Common sense and common ground

When it comes to the whole abortion issue, it's not simply a TWO sided argument, as is being presented (eg. Pro-Life VS Pro-Choice). There is a 3rd side to this issue, which is PRO-INDIVIDUAL-RIGHTS, which is not accurately discussed or portrayed in this article. And that is of the INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS of the CHILD. Scientifically (and medically), the age of viability for a child to be able to exist outside the womb is 22-23 weeks. I feel at that point, it ceases to be simply a fetus and becomes a viable human life that deserves the same basic rights granted to other individuals in this country. People always take about this being a RIGHTS issue - the "right" of the mother to choose. And I can agree to that up to a certain point. But at the 22-23 week point, there are TWO individuals involved, and both have rights that should be considered. At that point, who's "rights" should be more heavily considered? The right of one individual to exist, now that they are a viable human being? Or the right of another individual to be able to abort (kill) that other human being? I'm sure RELIGIOUS people would argue that life begins at conception. But I think that, based on scientific and medical evidence (and fact that children have been born at the 22-23 week point) that an individual exists at the 22-23 week mark. Any logical / rational person is capable of seeing that this basic fact is true and irrefutable.

Remember the good old days, we thought what our priests and ministers told us what to think. Than one day we found out that about 1,000 women a month died from illegal abortions and that was with a population 2/3rds todays. Than the issue got a little confused, we men found out that Drs. did D&C's all the time and that was wrong also. Some of us even found out how scary it would be if our wife or daughter died and left us with the kids (grandkids) to raise while working 40 hours a week. Or if your wife had the procedure save her life and than you had more kids. Hmmm Hmmm Hmmm! Choices we had or have to make as parents and spouses. Now Big Brother wants to control our lives again. Well I lived through some of this and know other men who experienced other parts. I think life's hard enough without busy bodies poking their noses into someone elses business. If my wife, daughter or grand daughter was denied a life saving procedure I would do something about it.

The GOP position is completely incoherent.

1. Cut contraception funding
2. Restrict abortion
3. Cut funding for the WIC infant nutrition program
4. Cut funding for state children's healthcare

Being pro-life doesn't mean dropping support for the child the moment it exits the womb.

Yonkers, New York
06 March 2011

Eventually, those Republicans who are responsible for cutting Federal funding for family planning and for abortion, and who have turned the screws tighter on abortion clinics, will realize that the Solutions they propose will have consequences which make those solutions counter-productive for the entire Society.

Mariano Patalinjug

Dear LAD(s)

Circumcision is a Form of [RAM/COW/BULL] BRANDING! Aye? But But, Today, Proves to be Really Kosher to be so-such. Aye?

This makes sense...well what do you say?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU

Instead of circumcising boys why don't we just give them vasectomies?

Darwin in the classroom is an abomination. Life (or a clump of cells that could become human life --- but who knows when the soul is implanted?)in the womb is sacred. (If abortion is murder, then isn't the "mother" at least an accomplice and deserving of the same punishment as the abortion-provider?)

But once that fetus becomes a born human infant, then it's out into the Hobbesian, Dearwinian war of all against all for survival of the fittest (or the richest) and everyone else is a "welfare queen" who deserves to die a miserable, hunger-wracked death in the street.

I would be comforted if this were one of Philip K. Dick's paranoid fantasies. But for millions, and millions more to come (if the latest Tea-Party jihad succeeds) it is all too real. Protect "innocent life" in the womb (even if the mother dies) and pitch the result into the ultra-capitalist, Randian, vortex, to fend for itself, and too f--ing bad if it doesn't survive.

Who needs Hell in the after-life when we are so very good at creating it in the here-and-now?

.
D░O░I░N░G░░M░O░R░E░░F░O░R░░K░i░D░S
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V░O░T░E░░M░I░T░T░░R░O░M░N░E░Y░2012+
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A fundamental flaw in the way that birth control information is delivered to students is that they take a nuts and bolts approach and just deliver the information on the tools of contraception. If they spent more time on the psychology and what girls might think they will gain by having sex, there might be a better effect in preventing pregnancy and STD spread.

Schools are just afraid to deliver anything that might smack of values endorsement. In the age of pornography, to which virtually all students have access, there needs to be some countervailing information about the psychological consequences of engaging in sex, especially for young girls.

Republican hypocrites? No way!

Modifications on the general theme of Republican stupidity probably won't work, unless you're just angling to receive a sex act from a Democrat.

The #1 cause of unwanted pregnancy is men. Why don't the Republicans regulate them?

You want to prevent pregnancy? Keep your legs closed.
Posted by: crisp11 | March 5, 2011 10:47 PM
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This is either some religious fanatic or assexual. However, this person is really a weirdo. May (s)he is so ungly, no one wants sex here. Whatever! This person is strange.

