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23 hours ago, eclipse said:

Pro-choice means that the decision should be up to the mother, her circumstances, and her doctors.  I am personally pro-life, which means that I will not get an abortion without an extremely good reason.  However, my pro-life stance is only for me.  If another woman feels that abortion is the appropriate choice for her, then it's not my place to prevent her from doing so.

As a man I dont think I have much of a dog in the abortion fight so Ill stay outta that one. 

However, lets dont downplay the Constitutional side of this. People keep sayin “but, but Captain, the Supreme Court banned abortion”. No, the Supremes did not ban abortion. All they did was was basically say “we dont have the authority to decide this sorta thing” and kicked it back to the states to decide for themselves as the 10A provides. Abortion may wind up banned in some but will remain legal in quite a few states

”But Captain, if they was wrong, why did the Supremes do it the first place?”

Nobody’s perfect. They was wrong with Dred Scot and undid that. They was wrong with Plessy v Ferguson and undid that with Brown v Board of Ed, and they was wrong in ‘73 with Roe

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1 hour ago, Sunwoo said:

What are you even talking about?

Because one side is  more concerned with saving the life of an fetus under the claim "that child never got an chance to live" or something along those lines instead of addressing the issues behind why abortions are carried out.

 

1 hour ago, Sunwoo said:

If they can't separate their religion from their jobs, when their jobs require them to be a leader for all the people and not just who they agree with, then they shouldn't be running for that job in the first place.

True, since all it would take would be to stop using one's religion as an excuse for  pushing the hot-topic bill of the month.

1 hour ago, Sunwoo said:

One can't claim to love America and say that America is and/or should be a Christian state.

But here's the thing, Christianity as an whole, was the dominant religion before the country was founded and the trend has more or less continued until immigration from Europe became the norm, although I forgot the exact year when this was happening, though.

But outside of some few small communities that existed throughout the ages, there really wasn't an theocratic America. Granted, the stuff  that's going on in this day and age would imply otherwise; it's mostly an case of Christianity influencing most of society solely because it has been around the longest.

 

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3 hours ago, Sunwoo said:

I mean, the thing with a lot of political and religious stances is that you can generally believe what you want (with some exceptions, of course) but you don't have the right to impose it on anyone. People who don't like abortion can just not have an abortion. It shouldn't affect them whether some person they don't know somewhere in the same country has an abortion. And outlawing abortion isn't going to stop people from getting them. It'll just mean more people trying to get them illegally and unsafely, and possibly dying or fucking themselves over for life, and more people dying just from complications of birth if there's no exceptions for abortion ever. Legalizing abortion keeps it safe, I very much doubt it'll actually make abortion rates a lot lower.

Ultimately, my personal opinion on abortion matters very little compared to my belief that it should be legal because desperate people will find a way, and this will more than likely make death rates higher and ruin people's lives.

Honestly I don't understand why more people can't just basically accept that philosophy. That you don't have to like thing for it to still be legal, just don't do thing yourself. Not sure why anyone thinks having less freedom for people would ever be positive. It's incredibly selfish (and childish) to demand that the laws of and everyone in the country you live in conform to fit your own beliefs if those beliefs involve restricting the human rights of others.

Well extend that philosophy to theft and murder and pretty much everyone will say "no, obviously that shouldn't be allowed." And for someone who is pro life it literally is murder. It also breaks down in a lot of other ways u less you're very heavily anarachist. Like I don't want young healthy people commiting suicide, but isn't that their choice? I don't want a bunch of people having unrestricted gun access. Accepting the very idea of law and government means certain rights are restricted. Thats what a society is. What exactly walls into the category of permissive restrictions and not, well that's what we depend on the democratic process to decide (well either that or the personal decision of our dictator)

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28 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Well extend that philosophy to theft and murder and pretty much everyone will say "no, obviously that shouldn't be allowed." And for someone who is pro life it literally is murder. It also breaks down in a lot of other ways u less you're very heavily anarachist. Like I don't want young healthy people commiting suicide, but isn't that their choice? I don't want a bunch of people having unrestricted gun access. Accepting the very idea of law and government means certain rights are restricted. Thats what a society is. What exactly walls into the category of permissive restrictions and not, well that's what we depend on the democratic process to decide (well either that or the personal decision of our dictator)

I don't appreciate smartass responses, especially when I do make it clear that I believe that there are limits to my philosophy -- the big one being that it doesn't infringe on anyone else's rights. Which theft and murder obviously do. Which unrestricted gun access facilitates. You clearly have points that I do think are worth engaging in, but posting comments like this just make me want to write you off as someone who's not interested in good-faith discussion and not even want to talk to you.

