of fitted up evidence that wouldn't stand for two minutes in court these days. I don't necessarily blame the police for that - they were under enormous pressure to convict *someone*. My guess would be that 9 out of 10 were guilty of *something*, & maybe one or two were guilty of what they were charged with. Nevertheless, in the current climate, the evidence that was available *then* wouldn't result in a prosecution *now*.

And that's the point - the world has changed. It is far more transparent, & far more demanding. You are undoubtedly right - CP will not make a comeback in the UK. Not because it is inherently right or wrong, but because the government that legalised it would lose too many votes (&, cynically, that's all they care about!). If it did, though, I am sure it really would be the ultimate sanction - rarely applied & only then when beyond all doubt. I firmly believe that a James Hanratty could not occur in the modern world.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 08:08 PM

Okay, if you don't like the word "moral," how about "ethical?"

When one says "moral," most people think one is talking about religion or sex because that's the context within which they usually hear the word. And most people seem to feel that morality is a strictly personal thing.

But it's not that limited. I was using the term in the more formal philosophical sense. It falls within the field of Ethics, and in that context, it is not subjective, or "yours is yours and mine is mine." It's a matter of determining standards of behavior to guide the actions of an entire society and all of its members. It is the philosophical basis of Law. It is also the basis of political principles—which seems to be an oxymoron these days. You hear a lot of talk about it, but see damned little of it in action, and when you do, it is applied relatively (it's immoral for Clinton to lie about his sexual activities, which was a private, domestic issue that affect a very small number of people emotionally, but physically harmed no one; however, it's okay for Bush to lie about the reasons he wanted to go to war, which is continuing to result in the violent deaths of a yet to be determined number of people).

Moral (ethical) question: is lying per se immoral? One test of many: what if everybody did it whenever they felt like it? How would this affect a well-ordered society?

Moral principles, once determined and agreed upon, apply to everyone. That's Philosophy 101.

If it's wrong for me as an individual member of society to kill someone, it is equally wrong for the society as a whole to do so.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 09:38 PM

Quote:
"'I think that executing one innocent person is too many'

"Yer not alone... and I'm not saying you're wrong... I just don't agree... "
__

You mean you wouldn't mind being executed as long as they got some murderers too?

How many innocent people *would* be too many to execute?

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,marthabees
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 09:41 PM

Some points we've missed as we've thoroughly wandered to and fro......

1. Paul Hill honestly believed that he was instructed by God to do the deed.

2. When he shot the two men, one didn't quite die, so Paul pumped 5 more shots into him till it was clear the man was stone dead.

3. He honestly believed that he was going to a better place and seemed genuinely pleased to be going to see his home in Glory.

4. He was by his own admission not repentent. He encouraged other persons to follow in his example.

All of the above adds fuel for thought to this so-difficult moral conundrum.

A comment: I heard a leader once referring to capital punishment as "cancelling their vote." Interesting euphemism.....

And tangentially:
I had the distinct non-privilege of being in Tallahassee during Ted Bundy's murders, watching the press scurry as it was awakened early in the morning to go to the Chi Omega house to see the crime scenc which contained the bodies of the chewed up coeds, seeing police photos of the bite marks, and seeing him in the police cars nearly every morning on his way to court.

I traveled to work on the same roads from the same part of town (my house was near the jail) to the destination (his, the courthouse - mine, my place of work) and more than once we made eye contact as our cars passed one another. I can even now as I type feel the awful 'vibe' he exuded as he made eye contact with me. It was nasty, dirty, evil. Call me over-reacting or call me accurate. Not sure, but it was truly creepy and it certainly qualified as the "evil eye" to me.

I didn't have any trouble at all with the state cancelling his vote. Other persons I am not so certain about though... it's a tough call.

Martha

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Bobert
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 11:15 PM

Yo Raedwulf:

What are your thoughts on the propostion that I laid out earlier with a private/public partnership that would turn prisons into manufacturing centers where the labor of inmates would compensate the victims of crimes, or their families.

Little Hawk:

I know hat you mean about stone. The P-Vine and I were in western Carolina recentl;y and we wanted to take a few of the mountain stone back for our gardens but we had a difficult ime in finding stone that would negatively impact the area around where we found them. It was difficult but we found several that we felt could come to live with us while not leaving their friends in a lurch. You get what I'm saying but I doubt if many other here do. Hopefully, I'm wrong....

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raedwulf
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 12:10 PM

Bobert:

It's an interesting proposition. Curiously, I've literally just finished reading "The Fatal Shore" by Robert Hughes (which I've seen mentioned either here or somewhere else within the last week), about Transportation to Australia. Assigned labour was an integral part of the early growth of the colony. Judging by what I read, it was neither success nor failure.

Your idea has been tried before. From what I know, I would say that the evidence is equivocal. There are immediate problems with trying to reintroduce it.

1) Convict labour is always reluctant & inefficient.

2) Some of the convicts will embrace the notion of expiation through labour. Unfortunately, many will not, & will sabotage the labour, where they can, out of sheer spite.

3) The biggest obstacle is probably the modern notion of human rights.

4) In Europe & the UK at least, the Unions will squeal about the way that you're taking bread out of the mouth of the honest labourer, etcetera... {rollseyes}

5) Would you (especially in light of 1 & 2 above) "buy" any convict labour, with the potential problems that might attend? And, given the modern negative world, would undoubtedly be far more widely publicised than the successes...

It's a plausible idea, but can you tell me how the practical difficulties will be overcome or neutralised?

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raedwulf
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 12:55 PM

Don:

Yes, ethical sounds a lot better than moral. However there are schools of ethics, & different breeds of philsophy too! How do you square Socrates vs. Plato for instance?

The rights of the individual against the rights of the group/society? The two often conflict. How do you strike a balance? Despite your remarks, I do not believe that it is as objective as you would like to suggest.

If it's wrong for me as an individual member of society to kill someone, it is equally wrong for the society as a whole to do so.

Only by your strain of morality, ethics, philosophy, whatever you want to call it, Don. I, for one do NOT agree. I do not see that any society derives any benefit (tangible or otherwise) from holding the likes of Ian Brady or Myra Hindley in prison until they die. I would suggest that, even incarcerated, they continue to have an effect equivalent to a cancer (only negative) upon the body of human society.

If I, an individual, go out & cold-bloodedly shoot an individual, I am guilty of murder. If society cold-bloodedly & rationally decides that individuals have placed themselves too far beyond the laws & mores of society, that is not the same case. Thou shalt not kill (inaccurate) vs. Thou shalt not murder (accurate) again.

If the decisions of society are automatically wrong when they are not the same as the choice of the individual, then any & all attempt at government is wrong, because all government must inevitably rule against the rights of the individual at some point. "Wrong for me = wrong for society" is as false a piece of argument as you could wish to make!

The answer to someone else's remark, BTW, is that if I, innocent, were sentenced to death, I would argue my innocence to the grave. I do not believe that I would argue for the abolition of CP simply because it would save my life!

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Don Firth
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 10:02 PM

I never claimed that morality (or ethics, if you will) was completely objective. What I was arguing against was the idea that morality is completely subjective. That can, and often does, lead to a great deal of social and political strife. And it leads to all kinds of abuse of good sense and general confusion when a society can't make up it's mind what kind of standards it really follows. One example I cited above is when one president's lie results in scandal and impeachment and another president's lie has thus far been just peachy-keen with a lot of the same people who were up in arms about the first president's fib. It's not just a double-standard, which everyone decries, it seems to be situational. And purely subjective. Hell of a sloppy way to run a society.

Nevertheless:—

I fail to see how a society gains by killing someone it regards as beyond the pale. In times past, societies used to execute people for holding the "wrong" beliefs, or even just being accused of holding the wrong beliefs. See the Inquisition or the Salem witch trials. Granted, a cold-blooded, unrepentant murderer would seem to be a prime candidate for the gallows or the gurney and needle, but society actually stands to lose by this, if not in moral, then certainly in practical ways.

First, for the really concrete-bound, there is the matter of the cost of execution when compared to the cost of life-long incarceration. Appeals are almost invariable granted in a capital crime—if the defendant has a good attorney (often depending on the depth of the defendant's pocketbook)—and this frequently winds up costing the taxpayer millions of dollars, and it puts a further strain on an already overburdened court system. (And they are grossly overburdened. Although not a criminal case, I've had some recent experience with the court system, and I know just how backed up the courts are and how long it takes to get even a simple ruling: something that should have taken a couple of weeks at most, but took six gawdam years!! But that's another story). In terms of cost, it is far more economical to hold someone in prison for life than it is to execute them, so the old wheeze about "why should the taxpayers have to pay to keep this monster in prison" just doesn't hold water.

Second, there is the appalling number of cases of people—especially poor people and ethnic minorities—sent to death row, who, if some curious person or agency with the time and the interest (it does happen, but nowhere near often enough) cares to re-examine a case, it turns out that the convicted person is completely innocent, and in their rush to close the case, the prosecution has taken the easy route, convicted some poor sod who hasn't got the resources to mount a decent defense, and left the real murderer still running free. How many innocent people have been executed? More that you would care to think about. And that, no matter how you slice it, is immoral! And no—one is too many!

On balance, capital punishment is not only immoral (arguable, perhaps), it is impractical (objectively provable).

Why should the taxpayer have to spend so much money executing this b*st**d when it's cheaper just to throw him in a six-by-eight cell somewhere and let him rot?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 10:49 PM

Let me rephrase a statement:

WHEN does it become acceptable (moral) (ethical) for society (or The State, if you'd rather) to do something which it is forbidden for me as an individual member of society to do? Again, from where does society derive the authority to forbid me to do something which society allows itself to do?

My old ethics professor defined ethics as "the necessary ought." My old morals teacher defined morals as "culturally and religiously defined ways of thought and behavior." Both were Catholic priests, and both seperated ethics from morals. Neither could effectively answer the questions.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Bobert
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 11:17 PM

Yo Readwulf:

Practice makes perfect. The time is right for another try at a private/public patnership but it has to be done with a few changes. First, inmates arre to be treated as regular folks. Second, there has to be a lot of emphasis put on counseling. Third, it must be sold to society as a way of reducing recivitist rates. Fourth, the particpants should be thought of as just that and not crimals or inmates... This is a biggie and is going to have to take some good Pr work....

But this system is very humane and do-able, and economical, and pro-human and, and....

And I'm speaking not completely as an outsider in that I was a jail house teacher in Richmond, Va. fir a few years and have seen first hand what we are doing to folks in jails across America....

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 12:40 AM

Yo Bobert!

My wife Barbara worked for years with an organization called "Peace Between People." Among other things, PBP conducted Alternatives to Violence workshops both in the community and in the prisons. Barbara was one of the Alternatives to Violence facilitators, and she and a number of other facilitators (all volunteers—they didn't get paid to do this) spent a lot of time over the years in the state prisons and reformatories doing these workshops. I can't give you any statistics, but both Barbara and I know a whole batch of guys who really turned their lives around and are now out, making a living for themselves, keeping their noses clean, and living as regular contributing members of society. Interesting when you consider that some of the prison official were dubious of the whole thing, and had an attitude of "I think it's a waste of time, but its your time, so be our guests." There were, of course, two or three who went through the workshops who didn't make it, but in the main, this kind of rehabilitation effort is very effective and really pays off.

Unfortunately, this kind of program depends on groups such as Peace Between People and other "bleeding-heart liberals and do-gooders" or they just don't happen. More than one prisoner made the statement that "it really makes a difference to know that somebody really cares what happens to us." If this kind of thing was as a regular part of the prison system's rehabilitation program (if any), it could make a huge difference. But—selling something like "alternatives to violence" to a system that considers violence to be an essential part of its overall methods isn't an easy thing to do.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 04:12 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 04:45 AM

Sorry about that. Not sure what happened.

Anyway:
"The answer to someone else's remark, BTW, is that if I, innocent, were sentenced to death, I would argue my innocence to the grave. I do not believe that I would argue for the abolition of CP simply because it would save my life! "

That's interesting, becuse I *would* argue for the abolition of CP simply because it would save your life. I believe it's wrong to kill the innocent, even if it enables one to kill the guilty.

"Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" seems obviously stupid and brutal to me. If it seems wise to you I don't know what to say.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: saulgoldie
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 10:46 AM

Programs to reduce recidivism cost money. But even if their succes is somewhat less than 100% they return many dollars for each dollar spent in prevention of future enforcement/imprisonment events. And for starters, a whole buncha resources for such programs could be freed up if we would just stop legislating personal behavior where society has no business meddling, like sex and drug activity in which no minors or unwilling participants are involved and no property is damaged.

And as much as I think some of the criminals prominently mentioned here are not part of civilized society, I still think executing criminals should not be done. It is, as has been pointed out here several times, much more expensive than a life sentence; it lowers society to the level of the killers; and it deprives us of the chance to have them possibly live to regret their actions and show remorse.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,pdq
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 03:20 PM

"It is, as has been pointed out here several times, much more expensive than a life sentence; it lowers society to the level of the killers; and it deprives us of the chance to have them possibly live to regret their actions and show remorse."

                1) as has been pointed out, endless appeals for 10 to 15 years cost money... execution should be a few thos.,            
                     not the 33 thos per year it costs to house, feed, and provide medical care for each federal prisoner

                2) "murder" by an individual and "execution by statute" are not the same and everyone knows that                  
                  
                3) who cares what the murderer thinks...regret their actions? feel remorse??? again, who cares

My opinion is that Mr. Hill, at the very least, had the huevos to stand behind what he did. No regrets. No remorse.

Mr. Hill's beliefs were so far from those of this society that society had to remove him. Permanently works just fine.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 03:40 PM

I don't want to abolish the death penalty for the benefit of Mr Hill. He is --was-- a piece of shit, as we say in North Idaho.

I want to abolish the death penalty for the benefit of the man who is wrongfully or mistakenly convicted.

Many cases are not as clear-cut as Hill's.
We all know that innocent men are sometimes convicted and executed.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,pdc
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 07:09 PM

Any Canadian posting to this forum is familiar with the fact that in the last decade or so, Canada has released at least 3 men who had been convicted of murder. Improved DNA tests proved their innocence.
It's a good thing we don't have capital punishment.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 08:37 PM

Troll, you challenged someone to find a better way for the state to protect its citizens, or words to that effect.

If you are seriously interested, you could start by having a look at some of the north European and Scandinavian countries.They have a mere fraction of the murders you have in the states, and much lower proportions of their populations in prison. Yet they don't have the deterrant of capital punishment. They don't have to kill people to stay safe. How on earth do they do it???

They do it by regulating their economies to ensure that the gap between rich and poor is narrower than in western Europe, particularly Britain, and a far cry from the obscene extremes of the US. As well as helping them feel safer, this also means more social mobility than in Britain, and massively more than in the so-called "land of opportunity." (Sick joke.) In other words, many people in Norway, Sweden etc, manage to get themselves out of poverty, whereas millions of the US poor haven't a chance in hell. They stay poor because they made the mistake of being born that way. (Plenty tax breaks for the rich though.)

You could be campaigning to get something done about all this, Troll. America doesn't have to be the way it is. It's just that some of you seem to like it that way.

Raedwolf, that's quite a bright idea, executing only those death row prisoners who are guilty beyond reasonable doubt. But hasn't good old American justice found every death row inmate guilty beyond reasonable doubt?

