Balkinization  

Friday, April 25, 2008

Affirmative Action Abortions

Michael Stokes Paulsen

An intrepid UCLA law student, acting as a "tester," recently called several Planned Parenthood offices and asked whether he could make a donation specifically to fund the abortion of black babies. The donations were enthusiastically welcomed. The tester's racist remarks -- he posed as someone concerned that there were too many black people, and that he did not want his children competing with them someday, because of affirmative action -- were, in several instances, embraced by the Planned Parenthood veeps and development officers with whom he spoke. One said his views were "understandable, understandable." Another said that her Planned Parenthood office would accept a donation for any reason. Could he specifically endow one race-specific, black abortion? Sure. The officials gave the tester the price and the address to which to send the check.

Unbelievable? You can watch the video / audio on YouTube. (I still haven't figured out how to post the link.) If it's a hoax, I haven't heard yet.



It's not really all that unbelievable when you think about it. The premise of America's legal regime of abortion, under Roe v. Wade, is that the unborn human fetus or embryo is not really human life at all. It's an "it." "It" is a potential human life, a mass of cells possessed of no moral worth and no standing within the human community. They are non-persons. How can it be wrong to kill a non-person, for whatever reason? There is certainly no legal, moral, or rational basis for distinguishing between "black" non-persons and "white" non-persons, is there?

Since none of these human fetuses qualifies as human life (under this view), why should it be thought wrong to wish to financially support the destruction of a particular sub-class of such nothings? Why should it be thought wrong for Planned Parenthood to accept -- or for that matter to solicit -- funds for abortions specifically performed for African-American pregnant women? Indeed, might this not be thought affirmative action of a certain type, assuring the availability of what is (after all) a legal right, financially, to members of minority racial communities?

It is, of course, hardly the case that minorities are underrepresented in abortions. African-American women reportedly are 13% of the child-bearing female population but account for 36% of the abortions. More than 1,400 black babies -- or if you prefer, fetuses -- are aborted each day in America. Since the early 1970s, abortions of black babies has reduced the African-American population in America by about one-third from what it otherwise likely would have been. Some have called this, quite plausibly, racial genocide.

But how could it be "genocide" to abort what is not a human life? Is this not a category mistake? Under the cruel "logic" of abortion rights rhetoric, the fetus has no racial identity, because the fetus has no human racial identity. There is therefore nothing wrong with abortion targeted at specific races. The pregnant woman may have a racial identity, but the aborted fetus has none.

The same of course holds true for what is an increasingly common practice in America: abortion for reasons of sex-selection. Under the logic of Roe v. Wade, and under the mission of Planned Parenthood, there is nothing wrong with abortion of female human fetuses because they are female. Abortion is permitted for any reason or no reason. So, abortion likewise should be permitted on the ground that (in a perverse reversal of a phrase usually uttered in joy) "It's a girl!" Because, it is really just an it.

All of this, of course, is law blinking reality. Of course an aborted black human fetus has a racial identity. Of course an aborted human baby was either male or female -- a boy or a girl. These are simple, unavoidable biological facts. (Aren't they?) Pity the poor human child-in-utero, who has enough biological humanity to have a race, and a sex, but not enough humanity to be treated as a member of the human community!

The tester's questions of Planned Parenthood open a window on the vicious, fictitious logic of legal abortion. Abortion-rights supporters dare not admit that the aborted fetus has a racial identity that can be recognized as such or that he or she has a gender identity that can be recognized as such. For that would give away the game.

Is there any way out of this for abortion defenders? Is there anything they think wrong, morally, with "affirmative action abortion funding"? If so, what exactly makes it wrong?


Comments:

1. Abortion has nothing to do with race. There are not dissimilar abortion rates among blacks and whites.

2. Killing fetuses is not genocide. Genocide involves killing to achieve the destruction of a culture by an outside force. People killing fetuses within their own body doesn't qualify.

3. The one decent point Paulsen makes is regarding sex selection. Personally, I think one can make arguments that abortion restrictions are justified in cultures where sex selection is rampant. But, of course, that means that in places where sex selection isn't rampant, you have to keep it legal and relatively unrestricted. Paulsen's raising of this issue is in bad faith.