As has already been discussed repeatedly in this thread, the question of when life begins is pretty nebulous and not everyone agrees that life begins at conception or fertilization or when there's a heartbeat or if it can survive outside of the womb or whatever. To a pro-life person they may believe that it is murder, but from what I can tell there is no major scientific consensus on this and ultimately they would be pushing their unfounded and possibly religious-based opinions on everyone else who doesn't share that. To me, saying "abortion is murder" has the same amount of reasoning as "same-sex marriage is wrong because marriage is between a man and a woman". Letting two men or two women get married doesn't negatively impact anyone who is screaming about how it shouldn't be allowed.

We also live in a society where many of our elected politicians as well as their constituents don't understand the biological processes associated with the thing they are trying to ban and are against, who would happily get an abortion for themselves or their wives or daughters or mistresses if it inconvenienced them. So it's not like we live in a society with government officials and people who actually believe in what they say. I agree that a society and government meant hat certain rights are restricted, but that also assumes that the entirety of society is operating on a shared sense of reality, rather than the dumpster fire that American politics has become in the last couple of years.

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1 hour ago, Sunwoo said:

I don't appreciate smartass responses, especially when I do make it clear that I believe that there are limits to my philosophy -- the big one being that it doesn't infringe on anyone else's rights. Which theft and murder obviously do. Which unrestricted gun access facilitates. You clearly have points that I do think are worth engaging in, but posting comments like this just make me want to write you off as someone who's not interested in good-faith discussion and not even want to talk to you.

As has already been discussed repeatedly in this thread, the question of when life begins is pretty nebulous and not everyone agrees that life begins at conception or fertilization or when there's a heartbeat or if it can survive outside of the womb or whatever. To a pro-life person they may believe that it is murder, but from what I can tell there is no major scientific consensus on this and ultimately they would be pushing their unfounded and possibly religious-based opinions on everyone else who doesn't share that. To me, saying "abortion is murder" has the same amount of reasoning as "same-sex marriage is wrong because marriage is between a man and a woman". Letting two men or two women get married doesn't negatively impact anyone who is screaming about how it shouldn't be allowed.

We also live in a society where many of our elected politicians as well as their constituents don't understand the biological processes associated with the thing they are trying to ban and are against, who would happily get an abortion for themselves or their wives or daughters or mistresses if it inconvenienced them. So it's not like we live in a society with government officials and people who actually believe in what they say. I agree that a society and government meant hat certain rights are restricted, but that also assumes that the entirety of society is operating on a shared sense of reality, rather than the dumpster fire that American politics has become in the last couple of years.

Wow...Why did you think I was being a smart ass? Those were meant to be genuine points. Is it just abortion as a topic that makes people touchy or do I just generally have a reputation around these parts for being facetious, because I admit I am facetious a lot and I can understand how that could lead to people misreading my proverbial tone, but for this post I was being completely sincere. Even the thing about a dictator was not tongue and cheak as many people do live under dictatorships that decide the laws of their society.

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48 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Wow...Why did you think I was being a smart ass? Those were meant to be genuine points. Is it just abortion as a topic that makes people touchy or do I just generally have a reputation around these parts for being facetious, because I admit I am facetious a lot and I can understand how that could lead to people misreading my proverbial tone, but for this post I was being completely sincere. Even the thing about a dictator was not tongue and cheak as many people do live under dictatorships that decide the laws of their society.

I literally know of no other way to interpret "Well extend that philosophy to theft and murder and pretty much everyone will say 'no, obviously that shouldn't be allowed' " when I very clearly stated "with some exceptions" and "if those beliefs include restricting the human rights of others". There is no need to bring up things like theft and murder when the language I included makes it clear I've already considered that and don't consider my philosophy absolute or flawless and it just feels pedantic and, as I said, like a smart ass.

Again, I think you have some good points that are worth engaging in. But your opening sentence is just an immediate turn-off to the point where I don't even want to discuss the rest of your post.

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7 hours ago, Capt. Fargus said:

As a man I dont think I have much of a dog in the abortion fight so Ill stay outta that one. 

However, lets dont downplay the Constitutional side of this. People keep sayin “but, but Captain, the Supreme Court banned abortion”. No, the Supremes did not ban abortion. All they did was was basically say “we dont have the authority to decide this sorta thing” and kicked it back to the states to decide for themselves as the 10A provides. Abortion may wind up banned in some but will remain legal in quite a few states

”But Captain, if they was wrong, why did the Supremes do it the first place?”

