Puzzled...

[GroobySteven]

How a progressive country like the USA can be so backwards thinking in the abortion issue, politics aside...other countries have religion yet don't have these problems. I'm just puzzled why so many people in this country, consistently are campaigning against the right for a woman to have an abortion.
seanchai
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060123/...NlYwMlJVRPUCUl

[joyboy123]

How a progressive country like the USA can be so backwards thinking in the abortion issue, politics aside...other countries have religion yet don't have these problems. I'm just puzzled why so many people in this country, consistently are campaigning against the right for a woman to have an abortion.
seanchai
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060123/...NlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Thats a very, very good question. The USA is a country full of strange contradictions.

[The American Nightmare]

I don't think there's necessarily a religious connection here. Sure, there are plenty of spiritual reasons to oppose abortion. However, the basic tenet of opposition, that life begins at conception, does not need a religious point of view to remain tact.

Abortion is one of the issues that, no matter what side of the argument you are on, if you are reasonable, you should be able to see that the other side has merit.

Gay marriage, on the other hand...

[slinky]

How a progressive country like the USA can be so backwards thinking in the abortion issue, politics aside...other countries have religion yet don't have these problems.

I have to disagree. The countries which are heavily dominated by "a certain religon" have even more hangups than the US (take the DR for example).

[BlackAdder]

Disagree as well..countries with little to no institutionalized religion have few hangups or blue laws.

[GroobySteven]

Spain, Italy, Brazil?
You don't get any more Catholic than those countries (apart from Ireland whose laws are so punitive, I remember a poor, young teen girl who was raped had to be smuggled out of the country to get an abortion).
My point is more to do with the question, why is a country like the US so polarised on this or so anti-abortion when so many more countries are more progressive on this issue?

seanchai

[hwbs]

yeah its out of control some of the agendas and policies here....i know all too well about it since i have someone in my family that was one of the founding members of project rachel...

[kennbo]

It's all about the use of metaphysical subtleties by the power hungry to gain and maintain power. Huh, you ask? I know, I know, metaphysics, what's that, right? Let me try to give as brief an explaination as I can. Aristotle, for instance, would talk about a red table. Simple, right, just a red table. He would then procede to parse out what it means to be a red table. By the time all was said and done, your brain would be so fried by his arguements about what a red table really is you would start to think you were a red table. Abortion is similar in that an arguement is made about the meaning of life, or more specifically, about when life begins. What does it mean to be a fertilized egg, or a blastocyst, or a morula, or a 2 month old fetus versus a 5 month old fetus or a 5 year old child? Most people don't have an educational background in biology and embryology, so they are easily lead down a metaphysical path where life is defined for them, just like a red table ends up being defined by Aristotle. Not quite, as Aristotle doesn't really come to a conclusion, but then again, Aristotle wasn't trying to have power over red tables. Politicians and preachers want power, which in a democracy, is derived from the people. If you can define what it means to be a person, you have essentially come into posession of that person. You have set the terms and conditions of what it means to be that person. As in any contract, when you set the terms and conditions, you have the advantage. As far as why the American people are polarized by this, its because the powers that be are fighting over what terms and conditions will ultimately define who they are. On one side, the religious types want to remain in that hazzy metaphysical realm, where magical thinking and complex unknowable concepts define reality. That gives the leaders of those religions tremendous power because they end up defining those concepts. On the other side is objective reality, which any enlightened individual can possess through a process of self edification and the application of reason. The latter gives power to the people, the former gives power to others to wield over the people.

[Vicki Richter]

Maybe it is because so many women use it as birth control. Some of these girls are getting four, five, ... abortions. At some point it becomes not the right thing. Also, I do believe that under age girls should be required to get a parents permission or buy in since it is a potentially psychologically damaging decision. If you don't think it is, you should talk to some of these girls who have had abortions.

In the scenario you gave with the rape, in the scenario of life threatening to the mother, when the baby would clearly be deformed or mentally handicapped, and perhaps, to a lesser extent, as birth control, I think it is fine... but there could be room for some regulation of the overall process IMHO. There are just too many couples who want to adopt a young healthy baby. I know people spending $40k to adopt kids from overseas because it is so hard to do so here.

What bugs me about it is that it comes up every fucking year in elections when the law is already passed. I mean get over it. Stop bringing it up all the time just to politic. I realize that you have to be flexible with laws because they don't always make sense... but to have a law that was just made debated year after year... That is ignorant.

V

[chefmike]

It is being brought up by bush (karl rove really, who does all his thinking for him) for the same reason that the gay marriage amendment was put on so many state ballots last election. The repugs know it will whip the bible-bangers into a frenzy, because as religious fanatics, this issue and ones like gay marriage decide their vote.

And it is also being brought up by bush because he believes ridiculous things like jesus speaking to him...and bible-bangers like shrubya want to overturn roe v wade, which is why he nominated alito for supreme court justice. The kind of speech shrubya just gave gives encouragement to the kind of fanatics who blow up abortion clinics.