4. Left out of this post, like all of Paulsen's posts, is any discussion of what happens to women when they are denied abortions. Earth to Prof. Paulsen-- THAT IS THE ENTIRE ISSUE. We don't support abortion rights because we cravenly want to kill babies and commit genocide. Until Prof. Paulsen posts SOMETHING about what would happen to women under the legal regime he favors, I think I am within my rights to assume that he is a misogynist sexist bigot whose writings about genocide and racism need not be taken seriously.
 

If Michael "Strokes" Paulsen is successful with this ploy, will he then go after the masturbators? But then he would have to deal with the George Carlin defense: "If masturbation were illegal, people would take the law into their own hands." That's even more of an individual right than the right to keep and bear arms. "Strokes" wants to control others' bodies. Isn't the ice out in Minnesota yet?
 

What the hell does abortion have to do with the fact that the planet is occupied by racists?
 

Shame on you for raising this, Professor Paulsen. Don't you realize that for every million fetuses aborted, there is a terrorist being waterboarded? Where is your sense of perspective?
 

Can you imagine working at a Planned Parenthood funding line? I'll bet that people are always calling up with crazy screeds about why they will or will not give PP money. I'd be numb enough to say "understandable...understandable" if I was sitting in that seat, fo sho.

It's funny how these kinds of Dateline "Let's find some racists!" stories with themselves as bait, call to mind both the "familiarity" the tester has to be with racial offense in order to say the right words and/or not bust out laughing, and the way it cuts across party lines. The right likes to tar the left with its own failings, and vice versa.
 

Imagine a very wealthy racist saying "I will provide free condoms for every black person in America so that we can further reduce the colored population and restore racial purity."

I share the intuition that his proposal would be morally repugnant, probably even genocidal. I'm not sure that the intuition turns in any important way on whether the affected spermatozoa are "life" or "potential life," or whether they already "have" a racial identity. In fact, the wrongness of the racists' proposal doesn't seem to have much to do with the rights of the affected sperm cells.

Ted Sampsell-Jones

(ps -- hope all is well at UST.)
 

Paulson is making a pretty basic philosophical mistake: Confusing the morality of actions with the moral worth of the agent.

Whether a fetus is aborted for reason X or reason Y, the action of aborting that fetus is the same. The fetus is no less or more a person depending on the reason it was aborted.

However, we do regularly make moral judgments about people based on their reasons for acting. So choosing to abort a child because it is female or black says something about the person making that choice. Ditto aborting a child out of a recognition that one simply cannot raise a child at a point in time.

By confusing the morality of actions with the moral worth of agents, Paulson is trying to force those of us who are pro-choice to defend people who would abort children on the basis of gender or race. We need not do so, any more than we need defend the motives of speakers when defending the first amendment.
 

Three things.

1) I once asked a pro-choice advocate how they addressed persons who were concerneed with the eugenics/racist origins of the movement back in the 20's. I also asked a pro-life speaker why their appeals to traditional values were necessarily a good thing given the long history of slavery in this country - a truly traditional value. They were at the same event and neither gave me an answer. So I do not lightly dismiss the attitude of the Planned Parenthood person which suggests that they may be racist or enabling racism.

2) As to Planned Parenthood as an institution, it reminded me of the comment attributed to Booker T. Washington about whether Tuskegee Institute took tainted money. His response was "yes, taint enough of it" or something along those lines. Having known from my son that he has driven friends to Planned Parenthood so that they could understand their options suggests that they play an important role in helping people decide what they are going to do. If the person was doing the salesperson's "Yes sir, I know what you mean." kind of response I have no problem with it. If it starts to move over to comforting that person in their racism, then it does bother me because of what it says about what the black woman coming in their making a difficult choice may be facing in the quality of the recommendations being made. Issues of disparate treatment in medical care in emergency rooms for blacks (less provision of painkillers etc) ARE concerns in the medical profession. But, I recognize how hard it is to raise money for their work that I think is very important work.