Nobody’s perfect. They was wrong with Dred Scot and undid that. They was wrong with Plessy v Ferguson and undid that with Brown v Board of Ed, and they was wrong in ‘73 with Roe

'I'll stay out of it, but actually not' >_>. Unless you can really explain what was wrong with their Roe v Wade decision, without basing it on abortion or why states should be able to tell a woman (or people for that matter) what they can do to their own bodies, I don't think you can really claim to stay out of the argument of abortion.

 

Not to mention the line saying "They are just giving the power back to the states, that's it" is also a line that is being used to gaslight the american population into thinking that a nationwide abortion ban won't come when the republicans come to power.

Mitch saying nationwide abortion ban is 'possible'

 

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3 hours ago, Sunwoo said:

I literally know of no other way to interpret "Well extend that philosophy to theft and murder and pretty much everyone will say 'no, obviously that shouldn't be allowed' " when I very clearly stated "with some exceptions" and "if those beliefs include restricting the human rights of others". There is no need to bring up things like theft and murder when the language I included makes it clear I've already considered that and don't consider my philosophy absolute or flawless and it just feels pedantic and, as I said, like a smart ass.

Again, I think you have some good points that are worth engaging in. But your opening sentence is just an immediate turn-off to the point where I don't even want to discuss the rest of your post.

But that's what you do to challenge a philosophy. You extend it to it's extreme to find common ground. I know you don't think theft and murder should be legal, and I wasnt implying you were stating otherwise. The whole point is that everyone thinks theft and murder should be illegal (even, to some extent, I think, thieves and murderers, though many people are still in favour of the death penalty but that's not a kettle of fish I want to get into right now). You establish first tue commonly agreed and then go down until you get to the grey area. What you exoressed was, essentially, libertarianism. Which is a popular philosophy (and though I do t subscribe to it wholesale I do hope it gets more ground in the US if it means breaking the two party system), but one with several very easily identifiable faults. You don't think it's perfect? Well great, we're in agreement, but I still think it's worth discussing to elaborate on where and how it fails and how that fits into the abortion debate.

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2 hours ago, Zanarkin said:

'I'll stay out of it, but actually not' >_>. Unless you can really explain what was wrong with their Roe v Wade decision, without basing it on abortion or why states should be able to tell a woman (or people for that matter) what they can do to their own bodies, I don't think you can really claim to stay out of the argument of abortion.

 

Not to mention the line saying "They are just giving the power back to the states, that's it" is also a line that is being used to gaslight the american population into thinking that a nationwide abortion ban won't come when the republicans come to power.

Mitch saying nationwide abortion ban is 'possible'

 

If that happens I’d would be against it just like the federal prohibition on marijuana which I oppose on the same grounds

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I'm personally of the belief that a nationwide ban on abortions by the hand of the supreme court is coming.

Texas made anyone who aided someone with getting an abortion civilly liable, including people not in Texas, and I wouldn't be surprised if several states end up criminalizing out-of-state abortions for their own residents. And to counter this, several other states have already made laws that block Texas from enforcing their law on their own residents. This is guaranteed to come before the supreme court sooner rather than later, and I currently think the most likely outcome is a wholesale ban on abortions.

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On 7/7/2022 at 7:17 PM, eclipse said:

Pro-choice means that the decision should be up to the mother, her circumstances, and her doctors.  I am personally pro-life, which means that I will not get an abortion without an extremely good reason.  However, my pro-life stance is only for me.  If another woman feels that abortion is the appropriate choice for her, then it's not my place to prevent her from doing so.

You're not pro-life when this is your stance. You're pro-choice.

Being pro-choice doesn't mean you have to be willing to kill your own fetus. It just means you accept that the option should be available for people if the situation forces it.

A lot of people seems to think Pro-Life means "not killing fetus". It might to a degree, but what Pro-Life heavily mean is being against the legalization of elective abortions.

On 7/6/2022 at 8:49 PM, Armchair General said:

I'm not sure if holding an zero-sum argument would actually work, in this case. Because regardless of what happens, everyone is going to be crippled and you're kind of putting an lot of pressure on the fetus becoming the scapegoat.

It's not a zero-sum argument. That would apply some positive gain in the situation, which abortion rarely is. Abortion most times come into play because both path sucks and the mother+family might see aborting the fetus being the lesser of two awfulness.

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14 hours ago, Sunwoo said:

We also live in a society where many of our elected politicians as well as their constituents don't understand the biological processes associated with the thing they are trying to ban and are against

I'm still convinced that this is an act that they're maintaining.