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 09:19 PM

Hi, Raedwulf...I'm back from the canoe trip. Money is "not in endless supply"? Actually, money IS in endless supply, but not to you and me or the public in general or the municipalities! It's in endless supply to the people who spuriously manufacture it whenever they want to (the banks). They do so by merely creating it out of thin air every time they make a loan to some major player on the business or financial scene. All of a sudden "Bingo!" there are millions more dollars in play that just magically appeared from nowhere, allowing already very rich people to become richer and do business and the banks to collect interest and become richer! What a pprofitable system, eh? It's an endless money tree for those who already have most of the money anyway...and most of the money ISN'T REAL!!!

The amount of real currency actually printed or minted by governments is a very small fraction of that created by banks through the use of loans, credit arrangements, and other such pyramid schemes. It is also the engine behind inflation.

This doesn't have much to do with the relative merits of paying or not paying for incarcerating prisoners, but I think it's an interesting aside on a social order which does in fact value money over all else, and most certainly over life, since your life or mine will indeed be forfeit if billions of dollars are at stake and we are in the way. Count on it.

Now, I'm not really suggesting that individuals on this forum value money over life, I'm just making a provocative statement in order to maybe get someone to look into the deeper implications of a decision to execute people "because it's cheaper than keeping them in jail". It seems like an almost unbelievably crass statement to make in favour of the death penalty to me. It's downright embarrassing that anyone would say it. Are people really that worried about the piddly amount of tax they pay each year (individually, I mean) to incarcerate prisoners? I would think the amount of money going to the building of nuclear weapons would outstrip it by far, and what could we possibly need more nukes for? Look, everyone pays taxes toward a lot of stuff that they don't personally agree with. You do. I do. It's inevitable. That's how the system works. It's the price one pays for living in an organized society that is doing many good things too. But to suggest that people should be executed to save you or some other person $5 a year or something like that (probably less) is just crass and shameful. It indicates shallow, knee-jerk thinking, as far as I'm concerned, rather than a real appreciation of what's actually happening on death row.

But here's another interesting notion: What may be the best thing to do in one social situation may be the worst to do in another, so like I said, laying down infallible rules of right and wrong (a la Ten Commandments) is virtually impossible. What we humans actually do is constantly make the rules up as we go along, and revise them whenever conditions change or whenever we change. Everybody does it. Some claim not too. Their claims are dubious, to say the least.

For the time being, given present conditions in North America, I would rather not see prisoners being executed. I don't think it serves any useful practical or moral purpose.

Naturally, there are other people who think it does.

In some places the law supports their view, in some places it supports mine. That will no doubt be subject to further change as well as time goes by.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 10:45 PM

Fionn, I really resonate with what you're saying. Whenever I bring up the Northern European and Scandinavian countries and make the claim that they are quite probably the most civilized countries in the world, far more civilized than most—including the United States—and explain why I think so, the argument I almost invariably get back is "But they're socialistic!"

Now, I've never probed into the nature of their political systems and the finer points of how they do what they do, but when a country has free high quality health care for everybody; an excellent educational system; virtually no poverty because of a social safety net that really works; is virtually crime free compared to, say, the United States; has laws that mandate long vacations and limit the amount of time one can be required to work in a day (and still maintains its position in the world economy); honors it's elderly and takes excellent care of them; values its history, culture, and folklore; has, in general, a healthy, happy, productive population; and has been at peace with its neighbors for generations—it strikes me that they must be doing something right. We should study them and see how they do it.

When I say this, what I hear back is "but they're socialistic!" and "but their taxes are so high" and "but they're not a democracy, they have a king!" (maybe true about the king, but not true about not being a democracy), and in general the arguments go "butting" around like a flock of nervous goats.

Where are these people's values? Look at the results. If it means socialism, then so be it! However they do it, we need some of that here.

If circumstances can be brought about where somebody doesn't have to sleep in their second hand Ford Windstar van because, even though they are employed, they can't afford rent, it somehow doesn't concern me a great deal if those same circumstances mean that the CEO of a local company has to give his son a Miata for his high school graduation present instead of the Lamborghini he wants.

But the way things are going, that'll be a cold day in hell. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Sep 03 - 12:03 PM

Don, you have just eloquently explained why I have been in favour of socialism all my life.

However, when people are brought up to view "socialism" as a dirty word, and made to think that it is somehow synonymous with dictatorship (which it certainly is not) then one can hardly expect them to think straight about it, can one?

Meanwhile, America lurches on in the grip of its own mythology... imagining itself to be the greatest society on Earth.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Tam the Bam (Nutter)
Date: 08 Sep 03 - 02:02 PM

It's crazy people like Paul Hill that makes ashamed for being a Born Again Christian.
I know the man was a monster and he wasn't sorry about the killings, but as a Christian I love him.
I also agree with Little Hawk.
Tom

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Tam the Bam (Nutter)
Date: 08 Sep 03 - 02:05 PM

He who is without sin cast the first stone. I know that I still do things that God isn't pleased about I try not to do them however I just can't for now however I will one day.
Tom

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McMusic
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 02:47 AM

Fionn,
The only difference between this man and the 9-11-01 hijackers is that they killed more people than he. Other than that, I have no answer to the problem of killing killers for killing killers for killing killers.... The disagreement can go on forever.
I will only say that I believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost--and that the fundamentalists on all sides (Moslem, Christian, Jew) are destroying this world.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raedwulf
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 03:52 PM

Fionn - How many times do I have to repeat this before you get it? "What does that prove? That your system is f***ed, nothing more, nothing less. Sort your system out..."

It proves nothing about CP.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 04:28 PM

"I will only say that I believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost"

I'd call that fundamental Christianity. Along with "Love your enemy, do good to those who hurt you".

Most of the people called "fundamentalists" seem to be obsessed with things that are in no way fundamental to their alleged religion, and in many ways totally inimical to it.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raedwulf
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 04:39 PM

Hi, Raedwulf...I'm back from the canoe trip. Money is "not in endless supply"? Actually, money IS in endless supply,

No Hawk, it isn't. It just looks like it. More to the point, the people that "make" the new money aren't spending it on philanthropy… Allow me to redefine the term perhaps slightly better – there is only so much wealth in the world. In Germany of the depressed '30s, they used 10,000,000 Mark notes as wallpaper – lots of money, precious little wealth.

We can argue endlessly about how the economic system works (or, frankly, doesn't), but the fact still remains that there is only a finite amount of resources in the world, & only a finite amount of wealth. Would you sit on your front porch setting fire to $50 bills? Because this is the net effect of maintaining in prison criminals you hope will never be released! Would it not be better for any country, any society, if this money were spent in the ghettoes (of New York, LA, London, Manchester, wherever) ensuring that a few less people wind up in this evolutionary cul-de-sac?

{snip} It's an endless money tree for those who already have most of the money anyway...and most of the money ISN'T REAL!!!

Yes, & that little diatribe (which I don't necessarily disagree with) had nothing whatsoever to do with the subject under discussion!

Now, I'm not really suggesting that individuals on this forum value money over life,

Good.

I'm just making a provocative statement

Just a bit! *g*

in order to maybe get someone to look into the deeper implications of a decision to execute people "because it's cheaper than keeping them in jail". It seems like an almost unbelievably crass statement to make in favour of the death penalty to me.

That may be because, faced with such a statement, you will not look beneath the surface. I am not a knee jerk opinion. I have spent as much time establishing in my mind my p-o-v, as you have in yours. I do not base my arguments in morality, because morality is highly subjective and, therefore, highly suspect. Ethics are scarcely less so. Economics? No, I'm no money-grubbing mercenary either.

I prefer to be rational. I cannot find a reason for the maintenance of the "unworthy". Especially given the amount of 'luxury' they seem to expect as their right! The possibility of error (which is, so far, the only rational argument that I find acceptable) is, IMHO, by & large considerably outweighed by the probability of concrete conviction in the modern world.


It's downright embarrassing that anyone would say it. Are people really that worried about the piddly amount of tax they pay each year (individually, I mean)

No, I'm not. What bothers me is the amount of tax that society as a whole expends on the worthless that would ({cynic}I hope, rather than expect{/cynic}) be more usefully spent elsewhere.

Look, everyone pays taxes toward a lot of stuff that they don't personally agree with. You do. I do. It's inevitable. That's how the system works. It's the price one pays for living in an organized society that is doing many good things too.

Yep.

But to suggest that people should be executed to save you or some other person $5 a year or something like that (probably less) is just crass and shameful. It indicates shallow, knee-jerk thinking, as far as I'm concerned, rather than a real appreciation of what's actually happening on death row.

There again, what your reaction indicates to me is a "crass and shameful… shallow, knee-jerk" failure to appreciate what your 'lily-livered liberalism?' costs society. I'm not saying I'm right. However, your arguments, as presented so far, involve too much emotion, both defensive & offensive, for me to accept. In this, Hawk, you argue as though your beliefs decide your proof. This is suspect.

Show me that your beliefs are based upon your proofs!! I probably still won't agree ;), because I'm certain that my position is based upon my best rational foundation. Would you change your p-o-v? No, didn't think so! ;) But I demand proof, not opinion. I have a great deal of respect for the best of the anti-CP side. Most of them, though, (like most of the pro-CPers) couldn't argue their way out of a wet paper bag… And did I warn you I'm before, after, & beyond anything else, a cynic… ;)

But here's another interesting notion: What may be the best thing to do in one social situation may be the worst to do in another, so like I said, laying down infallible rules of right and wrong (a la Ten Commandments) is virtually impossible. What we humans actually do is constantly make the rules up as we go along, and revise them whenever conditions change or whenever we change. Everybody does it. Some claim not too. Their claims are dubious, to say the least.

Agreed! Especially to the latter half!!!

For the time being, given present conditions in North America, I would rather not see prisoners being executed. I don't think it serves any useful practical or moral purpose.

And, again, at the moment I also would rather not see prisoners being executed. The US State/Federal system of justice seems to me (an outsider), a far too subjective & inconsistent system of justice. I have read of cases, & wondered why it has taken 20-odd years to execute. I have read of cases & wondered why, after the passing of 20-odd years, the authorities still do not recognise the presence of doubt.

At the risk of being incredibly boring, I will say again "What does that prove? That your system is f***ed, nothing more, nothing less. Sort your system out..."

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 04:41 PM

"What does that prove?"

Fraid I've lost track of what "that" is, Raedwulf, and of who asked the question. But anyone who thinks CP helps save people from being murdered is not looking at the evidence.

Most developed countries don't resort to CP; no developed countries apart from (some of) the US executes people for crimes they carried out when aged 17 or less. Yet most (I would say all, but haven't time to check right now) developed countries also have lower murder rates than the US, lower levels of violent and gun-related crime and lower levels of crime by minors.

From this I rashly conclude that CP serves no deterrant purpose. OK, maybe it does give friends and relatives of the victims a short-lived, gratuitous buzz, but that's little to show for a punishment that kills the innocent and degrades us all.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raedwulf
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 04:56 PM

Bobert:

If you can persuade the authorities to take another crack at the system, I would be interested in seeing the results. I'm dubious, I confess, as to the result, but I'll hope for the best!

The modern world & it's people are less simple than of old but... Look up Captain Maconochie, & the system that he introduced to Norfolk Island. This is in context with "The Fatal Shore" (Robert Hughes) & Transportation again. Part of the reason that Maconochie never got a fair crack of the whip was that he was too inclined toward reward, rather than punishment. This neither agreed with the theory that he presented in advance of his appointment, nor sat well with his superiors afterwards, but it surely makes for interesting reading now?

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raedwulf
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 07:35 PM

Fionn - I think it was something along the lines of "we kill people that *might* be innocent", but I may be wrong. It's 12:30 over here & I'm nished as a pewt, so I am *not* a reliable witnes to anything wot might happen in the next few minutes...

*sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssnnnnnrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt*

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 10:41 PM

I think we're communicating better now, Raedwulf. :-)

Keep in mind that my snarky remarks (which you orginally objected to) were directed at Clinton Hammond! Clinton and I have a thing going where although we like each other (at least, I like and respect him), we disagree fundamentally on all kinds of philosophical matters, and insult each other with absolute abandon at any excuse. It's sort of an "in joke" at this point, between me, Clinton, and Raptor. Clinton is one of my most worthy opponents on Mudcat, along with Wolfgang, Troll, and one or two others...depending on what's being discussed (politics, religion, science, UFO's, William Shatner, etc...)

Obviously, word of my classic feud with Clinton has not reached everyone on this forum...so I have to watch what I say, I guess, lest in offending Clinton, I offend many!

The primary reason I am opposed to capital punishment is that I have strong spiritual beliefs (NOT religious beliefs...I belong to no specific religion or church), and those spiritual beliefs tend to make me very opposed to premeditated, calculated killing of helpless people by an individual, a government, or an authority. My beliefs don't cause me to be opposed to killing in self-defence or in defense of others "in the heat of the moment", so to speak, when there may be no other recourse...I'm just opposed to killing people who have been captured, subdued, imprisoned, etc. I'm likewise opposed to torturing them. I don't consider either activity justifiable. I think it's vengeance, not practicality, and I am well convinced by now that vengeance is a useless indulgence...although it's definitely an impulse that is very strong in most people...and it makes for wonderfully gripping stories (ever read Louis L'Amour?).

I'm a real cynic too...but maybe not about the same things as you. I'm cynical about governments, churches, laws, traditions, class structures, educational systems, stuff like that...the world's authority structures, in other words. I'm not cynical about spiritual matters, moral matters, or love (in the larger than just romantic sense of the word).

So of course, my views are subjective. I wouldn't even consider working money into the equation of whether or not someone should be killed by society...and I cannot imagine that a person could truly be intrinsically worthless....although...they could most certainly be in a temporarily worthless state of mind (for whatever reason).

The best way I can explain it is: I cannot ultimately judge the worth of any other human being, I can only judge his acts. I may imprison him for antisocial acts (and the danger he may commit more such), but not because he is intrinsically worth less than another human being. I frankly don't know what he's worth, and neither does anyone else...nor can they know it.

I believe the worth of any human soul is a mystery that is simply beyond our calculations. So, like you say, I'm subjective in my opinions.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: harlowpoet
Date: 13 Sep 03 - 04:27 AM

Without supporting either the death penalty, abortion, or Paul Hills actions, I would say that he would not have commited what he did, if the doctor had not been aborting live babies. We are talking babies,who if born premature, the medical authorities would be going all out to save. Yet because they are unwanted, they are disposed of discreetly, as if they never occurred. What a wonderful society this is.

Sorry, but no-one comes out of this one smelling of roses

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,John Hardly
Date: 13 Sep 03 - 02:11 PM

Seems like excessive outrage and anger over a murderer simply because he expresses a view that snuffing the unborn is morally wrong. If he was any other murderer, most here would suggest we don empathy shoes and walk a mile so we might have a sense of the economic or social inequities that forced him into a life as a murderer. Instead, because he has the nerve to pass moral judgement on abortion, those who would otherwise dismiss captital punishment are suddenly contemplative -- and happy that at least this once they didn't have their way on that issue.

But what wasted anger -- after all, pragmatically speaking, his act was the equivalent of trying to stop the agricultural output of the USA by killing two farmers. The harvest of unborn is going to be statistically equal before and after Hill' foolish act. Hill's act won't diminish the snuffing one bit. Pro-choice wins both ways -- undimished snuffing and a villain to point to (and paint the pro-life side as).