3) Official state torture, like forced state abortions, forced sterilization and other attacks on the bodies and spirits of people are very serious things. It would seem that we would be able to understand on this website that trying to trivialize torture is an attack on human dignity. Concern about human dignity is a central concern of both pro-choice (a woman's right to control her body) and pro-life (the fetus as an unborn child) persons.

Best,
Ben
 

Like a lot of people, I have no problem with abortion early in the pregnancy, some problem with it a bit later, and a lot of problems with late-term abortion. At every step, we come closer to a human life. But there comes a point, as we get closer to the start of pregnancy when abortion is no more morally repugnant to me than is wearing a condom.

I think a lot of Professor Paulsen's rhetoric here becomes less inflammatory if we admit gradations into the debate.
 

I'm pretty much in Steve's camp. At least tentatively -- willing to be convinced otherwise.

So my question for Prof Paulsen (or anyone else, for that matter) is: What is the moral difference between a sperm and a zygote?

Put differently: what is the difference between (1) taking a pill that prevents ovulation, and (2) taking a pill that prevents a zygote from attaching in the uterus?
 

An intrepid UCLA law student, acting as a "tester," recently called...

Why is the student "intrepid"? Was the phone guarded by a pack of snarling wolves or a revolving disc of concertina wire?

Seriously, why should we applaud the efforts of a person to discredit an already embattled agency?

This isn't the first time UCLA students have pulled this kind of stunt. Another group of "testers" went into a Planned Parenthood and posed as a 15-year-old girl and her 23-year-old boyfriend. As you might expect, the staff urged the girl to bump her age to 16 to avoid a mandatory call to the police to report statutory rape.

Ben, as usual, describes the situation more eloquently than I can. It strikes me that the pro-life activist is certain their cause justifies their lie (hey, posing as a racist is okay if it saves fetuses) to the same degree that the pro-choice activist is certain that posing as a racist ("how much will the check be for?") is okay if he/she knows it's going to a good cause and the racist earmarking will be conveniently forgotten.
 

Paulsen seems to have a great deal of practice in not only slinging racism, but attempting to disguise (justify) it by combining it with a "laudable" "concern".

I've been around a long time, Paulsen. I have been a civil rights activist for more than 50 years. I've heard it all: NO honest human being, being decent and moral, uses hateful images, rhetoric, or suggestions -- in your case exploiting racism, which has the usually-intended consequence of keeping it alive and perpetuating it -- to achieve a decent, moral, honest end.

Trying to induce others to reveal that with which "you" are targetting them is despicably racist in itself.

Tell us, Paulsen: Why is that everyone but True Believing Christians must obey the rules which are Commanded of being Christian? I refer, of course, to the Commandment -- not "Request" or "Suggestion" --

Thou shalt not lie.

And I'll toss in for good measure:

Thou shalt not lie against others.

When you fantasy about racism, Paulsen, those fantacies are in YOUR head, not in the heads of those to which you deceitfully endeavor to attribute it.

Same goes for your "testers" who are engaged, as well, in a morally and ethically reprehensile deceit in effort at "gotcha!" and entrapment based upon the IRRELEVANT which is also NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS.

Last but not least: what is the law in CA concerning the taping of a telephone conversation without the knowledge or permission of the other party or parties to the conversation? That question stands distinct from the bigots who introduced the racism -- their racism -- into the equation in order to accuse others of it.
 

dilan said...

1. Abortion has nothing to do with race. There are not dissimilar abortion rates among blacks and whites.

Sorry, but CDC abortion rates for African Americans are nearly three times that of whites.

2. Killing fetuses is not genocide. Genocide involves killing to achieve the destruction of a culture by an outside force. People killing fetuses within their own body doesn't qualify.

The argument being made here is that abortionists are committing a form of genocide by offering their services at a disproportionate level in African American communities.

However, the abortionists cannot affirmatively seek out and kill unborn African American children so the term genocide is not quite accurate.

Killing one's own children can be more accurately called a form of cultural suicide.