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12 hours ago, Jotari said:

But that's what you do to challenge a philosophy. You extend it to it's extreme to find common ground. I know you don't think theft and murder should be legal, and I wasnt implying you were stating otherwise. The whole point is that everyone thinks theft and murder should be illegal (even, to some extent, I think, thieves and murderers, though many people are still in favour of the death penalty but that's not a kettle of fish I want to get into right now). You establish first tue commonly agreed and then go down until you get to the grey area. What you exoressed was, essentially, libertarianism. Which is a popular philosophy (and though I do t subscribe to it wholesale I do hope it gets more ground in the US if it means breaking the two party system), but one with several very easily identifiable faults. You don't think it's perfect? Well great, we're in agreement, but I still think it's worth discussing to elaborate on where and how it fails and how that fits into the abortion debate.

No, I don't, because now I realize you didn't even understand what I was saying.

Past the part about "abortion should be legal because people will find a way to do it unsafely", nothing I stated has anything to do with government and has everything to do with people not being able to mind their own fucking business. My actual beliefs are that if everyone could just be good fucking people who love and respect each other we probably wouldn't need a government to keep things in order, and yet we are not. That's not libertarianism, as far as I know it doesn't even have a name.

If you thought I was speaking of government in my last sentence, I'm not. I am speaking of entitled groups of people who want their fringe beliefs to be what everyone is forced to believe, because they can't stand the idea of them and their ideals not being the center of the fucking world!

Honestly, try to understand what someone is saying before trying to argue with them about things they're not even saying? ;/

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3 hours ago, Sunwoo said:

No, I don't, because now I realize you didn't even understand what I was saying.

Past the part about "abortion should be legal because people will find a way to do it unsafely", nothing I stated has anything to do with government and has everything to do with people not being able to mind their own fucking business. My actual beliefs are that if everyone could just be good fucking people who love and respect each other we probably wouldn't need a government to keep things in order, and yet we are not. That's not libertarianism, as far as I know it doesn't even have a name.

If you thought I was speaking of government in my last sentence, I'm not. I am speaking of entitled groups of people who want their fringe beliefs to be what everyone is forced to believe, because they can't stand the idea of them and their ideals not being the center of the fucking world!

Indeed, the perfect state for society would be where in there are now laws, but no one ever does anything wrong. Like Mother 3 before Porky showed up.

Quote

Honestly, try to understand what someone is saying before trying to argue with them about things they're not even saying? ;/

Come on now man, if one of us is being a smart ass here, it's you. I'm not here to be hostile. And it's not like you've actually put much effort listening to what I'm actually trying to say, preferring to dismiss me as a smart ass.

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2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Come on now man, if one of us is being a smart ass here, it's you. I'm not here to be hostile. And it's not like you've actually put much effort listening to what I'm actually trying to say, preferring to dismiss me as a smart ass.

I explained why I interpreted your comment towards me as being "smartass", whether you agree with that reasoning or not, and why that put me in the mood to not listen to listen to your post. I was upfront about that, so ... no duh I'm not really putting in effort listening to what you're trying to say?

I didn't even want to start the type of discussion on government and society that it looked like you were leading into, because that wasn't even my point to begin with. If I'm being a smartass now, it's because this entire conversation didn't even need to exist if we weren't on two different pages about what we're talking about and I'm irritated. Let's just stop this before it gets somewhere neither of us want it to go.

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21 hours ago, Sunwoo said:

I explained why I interpreted your comment towards me as being "smartass", whether you agree with that reasoning or not, and why that put me in the mood to not listen to listen to your post. I was upfront about that, so ... no duh I'm not really putting in effort listening to what you're trying to say?

I didn't even want to start the type of discussion on government and society that it looked like you were leading into, because that wasn't even my point to begin with. If I'm being a smartass now, it's because this entire conversation didn't even need to exist if we weren't on two different pages about what we're talking about and I'm irritated. Let's just stop this before it gets somewhere neither of us want it to go.

I think I'm closer to your page than you are to mind. But its clear you weren't receptive to even engage to begin with (which begs the question as to why you posted to begin with). So all I can say now is have a nice day (that's sincere).

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On 7/8/2022 at 8:01 PM, Capt. Fargus said:

As a man I dont think I have much of a dog in the abortion fight so Ill stay outta that one. 