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 Sep 03 - 04:10 PM

Without supporting either the death penalty, abortion, or Paul Hills actions, I would say that he would not have commited what he did, if the doctor had not been aborting live babies. harlowpoet, if Hill had not done this particular murder it does not in any way signify that he would not have committed a different murder or other heinous act in time. Anyone who is so sure of the correctness of his views is vulnerable to going over the top. That is what scares me most in all peopledom: Being absolutely sure. Questions are far more important, imo.

A good man's not always right
Nor the bad man always wrong
Things are not always black and white
As I'd thought my whole life long
Instead of haste I've learned patience
And deep gratitude for questions
The answers can wait, that at last, I have found

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Sep 03 - 06:39 PM

A lot of people appear to be absolutely sure of the correctness of their views when it comes to abortion.

The pity about all this is that too often people opposed to abortion fail to recognise that the only real way to prevent babies getting aborted must involve getting rid of the things in society that push women into "choosing" that as a solution to their situation.

True, there are women for whom abortion it is a genuine free choice, but most of the time it's an imposed choice, because of poverty and all kinds of other pressures and distortions. And whether people are "pro-choice" or "pro-life" they should be united in seeing that as a disgrace.

I'd see Paul Hill's resort to murder as a reflection of the fact he was living in a country where reprisal killing of killers is a respected and authorised aspect of the law and the culture.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 Sep 03 - 10:35 PM

"..respected and authorised aspect of the law and the culture" How so, McGrath?

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: harlowpoet
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 04:53 AM

Ebbie

I am absolutely sure that taking life is wrong. I get fed up with these so called ethical dilemmas, such as should we destroy this life or not. There are people maimed and murdered all over the world in countries, such as Palestine, Iraq and Vietnam, where world leaders struggled with their ethical dilemmas, and decided that bombing populations is OK.

There is no ethical or moral dilemma involved in murdering someone (and that includes babies). You don't do it.

There is a muslim proverb, that says if you take one life, you kill the whole of humanity.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 09:31 AM

Capital punishment, and its corrupting effect is what I'm referring, Ebbie. The idea that taking a life for a life is a good thing to do.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 09:52 AM

I'd see Paul Hill's resort to murder as a reflection of the fact he was living in a country where reprisal killing of killers is a respected and authorised aspect of the law and the culture.

Yeah, THAT"S gotta be true. No way an American could be intelligent enough to be able to evaluate and discern a difference in intent or rationale.

Of course, snuffing unborn in no way informs our valuation of human life, though capital punishment does.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 10:25 AM

I definitely think that contributes to it as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 10:32 AM

I definitely think that contributes to it as well.
So, then, our government's allowance of women to "choose" snuffing contributes to the occurance or commission of murder generally?

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 12:22 PM

"There is a muslim proverb, that says if you take one life, you kill the whole of humanity."

I believe that's a Jewish proverb as well. Not surprising - both are the same religion at root after all. And so is Christianity.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 06:24 PM

McG, the irony will not have escaped you that one of the greatest pressures leading pregnant mothers to endure the trauma of termination has been the fear of vilification by arrogant clerics in the Catholic church. Not to mention the fear, until very recent times, of incarceration in catholic institutions, and the brutal treatment to which they were often subjected therein.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peg
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 06:34 PM

Ahem...abortion is legal. Murder is not.   There is   apparently   a great deal of misunderstanding of our terms here. Viability of a fetus is what draws   the line between   abortion and "snuffing."

Many years ago, this was not an issue of   morality. It   is now because it has also become an issue of control   of women's bodies,   not to mention religious fanatics   who   live in   terror of   other people having more   fun   (read: sex)   than they   are   having.

Funny   how   most people against abortion are also against homosexuality. Funny how most people in favor of reproductive rights are also against capital punishment. Well, not funny,   really; no one's laughing.

Anyone who has not had to face an unwanted pregnancy (their own or a partner's or   friend's or child's) should   just shut the hell up about abortion.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 06:35 PM

True enough, and sorting out that kind of thing is very much the sort of change I'm talking about. There's been a lot of change in recent years in those kind of attitudes, long overdue and no doubt incomplete, but very welcome for all that.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 07:06 PM

1855 AD -- anyone who has never been a slave should just shut the hell up about slavery.

1935 AD -- anyone who has never been gassed should shut the hell up about genocide.

Babies aren't viable on their own. "Snuffing" works for me. You choose your euphamisms, I'll choose mine.

Fun with sex isn't the issue -- never has been. Responsibility with sex is the issue -- always has been. I absolutely defend a woman's right to choose not to have sex -- even to the point of capital punishment for rape (philosophically -- though practically it couldn't be done).

at least you didn't say "abortion should be safe, available and RARE"

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,pdq
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 07:20 PM

Peg:

"Funny   how   most people against abortion are also against homosexuality. Funny how most people in favor of reproductive rights are also against capital punishment. Well, not funny,   really; no one's laughing."

The laughing is at you. If you cannot argue one point on its merits you should stop arguing. Instead, you link the subject to other subjects. Tarred by association?

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 07:22 PM

Using words picked out to make it harder to communicate across barriers of disagreement does not help. Doing that is just a cop out, a way of confirming that the people we disagree with aren't reachable.

An instance of the kind of thing I touched on in this post I made in a recent thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,pdq
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 08:44 PM

Again, McGrath, please argue the point in question. What Peg did was say "people who believe______ also believe ______".
The second space is often reserved for something vile and unrelated. This is a dishonest and mean-spirited argument technique and nothing more.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peg
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 09:19 PM

My point is that people do not use the same definition for what could be said   to be the same   thing. Why is abortion   as "murder" acceptable, when   capital punishment is not?   And vice versa? I am in favor of reproductive rights (women should   choose if they want to carry a pregnancy to term) and NOT in favor of capital punishment.

NO ONE thinks abortion is a "good" thing; but it should remain a legal and accessible option.

John Hardly, you seem to be ignoring the fact   that vialbility of a   fetus refers to   whether a "baby" can live on its own outside the mother's womb. That's where the line is   drawn on whether the procedure is offered and at what stage. At eight weeks, that fetus is not viable. At thirteens weeks, it is not viable. At twenty weeks, well, maybe it is. See the difference?

I have not only noted that many who are "pro-life" are also in favor of capital punishment; but that the overwhelming majority of "pro-lifers" are MEN. That includes the Mudcat. My, my, how interestng. Men's opinions on this do not carry the   same weight that women's do. If you don't like that, too freakin' bad. Men who actually respect women understand where I am   coming from on this; but then, they are also pro-choice.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 09:57 PM

John Hardly, you seem to be ignoring the fact   that vialbility of a   fetus refers to   whether a "baby" can live on its own outside the mother's womb. That's where the line is   drawn on whether the procedure is offered and at what stage. At eight weeks, that fetus is not viable. At thirteens weeks, it is not viable. At twenty weeks, well, maybe it is. See the difference?

No. a baby cannot survive outside the mother's womb. I understand that someone else can provide the care. But, it is my understanding that the Roe v Wade ruling doesn't provide even for the thin distinction you offer -- and the pro-choice mommys are fighting tooth and nail for partial birth abortion anyway. Seems even if we were to use your definition of "viability" we would still be snuffin' the inconvenient li'l shits anyway.

"I have not only noted that many who are "pro-life" are also in favor of capital punishment; but that the overwhelming majority of "pro-lifers" are MEN. That includes the Mudcat. My, my, how interestng. Men's opinions on this do not carry the   same weight that women's do. If you don't like that, too freakin' bad. Men who actually respect women understand where I am   coming from on this; but then, they are also pro-choice."

I don't know where you get your stats but I don't accept that more men are pro-lifers. I personally know at least as many pro-life women. My mother was and my sister is and activist in the movement. That's a tired old rube and again, as with slavery or genocide one need not be directly affected to pass logical judgement. I respect women. There is nothing about being pro-life that hinders or limits that.

"My point is that people do not use the same definition for what could be said   to be the same   thing. Why is abortion   as "murder" acceptable, when   capital punishment is not?   And vice versa? I am in favor of reproductive rights (women should   choose if they want to carry a pregnancy to term) and NOT in favor of capital punishment"

Abortion involves the taking of an innocent life. Capital punishment, when done with due process is the taking of a guilty life. This shouldn't be a hard concept to grasp. You may disagree with the usefulness of capital punishment, or even find it immoral -- but you really shouldn't have trouble understanding how one might make a distinction.

And "Reproductive Rights"..... if EVER there was a misfired euphamism it is this one. It's so bad it should be embarrasing to use. There is NOBODY on the pro-LIFE side of the equation who purports to limit one's RIGHTS to reproduce. The pro-choice side doesn't try to limit ones RIGHTS to reproduce either -- but if anyone is suggesting it, it would certainly be from THIS side of the debate.

"NO ONE thinks abortion is a "good" thing; but it should remain a legal and accessible option"

This is that "getting to have it both ways" part of the debate that really gets me. Like when Clinton said that abortion should be safe, available and RARE. But that statement passes the same judgement that Mr Hill does -- it says that what the pregnant woman is doing is BAD. But, and this is the nasty part -- though conceding that it is BAD -- it chooses not only to do nothing about this bad thing -- it actually wants to keep this BAD thing as an option.

It would be far more intellectually honest to admit that you see nothing wrong with the option than to condemn the act out of one side of your mouth -- and promote it out of the other.

You should be able to say with conviction -- "I don't want abortion to be any more rare than the availability for every pregnant woman who wants one". It should not be RARE until its functional usefulness has run its course, and every poor, defective, unwanted, or racially undesirable fetus is gotten safely rid of. For that matter until every goddamn yuppie woman no longer has to make the choice between a new kitchen or the third SUV in the driveway and this unwanted product of volutary recreational activity. It's her body goddamnit!

Who are you to pass the judgement that abortion is not a good thing?

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 10:54 PM

John Hardly, capital punishment, even when done with due process is sometimes the taking of an innocent life. The courts are not infallible, & do not necessarily have all the evidence. Check it out.

And if I said "*Amputation* should be safe, available and RARE," would you call that "having it both ways?" Amputation is indeed a bad thing, but sometimes it's the best you can do.

If pro-life advocates put their actions where their mouth is they'd each adopt at least one "undesirable" baby, and have funerals for miscarriages. Hardly any do.

And they'd vote for a low national speed limit, and vote against capital punishment.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peg
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 12:11 AM

well said, Clint.   Very   true that innocent people are   sometimes executed by the state.

John Hardly's judgment seems clouded by emotion. He also seems one of the most ignorant men I've ever come across.

Since when do all women get pregnant as a result of voluntary recreational activity? You mentioned rape just a few   posts earlier; surely even someone as brain-dead as yourself, John Hardly, can be   made to understand   that pregnancy can be a result of rape? Should such a pregnancy   be carried to term? What about when a girl is forcibly raped   by her own father   or brother?   It happens. Should   these products of incest AND rape   be carried to term?   What about women raped during in vasion during wartime? Ever been raped, John? I didn't   think so.

It might also interest you to know that women do actually become pregnant regardless of whether they use   birth control. My own   sister conceived her first child while she was on the Pill in fact. Birth control is still in the Stone Age; interestingly enough, variations on Viagra continue to dominate   pharmaceutical researchers' experiments, and it's more available to low-income patients than birth control.

When you're ready (or your pro-life female relatives are ready) to adopt all these inconvenient little babies, we can talk. Until then, your opinion on this matter is worth little.   You're    just another one of those pathetic middle-aged old men waving signs and hating women in front of the clinic.   Some of them stop at signs; others move on to guns.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 08:42 AM

"John Hardly, capital punishment, even when done with due process is sometimes the taking of an innocent life. The courts are not infallible, & do not necessarily have all the evidence. Check it out"
This doesn't change the point I am making. In fact, I even said "You may disagree with the usefulness of capital punishment, or even find it immoral -- but you really shouldn't have trouble understanding how one might make a distinction". You obviously understand my distinction. You are merely adding another issue that still doesn't alter the logic of my point -- that capital punishment can make a mistake.

"And if I said "*Amputation* should be safe, available and RARE," would you call that "having it both ways?" Amputation is indeed a bad thing, but sometimes it's the best you can do".

So you are saying that an abotion is an amputation? See, the whole point of the pro-life movement is that we don't see it that way. We see TWO lives in a pregnancy.

Are you saying it should be rare because it is an operation? Or are you saying it should be rare because you also understand that a pregnancy represent two people?

"If pro-life advocates put their actions where their mouth is they'd each adopt at least one "undesirable" baby, and have funerals for miscarriages. Hardly any do."
Lots do and lots do. But even if they did not adopt a single unwanted, undesirable child, it might make them less honrable -- but not philosophically wrong. And I have personally attended three funerals for miscarriages.

"And they'd vote for a low national speed limit, and vote against capital punishment."
I covered the capital punishment thing -- it's a distinction of innocent vs guilty. Besides, many pro-lifers actually are anti capital punishment. I have my own problems with it from a practical point of view -- I don't think we are capable of fielding a clear-thinking jury these days, and that makes me squeamish about capital punishmnet -- but it doesn't alter the philosphical and logical underpinnings of pro-life. It's actually a red herring. If you understand the distinction between innocent and guilty (and I think I pointed out that you do), comparison of abortion to capital punishment is merely a red herring.

The speed limit thing -- I can understand the connection but logically you would have to accept the premise that lower speed limits save lives. I've seen stats that counter that notion.

"John Hardly's judgment seems clouded by emotion. He also seems one of the most ignorant men I've ever come across" "... even someone as brain-dead as yourself, John Hardly"
How very sweet of you to say! (I had to look back to see if my posts contained any personal attacks. Didn't find one.) Should I be unemotional?

"Since when do all women get pregnant as a result of voluntary recreational activity? You mentioned rape just a few   posts earlier; surely even someone as brain-dead as yourself, John Hardly, can be   made to understand   that pregnancy can be a result of rape? Should such a pregnancy   be carried to term? What about when a girl is forcibly raped   by her own father   or brother?   It happens. Should   these products of incest AND rape   be carried to term?   What about women raped during in vasion during wartime? Ever been raped, John? I didn't   think so."
You are jumping to a conclusion that, again, doesn't alter the logic of any point I've made. You are merely adding one more thing into the mix -- rape. You never asked me if I thought there should be any exceptions to a pro-life position. Of course I do. And most pro-lifers do as well. And I think my exceptions are still philosophically consistent. In cases of the life of the mother at risk -- historically no government has ever been against the concept of self-defense. In the case of rape , the choice for the life altering--and risky business of pregnancy was not the woman's, therefore it is understandable that she should have the choice of whether or not to shoulder the risk (element of self-defense).

Again, it shouldn't matter if I had been raped or not for me to be able to determine that rape is wrong. It shouldn't matter if I had been a slave or not to know if slavery is wrong. I shouldn't have had to be robbed to know that robbery is wrong......I could go on.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 08:46 AM

"This doesn't change the point I am making. In fact, I even said "You may disagree with the usefulness of capital punishment, or even find it immoral -- but you really shouldn't have trouble understanding how one might make a distinction". You obviously understand my distinction. You are merely adding another issue that still doesn't alter the logic of my point -- that capital punishment can make a mistake."