Thus, abortionists are offering a form of assisted cultural suicide rather than genocide.
 

Bart affirmatively self-assists in aborting his own argument --

"The argument being made here is that abortionists are committing a form of genocide by offering their services at a disproportionate level in African American communities."

(According to anti-choicers, that couldn't happen because it's all about greed -- duh MONEY.)

"However, the abortionists cannot affirmatively seek out and kill unborn African American children so the term genocide is not quite accurate.

"Killing one's own children can be more accurately called a form of cultural suicide.

"Thus, abortionists are offering a form of assisted cultural suicide rather than genocide."

And being the moral, socially- conscious (-- not to say "so-shul-ist"! --) Christian you are you oppose abortion.

But torture is okay, because its a core Christian value. We know that because the only reason Christ rose from the dead was to get revenge on those who refused to turn the other cheek, as He had ordered.
 

Sorry, but CDC abortion rates for African Americans are nearly three times that of whites.

You have to control it for income, Bart. More poor people get abortions, and more blacks are poor. But Prof. Paulsen's misogynistic post decided to compare desperate women who are trying to avoid carrying a pregnancy to term to racist eugenicists, not, say, oppressors of the working classes.

I will repeat, left out of Bart's post, like Prof. Paulsen, is any mention of what the women are going through, WHICH IS THE ENTIRE ISSUE OF ABORTION. NOBODY WANTS TO LEGALIZE ABORTION BECAUSE WE HATE BABIES OR WANT THEM TO DIE. IT'S BECAUSE OF WHAT HAPPENS TO THE WOMEN!

Pro-lifers are mostly misogynists who never accepted the feminist revolution; they hate or don't care about women and hide behind phony arguments about life.
 

To make it clear, when you control for income, poor hispanics, not poor blacks, have the highest abortion rates, and poor women have the bulk of all abortions, with over 70 percent procured by women on Medicare. And poor whites have 1 1/2 to 2 times as many abortions as wealthier whites.
 

dilan said...

To make it clear, when you control for income, poor hispanics, not poor blacks, have the highest abortion rates, and poor women have the bulk of all abortions, with over 70 percent procured by women on Medicare. And poor whites have 1 1/2 to 2 times as many abortions as wealthier whites.

If these unlinked figures are correct, can we then argue that the state and federal governments are seeking to kill off the poor by financing their abortions and perhaps blacks and hispanics in particular because they are disproportionately poor?
 

jnagarya:

1) My opposition to abortion has nothing to do with my Christianity. The Bible does not even mention the practice. Rather, my position is based on the empirical fact that we all begin life as individual human beings at conception.

2) The difference between unborn (or indeed most born) children and terrorists is that children are innocent and terrorists are seeking to kill you and your children. I am not a Quaker and do not foreswear the right of self defense.
 

The obvious problem with an offer to abort fetuses of a racial class (and also with the acceptance of such an offer) is that it evidences a vicious attitude about actual persons from that class.

This does not strike me as a terribly subtle point.
 

On "facts"

It is not an "empirical fact" (whatever that is) that "life as an individual human begins at conception." Life began millions of years ago, and the joining of two zygotes, from that perspective, is merely an event like many others, such as birth. It could as well be argued (and with equal scientific rigor to Bart's assertion) that life as an individual human begins when the young human leaves the direct confines of the family, around 18 years of age.

But to be accurate, we should note that life is a great circle -- and we all know where the end of the circle lies.

Asserting as fact that which is not fact is dishonest.

A fetus is not a "human-child-in-utero". A child is a child, a fetus may (if miscarriages or other misfortunes do not intervene) someday become a child -- but is not a child, and to call the fetus a "child" is incorrect by etymology and scientifically, as it pretends that birth is not a significant event.

Deliberate conflation of different things is dishonest.
 

Bart DePalma drools on himself yet again --

"jnagarya:

"1) My opposition to abortion has nothing to do with my Christianity. The Bible does not even mention the practice."

Actually, Bart, and in fact, the "bible" (a Jewish book of history stolen by illiterates, who had none of their own, and distorted to their own ends) does mention it. It allows it before "quickening" -- which is roughly the point at which the fetus becomes viable.