Using Guttmacher Institute data on birth control method failure rates,

guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contr_use.html ,

one is able to calculate the number of unplanned pregnancies resulting from the current use of male condoms. It is an horrific number of 1.2 million/yr. Even perfect use of would result in 138,000 unplanned pregnancies.

(And what is the abortion rate in the USA? ~1,000,000/yr CDC data.)

Conclusion: currently, a perfect birth control barrier system does not exist. Time to develop one. In the meantime, monomasturbation or mutual masturbation for heterosexuals are highly recommended for those at risk.

Abstinence is the another best-solution but obviously the se-x drive typically vitiates this option although being biological would it not be able to develop a drug to temporarily eliminate said drive?
One wonders why Planned Parenthood has not promoted the development of this kind of medication?

You want to prevent pregnancy? Keep your legs closed.

Fundamentalist Religions have a very low opinion of women. To them women are nothing more than breeding stock. Planned Parenthood is the only organization that gives poor women and young women control over their fertility. As I see it Fundamentalists just like to punish women for having sex. Lots of babies, Never ending poverty. Ignorance. Lots of desperate future workers with no way out the cycle that conservatives and religious fundamentalists have always imposed in their well ordered reality.

judithclaire1939

Do you not know that the majority of minimum wage workers in the USA are poor white women, who I will assume from your post, look like you?

No most married couples in the USA of any race that have an unplanned pregnancy cannot afford to run out and buy a larger car and cannot afford more childcare. If you truly believe that then you are totally ignorant of the hell people in the lower classes are going through of every race.

It is about economic class, not race judithclaire1939, and it was caused by harmful trade deals and visa programs that took and still take jobs away from the US people of the lower classes.

It is not a race problem and there is no race solution.

Irony. The GOP likes to indignantly talk the talk about criminalizing abortion, yet they actively undermine the efforts of Planned Parenthood and make it more difficult for teens and lower income people to have access to contraceptives.

To conservative Republicans and tea party folk, "traditional family values" means unplanned pregnancies by unwed, under-aged teenagers.

I believe this will cause some marriages to fail. Wives will be denying intimacy to their husbands for fear of pregnancy.

Don't we wish that young girls who get pregnant did feel loved and valued by their caretakers and did not need to allow a boy to tell them that he "loved" them by providing a baby. And yet, we know that many married couples have unplanned pregnancies...they give it great thought and often have the means to buy a larger car for the other children and the new baby seat...have an extra room, can afford more child care. Yet, as Prof. Roger Wilkins reminds us, the most despised people in America are low income black people. It is true and we take out our anger on them without looking carefully at the cycle of poverty that is so hard to change. We know that better education and jobs help with this problem, but do we have the energy for people who do not look like us?

Just goes to show you that Republicans are as dumb as rocks. This is no way to run a country. Their policies are stupid beyond belief.

Is it just impossible to have this discussion using actual facts? You say in the lead in: "Should personal and religious views be allowed to prevent women from having access to a legal medical procedure?" No one is "preventing women from having access to a legal medical procedure." Show me any fact you want to show that supports that question.

What is being prevented is the use of taxpayer funds for that abortion. In other words, when I stroke by check to Uncle Sam later this month, it means the he won't send the money he gets from me to Planned Parenthood, so they in turn can take those dollars and pay an abortionist.

Any woman who wants to can still get an abortion and how she pays for it is her business. Just don't use my tax dollars.

Stop Calling Your Brother a Fool

And white men of the lower economic classes are your brothers if you are not in the top economic class. They may not be the smartest, best behaved, or most pleasant to look at or listen to but they are your brothers non the less.

Racial division on issues is what has served the elites in the USA better than any other psychological attack on the lower classes.

Look at the elites of the USA. They are of every race and they all stand together to subjugate and cheat the lower classes. The white man, the black man, the latino, the arab, the asian, they are all there.

Change yourself and you will get change. Unity of the lower classes is the only hope and racial division among those classes is the greatest threat to their futures.

Stop saying "the white man, the white man" is the cause of every problem. That is exactly what the elites want you to do.

Reach out to your brothers. Point out to him each time you can how you are the same, the same family with the same needs, the same economic class.

Where there is religion, there is no common sense.
Religion does not belong anywhere in politics.
Religion is a tool used for biased and mislead agenda.
So nice to see it is now placing wild horses above women on that stairway to heaven...Actually, I guess that is nothing new....

OK so just to verify in the eyes of Republicans Horses > Poor people when it comes to contraception...

Since these cuts, if enacted, will result in sharply higher births among the poor, I would suggest a 10 per cent surcharge on all registered Republicans to pay for the additional medical and welfare costs of these children.