I worded this wrong.

what I was trying to say is:

"This doesn't change the point I am making. In fact, I even said "You may disagree with the usefulness of capital punishment, or even find it immoral -- but you really shouldn't have trouble understanding how one might make a distinction". You obviously understand my distinction. You are merely adding another issue -- that capital punishment can make a mistake." That still doesn't alter the logic of my point.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peg
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 09:05 AM

John Hardly keeps insisting he is using LOGIC. Yet he sounds   like a fanatic to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 09:24 AM

"Safe, legal, and rare" has also been said by G. W. Bush -- on "Larry King Live," Dec 16, 1999. His OWN position on abortion seems to be one of waffling and indecisiveness. I first remember this phrase being used by one of the people Clinton attempted to have ratified as Surgeon General.

The President's mother is on record (1994) as not being against abortion. His father is on record as saying that it should be a woman's choice.

Here is an interesting study/article on abortion.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 09:39 AM

"John Hardly keeps insisting he is using LOGIC. Yet he sounds   like a fanatic to me."

Well then , peg, discuss the issue. Point out my flaws. I'm game -- hell, there's lots smarter people than me here on the 'cat.

Rapaire,

Yup. Just another reason why Bush is not a favorite with conservatives -- never has been, and that disfavor is growing (and that growning disfavor is one of many reasons I think Bush will probably lose in 2004)

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raptor
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 09:56 AM

Peg I agreed with everything you said But you lost me when it got personal!

The fact is that pro-lifers Don't get the fact that the are taking thier own beliefs (that they think a 3 week old fetus is a viable lifeform and not just a lump of sperm and egg)And deciding that law should make everyone conform to thier way womans choise be damned!

Try to keep your emotions out of it with the namecalling!

Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: harpgirl
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 10:09 AM

Paul Hill got lots of publicity here in Flori-DUH, especially just before he was executed. I thought he was a frightening psychopath and undeserving of any publicity just before he was executed.

As for pregnancy termination, I'm in favor of free abortion on demand ALL OVER THE PLANET!

Until all women have equal rights with men, (which includes a say over what medical choices they make regarding their bodies), we will continue to have mass abandonment of female children in China, female genital mutilition in Africa, forcible rape by HIV positive men all over Africa, untold domestic violence in the United States, fundamentalist Islamic terrorists raised in all male schools wreaking havoc all over the globe, immolation of women in India, and millions of women unable to drive, walk freely outdoors, vote, inherit, own property, divorce freely and all of the other freedoms that men all over the world take for granted.

Make women equal, men of the world; then let us all decide together how we will treat human life!       Love, harpgirl

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peg
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 10:34 AM

Rapaire; I think John Hardly got pretty personal. He referred to my statement that more pro-lifers are men than women (particularly the ones who try to kill doctors who provide abortions) as a "tired old rube" with NO factual information to back it up except for his 'personally' knowing some pro-lifers who are women. Maybe next time he is picketing a clinic he should do a head-count and see which gender is better-represented. Herein Boston, most of them are men (remember   John Salvi?) and most of the names represented on the hate-filled websites are men's. Certainly more of the politicians who are anti-choice are men. Harpgirl makes a good point about gender inequity.


Then he claims to be using "logic"? I don't think calling someone ignorant is name-calling; it's pretty obviously true in this case.
He calls on me to "point out his flaws" and I have already done so, but he then ignores what I have said. I am done with this silly argument.   My experience has been that pro-lifers in general are so fanatical that they can't see reason, nor respond   to anything without distorting it to fit their own tiny little mindset, and I have better things to do than argue with a fanatic.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 11:10 AM

(Maybe it's my computer, or my server, or the Mudcat, but right now I'm having to split my posts up in order to put them on the cat. This isn't all that long, but it'll have to be done in three or so bites.)I think it's very unlikely indeed that the proportion of women opposed in principle to abortion is lower than the proportion of men. It just doesn't square with my experience. The only polls I've ever seen do seem to indicate that this was the case, with well-off young men being the section most likely to be pro-abortion. Maybe it varies in different parts of the world.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 11:10 AM

Getting involved in picketing isn't necessarily the same thing at all - it could well be that a higher proportion of women opposed to abortion might recognise that as a futile and counter-productive exercise, and prefer to get involved in other ways, especially those where men wouldn't have a direct role to play in one-to-one support work.

I suppose it is just about possible to argue that being opposed to abortion is consistent with being in favour of state killing of people convicted of capital crimes. But I don't think it's consistent with using the label "pro-life". Indeed people who are against the death penalty, but in favour of abortion could use the label just as appropriately, and it'd be just as much of a distortion of language.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 11:11 AM

Abortion doesn't happen because its legal, it's legal because it happens. Those opponents of abortion who concentrate on trying to change the law to make it illegal are starting at the wrong end. If the only women having abortions were those who are doing so as a genuinely free choice, the number would be far fewer. Working to help give all women who are pregnant a real choice not to have an abortion should be the priority, and one on which everyone should be able to agree.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: harpgirl
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 11:38 AM

Well Kevin, I disagree with your notion that there would be far fewer abortions if women could get them easily by choice.

There would be many, many more abortions all over the world! We might even be able to control overpopulation and the planet would not be doomed to extinction!

I don't understand how you can presume to speak for the intentions of women all over the planet! Let the women have the real say about this subject! Men even try to dominate the discussions about it here at Mudcat! Shame on all you men!    Love, harpgirl

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 11:50 AM

That wasn't what I said actually. I was just saying that a lot of women are forced into having abortions which they would sooner avoid. And I don't think many people would disagree with that.

And I wouldn't have much time for anyone who doesn't think that is a bad thing, and I doubt if you would, harpgirl.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 11:56 AM

The other way of "distilling" is to freeze out the water. Mind it's got to be pretty cold for that. Perhaps the craft died out with the end of the ice age.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Ebbie
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 12:42 PM

"And I have personally attended three funerals for miscarriages". Somehow I doubt that statement, John Hardly.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 12:45 PM

That last post of mine belonged in another thread! I wondered where it had gone to...

(I can't see anything in the least improbable about that claim by Ebbie - funerals for still births are not that unusual.)

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 01:04 PM

"And I have personally attended three funerals for miscarriages". Somehow I doubt that statement, John Hardly

Why in God's name would you doubt it? Have I lied to you before? Do you want the names and dates? How could I prove it to you? This is just wierd.

By the way, way to go harpgirl. I know you rather not have me "on your side" but I can admire a consistant position.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Ebbie
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 01:31 PM

Still birth funerals, I can see. A funeral for a miscarriage I don't grasp. And I come from at least as conservative and pro-life a background as John Hardly.

OK. My remark was gratuitous and uncalled for. My apologies.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: harpgirl
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 02:12 PM

Kevin, you said...

"If the only women having abortions were those who are doing so as a genuinely free choice, the number would be far fewer."

Kevin that sounds to me like you are saying women would have far fewer abortions if they had a genuinely free choice. What did you mean if not that?

"Working to help give all women who are pregnant a real choice not to have an abortion should be the priority, and one on which everyone should be able to agree."

I disagree with this statement as well. Working to give all women a real choice "to have an abortion or not to have an abortion", is the real choice. Abortion is not really a choice for most of the pregnant women of the world. (And many of us know that herbal remedies don't always work!)

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 02:32 PM

You disagree with that, harpgirl? If women who don't want abortions feel that because of poverty and lack of support and all that they don't in fact have a choice to carry on and give birth, you don't think that matters? I find it hard to believe that.

There are some things where we'd always disagree, I imagine, but I can't see how that could be one of them.

(Perhaps it's because I wrote "the piority" instead of "a priority" - to make it clearer, what I meant that for people who are opposed to abortion it ought to be "the priority"; for other people perhaps "a priority" is more appropriate. But I think its "a priority" which ought to be held in common.)

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: harpgirl
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 02:51 PM

Kevin, you just said...

"If women who don't want abortions feel that because of poverty and lack of support and all that they don't in fact have a choice to carry on and give birth, you don't think that matters? I find it hard to believe that."

Who are these women who don't want abortions and are forced to have them? Women who have abortions want them! But most women do not have access to abortion and therefore have no real choice! Choice means to "have or not to have," an abortion.

Once again, most women on the planet live in abject poverty and also do not have a choice about giving birth. They are impregnated and give birth because they have no choice.

I went back and read most of this thread and you men have mostly ignored the issue= "ABORTION" and talked mainly about capital punishment. Stick with that issue, Kevin. You are not qualified to
speak about what most women want. But you have done a passable job of obfuscating your opinion to get yourself off the hook on the issue of FREE ABORTION ON DEMAND FOR ALL THE WORLD'S WOMEN!

Since you have changed the point of your argument, I can say that yes it does matter that the American women who have access to abortion as an alternative to raising unwanted children are lucky they have three hundred dollars and a ride to the clinic. Most women don't have this choice.   

Love, harpgirl

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: harpgirl
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 02:56 PM

As for Paul Hill, his mother should have aborted him! I bet she didn't have a choice! Love, harpgirl

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 03:46 PM

Harpgirl are you saying that only the woman have the right to decide on abortion? And men don't have a right to have thier opinion at all?

Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 03:58 PM

I've never had anyone I loved murdered, so how am I any more qualified to talk about capital punishment, by your logic, harpgirl? There are plenty of people who would put it that way, too.

I don't think killing human beings is a good thing to do, that's all. However guilty, however small.

And you really believe that the only women who have abortions arre the ones who would freely choose this if they could see an alternative... Well, maybe there are some places and times where that is true, in which case they are a lot more fortunate places and times than any I have ever lived in.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 03:59 PM

John Hardly:

"If you understand the distinction between innocent and guilty (and I think I pointed out that you do), comparison of abortion to capital punishment is merely a red herring."

Indeed I do understand. I said, plain as I could, "capital punishment, even when done with due process is sometimes the taking of an innocent life. The courts are not infallible."

"So you are saying that an abotion is an amputation?"

No. They are similar in that they are bad things. Amputation and abortion and killing a child's dog are all bad things, but sometimes a bad thing is the best you can do, because the alternatives are worse things.

" 'If pro-life advocates they'd each adopt at least one "undesirable" baby, and have funerals for miscarriages.''
"Lots do and lots do. But even if they did not adopt a single unwanted, undesirable child, it might make them less honrable -- but not philosophically wrong. And I have personally attended three funerals for miscarriages"

Didn't say "philosophically wrong." Said they're not putting their actions where their mouth is; not practicing what they preach; not living up to their philosophy.All hat & no cattle. I had never heard of a funeral for a miscarriage until your post. Stillbirths, yes.

"The speed limit thing -- I can understand the connection but logically you would have to accept the premise that lower speed limits save lives. I've seen stats that counter that notion."

Stats or no, it takes longer to stop at high speeds, and that can cost lives. That's why nobody sane wants a 60 mph speed limit inside city limits.

But my point was, if you're sincerely pro-life I expect you to be against anything that is anti-life, that can cost lives. Burning stubble fields in this area, for instance.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Everyman/USA
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 04:49 PM

But...but...that would mean being totally consistent...and who is?

Leave us quietly alone to our little hypocrisies, blind spots, and self-indulgences, I say! It's we little people who can't even live up to our own impassioned rhetoric who keep daytime TV and WalMart viable in these perilous times, to say nothing of the Democratic and Republican parties. Without us you wouldn't have had beanie babies either. We weep buckets over the death of one kitten (reported on the 6 O'Clock News) while daily devouring meat from slaughterhouses that torture and kill millions of animals yearly. We don't think about things that are disturbing, unless we're told to. Remember that. Allow us our little hatreds, I say! They are part of what makes us free, and causes others to envy our way of life.

I eat steak 5 times a week, and have never experienced a moment of guilt, but I hope they fry the guy that killed that kitten.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 06:19 PM

Clint,

I'm sorry, I'm obvioulsy not a very good communicator. I'll try to take a wack at our obvious impasse. I don't mind discussing it but I do know these long threads can be horribly tedious to open and read, so if I bore you early on I understand.

If you understand the distinction between innocent and guilty (and I think I pointed out that you do), comparison of abortion to capital punishment is merely a red herring."

Indeed I do understand. I said, plain as I could, "capital punishment, even when done with due process is sometimes the taking of an innocent life. The courts are not infallible."

The point I was trying to make way back when was that there is a significant difference between "IS innocent" and "COULD BE innocent" (or, as you said "sometimes" the taking of innocent life. {by virtue of poorly served justice}). To my thinking, relative to the comparison between abortion and CP -- it is only significant that the unborn is innocent and the killer is guilty. relative to arguing the merits of CP THEN your issue of "could be" is significant.

"So you are saying that an abotion is an amputation?"

No. They are similar in that they are bad things. Amputation and abortion and killing a child's dog are all bad things, but sometimes a bad thing is the best you can do, because the alternatives are worse things.

That's why when I "made this point" I ended it with a question. So you don't think abortion is bad on moral grounds? So, on what grounds do you find it "bad"?

" 'If pro-life advocates they'd each adopt at least one "undesirable" baby, and have funerals for miscarriages.''
"Lots do and lots do. But even if they did not adopt a single unwanted, undesirable child, it might make them less honorable -- but not philosophically wrong. And I have personally attended three funerals for miscarriages"

Didn't say "philosophically wrong." Said they're not putting their actions where their mouth is; not practicing what they preach; not living up to their philosophy.All hat & no cattle. I had never heard of a funeral for a miscarriage until your post. Stillbirths, yes.

I probably shouldn't have mentioned that I have attended such funerals because the point I have been making all along is that this is a philosophical/moral issue but it is significantly clouded by emotional arguements that are actually red herrings. We may FEEL a certain way about something but it has no bearing on the rightness or wrongness of it. If we were slave owners we might FEEL as though we were kind to those we own -- but it's immaterial to the rightness or wrongness of slavery.

And, again, you may feel as though a pro-lifer who doesn't adopt is a hypocrite -- but it doesn't answer the greater moral question. It's a bitch when nasty people are right -- but it happens some times.

You seem to make a strong distinction between "stillbirth" and "miscarriage". Relative to the pro-life/pro-choice debate however, this is inconsequential because what acts or serves as the law of the land makes no distinction relative to length of term. Any fetus can be aborted. There is no wing of the pro-choice movement lobbying congress to enact laws limiting abortion to early term. There IS a wing of the pro-choice movement seriously lobbying to protect late-term (partial birth) abortion.

"The speed limit thing -- I can understand the connection but logically you would have to accept the premise that lower speed limits save lives. I've seen stats that counter that notion."

Stats or no, it takes longer to stop at high speeds, and that can cost lives. That's why nobody sane wants a 60 mph speed limit inside city limits.

But my point was, if you're sincerely pro-life I expect you to be against anything that is anti-life, that can cost lives. Burning stubble fields in this area, for instance.

There is one word in your reply here that moves this away from a moral (or certainly a moral equivlency) issue. The word is "can" - as in "...can cost lives."

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 07:02 PM

Well, we're talking past one another. I don't understand your distinctions and you don' t understand mine.

I haven't got the heart to go through point by point, but try just a couple.
It is immoral to drive at high speeds through crowded streets or to fire a random shot into a crowd because it can kill someone. Neither will be sure to kill some one, but the word "can" does not make either a moral act, or beyond good and evil. Either act would be immoral because either is a wrong thing to do even if no one happens to be injured. Either is a thing you should not do.

And amputation is a bad thing because it leaves one crippled, but it's better than dying from gangrene, which is a worse thing. But "better than gangrene" does not mean the same as "good.'