As concerns economics, of course, it (also) doesn't concern your Chritisianty to pay for the consequences of those abortions you intend to prevent: better a child be crippled, destroyed, by poverty, than you follow through on the responsibility you voluntarily took on when you decided to impose your will on poor women by force by providing the "so-shul-ist" programs necessary to prevent that crippling, that destruction.

Better the child become a criminal out of circumstances, incarcerated, and then executed. There's more entertainment value in that.

"Rather, my position is based on the empirical fact that we all begin life as individual human beings at conception."

If that were an "empirical fact," Bart, it would not be in dispute by those who actually know the relevant science.

"2) The difference between unborn (or indeed most born) children and terrorists is that children are innocent and terrorists are seeking to kill you and your children. I am not a Quaker and do not foreswear the right of self defense."

No great hoard of BLACK terrorists are seeking to kill me, you, or anyone else in particular. They are expressions of the poverty and rejection of the oppressions imposed by force on diverse peoples by the imperious and the imperialists.

And I note that paranoia is a negative megalomania:

"Everyone in the world (and on other planets) is plotting against me personally.

The only consistency you show, Bart, is rancid hypocrisy: rejection of the rule of law because "everyone else" (read ALLEGED "terrorists") rejects the rule of law, because the rejection of the rule of law is wrong.

You believe torture is wrong, therefore it is acceptable to torture ALLEGED torturers in order to reduce the incidence of torture.

Two wrongs don't make a right, Bart, even when committed be hatefilled anti-intellectual bigots such as you.

As for "the right of self-defense": get an actual educationn in actual law beyond the pseudo-law you get from the 'Net: the "right of self-defense" is not unlimited ANYWHERE. It is regulated and limited BY LAW precisely because you do not have rights superior to, or exclusive of, everyone else's.

One act prohibited by the limits placed by society for its own safety's sake on "self-defense" is T-O-R-T-U-R-E.

When you, Bart, agree to support the child in all ways required for the health and safety of the child you forced to be born -- for which you thereby took or accepted responsibility -- I'll believe your rhetoric is more than self-righteousness which is, as with everything else with you, all talk -- the result at best of being drunk on someone else's cork.
 

And a cigar is just that, a cigar. Smoke that fact but don't blow smoke in our faces that life begins with conception. The next step with this illogic would be to make illegal methods of avoiding conception, unilaterally or bilaterally. Lisa and her bro can control their own bodies however they wish; but they cannot, even with the assistance of "Strokes" Paulsen, impose limitations upon others. I'm giving George Carlin Lisa's bro's name to incorporate into his act.
 

c2h50h:

A child is simply a human being which has not reached adulthood.

A human being is simply a living human.

You are an individual living human starting at conception.

Thus, you are a child starting at conception.
 

Child
1. (!) a person between birth and full growth (!).... (My emphasis)
 

Bart,

I do not grant you the right to define the terms. While some people refer to an unborn child as a child, it is, with any sane person, with the "unborn" distinction. While modern science has made it possible to term a woman "with child" early in the first trimester, it has also made it possible to change that condition by relatively simple procedures.

That you would like to have it otherwise does not make it so.

The definition of a human being as a living human is circular. You might have noticed that.

Much as you and Professor Paulsen would like to steal the argument by defining the terms and by fiat, it isn't going to happen.
 

c2h50h:

You may notice that most parents who want their unborn to be born call them their "child" or "baby" from the outset.

The medical term "fetus" is not one of common usage to refer to the unborn unless your intent is to dehumanize the unborn. Mothers usually do not go around saying: "Here is the ultrasound of my fetus."

I would suggest that the pro abortion folks are the ones doing violence to the language in order to excuse doing violence to the child.
 

Bart,

You also rarely hear a parent bragging about the electron microscope pictures of their zygotes, but that doesn't mean it's not the proper word to use.

Frankly, in all my years I've never heard anyone of my acquaintance refer to a fetus as a child without the adjective unborn. Perhaps you should get out more.