However, lets dont downplay the Constitutional side of this. People keep sayin “but, but Captain, the Supreme Court banned abortion”. No, the Supremes did not ban abortion. All they did was was basically say “we dont have the authority to decide this sorta thing” and kicked it back to the states to decide for themselves as the 10A provides. Abortion may wind up banned in some but will remain legal in quite a few states

”But Captain, if they was wrong, why did the Supremes do it the first place?”

Nobody’s perfect. They was wrong with Dred Scot and undid that. They was wrong with Plessy v Ferguson and undid that with Brown v Board of Ed, and they was wrong in ‘73 with Roe

It doesn't ban it nationwide, but consider this is what Republicans have been campaigning on for 40-50 years and put judges on the bench precisely to help do this. It's ultimately a wedge issue that's bad for everyone in America, even in states where abortion is legal.

But in either case, while it does not ban abortions, it allows for the ban on abortions. Many states have trigger laws -- I have linked many sources on this in previous pages -- so it does end the legalization of abortion in many states. By removing rights to privacy as well, they also move a lot of civil rights issues (gay marriage, anal intercourse etc) to the states, many of which are also in favor of banning them.

I mean, you can talk to a lot of politicians with their finger on the pulse, and the replacement theory thing has been a big deal since before Tucker Carlson spewed that garbage on air. It's plainly obvious. A senator literally mentioned that the courts shouldn't decide interracial marriage, the only reason it wasn't brought up in the majority opinion (like the other rights) is because Clarence Thomas has a white wife. It's very nakedly corrupt and activist; this isn't a mistake.

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So,Arizona has recently signed an bill that will make it an minor crime for people to film them at an distance of eight feet and the news are claiming that this violates freedom of speech. There's supposed to be an exception if you're inside an vehicle or an private residential building, but I doubt if it'll actually work out this way.

 

On one hand, eight feet shouldn't really matter much if you're talking about an random bystander filming an arrest. But is it an really an threat to the officer's "safety" if the person that they're after is filming the incident? Last time I checked, cameras don't have the capacity to suck out someone's soul or anything.

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15 minutes ago, Armchair General said:

So,Arizona has recently signed an bill that will make it an minor crime for people to film them at an distance of eight feet and the news are claiming that this violates freedom of speech. There's supposed to be an exception if you're inside an vehicle or an private residential building, but I doubt if it'll actually work out this way.

 

On one hand, eight feet shouldn't really matter much if you're talking about an random bystander filming an arrest. But is it an really an threat to the officer's "safety" if the person that they're after is filming the incident? Last time I checked, cameras don't have the capacity to suck out someone's soul or anything.

Fucking snowflakes. I bet they don't release body cam footage during an investigation either.

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50 minutes ago, Armchair General said:

It's Arizona, I really don't expect much from them, in the first place.

I lived there. The people are actually more on the libertarian side and much more liberal than you would expect. The politicians are a disaster and the Arizona GOP is many orders of magnitude out of touch with the population. Their education is ranked 49th in the US and somehow has many avenues to getting worse, which sucks because it can be a very nice place to live if you love nature and the outdoors. The people who live there and the landscape don't deserve the bullshit that their state is giving them.

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1 hour ago, Lord Raven said:

The people are actually more on the libertarian side and much more liberal than you would expect.

It's not the people that I have an issue with, it's mostly the stuff that politicians and law enforcement has done over the years. Although, the same could be said about anywhere else

Edited by Armchair General
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2 hours ago, Lord Raven said:

I lived there. The people are actually more on the libertarian side and much more liberal than you would expect. The politicians are a disaster and the Arizona GOP is many orders of magnitude out of touch with the population. Their education is ranked 49th in the US and somehow has many avenues to getting worse, which sucks because it can be a very nice place to live if you love nature and the outdoors. The people who live there and the landscape don't deserve the bullshit that their state is giving them.

Aright,  you're begging the question there. Who is ranked last in education? (I know I could just look it up, but prosterity and all that jazz).

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2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Aright,  you're begging the question there. Who is ranked last in education? (I know I could just look it up, but prosterity and all that jazz).

I am not sure which source he is using, but it is funny to see even Fox ranking red states' education as kind of crap. According to U.S. News, New Mexico got the worst overall education and lower primary education, and Pennsylvania got the worst higher public education. According to USA Today, Nevada is last. I would take all the rankings with a grain of salt though, since they seem all over the place.

America as a whole though still has a pretty shit primary education system.

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3 hours ago, Jotari said:

Aright,  you're begging the question there. Who is ranked last in education? (I know I could just look it up, but prosterity and all that jazz).

mississippi, nevada, and new mexico are in the same tier. those are the fastest that come to mind.

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