Morality is not a chemically pure abstraction; morality has to do with one's actions in a messy imperfect world. What one should do in a world of infallible courts, or a world where speeding alway kills or never kills, has no necessary relation to what one should do in this world.

And before someone splits another hair, for purposes of this message "ethical" can be substituted for"moral."

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: harpgirl
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 07:25 PM

Raptor,
    Yes I believe that only women should make decisions about abortion. Men are entitled to an opinion. However, I do not think they are entitled to be involved in the decision to abort unless the woman in question allows it. I will not be changing this opinion until women have full equality with men in every aspect of living all over the planet.
      


As for Kevin, since he is probably asleep by now and I need to eat my dinner. I'll answer him later. Love, Harpgirl

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 07:27 PM

I've never had anyone I loved murdered. Kevin McG, I never did have you down as the type who would go round having people murdered, whether you loved them or not.

In the abortion debate, as always, I'm on Peg's side, except that I don't think John Hardly was really mounting a personal assault. I'm finding his posts quite thought-provoking, and well within the bounds of civil argument, even if it's an argument he's losing so far. (No convincing response to Clint's points.)

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 07:43 PM

Fionn,
I'm sorry but Clint and I seem in need of that fancy internet free downloadable English to English translation software. From my perspective I am actually laughing out loud because it seems we aren't even talking to each other.

Perhaps you can translate what you think are his salient points that you think I'm not answering -- because I feel like he is totally missing my points ---- AND I'M QUITE WILLING TO ACCEPT THE FAULT AT COMMUNICATION. *grin* I'm not trying to dodge anything -- I thought I was answering Clint. apparently not.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: harpgirl
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 08:00 PM

Fionn you began this thread thusly:

Does anyone besides me find the circus that surrounds US executions a bit distasteful? Is it necessary for instance to parade the condemned at press conferences? I would have thought that, in terms of pandering to the ghoulish in our natures, this was about one step better than full-blown public executions a la Saudi Arabia etc.

Not only is it distasteful, but IMO it is pandering to the fanatical Christian right. Generally however, I think it most reflects the global journalist communities' attempts to publicize news that panders to the lowest common demoninator of intelligence worldwide.


I realise that an audience of sorts is accommodated at US executions. A Death Row lawyer on UK tv the other night recalled a recent "performance" at which the official pronouncement of death was greeted with laughter from the victim's relatives. One wonders how long such relatives manage to trip out on such an experience. As the lawyer said, they probably wake up next morning and find that the world hasn't changed much after all.

Paul Hill seems to pose the US a real quandary, being a fundamentalist Christian of some sort, convinced that the state of Florida is speeding his passage to heaven. This is exactly the mentality that fills so many in the west with dread, particularly in the states, when it comes packaged with Islamic fundamentalism. When will America wake up to the reality that this kind of madness is a pestilence whatever religion it comes with?

Good question! I think we will better answer this question when women and men have full equality all over the world. Fundamentalism in all religions is based on male partriarchy, a particularly virilent and destructive form of human societal organization that has distorted religion all over the planet and led to countless deaths, human subjugation, inequality, and most all of the rest of the world's woes.   


In the meantime, executing people like Paul Hill seems like a shabby cop-out to me. He might have lived to regret his hideous crime and shake off the nonsense he's been brainwashed into believing. And even if his death means momentary gratification for relatives, the law should not be steered by the gut feelings of people who are emotionally vulnerable.

I don't think it is a shabby cop out. He lived in Florida. Most high profile murderers get executed in this state. It's the one thing Jeb Bush has done this year that I didn't disapprove of. Has he been brainwashed? No more than millions of other fundamentalist males in the world. Yes, he might have lived to change his mind about the meaning of what he did. Probably not though. He was a psychopath and therefore not likely to change his mind about his crimes. I don't see how the law was steered by gut feelings of people who are emotionally vulnerable. Mostly it was men who made the decision to execute him.


If what he did is sanctioned by the codes of his church, then I would have thought that his church should be put on trial. And that should hold regardless of whether abortion is right or wrong (on which matter I'm afraid I continue to vacillate).

I doubt that what he did was sanctiond by the codes of his church. I don't vacillate on abortion. Nor will I change my opinion until women have complete worldwide equality. But, Fionn, your posts are always thoughtful and articulate. As are Kevin's.    Love harpgirl.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 09:21 PM

"I'm sorry but Clint and I seem in need of that fancy internet free downloadable English to English translation software"

Very good & exactly right. I too thought I was being perfectly clear & logical, but like I said, we're talking past each other. We're working from different assumptions on some level that's deeper that abortion and murder. Seems useless to continue.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raptor
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 08:47 AM

Harpgirl

I Think I'm gonna regret this but I need to know what you mean by "full equality with men".

And don't women already have the only right to chose to have an abortion!

Both these questions are asked with the utmost respect and no sarcastic or disrespectfull tones are intended!!!!

Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 08:49 AM

"We're working from different assumptions on some level that's deeper than abortion and murder. Seems useless to continue.

I'd have thought that identifying where the different assumotions diverge, and exploring whether there are deeper assumptions which are held in common would be the very reason for continuing the discussion.

In face-to-face discussions these kind of things tend to get crowded out as anger takes over. That happens here often enough, but it needn't.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 09:52 AM

McGrath,

I think that's what we were trying to do -- at least that's precisely what I was attempting.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 03:46 PM

McGrath:

"I'd have thought that identifying where the different assumotions diverge, and exploring whether there are deeper assumptions which are held in common would be the very reason for continuing the discussion."

Thought I was doing that for a while, but I don't know where to go next. Maybe when I rest up.

It's hard to explain things that seem perfectly obvious to you.

clint.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Rapparee
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 04:26 PM

"It's hard to explain things that seem perfectly obvious to you."

Perhaps that's why fights do break out, even here. Frustration because you can't communicate that which seems obvious to you can lead to aggression. And it's not necessarily the fault of the communicator OR the hearer, since the problem can lie in what each perceive as the meaning of the words used in the attempt to communicate.

There also has to be a willingness on the part of both the speaker and the listener to communicate in a meaningful way.

It's sad the ideologies and fixed ways of thinking seem to be breaking down communications between people more and more often.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 04:37 PM

And that's why it's best to avoid using words and turns of phrase that are liable to switch off the other parties listening chip - or which seem to be an attempt to beg the question.

One deeper assumption which I think all of us would agree about is thta killing fellow human beings is a bad thing to do - and then we'd divide about what kind of circumstances might justify doing somnething like that; and also probably about what we mean by "human being".

And there'd be other deeper assumptions about freedom, and disagreements about the limits on freedom. And about the role of law in society. And so on.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 05:26 PM

"One deeper assumption which I think all of us would agree about is that killing fellow human beings is a bad thing to do - and then we'd divide about what kind of circumstances might justify doing something like that; and also probably about what we mean by "human being"."

Very astute observation. And I think that one reason we have trouble discussing (and understanding each other) is that so many of the arguements that either side uses are either...

1. based on assumptions we make FOR the other side about what THEY must believe. I do think it is fair to point out inconsistencies -- but if you are going to do so, I think it is incumbent upon you to LISTEN to their response -- they may actually have an answer for what YOU think is an inconsistency.

2. the above but they have become unassailible cliches.

3. defenses for what we WANT to believe rather than reasons for why we believe what we believe.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Willie-O
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 05:30 PM

Troll yer full of hyberbole there. We hear plenty about victims. Since we have a provincial election going on, our rightwing premier just had a public meeting with "police and victims of crime".

Victim stories are great copy. Especially if they are middle or (most rarely) upper-class victims. If they're the usual hookers and Indians you won't hear much about them. I don't think that's because they don't have good stories, it's because they are a little more complicated than yer conservative mindset cares to get involved in.

That's right, capital punishment is more expensive than life imprisonment, because an extensive appeals process involves a lot of high-priced lawyers. (Or at least it should, the notion that this means the appeals process should be "streamlined" leads directly to killing more innocent people).

One thing more. Some people who have committed terrible crimes can and do change over time, and some can't. This "life without parole, period" line isn't very observant of real life circumstances. Isn't it enough to take away someone's productive adult life, if they can gradually come to an understanding that we were put here to help each other? Elsewise, how likely are any of them to come to that understanding?      

Willie-O

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peg
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 09:17 PM

Joihn Hardly says things like this:

"Seems even if we were to use your definition of "viability" we would still be snuffin' the inconvenient li'l shits anyway."

and then a few posts later claims to be trying to debate this in a thoughtful manner? I think not.

THAT sort of statement (above) is offensive and obviously designed    to inflame. Don't tell me for a second it isn't. At   least admit to what you are trying   to do, don't try to hide behind some cloak of respectability here.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 11:30 PM

"don't try to hide behind some cloak of respectability here"

Well, I am a bit o' a Hairy Potter, but I don't need a cloak. I have a 3 year history here. By now folks like my writing style or don't. I'm not hidden -- you can click on my name and call up every post in my history (except the first half year I spent as guest). I'm actually pretty respectable. No, really.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: harpgirl
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 11:35 PM

Kevin, you said...

I've never had anyone I loved murdered, so how am I any more qualified to talk about capital punishment, by your logic, harpgirl? There are plenty of people who would put it that way, too.

I don't think you are more qualified to talk about capital punishment, Kevin. Just unqualified to speak about what most women want. However, since men are mostly responsible for the laws we have about capital punishment as well as more numerous on death row, one might argue that you have a greater stake in that issue.

I should like to see you and your brothers insist that all laws about capital punishment be rewritten by an equal number of men and women! Hell, I'd like to see the Constitution rewritten by an equal number of men and women. Then maybe it would reflect women's concerns as well!

I don't think killing human beings is a good thing to do, that's all. However guilty, however small.

I know you are against abortion, Kevin. We differ on that.

And you really believe that the only women who have abortions arre the ones who would freely choose this if they could see an alternative... Well, maybe there are some places and times where that is true, in which case they are a lot more fortunate places and times than any I have ever lived in.

Kevin, most women who would chose abortion do not have the option. To have or not to have an abortion is my idea of a "free choice."
The vast majority of women on this planet have no choice but to carry their pregnancies to term. Abortion is just not an option.

Even women who get to choose abortion as an alternative to unwanted pregnancy are often doing it at the behest of men. Or as Fionn suggests, they are choosing it because to have a child out of wedlock would bring the patriarchal wrath of their church elders down on them. Controlled by men either way! Not much choice there I'd say!

Women have found ways to terminate unwanted pregnancies for many thousands of years. I believe the first reasons had to do with the challenges of seasonal migration and the food supply. And we will continue to make choices about having or not having babies no matter how much men try to control us!

And by the way guys, I'm not even the slighest bit angry about this discussion! I think it's important that you all hear from women with strong and differing points of view. Maybe that way those of you who don't care what women think or who don't listen to women will begin to take some notice! And stop telling us what to do with our bodies!
Love harpgirl

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: NicoleC
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 12:30 AM

Harpgirl - I don't think the ability to choose or not choose an abortion is anything like "freedom." Most women would vastly prefer not to ever have to make the choice. If abortion weren't an alternative because there were no need at all for it, I think the world would be a better place.

Rapaire - "I Think I'm gonna regret this but I need to know what you mean by "full equality with men". And don't women already have the only right to chose to have an abortion!"

Not by a long shot. Until women can soley decide whether or not to get pregnant with their accepted partner, then we can discuss whether a woman is the only one making a choice. Just because in some places a woman has the opportunity to make a final choice about the aftermath doesn't mean she was the only one involved in getting there. For example:

See, the whole point of the pro-life movement is that we don't see it that way. We see TWO lives in a pregnancy. (John Hardly)

Funny how the pro-life movement never holds the man accountable or even is an issue. They want the man to be able to decide -- but not to be held responsible for the choice. All authority, no responsibility.

Because the so-called pro-life movement is not about human life, it's about potential male life. They don't care they carrying a pregnancy to term is more dangerous and life threatening than an abortion. Who cares if the woman dies? They don't care that lack of available medical care may kill the fetus anyway, and maybe the mother with it. They don't care what happens to the baby after it is born, as long as it gets born. They don't care if a woman has access to safe and effective birth control, in fact, many will protest any kind of birth control as immoral. They don't care that many women don't have access to the reproductive health services they need to be as safe as they can be about having a baby or not having one. They don't care that dozens of zygotes are killed during in vitro fertiliation -- for some reason that's not a crime because you probably eventually get a BABY out the process. God forbid you then use those doomed zygotes for stem cells though!

The worst of them advocate the death penalty for women who get an abortion and the doctors who provide them, but the men who impregnated them get off scot free.

And then there are some of us who have faced the "pro life" movement's real beliefs first hand and have been seriously injured for it. I wasn't getting an abortion, but that didn't stop them from attacking me for entering a women's hospital that provided reproductive health services of all kinds.

I may believe there are some serious and principled people against abortion out there, but you won't find them defining themselves according to a "movement" whose actions are as immoral as the ones they claim to protest for immorality. The exception is the Catholic Church, whom I may disagree with on many matters, but they at least are consistent when it comes to what they consider killing.

Nah. Women aren't the only ones who make a choice. They're just the only ones who HAVE to pay the piper. That's not equal rights by a long shot.

Until every woman can make a choice about becoming pregnant or not without fear of physical, economic or religious reprisals, abortion is the cruel escape hatch that a lucky few have access to. Those who would seek to close that door without addressing the issues that cause it to be there have no moral ground to stand on. They simply seek to impose their definition of morality with providing an alternative.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: katlaughing
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 02:34 AM

Brava, Nicole! Well-said!

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 03:41 AM

Ok, John H. Here's a basic belief of mine. I'll do my best to define my terms.

The belief: It is a bad thing to kill a human. As Raymond Chandler (I think) said, it is 'the ultimate cruelty,' because you are taking something that can never be returned, even in part.

But it is permissible (though never good) when it is the lesser of two evils. Almost always that means killing if it is necessary to stop a person who is attempting to kill or severely injure another person. ("Severe injury" is mutilation, broken bones, permanent injuries.) My reasoning is if a bad guy is attempting to kill an innocent child of mine, and I must shoot him fatally to stop him, I am responsible for the death of a human, although a bad guy, and that's not good. But if I do not shoot him I will be responsible for the death of my child, and that's worse.

It is generally not permissible to kill someone because you believe he is going to attack you or yours some day nor to kill someone because you believe he has killed someone else. The reason is that you may be wrong, and if you kill an innocent man you can never undo it, and you are a murderer, not a savior.

This is why, in the US, the laws allow self-defense and forbid pre-emptive or punitive shootin' and cuttin'.

And that is why I believe the courts should not be allowed pre-emptive or punitive homicide either. They may be wrong, and they sometimes are, and then they not only kill the innocent, they let the guilty go free.

I realize this is not nit-pick proof. There is no single legal definition of self-defense from state to state, for instance. But writing is laborious for me and it's as clear as I can make it at present. Tell me what you don't agree with.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 05:47 AM

"Because the so-called pro-life movement is not about human life, it's about potential male life."

And not just as much about the potential female babies? I just don't think that is true.

Myself I'd be more than happy if we could balance up the scales of history a litle bit and have women run the world at a political level for a few hundred years. It'd very likely be run better, and it couldn't be run worse. And I suspect that the number of abortions would be a lot lower. But I don't suppose that is on.