If you are going to allow the mother of a fetus to decide whether to call it a child, then simple consistency seems to require you to allow the mother to decide that it is instead an unwanted fetus and take advantage of medical science in order to remove it.
 

You are an individual living human starting at conception. Thus, you are a child starting at conception.

Does an identical twin's life start at conception, or at splitting? And if the answer is splitting, whose life was it before it split? What individual human being was it? Was it twin A, twin B, or a different person whose life was snuffed out upon splitting?

Remember, also, to keep your eye on the ball, abortion is legal because prohibiting it screws women over. The whole game plan of pro-lifers is to downplay what their proposed bans would do to women's actual lives and change the subject to the unimportant abstract and philosophical question of when life begins.
 

I cannot tell if any commenters for this post are women. I would like to hear from them. After all, they are the ones bearing the consequences. It's too easy for men to be moralizing on the subject of abortion. How many men are willing to subject their bodies to vasectomies to possibly lessen the needs for abortions? There are medical issues involved. Should non-medical males resolve the matter for women?
 

I see that Paulsen, totally deaf/unresponive to critiques of his essentially-juvenile crap, has shamelessly escalated to "in-your-face" with a blatantly racist, blatant and wholly amoral deceit with which I would be ashamed to be associated.

Though doubtless it will bounce off his closed mind -- his inability to learn -- the meaning of the term "pro-abortion" is in essence this: a woman who gets pregnant in order to get an abortion -- a stupid and deranged notion arising and held in an amoral mindset underlain by fear, anxiety, and a degree of paranoia.

Otherwise --

Shag from Brookline --

"I cannot tell if any commenters for this post are women. I would like to hear from them. After all, they are the ones bearing the consequences."

It's too easy for men to be moralizing on the subject of abortion."

So much so that women are often surprise to learn that I'm both male and personally opposed to abortion.

"How many men are willing to subject their bodies to vasectomies to possibly lessen the needs for abortions?"

How many, men or women, are willing to split the responsibility equivalent to that, but not in the end?

"There are medical issues involved. Should non-medical males resolve the matter for women?"

Non-medical males aren't competent to diagnose/"resolve" their own "issues," let along someone else's.

Within the last several years, a man who married his girlfriend, who he got pregnant -- who fulfilled his responsibilities -- learned, some five or so years into the marriage, from her, that he wasn't the father after all.

He did DNA testing and discovered that in the second instance -- that it wasn't his -- she was telling the truth.

The matter went to court, his complaint being that he should not be requred to pay child support for a child which was all along not his. The highest court in the state basicly held: "Tough shit, guy. You committed yourself to raising the child, so you have no choice but to continue to do so."

That should also speak to all the heroic anti-abortion champions who want to force women to full term, force them to give birth -- but refuse to accept responsibilities consequent upon their committment to that end.

Which isn't surprising, in view of the fact that they reject "ends and means" -- ethics -- altogether.

Otherwise, this is the core paradigm:

1. A couple gets pregnant. Neither wants it. No problem.

2. A couple gets pregnant. Both want it. No problem.

3. A couple gets pregnant. He wants it, but she doesn't. She doesn't have it.

4. A couple gets pregnant. She wants it, but he doesn't. She has it and his wallet.

I recall the first wave of Feminism in the 1970s. A "plank" in their "platform" was the repeal of all alimony and child-support laws, the principle being, "Want to be independent, Sister? Then get off his wallet."

That proposal was drummed out of the debate mostly by white men (with the largely-tacit assistance of opposing middle-class white women "feminists").

The men didn't do that because they look forward to paying alimony and child support; they did it to maintain a slaver's mindset co-extensive with that hled by the middle-class white women. As long as she is dependent on his wallet, he has access to sex. And as long as she gives sex, she has a claim on his assets.

While most "feminists" were objecting to and rejecting men's evaluation of women as "sex objects," the "feminists" continued to evaluate men as "success objects".

