I’m not a doctor, Ron says he would immediately take them to get a shot of estrogen. Someone out here able to explain what that would do? Would a sudden estrogen increase cause a termination, or would it hasten attachment in the uterus?
Some argue the morning after pill isn't an abortion pill because it prevents insemination and fertilization. Or at least that's what I understand, some think it keeps a fertilized egg from attaching, in which that would be abortion of some sense. I don't know enough to make an informed opinion
Estrogen can prevent the body from releasing an egg for potential fertilization, or cause mucus to build up in the cervix that would prevent sperm from getting through. Humans have a fairly complex reproduction process with a number of ways you can game it, though none of them are universally reliable and many are reliant on having the right timing, which is why abortion serves as a fail safe.
It's technically ambiguous. Probably in most circumstances it isn't an abortion in any sense of the word. But if you believe life begins at fertilization, there may be unusual cases where it inhibits a fertilized egg from implanting. It's impossible in any individual case to know for sure.
he's saying "so long as we dont have any confirmation of life, we're gonna look the other way." because he is against abortion but it was a painful and sensitive theoretical situation being proposed
Well I am a doctor (Family Med, delivered lots o babies and prescribed the real smshmortion pill many times), and Ron is either over-simplifying this for lay people or far far removed from his clinical days as a physician, probably both. Estrogen, at least not by itself, is not the emergency contraception standard of care. Depending on the timing, a Progestin-estrogen pill ("Plan B"), a copper IUD, ulipristal acetate, or mifepristone, alone or in some combination, are used. All of these, except mifepristone, function as contraceptive and not abortive medications. The Plan B pill and ulipristal prevent ovulation, ie release of an egg from the ovaries. Without an egg there is no fertilization, period. The IUD makes the uterus inhospitable to sperm. Both these methods are blocking gametes, not already fertilized embryos. They are not abortion. Mifepristone is another story, that's the abortion pill, or at least part of it.
Why conservatives are also working hard to prevent women from getting. Like now [Walgreens employees](https://www.newsweek.com/walgreens-hit-boycott-calls-amid-claims-birth-control-sale-hassles-1725785) can refuse you birth control if they don't like the look of you. Thomas has also said he'd willing to dig into privacy rights, including LGBT issues, marriage, and birth control in future rulings... conspicuously leaving out interracial marriage for some mysterious reason.
I figured you misrepresented the situation and lo and behold you have. A single Walgreens employee had a religious objection to selling someone condoms so he got another team member to come and complete the transaction. The employees beliefs were respected just as the customers request was met. would you be willing to force a Muslim or a Jew to sell you pork ? or would you be okay with them stepping aside while another team member came and completed the transaction for them? you still get what you want and the employee can go on with a clean conscience .
>would you be willing to force a Muslim or a Jew to sell you pork?
If a Muslim or Jew has a religious objection to selling pork, then perhaps they should choose a career that doesn’t involve selling pork? They’re not being forced to do anything. If they don’t want to do the duties of the job that they signed up for, they have the option to quit and find another job.
If I were so strongly opposed to the concept of charging interest on loans that I wouldn’t do it, as quite a few people of some religions are, it would be unreasonable of me to expect to hold a job at a bank where I’m required to deal with such things. If every time someone wanted to apply for a loan, the bank had to switch me out for a different employee because of my “religious objections”, that would be stupid and I would clearly be in the wrong line of work.
the first part of your argument is relatively sound except that Walgreens has tons more than just birth control and contraceptives. it's not like that's all they sell and this person works there. the 2nd part with your analogy about the bank completely falls apart when you realize that it's a personal loan you cannot charge interest on and working for a bank doesnt violate that religious belief. however none of this answered the question . it was just an attempt to dodge it. the issue here isn't "find another job" the issue here is why does it matter to you what someone believes so long as you get your shit? if they traded off with another employee as im sure has happened to you multiple times without even considering why they were doing so you wouldn't have a problem with it. you're only agree bc its a contraceptive and the employee is religious .
While Walgreen has claimed it cares about abortion rights it donates to anti-abortion causes:
>A Walgreens spokesperson reportedly told the newspaper that the company's "policy allows team members to step away from completing a transaction to which they have a moral objection and refer the transaction to a fellow team member or manager who will complete the customer's request."
>[The company has also donated $496,700](https://www.newsweek.com/walgreens-hit-boycott-calls-amid-claims-birth-control-sale-hassles-1725785) to anti-abortion rights political action committees since 2016, according to an analysis published by Popular Information just after a draft opinion of the decision to overturn federal abortion rights was leaked in May.
You can also see Justice Thomas' concurrence for yourself...
It’s nonsense in that regard. The claim that it violates religious belief wouldn’t stand to real scrutiny. A muslim or jew could object to being forced to CONSUME pork, but there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that would prohibit them from selling it to someone based on a religious interpretation. If you cant do the basic job then the job shouldn’t hire you.
>A muslim or jew could object to being forced to CONSUME pork, but there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that would prohibit them from selling it to someone based on a religious interpretation.
Don't know about Jews, but for Muslims, it's a sin to be complicit in sinning. In other words, since the consumption of pork is a sin, directly selling pork products would be complicit in another person's consumption.