(A suggestion - it gets confusing when people run a quote from another post and then respond to it, without indicating, by quote marks or italics or whatever, which are the quotes.)

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 07:32 AM

"See, the whole point of the pro-life movement is that we don't see it that way. We see TWO lives in a pregnancy. (John Hardly)"

"Funny how the pro-life movement never holds the man accountable or even is an issue. They want the man to be able to decide -- but not to be held responsible for the choice. All authority, no responsibility."

NicoleC,

The quote of mine that you pulled was addressed directly at the comparison between abortion and amputation raised by Clint. It was not about responsibility.

Of course I understand that a man is in the pregnancy equation. And at least every pro-life person I know holds the man equally morally responsible for the pregnancy as well as anything related to it (the abortion) ...if he had a say in it.

I thought it was women who did not want men in the equation where abortion is concerned. Now I really am confused.

Clint,

I have no problem with your entire last post, though I disagree with your conclusion about capital punishment. I understand you. I think your view is consistant. I have other reasons for believing in capital punishment.

But what I was asking you is if you believe that abortion is the taking of a human life. At any point in the term?

That's why I said what I did in the above quote that NicoleC abused. Since you compared the "badness" of abortion to the "badness" of amputation, I was commenting that, to me, a major difference between abortion and amputation is that abortion IS the removal of another life -- not the removal of a leg.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 07:35 AM

...and NicoleC,

I have NEVER met a pro-lifer that holds the beliefs you describe.

Never.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raptor
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 09:58 AM

I am Raptor NOT Rapaire.

2 different people!

Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: harpgirl
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 10:13 AM

Nick, you said...

Harpgirl - I don't think the ability to choose or not choose an abortion is anything like "freedom." Most women would vastly prefer not to ever have to make the choice. If abortion weren't an alternative because there were no need at all for it, I think the world would be a better place.

I disagree with you, Nick. Most women in the world have no choice but to carry to term. Therefore we can not say for certain that most women would prefer not to make this choice, to abort or carry to term. Beccause they don't presently have a choice. They must carry to term. American women have legal access to abortion but they don't necessarily have economic access, unfortunately.

Being able to choose not to carry to term with free access to abortion is definitely a kind of freedom for women. It's not the only kind of freedmon women have no access to but it is one important one. I did not say most women would choose abortion if they had complete unfettered access to abortion.

Having no need for abortion might make the world a better place, but in order for that to happen we must give women complete equality in all aspects of society in all places in the world. Even then, many women would choose abortion at some point in their lives when becoming pregnant. Just as the privileged ones do now.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peg
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 10:23 AM

John Hardly;
once again you completely ignore what I am saying and attach yourself to three little (metaphorical) words. I don't give a damn how long you've been here nor was I accusing you of being anonymous. Stop being so willfully obtuse. Obviously someone as smart as you (though I am beginning to wonder) understands what cloak of respectability means.

Do you or do you NOT agree that your earlier comments (quoted in that post) were intentionally offensive and inflammatory?? How can someone claim to be having a rational discussion about abortion when they use words like you have (i.e. "snuffing the inconvenient lil shits"). You need to own up to this offensive rhetoric. YOU. Not by pointing to what I have said; but by owning what YOU have said. That's where the cloaking is coming in; your refusal to acknowledge the distasteful way in which you are taking   part in this discussion.

For Christ's sake can you actually respond   directly to something for once???? I am really tired of your constant misquoting and willful misinterpreting to avoid the issue.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: harpgirl
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 10:30 AM

BTW folks, when I say "women" I mean women who have or have had in the past, most of the equipment necessary to become pregnant and carry a child!!!!!...just for the record...!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 11:04 AM

peg,
I haven't misquoted anyone, willing or not. I have painstakingly pulled entire quotes as much as necessary and responded to them.

If you want to know what went through my head when I composed the line that you seem so offended by, I'll tell you.

First, it seemed very "mudcat" that is, it is irreverent language. That IS the coin of the realm here.

Second I purposely chose language that is as ambiguous as the debate. Snuffing is an interesting term because it clearly pictures two different and severly contrasting things. When one "snuffs" a candle it is an almost pacific action -- not blowing a candle out, rather, snuffing it. In fact you snuff a candle for that very reason -- so as to leave no trace (as blowing will shower a table top with wax residue.

But that was why "Snuffing" was a word loaded with irony when gangsters adopted it for "offing" someone. Therefore, to my way of thinking "snuffing" is a terrific word in this instance -- it contains elements of both sides of this debate.

When I chose li'l shits I also did so for the double meaning. On the one hand, it is not uncommon for us to refer to very loved children humorously in these term, as in "you shoulda seen what the li'l shit did..." conferring a humorous view of a mischievous child that is still very loved. I refer to my very loved pets as li'l shits when they get into mischief -- not out of anger, rather conferring humor on their innocent mischief.

On the other hand, it simultaneously makes referrence to the most vulgar of views that compares abortion to little more consideration than getting shed of any other non-living biological waste product.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peg
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 11:06 AM

well, at least you have gone to some pains to demonstrate how really tasteless and sick your views are. Thanks so much.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 11:14 AM

By their words ye shall know them.

In Peg's first post to this thread: Viability of a fetus is what draws   the line between   abortion and "snuffing."

2nd post: My, my, how interestng. Men's opinions on this do not carry the   same weight that women's do. If you don't like that, too freakin' bad.

3rd post: John Hardly's judgment seems clouded by emotion. He also seems one of the most ignorant men I've ever come across...You're    just another one of those pathetic middle-aged old men waving signs and hating women in front of the clinic.   Some of them stop at signs; others move on to guns.

4th post: John Hardly keeps insisting he is using LOGIC. Yet he sounds   like a fanatic to me.

5th post: I think John Hardly got pretty personal. He referred to my statement...Maybe next time he is picketing a clinic he should...

6th post: I don't think calling someone ignorant is name-calling...I have better things to do than argue with a fanatic.

7th post: Joihn Hardly says things like this:

"Seems even if we were to use your definition of "viability" we would still be snuffin' the inconvenient li'l shits anyway."

and then a few posts later claims to be trying to debate this in a thoughtful manner? I think not.

THAT sort of statement (above) is offensive and obviously designed    to inflame. Don't tell me for a second it isn't. At   least admit to what you are trying   to do, don't try to hide behind some cloak of respectability here.

8th post: John Hardly;
once again you completely ignore what I am saying and attach yourself to three little (metaphorical) words...the distasteful way in which you are taking   part in this discussion...I am really tired of your constant misquoting and willful misinterpreting to avoid the issue.





Not the first time we see "little metaphorical words" when she's let her mouth overload her brain.



and while I was writing: well, at least you have gone to some pains to demonstrate how really tasteless and sick your views are. Thanks so much.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: NicoleC
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 11:55 AM

Harpgirl - I agree that the choice of terminate a pregnancy is a type of freedom, but when it comes at the end of a lifetime of being trained to marry, trained to be submissive to men, and being stripped of basic choices about one's body, it's not much of a freedom. It's beats having nothing, I admit, but it's not what I'd really call "freedom."

Kevin - I agree that the so-called pro-life movement values potential life over those living. But female babies will be treated with the same lack of respect once they are born that their mother's were, so it certainly seems to me their lives aren't valued much either.

Of course, John claims that it is okay to kill prisoners on death row since they are all "guilty" -- a fact which is demonstratably not true, but not okay to kill a fetus, because the fetus is "innocent" -- a belief which is unfounded at best while the nature vs. nuture arguement continues unabated. Was Hilter born bad or did his parents make him that way? What about the biblical Antichrist -- if he gets aborted, is Armaggedon off?

John - in this entire discussion, you haven't mentioned men's responsibility until I did. You haven't mentioned alternatives until Ebbie mentioned adoption. I've never seen you support public healthcare issues or write impassioned arguments about pregnancy prevention and reproductive health, or a woman's right to self-determination BEFORE she gets pregnant. (Clearly, you think that she has no right afterward.) When it comes to the issue, you only have one thing to say -- you think it's morally wrong and you think you have the right to judge that morality for everyone else. That's your opinion and I respect that someone might hold it. But your outrage is merely reserved for the end product of the problem, not the cause, not the symptoms, and certainly not focused at a cure.

Yet even within this thread on capital punishment, numerous Catter's have waxed philosophical and forwarded ideas on how to prevent victims of crime and find better ways to deal with convicted criminals that don't kill the innocents convicted. Don't you think that's ironic?

I have NEVER met a pro-lifer that holds the beliefs you describe.
(John Hardly)

He who sleeps with dogs rises with fleas. I've met quite a few up, and I'm not even involved with the "movement." Perhaps you should read some of the beliefs published by organizations like www.abortionismurder.com (contraception is murder, abortion is wrong even in cases of rape and incest), Right to Life (www.nrlc.ord) (no mention of healthcare issues or the byproducts of fertility treatments nor the death penalty or anytrhing other than they are also against euthanasia). Then there's www.operationrescue.org, who believes that God is punishing America for abortion and everyone who gets an abortion is going to Hell, but at least has the backbone to also protest capital punishment.

Even Dan Quayle publicly stated he didn't support abortion even in the case of a 12 year old raped by her father.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Fast Eddy, the Agent from Duluth
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 01:54 PM

For the last 6 months I have examined all of Peg's postings in great detail, and I have never seen a more moronic and intemperate barrage of abuse. She needs to own up to her offensive rhetoric and stop being so willfully obtuse. Her statements are intentionally offensive and inflammatory. Yet she refuses to acknowledge the distasteful way in which she is taking part in this discussion! Rather than seeking a meeting of minds, she engages in senseless personal diatribes inspired by hatred and an innate sense of superiority over anyone who disagrees with her about anything. She is overly emotional, takes everything personally, and flies off the handle like a berserk pit bull at the slightest suggestion that any truth but hers is a truth worth considering! Thin-skinned? This woman HAS no skin!

Peg, there is a lucrative job waiting for you as a radio-talk-show host here in the Midwest. Call us at once, and arrange for an interview!!! I predict that you will end up better known and more successful than Rush Limbaugh, Geraldo Rivera, Jerry Springer or any of those other loudmouthed bastards. You will be the Queen of broadcast (love that word) abuse! You will be the broad that casts aspersions like other people cast for fish!

Phone immediately at 1-800-IMA-JERK and embark on an exciting rise to fame and fortune, pissing off people royally from coast to coast!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 01:57 PM

Of course, John claims that it is okay to kill prisoners on death row since they are all "guilty" -- a fact which is demonstratably not true, but not okay to kill a fetus, because the fetus is "innocent" -- a belief which is unfounded at best while the nature vs. nuture arguement continues unabated. Was Hilter born bad or did his parents make him that way? What about the biblical Antichrist -- if he gets aborted, is Armaggedon off?

NicoleC,

No, I did not say "…it is okay to kill prisoners on death row since they are all "guilty"".

I was merely responding to the charge that pro-lifers are inconsistent because we are against killing the unborn but we are not ALL against the government killing murderers. I only addressed the difference between an innocent unborn and a guilty (by due process) killer.

I even allowed (two times) as how one might still choose to argue the finer points of capital punishment on the basis of a failing justice system. But, again, THAT does not mean that pro-lifers are inconsistent when they can make a distinction between a guilty murderer and an innocent unborn.

Are you saying that you are pro-abortion on the basis of its potential to save us from a potential mass murderer?

I have never referred to any murderer that has not been convicted by due process. I cannot imagine a due process that would convict on the possibility that an unborn. might become a murderer.

I (not the pro-life movement) do believe that capital punishment represents a pro-life position, and I would be glad to share my rationale, but it is too long to put in this already too long post – it would only confuse things more.

"John - in this entire discussion, you haven't mentioned men's responsibility until I did."

I never brought it up because I never thought it was germane to the discussion. At what point did you think it was?

But now that you asked me, rather than responding to my response, you now complain that my response is illegitimate because of its lack of timeliness.

Again, I do not get it. I thought you were against a man having any say in abortion. Now it matters to you whether or not I understand that a man is involved? (I do). So you are saying a man is involved and therefore SHOULD have a say in the commission of an abortion?

"You haven't mentioned alternatives until Ebbie mentioned adoption. I've never seen you support public healthcare issues or write impassioned arguments about pregnancy prevention and reproductive health, or a woman's right to self-determination BEFORE she gets pregnant. (Clearly, you think that she has no right afterward.) When it comes to the issue, you only have one thing to say -- you think it's morally wrong and you think you have the right to judge that morality for everyone else. That's your opinion and I respect that someone might hold it. But your outrage is merely reserved for the end product of the problem, not the cause, not the symptoms, and certainly not focused at a cure."

Again I didn't bring it up because it wasn't what we were discussing. You seem inordinately concerned about the order in which I choose to discuss this issue – as if, unless I make the points I am making, in the order in which you think I should make them, they are illegitimate.

As I said earlier. It may really grate on you. You may think a pro-lifer is a hypocrite if he doesn't choose to address the problem in a concrete manner that you find suitable. But the point I made (earlier) is that, all that unhelpfulness and hypocrisy may be true – but if abortion is an immoral act, it doesn't alter that fact just because those who believe it is immoral are jerks. Again, it's a bitch when total jerks are right – but it happens from time to time.

Yet even within this thread on capital punishment, numerous Catter's have waxed philosophical and forwarded ideas on how to prevent victims of crime and find better ways to deal with convicted criminals that don't kill the innocents convicted. Don't you think that's ironic?

No.

I have NEVER met a pro-lifer that holds the beliefs you describe.
(John Hardly)

He who sleeps with dogs rises with fleas. I've met quite a few up, and I'm not even involved with the "movement." Perhaps you should read some of the beliefs published by organizations like www.abortionismurder.com (contraception is murder, abortion is wrong even in cases of rape and incest), Right to Life (www.nrlc.ord) (no mention of healthcare issues or the byproducts of fertility treatments nor the death penalty or anytrhing other than they are also against euthanasia). Then there's www.operationrescue.org, who believes that God is punishing America for abortion and everyone who gets an abortion is going to Hell, but at least has the backbone to also protest capital punishment.

Even Dan Quayle publicly stated he didn't support abortion even in the case of a 12 year old raped by her father.

I did not say you couldn't find anyone who believes as you do. I said that I don't know anyone who does. I think what I am saying by that is that perhaps the mainstream of the pro-life movement isn't represented well by its fringe.

Quayle didn't get elected dogcatcher. (he made that comment during his aborted presidential bid).

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peg
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 02:24 PM

Mary: I stand by my words. Every one of them. And you have chosen   to remove my words and put them in a post utterly without context (instead of offering to insert the posts of John Hardly's I was replying to), so I don't understand why you think this is somehow making a point about anything. That's what bothered me so much about John's words, was that he took things out of context and selectively commented on partial quotations.
Like you have done.
I was insulted by what he said, and said so. I still think he is ignorant (or at least, if he is not, he appears to be so) and intentionally offensive.


Guest Fast Eddy: you aren't even good at what you're attempting to do. Using my words to insult me? Not only unoriginal, but lazy as well. I don't think GUESTS are worth replying to.

And I highly doubt you've examined all my posts of the last six months in detail. What about all the music commentary? (Something you seem uninterested in)

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 02:43 PM

I think the last few posts - from both sides in the argument - have demonstrated why getting personal and hitting out at people who disagree with you has the effect of destroying communication and preventing discussions from having any useful outcome.