(From there arise the complexities of sexual politics -- 99.99 per cent of which being solely a power struggle -- which is comprised mostly of mindfields and deceit. As example, the MA legislature has recently been for enacting a law -- they may by now actually have done it -- which defines "lying to get sex" as "rape". There is no mention of "lying to get assets" being rape, or even fraud.)

Abortion, for most those who oppose it, is not about fetuses or children or "God"; it is about power. It is about enslaving. Unfortunately, there is an equivalent on
the women's side of the equation.

Those are the issues, at simplest. Not addressed in this analysis is the relevant issue of biological disparity: one sex can do "two" things, the other can only do one of those.
 

On paradigm points 1, 3 and 4, "big brother" may try to challenge the decisions.
 

Obvious troll is obvious.
 

Obvious troll is obvious.
 

"Larry D'Anna --

"Obvious troll is obvious."

As far as I can tell, there are two trolls in this thread. One is Paulsen himself; and the other is Bart.
 

Has anyone checked in to the validity and the provenance of this "YouTube" piece? Is this "Colbert Nation", by any chance?

Anyone asked PP for comment?

Just curious....

Cheers,
 

Here's another take on the "conversation".

Obvious hatchet job. Paulsen ought to be ashamed to be flogging this.

Planned Parenthood supports no such policy. Nowhere.

If you want eedjits that happen to be part of your organisation, Mr. Paulsen, check this out (my comments here).

Cheers,
 

"MLS said...

"Shame on you for raising this, Professor Paulsen. Don't you realize that for every million fetuses aborted, there is a terrorist being waterboarded? Where is your sense of perspective?"

Not to worry: Paulsen hasn't said anything about torture, let alone against it and in support of the rule of law prohibting it. Has been completely silent about the absolute denial of due process to the allegedly-Muslim detainees. Completely silent about the Dark Ages show trials the "Christian" Bushit endeavors to impose in order to guarantee the outscomes.

Paulsen has no interest in justice. It's all about getting his way by whatever loathesome, underhanded means he considers necessary. If he sees his racism, he approves it. If he doesn't, then he's in serious denial. In either event, he sees himself as exempt from the self-examination demanded of him by Christianity.

I think we can accurately interpret his silence on that point: he's all for torturing "abortionists" until they turn the other cheek for another round of torture.

Shameless. Anything goes: killing in order to prevent killing. Torturing in order to reduce the incidence of torture.

The hate is first; the "ideology" is simply a rationalization allowing the expression of it.
 

"You may notice that most parents who want their unborn to be born call them their "child" or "baby" from the outset."

I admit I've never noticed that. What I have noticed is that couples who find out they're pregnant say something like "We're having a baby!" or "We're going to have a baby!" and not "We have a baby!"

Of course it would be none too keen to suppose that folk usage has much to say about the ontological issues here. But arguments that live by folk usage shall perish by folk usage.


"I would suggest that the pro abortion folks are the ones doing violence to the language...."

You mean such linguistic violence as pretending that quaternary definitions of words like 'child' are the preferred (and indeed solely legitimate!) definitions?
 

What if the pregnant parents refer to having a "bun in the oven"? That doesn't mean a loaf of bread, does it? Or if the father says with joy "My boys are really swimming" is he thinking of a Johnny Weismueller prodigy? (Ask a geezer who Johnny is.) Let's make a list of what couples call the results of doin' the nasty. But would this serve as evidence of when a person in a legal sense exists?
 

Shag, of course it's metaphorical -- it doesn't refer literally to bread, but to all forms of baked goods.
 

Now that the Easters are both over, is it too late for "hot cross buns" or do I have to wait until next year?
 

UCLA is too liberal, and it shouldn't support what this "tester" did. That student should be expelled.

However, the abortion critics are missing the most important point. Aborting a human fetus - I understand your opposition to that.

But blacks aren't human. There really is no need whatsoever to lament the loss of black offspring. Abortion is a humane way to deal with black overcrowding. And since blacks and their offspring are not human then there is no need to oppose abortion for blacks.
 

You know it's love when all you want is that person to be happy, even if you're not part of their happiness.
Agen Judi Online Terpercaya
 

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