Truly, do conservatives think at all? And, if so, about what?

Are you serious with your question?

"Should personal and religious views be allowed to prevent women from having access to a legal medical procedure?"
A blatantly biased question that doesn't deserve an answer.

How about this: "Should taxpayers be forced to pay for elective abortions?"

I understand the desire not to support abortions, but cutting all these other services is nonsensical, unless you consider the aspect of control. A lot of the GOP are evangelical Christians, many of whom believe that God requires male rule. They came for blacks (welfare queens), and mostly we did not care. They came for immigrants, most of whom have jobs white folks rarely want, and we did not mind. They have gone after American Muslims, branding them as terrorists, and we did not protest. Do we care yet when the targets are all the poor women and even those who work for government?

Education and access to birth control - sre work a lot better than the "abstinence" programs that have been proven to be a waste of time and money.

My House Rep. did not vote that way. If yours did, why not call up his/her office and speak up! Some US Rep do not read these WaPo's blogs.
We must speak up loud on the phone!

Not having sex is a good way to prevent pregnancy but there is always the risk of an immaculate conception, lol.

But I think sex crazed priests are not the ones to lecture. Stay off the little boys.

These counterproductive measures being pushed through by the Republicans, especially the right wing, strip bare their sanctimonious concern for "the protection of innocent life" to expose their true motivation: control.
They want to control women, minorities (witness the outrageous laws being passed in Arizona and elsewhere), non-heterosexuals (witness the baseless, paranoid claims with regard to same-sex marriage), the working class (Wisconsin, etc.).
In short, this movement, whose supporters are overwhelmingly a certain brand of white men, is a concerted and far-reaching effort to put all other people back "in their place."
These people want to reassert their superior position in society by taking everyone else down. They want to take us back to the mythological "good ol' days," when they could command respect just by being white men, but confident that they had earned that place through merit.

Mike Pence's behavior is an example of blind and reckless political evangelism.

He is an incompetent legislator.

What he does is harmful and senseless.

It's characteristic of so many supposed well-intentioned GOP doctrines which attack some minority-need segment just to please what are well-understood prejudices.

I cannot say it any better than what I saw at, altacocka.com. so copy it and say I wrote it.

At last! A scientifically correct MORAL, COMMON SENSE stance!

I am speaking as an 82 year-old Professor emeritus (University of Houston) who devoted 30 years research/teaching (FSU, Univ. Miami, Woods Hole MBL, Tulane's Delta Regional Primate Center, and UH). I served on NICHD and Population Research Site Visit Committees, and as an ad hoc member of NICHD Study Section. I was a participant in National and International Meetings and Symposia on Reproduction, Fertilization (+ 3 Gordon Conferences), Spermatogenesis and Sperm Motility. About 9 years of my research was funded by grants from the NICHD and the Center for Population Research. My 63 scientific publications were subjected to peer review, and I also reviewed several articles (and a few books) submitted by my peers to various journals.
PLEASE FORGIVE THE DELUGE of HORN BLOWING.

I included it to underscore that the Greatest Threat to a PEACEFUL future for Civilization and obtaining Scientific progress that "might" restore a Balance between the human population and the environment - - - is the EXPONENTIAL GROWTH OF THE HUMAN POPULATION.
Programs that attempt to address that REAL threat (Family Planning) should receive absolutely HIGHEST Priority in Funding and support.
Please UNDERSTAND that Opposition to Family Planning has NO scientific basis. It comes ENTIRELY from outdated and unfounded religious Dogma.
Those are FACTS!

I'm so happy to see a column addressing these important subjects. It's great to see an acknowledgment that in fact, most pro-lifers and pro-choicers agree on prevention of unintended pregnancy. I'm saddened and disgusted to see opposition to abortion co-opted to advance an agenda against family planning that most abortion opponents don't actually share. I can of course understand why abortion opponents don't want to fund an organization that performs hundreds of thousands of abortions per year, even if strictly speaking Federal funds can't be used for the abortions themselves. But Republicans aren't just cutting family planning funding that goes to abortion providers -- they've zeroed out all Title X funding in H.R. 1. Most of that goes to public health departments and other entities that don't provide abortions. There's no excuse for that, and it's so counterproductive to the cause they claim to be for.

Jen Roth
All Our Lives

David,

This is a well thought out, well supported column. It seems to make a lot of common sense.

I particularly enjoyed your conclusion that the unintended consequences for these actions goes a long way toward producing the opposite results claimed to be the goals of house republicans.

Forgive me! Sir AND Madame.

I don't know if I have ever seen an opinion piece make more sense.

I am not sure, but you may have just made hell freeze over.

I will make it a point to look for your posts in the future. Well done, sir. Truly well done.