"Useful outcome" meaning, for example when you end up with a better understanding of what you think yourself, and of what other people think, and where the differences are. Even when nobody changes their view, I think it is useful to achieve that much.

And a helpful thing to do sometimes is try to state the position of the person you are arguing with, in words with which they would agree was a fair representation of their point of view. I can't see much sign that some of the people lashing out here would be up for that.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 03:07 PM

"I think the last few posts - from both sides in the argument - have demonstrated why getting personal and hitting out at people who disagree with you has the effect of destroying communication and preventing discussions from having any useful outcome."

I'm sorry, MofH, but I don't see where my post was doing that.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 03:19 PM

How about: "Within the last few posts we've had examples from both sides in the argument of how getting personal and hitting out at people who disagree with you can have the effect of destroying communication and preventing discussions from having any useful outcome."

I wasn't actually referring to John's last post. Which posts was I referring to? If the cap fits, wear it.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: katlaughing
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 03:39 PM

It seems many pro-lifers are also fundamentalist Christians. While they claim a fetus is "innocent" don't they believe that we are each born in a state of sin and therefore not innocent. Splitting hairs? Perhaps, but I still find it an interesting point.

FWIW, I do feel it is difficult for men to understand what a woman goes through from sexual awareness to contraception, if available, which may fail, to being pregnant and having to make a decision about what to do (esp. if the pregnancy came about through force of any kind.)

Please note, I said "difficult" not impossible. Ultimately the decision comes down to that one individual, that lone woman, no one can, nor should they, make that decision for her, yet it happens all of the time. That it happens at the behest of men, sometimes, makes it even more distrubing, imo. There is no correlation in which mens' bodies are regulated by the laws of the land. No correaltion exists in which mens' bodily functions are so hotly debated and contested.

On the original issue of this thread, that is capital punishment, our newspaper runs memorial ads by relatives of people who have passed on. This past Sunday I noticed the following and found it interesting that after nine years, the deceased's family still wanted vengeance and believed, apparently, that his soul was not at rest in all of that time. I do not make judgement of them, just thought it was an interesting take from some people who have obviously lived with some of what we've been talking about:

It's been nine years since God took you home. Your memory is still fresh in our minds. Today our hearts are more at ease because the one who took your life is finally going to pay. Now you can finally rest.
Love,
Mom and Dad, etc...

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Fast Eddy, the Agent from Duluth
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 05:31 PM

Peg, you are absolutely on the money! I'm not worth replying to. :-) But when did that ever stop you? You are as predictable as one of those punch-em dolls we had when we were kids, you always bounce back! You're like the energizer bunny, you just keep going, and going, and going...

This is why I think you should seriously consider our offer and apply for the job at once. We need people just like you at KICKASS FM...people who simply don't know when to quit, because that's what secures RATINGS! Yes! There is a vast, immature public out there which craves controversy and delights in backbiting, invective-spewing arguments that reach no useful conclusion but go on forever...like this thread.

May I use a popular phrase and say, "YOU GO, GIRL!". More abuse, please! More criticism! Do your worst. Put on some stilletos and walk all over my naked body...I can take it. You're right that music doesn't interest me much. Money interests me. And I see gold in them thar hills when I read your diatribes. I used your own words out of sheer admiration.

(By the way, I pretty much agree with you on the abortion issue, but who cares? It's not your opinions I value, it's your nastiness and your gift for verbal malice that really grab my attention. Reasonable people do not secure good ratings on radio shows. People like you do.)

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 06:09 PM

As you say kat, it's "difficult for men to understand what a woman goes through...", and it's also difficult to appreciate what it's like having had someone you love murdered, if we haven't experienced that.

And what that means is that those of us who can't understand, because of that difficulty, should refrain from making judgements about people we don't understand, and their beliefs.

But it doesn't mean that we don't have a right and a duty to reach our own conclusions about what is right and what is wrong, even when we aren't in those situations ourselves. And it is pretty clear that, when it comes to issues around abortion, there are women who reach different conclusions, and the same goes for relatives of murder victims in relation to capital punishment.

It occurs to me that there is a significant difference between the context in which we are arguing - in the USA the question of the legality of abortion is very much a live issue; in the UK it isn't really any more. The question isn't so much about "the right to choose", but rather about what makes a choice right or wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 09:55 PM

Is the gender issue really that valid, Nicole and harpgirl? Surely it skirts close to the argument that men are responsible for all that's wrong with the world. Yet some of those pro-life attitudes that Nicole attributed to men put me very much in mind of Mother Therese's interference in India, retrieving foetuses from skips but with no apparent interest in any lives saved.

Channel 4 in the UK recently ran a long documentary on female circumcision in Kenya, the horrific effects of which I had not fully understood. (It is widespread in Africa; the program just happened to focus on Kenya.) I was surprised to learn that women are the main driving force behind the survival of this cruel, and often disabling tradition - mothers, who have themselves been circumcised, yet who are determined to put their own children through the same trauma. The men, it seems, show no great enthusiasm for the custom, but seem to accept that its for mothers to decide.

Thanks for the kind words harpgirl - also for picking up (as hardly anyone has done) on the thoughts that prompted me to start the thread. And yes, I do tend to think of all fundamentalists as victims of brainwashing, and therefore not entirely responsible for their actions.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: harpgirl
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 10:37 PM

Ouch, Lepus! (re: your remarks to Peg) But when are you gonna come out from behind your aliases and meet the rest of us as equals like you used to? Love, harpgirl

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: NicoleC
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 01:37 AM

Exactly my point, John.   You don't think anything is relative to the issue except for your personal moral judgement. You even stated that men are only responsible if they agree to an abortion, but apparently don't think they have any responsibility over the pregnancy in the first place!

It's like condemning someone for not being able to read, but not being willing to question whether they were taught to do so. A woman is evil/immoral/wanton/slutty for getting pregnant (but not the man who impreganated her). A woman is evil for getting an abortion, but the man is not responsible for her having to make the choice. A woman is horrible if she doesn't take good care of her child, but if she can't afford medical care that's her fault. A woman is a lazy slut if she doesn't work at least a demeaning minimum wage job while she has an infant, but we won't take any steps to address affordable childcare. A woman is a bad mother if she leaves her child at home alone, but, wait, there's still no childcare.

Issues that lead to the need or desire for such a decision are entirely relevant to the issue.

Fionn, I don't think we can separate abortion from numerous other social issues, particulary gender issues, any more than we can separate crime from other social issues. I'm not talking about men being responsible for everything wrong in the world. The entire anti-abortion movement is based on fundamentalist Christian beliefs which hold that a woman is the property of her husband/father/male guardian and he gets to make all her choices for her. It's about possession and control of women and children.

If one truly believes it is a moral decision, then they should also know that no one can truly judge another.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 05:14 AM

John Hardly:

"Since you compared the "badness" of abortion to the "badness" of amputation, I was commenting that, to me, a major difference between abortion and amputation is that abortion IS -- not the removal of a leg."

Abortion & amputation are alike in that they are bad things. Of course there are many ways in which they are different, but I was talking about that particular similarity.

Try self-defense instead of amputation. Self-defense is sometimes the removal of another life, and thus a bad thing, but better than the alternative. Like abortion.

And before you ask, I'm not saying that abortion is self defense.

I'm saying that you don't always have a choice between good and bad; sometimes you only get to choose between bad and worse, and it can be hard to tell which is which.

"But what I was asking you is if you believe that abortion is the taking of a human life. At any point in the term?"

I believe an egg, a sperm, or a fertilized egg is alive, but I think none is a human being. I think a viable fetus is a human being, but I don't believe a viable fetus is ordinarily aborted. Not legally, anyhow, but correct me if I'm wrong. I do not know at what point a sperm and egg become human or at what point a fetus become viable.

But whether or not abortion is homicide, we have a right to do it when we believe it is the lesser evil.

Letting both mother and child die when abortion could save the mother is wrong. Using abortion as a substitute for contraception is generally wrong (and impractical). Those are relatively easy decisions, though sometimes terribly painful. Other cases are not so clear cut and we have to do the best we can. Because we are responsible both for what we do, and for what we do not do.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raptor
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 06:54 AM

Nicole

Forgive me but I'm still not clear on what you are saying as i understand it a woman can get pregnant and the man is responsible for the child finantualy untill its 19 years oldautomaticaly and has NO right to and opinion as to weather he wants to have the child(not that this is wrong).

How is the choice not the womans?

Asked respectifully

No Disrespect intended

Raptor not Rapaire

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 08:36 AM

. You even stated that men are only responsible if they agree to an abortion, but apparently don't think they have any responsibility over the pregnancy in the first place!

I said nothing of the sort. I don't believe anything of the sort. Just because I state that I think a man is responsible in the event of an abortion in no way implies that I don't think he is equally responible for/in the pregnancy.

Clint,

Abortion is legal at any point in the term. The pro-choice advocates are even in favor of "partial birth abortion" -- and it has been held up as legal in our courts.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 10:29 AM

Fionn, I've read a lot about the female circumsion practices in Africa and while I believe it is so that the mothers do have a lot to do with carrying on the tradition, I still believe, according to what I've seen and read, that they are acting out according to the dictates of the patriarchy. In the accounts I've read, the men wanted their women circumcised and sewn so tightly shut that only a trickle of urine could escape. It is also a "guarantee" of virginity. It is said they get more pleasure out of the effort to "open" the girl up and they even sew them shut, again, after each birth.

It's more rare now, but little girls in this country were forced to undergo clitorectomies as late as the 1930's when thought to be oversexed, i.e. found playing with themselves, even when very, very young.

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peg
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 10:43 AM

McGrath wrote:

"And a helpful thing to do sometimes is try to state the position of the person you are arguing with, in words with which they would agree was a fair representation of their point of view. I can't see much sign that some of the people lashing out here would be up for that."


I would be up for that; really I would. It certainly is helpful to do that when the issue is as complex and divisive as this one. I do not think John Hardly was at all fair in his representation of my point of view (most of the time he was just picayunishly rhetorical), and that is why I lashed out at him. I asked him, in trying to clarify his point of view, direct questions regarding this issue, and he ignored them, or insulted my statements by calling them "tired old rubes.". He then used words describing women who have abortions that I found extremely offensive. Fair enough, I used offensive words too, but only after his. The fact that I used them to refer to him personally is what seems to have gotten everyone riled up; but that is what he was doing, too, just not in a straightforward manner. Other women who have restated my own views in this thread (i.e. men's opinions do not carry the same weight as women's, and those who have not directly experienced the dilemma of an accidental or rape-induced pregnancy might have less to say on this than those who have) have not been similarly disrespected by him. I tend to respond in kind in this sort of debate.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 10:53 AM

I've never seen you acting so respectful, Raptor. What's up? Have you found Jesus?

Hey, folks...instead of finding a gender to blame, why don't we just try to agree on what is negative behaviour and what is positive behaviour? Anyone here in favour of clitorectomies and female circumcision? No? I didn't think so.

Okay....

Now, what about the thorny issue of when a fetus becomes a "person"? Is it a few weeks into term? Is it a few months into term? Is it (as is suggested in some spiritual writings) at or shortly prior to birth itself? Or is it at the very moment of conception, when the sperm fertilizes the egg???? (which is, of course, prior to the actual fetus, per se...but you know what I mean...)

All of these matters must be considered in forming an opinion regarding the morality of terminating a pregnancy.

Now the fact is, lots of people have opinions regarding the above, but they DON'T KNOW the answer to when the "person" begins. So...their opinion on the morality of abortion is based upon:

1. emotion

2. conjecture

and most importantly of all... (drum roll)

3. the opinions of other people whom they have known or heard from in the past!

...whose opinions were based on...

1. emotion

2. conjecture

and most importantly of all... ('nother drum roll)

3. the opinions of other people whom they have know or heard from in the past!

...whose opinions were based on...

(ROLL ABOVE TAPE ON INDEFINITELY)

And that's life on planet Earth. Gotta love it! Can you believe people kill each other over stuff like this? Well, hey, sure they do! And over even sillier things, too.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: harpgirl
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 12:37 PM

I can answer you with my unswerving opinion, LH. Inside the mother equals parasite. Outside the mother equals human child. Love, harpgirl

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 01:34 PM

Yup, that's one view, and I certainly comprehend it, although it's not quite the words I would use. I would never presume to tell a woman what to do about her own pregnancy, although I might offer her advice if I thought it apt to do so. Depends on the individual circumstances.

The problem with laws is that they are usually far too inflexible to meet all individual circumstances properly. And that very problem has inspired countless folksongs, movies, novels, etc.

That's why a society would be better governed by wise and flexible people than by laws...but where do we find such people? And how do we agree on who those people are? It ain't easy. I guess that's why we have come to depend on written laws so much.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 01:35 PM

Is "parasite" more or less calculated to offend than "little shits"?

How about "Inside the mother equals a wholly dependent human being. Outside the mother equals an almost wholly dependent human being"?

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: alanabit
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 02:33 PM

This has got a little personal, which is a shame, because there is plenty worth debating.
   There is the view taken that life begins at conception and that if this life is curtailed it amounts to the killing of an "unborn child". Others - including myself - believe that life emerges more gradually and that above all we have to act in accordance with the wishes of the women in whose bodies this happens. The "pro lifers" see themselves as wishing to save "unborn children". The rest of us believe that we have no right to impose our own moral judgements on others. Now before the "pro lifers" come back with the answer that we are in effect forcing our judgements on unborn children, it is worth recalling that debate of any importance has long since moved on.
   It is hard to find anyone who really likes abortion per se and in practice it is always seen as the lesser of two evils. This is an issue of a personal moral dilemma. For that reason, whatever one's own moral revulsion to abortion is, it can not be legislated out of existence any more than prostiution can be, or gambling can be or dangerous drugs can be, or being rude to people on Wednesdays can be. All legislation can do is to set up a framework in which it can be carried out with the least damage to women.
   When women have proper access to health care, education, career structures and political influence, there will be less unwanted pregnancy and less abortion. There is no such thing as a pro abortionist.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 02:52 PM

"Rapaire - "I Think I'm gonna regret this but I need to know what you mean by "full equality with men". And don't women already have the only right to chose to have an abortion!""

Nope, 'twasn't me that posted that. It isn't even close to something I'd write. I don't think I'll post on this thread anymore, as 1) I see it getting awfully personal instead of being an informed discussion, and 2) I don't see anything but it going around in circles.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 03:33 PM

Speaking of Jesus. . . .

There is the Biblical story of the woman who was caught in adultery and brought to Jesus for judgment (actually, knowing Jesus' feelings about capital punishment, it was an attempt to trap him into preaching against the established law, which said that an adulteress was to be stoned to death). Jesus, knowing what they were up to, yanked the rug out from under them by saying, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." They all stood around looking guilty, and after a few moments, dropped the stones they were ready to hurl at the woman, and wandered off, muttering to themselves. Jesus turned to the woman and said, "Go. And sin no more."

But while those who wanted to stone the woman were presenting their case, arguing, and quoting the law, as he listened to them, Jesus is said to have knelt down and, with his finger, wrote something in the sand. But the Bible doesn't record what he wrote, and this has been the subject of some speculation among Bible scholars. A theologian of my acquaintance once said, "I think I know what Jesus wrote. He wrote, 'Where is the man?'"

FYI:—

The laws proposed in an attempt to ban so-called "partial birth abortion" are ". . . vague and broad, with the potential to restrict other techniques in obstetrics and gynecology. It fails to use recognized medical terminology and fails to define explicitly the prohibited medical techniques it criminalizes." [Quoted from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists on the Subject of "Partial-Birth Abortion" Bans, July 8, 2002]

The term "partial-birth abortion" is a Trojan Horse. "Partial birth abortion" does not refer to any established medical procedure. It is a term invented by anti-choice activists. Among a number of procedures prohibited by the proposed "partial birth abortion" laws are "D&X" (dilation and extraction), which is the standard procedure for performing an abortion. Which means the laws are intended to ban all abortions. Anything that might actually be considered a "partial-birth abortion" would have to take place late in the third trimester—the last three months of the pregnancy. Long-standing, unchallenged statutes in 40 states and the District of Columbia prohibit elective abortions by any method after fetal viability. Moreover, women do not carry healthy pregnancies for seven or eight months and then abort on a whim. On those extremely rare occasions when third-trimester abortions are performed, they are done because the fetus has severe or fatal anomalies or because the pregnancy endangers the life or health of the woman. In these cases, the existing statutes do not apply because it is a matter of of medical necessity, and is, therefore, not "elective."

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 03:45 PM

Someone got you confused with Raptor, Rapaire. Raptor has likewise been protesting that he is not you. We should get someone else to join the forum now, called "Raptaire", just to totally confuse things.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 04:12 PM

Don and Alanabit, thank you, both, for those excellent and informative postings.

McGrath, while "parasities" might be as abhorrent to you as "lil' shits" at least the former is more accurate, though I don't particularly care for the term, either. Also, "human being" to me implies viable outside the mother's womb. Until then it is a foetus. Splitting hairs, again, perhaps, but it's the way I feel about it.

LH hit upon this a slight bit without particulars. There is one org. I know which conducted esoteric experiments during live births which showed the soul, i.e. silver chord with spirit attached, so to speak, entered the body of a newborn upon their first breath, i.e. the Breath of Life. Somewhere in the Bible there is reference which taken metaphysically relates to this, but I cannot remember the exact phrase, etc.

I personally believe we choose our parents long before we become a newborn and that we may *hang around* within and without the mother's body during the gestational period. If an abortion is warranted for some reason, I believe the soul has a choice of moving on to a different incarnation with perhaps better timing. It's all bound up in past lives, karma, connections of souls, learning from experiences, etc., in my own personal belief system.

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 04:20 PM

"Rapport" might be a way of conveying a friendly sort of attitude...

When women have proper access to health care, education, career structures and political influence, there will be less unwanted pregnancy and less abortion And that's what I was getting at earlier.

I believe the most effective way to reducing abortion is to bring about changes in society that would be welcomed by anybody who would use the label "pro-choice", and by anyone who is sincerely "pro-life".

Which doesn't mean there's not still a lot of room for disagreement as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: John Hardly
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 04:22 PM

"The term "partial-birth abortion" is a Trojan Horse. "Partial birth abortion" does not refer to any established medical procedure. It is a term invented by anti-choice activists"

So, Don,

What do you suggest we call it so that we can discuss it? I think we all are up to date on the political arguments -- and we all know to what procedure we refer. Or should we just not discuss it because there is not a specific medical terminology? It (as a term) was brought up (by me) merely because Clint said he didn't know if there was any limit to when an abortion could be performed. I merely told him, no, there is no limit right up to the very moment of birth.

I brought this up because several had already brought up the notion of "viability" and he had expressed some question as to the ambiguity of such a judgement (about viability).

I was merely pointing out that, regardless of the moral qualms you might have regarding human life=viability, it does not currently matter according to the law of the land.

I am more than happy to drop the issue (of whatever we are to now call partial birth abortion -- wherein labor is induced, an instrument is inserted into the fetus brain, and a now dead thing is stillborn), as arguing its finer points was not the intent of its having been brought into the conversation (as I just described).

(this isn't meant to sound nearly as snide as I know it's going to sound given the current atmosphere of this thread. I am just aware of having been corrected for something that is quite secondary to the point I was making. And I'd like to clear that up)

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 04:36 PM

What you said pretty well describes the way I see it, Kat.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: harpgirl
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 04:49 PM

Oh dear, I really wasn't thinking about my entire audience when I replied to LH. I truly do not want to choose offensive language on this issue but I abhor the term fetus and can barely bring myself to use it. Sorry, but I intended to suggest that human life begins at birth.

I like kat's notion that if an abortion or miscarriage occurs, the soul departs for greener pastures, so to speak. Then I can love my little lost babies thinking they're elsewhere on earth rather than dead and gone....


Sincerely, harpgirl

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 04:50 PM

Yeah, LH? I think we're on the same page, well maybe same *book* at least, more often than not...just different ways of saying so.:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 05:01 PM

This is the part of Don's post that applies to what I was talking about.

'Long-standing, unchallenged statutes in 40 states and the District of Columbia prohibit elective abortions by any method after fetal viability. Moreover, women do not carry healthy pregnancies for seven or eight months and then abort on a whim. On those extremely rare occasions when third-trimester abortions are performed, they are done because the fetus has severe or fatal anomalies or because the pregnancy endangers the life or health of the woman. In these cases, the existing statutes do not apply because it is a matter of of medical necessity, and is, therefore, not "elective." '

I had assumed that the discussion was about "elective" abortions. Whether or not "Partial Birth Abortion" is a Trojan horse is beside my point (though I believe it is indeed a Trojan horse), as is the description of the third-trimester abortion, which it seems does *not* occur electively in 40 states and the District of Columbia. Do you have any information on how often it occurs in the other 10 states? I would suspect Don is right when the says "women do not carry healthy pregnancies for seven or eight months and then abort on a whim."

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 05:40 PM

John (or anyone else interested), this is undoubtedly more than you will ever care to know about various abortion procedures HERE, and definition and description of "partial birth abortion" HERE. I was in error in my above post. D&X is not the standard procedure for early (first trimester) abortion, I believe D&E (dilation and evacuation) is, although I shouldn't say because I'm really not sure. I believe this is covered in the second link I posted. If you really want to pin it down, check with a gynecologist or obstetrician, but in any case, it is my understanding the D&X is a late term procedure rarely used, and then only under the conditions I stated in my previous post—medical necessity. In any case, banning "partial birth abortion" when a doctor deems it necessary would quite possibly result in the death of the woman. Not something you hear much about from the "pro-life" advocates of these bans.

While googling through cyberspace in search of this information, I encountered a large number of "pro-life" web sites that described—very graphically—the "partial birth abortion" procedure in what can only be described as emotional and inflammatory terms: "The scissors are thrust into the baby's skull, the opening enlarged, and then the baby's brains are sucked out, causing the baby's skull to collapse. . . ." Note the often repeated use of the word "baby" rather than "fetus." The diagrams show a baby which is either full-term or very close to full-term. Another appeal to emotion.

In my opinion, abortion is a sad and undesirable thing. But I, personally, would butt the hell out and leave the decision up to the woman in question and her doctor, not to a bunch of people who want to cram their religious beliefs down the throats of the rest of the country and certainly not to a bunch of middle-aged men in Washington, D.C.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 05:47 PM

Viability isn't determined solely by the level of development of what's-happening-in-the-womb, but largely by the level of development of medical technology. Babies can be born and survive outside the womb at far earlier in pregnancy than would at one time have been thought possible.

Does anyone really believe that, once it's got to that stage (whatever that stage might be), to kill a viable embryo is not killing a human being?

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 09:00 PM

Don't bridle at "parasite" McG. It has a precise meaning which was not abused, and it allowed a fine distinction to be drawn. I believe that in biblical times honoured guests were known as parasites, but I can't cite anything in support of this right now.

I hear you Kat, but in the documentary I saw, about one specific village in Kenya, mothers did seem to be the prime movers.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 Sep 03 - 12:17 AM

Thanks, Fionn. I'll watch for it.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 Sep 03 - 12:30 AM

kat, might the Biblical reference to spirit be when "God breathed life into Adam"? We can probably safely assume that in the context of creation Adam was inert and NOT human until he took that first breath.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: GUEST,Wolfgang
Date: 19 Sep 03 - 04:28 PM

Does anyone really believe that, once it's got to that stage (whatever that stage may be) to kill a viable embryo is not killing a human being?

Yes, I do, more or less. To carry it to the extreme, medicine will be able (though I hope, not willing) some time in future to generate human life from a single cell. Each wanker killing a billion possible lifes daily (twice weekly, or whatever your preference).

Sorry about that too colourful language, but I think the onset of human life to be fully considered as such by the law is merely a question of definition to be agreed upon and not a good question for theorists.

Onset of pain perception seems a good definition to me, though others may disagree.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Peg
Date: 19 Sep 03 - 04:44 PM

It strikes me that, just as advances in medical technology   have made it possible for premature infants to survive outside their mother's womb at ages far earlier than they might have done some years ago; the same is true for the survival of elderly or terribly ill people who can now be kept alive via various life support systems. But the quality of that life may not be a very good one. We may be able to keep someone alive longer, but should we?

Fetuses or preemies can't speak and therefore can't offer an opinion on the matter; but we can and should ask our loved ones if they would prefer to be kept alive by heroic mesaures of life support technology, should it come to that.

Medical technology also allows us to know when a child will be born with severe birth defects. (Meaning, in some cases, without a brain stem,in which case immediately after birth the child will begin to deteriorate and die. Recent legal questions surround this rare but not unknown phenomenon; should the babies be brought to term so their healthy organs may be harvested to help other infants? Should these children be brought to term? Right to lifers don't even want stem cell research to happen, so you can imagine what they say to this.

Our culture has a profoundly troublesome relationship with death. It is also true that people are far more likely to sue for malpractice when something goes wrong in the hospital. A few decades back, it was accepted that mistakes were sometimes made. Better and more complex technology, not to mention a crowded and increasingly incompetent health care system, have created greater possibilities of error alongside this greater tendency to be litigious about the fate of our loved ones.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Sep 03 - 06:56 PM

Interesting thought there, Wolfgang, about the "onset of pain perception" as a defining condition of the beginning of individual life.

I would tend to agree. Intelligent life is, by definition, that which is both self-aware and aware of outer stimuli. (And that includes plants, by the way, according to recent studies. They can't show a demonstrable visible reaction (lacking muscles), but they do react in an energetic sense to outer stimuli, and their reactions can be monitored.)

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: NicoleC
Date: 20 Sep 03 - 12:04 AM

RapTOR (sorry for the mis-ID),

Forgive me but I'm still not clear on what you are saying as i understand it a woman can get pregnant and the man is responsible for the child finantualy untill its 19 years oldautomaticaly and has NO right to and opinion as to weather he wants to have the child(not that this is wrong).

How is the choice not the womans?

Well, I perceive no disrespect. Let me clarify a bit.

There are numerous circumstances in which a woman does not have a choice apart from rape. While the obvious cases occur in extremely poor countries (like most of Africa) and countries with large fundamentalist or anti-female populations (like the Middle East, India and many part of rural Asia), it also applies to western countries.

Let's just pick an example, and not an uncommon one:

What of a poor woman with 4 kids who can't afford or isn't allowed birth control by her religion, or who's birth control fails (as it often does), with a husband who won't wear a condom? Her economically subjugated position doesn't allow her to realistically refuse her husband sex without jeopardizing the welfare of herself and her 4 kids, if not rape itself. So what happens when she has a 5th child she can't afford food or medical care for?

This is not as hypothetical a situation as you might think -- it's the modern equivalent of several millenia of the choices women have made. When they couldn't afford (i.e. have the food) for a new child, abandonment or neglect were very common ways of dealing with it. If the choice is the new child, or the child you know and love, who do you choose to die? Or do you try and feed all of you, and have you all sicken and die? It's not something discussed in western society, but any anthropologist will tell you it still goes on, often subconsciously. Mothers seemingly perplexed at why an infant dies, when they neglected to ever feed them. Selective memory to protect oneself, I would say.

"Dumpster babies" are a modern version. It's might be better than being eaten by wild animlas on the hillside, but maybe not.

In the modern western era, women who do the same jobs are paid 25% less than men. A single women, particularly without health insurance, is hard pressed to have the kind of money that not only pays for the pregnancy, but allows her to take ANY time off near the birth. And not just money, but TIME. Kids take lots of time, the kind that a regular 8-5 job really doesn't allow unless you have a very understanding employer. Men frequently walk out and abandon their families, and while there's a lot of talk about how that's bad, men are really not held responsible. Imagine what you hear said about a woman who abandons a little child and leave it with the father... and a "deadbeat" Dad?

Then the working mother she is derided for leaving her child with a substandard daycare center, which she probably can't afford anyway.

A woman without a male partner is severely compromised in her ability to care for one or more children in our society. This would not necessarily be a bad thing if we held men to the same standards in regard to children as we do women -- two or more people is not only the easiest way to raise kids, but still probably the best. A woman with a partner (who is not lucky enough to have one of the MudCat gentlemen) may have to appease her partner at all costs to herself in order to continue to care for her children.

Many women live in a form of economic slavery, even those who appear to have middle class lives. Because of the disparity of the payscale, they may be trapped. And no woman really knows if her partner may walk out or even die and leave her financially incapable of caring for her children -- and our society does not accept responsibility for needy children as a whole, especially if the mother is not deemed "unfit."

This doesn't even touch on religious issues that confine a woman.

In a nutshell, *I* do think that men are equally responsible about ANY pregnancy and ANY child that is the result of their sperm (moreso in the case of rape or molestation) -- but since the woman is, in reality, going to be held virtually soley responsible for that child's care by our society, hers should be the final choice, by consulting the family, friends, doctors and spiritual advisors she needs to make her decision. These kinds of very hard decisions can't be decided by law, particularly when the law does not in practice judge both genders equally. Justice and law are not the same.

If we lived in an gender-equal society, then comments about how a man should have half the choice would be more appropriate and reasonable.

Imagine if every man had to get a woman's permission to get a vasectomy? Or NOT get one, because a woman decided he had to have one? That's not even the life-altering decision a child is, yet every man reading this is recoiling at the idea of someone else deciding what to do with the family jewels.

FWIW, I agree with the term parasite, in a biological sense. One might argue that a fetus is a symbiote -- since the species needs them to reproduce -- but on an individual level, no woman NEEDS a child and every woman who carries a child pays a physical price because the fetus draws the best and most nourishment from her body. And the fetus cannot survive without a human womb (real or technological), so in that respect, it's a parasite.

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: Raptor
Date: 22 Sep 03 - 01:38 PM

Nicole Thank you for:

1 Reading no disrespect into my question

2 Answering my question and clarifiing your point.

I must say I agree with it I just needed to be sure I got you drift!


Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Farewell to an anti-abortionist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Sep 03 - 02:46 PM

I think most people would find it much more insulting to be refered to as "parasites" than as "little shits".

But the question of insult or "offense" is not really the point. In both cases what is involved is a kind of euphemism that seeks to distance us from what is involved. A fetus or embryo is not parasite, nor a bodily waste product, but a human being at an early stage of development.

I don't think talking about hypothetical cloning from single cells is really relevant here, Wolfgang. A single cell is not a human-being-at-an-early stage-of-development whether it is an egg, a sperm or a blood cell.

I think there is good research evidence indicating that a definition of humanity based on "onset of pain perception" would actually kick in before current viability.