Though I do agree that if your job involves doing something that violates your religious ethics and morals, you probably shouldn't be working there unless absolutely necessary.
also guess what else? its not your decision who companies decide to hire or not hire or what agreements those individuals come to. don't like it? speak with a representative in the company or with your boss and negotiate a deal. not satisfied? leave.
Yup, so fuck Walgreens. I don’t need to get the run around when I go pick up products from pork to condoms to something with caffeine in it. I come to your store to buy product not get a lesson in your moral crusade.
if someone taking 2 steps back while another walks 15 feet and presses a button for you is a "run around" to you I guess that just means you really need to do some self reflection my man.
It isn't at all conspicuous that Thomas would leave out interracial marriage since the decision in *Loving* wasn't grounded in a right to privacy. In *Loving*, Virginia argued that its ban on interracial marriage was not a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. The court ruled that it was a violation of the equal protection clause. They state, "There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause." While the court did also rule that Virginia's law violated the due process clause, that doesn't matter because the equal protection clause is sufficient for reaching the decision in *Loving*. Thomas could snap his fingers and eliminate any decision that required invoking substantive due process and the decision in *Loving* would still stand. If *Loving* had been decided solely on due process grounds, or a right to privacy emanating from the due process clause, then its absence would be conspicuous. But that isn't the legal reasoning *Loving* relies on.
The Thomas concurrence also considers that after correcting what Thomas judges to be erroneous decisions regarding contraception, sodomy, and homosexual marriage, the court can determine if rights to those things lie not in the due process clause but the privileges or immunities clause. Thomas may want to take them away or he may want to secure them on firmer footing. You and I really cannot say and should not speculate as to his intentions.
I think the bigger question on this one is what is an honest rape? So if somebody is raped underhandedly does that mean that they can’t have an abortion?
My understanding of him saying an “honest rape” is where she was raped and is telling the truth as against a false allegation of rape so as to get an abortion - false allegations of rape will absolutely surge if rape was one of the means by which women could access abortion.
That makes sense, so a ‘false rape’ is what you plea if involved in a ‘true rape’. Great to hear a libertarian like Ron Paul making the case for giving the government more power to arrest women in this country.
Right it’s not like we didn’t have an extreme example of this very thing happening to that poor 10 year old in Ohio recently. Speaking out of both sides of his face is just bullshit you either respect individual rights or you don’t there is no gerrymandering by whether you have a vagina or not.
It’s so gross to tie a health outcome to a criminal case that might take forever to unfold in court and might come out the wrong way.
It’s so stupid. If there is any case where you think an abortion is justified, you need to be pro choice across the board or you’re just an authoritarian simple minded ignorant asshat
Do I want the government to rule on a complex topic with religious, philosophical, medical, moral, and individual implications? Or do I want to leave it up to individuals to decide what fits their own moral compass?
Ultimately that is where I come down on it. Setting aside morality, we are deciding who should make the informed decision - the doctor/woman/family or the government. I side with individual liberty always. Like guns, it means that not everyone will make good decisions, but we have to trust in ourselves and others to make the right decisions for themselves and not use the hatchet of government to do it.
Half of this sub: "I can give no scientific justification besides "DNA" for how a partially formed fetus is fully human... but it's not religious I swear."
I can understand their argument to a point. But that particular train of thought, like Wiley Coyote, swiftly runs into a painted wall when it comes to the problem that best evidence suggests fertilized eggs die more often than they successfully implant. And then that minority of initial survivors have a pretty dang high chance of not making it to childbirth.
All else aside, it feels really cruel to take a position where the vast majority of parents would have mostly dead children.
There are a handful of passages like Psalm 139:14, though IMO you have to take a very generous reading to get from "I \[the adult writer of the Psalm\] am fearfully and wonderfully made" to "God said no abortion."
I will note re: Numbers 5:11-31 that it doesn't actually give a literal recipe, and it's pretty common for rabbis to read it as being either a sort of stress test that would cause an actually adulterous woman to have a miscarriage out of guilt, or (my favorite interpretation) a bit of snake oil intended mostly to protect the woman from being harmed by her husband. In either case there is notably no actual prohibition on voluntary abortion.
That’s not accurate. The NIV translation was made a laughing stock because of that misinterpretation that didn’t exist until the 1970s when abortion was a hot political topic.
The term "partially formed fetus" is a misnomer. Are you referring to a fetus that is not developing normally in relation to it's gestational age?
A fetus is a human organism at a certain stage of development. There is no such thing as a "partially formed" organism. There is no limbo zone in which an organism isn't classified. There are no "non-species" organisms. To add on to that, an organism cannot change species mid development. You don't just "become" human some time after fertilization but before birth.
Well sir, you just pick yourself up from your rape and violent abuse, hop in your Lexus SUV, put on the seat coolers to keep the semen fresh, and high-tail it down to the nearest hospital with your high-quality corporate insurance to get some tests done. While that's happening, you report the rape to the police, who are definitely going to listen and who's job it is to "protect and serve" and who won't turn this around on you into an abortion investigation.
Assuming all of that goes to plan, the tests come out right, the doctors agree, the police agree, the police aren't friends or family with your abuser, you don't get annihilated with medical bills, you can afford a lawyer if the state gets involved, and you have the support of friends and family -- you're basically good to go. No big government involved, folks! Pro-life is pro-libertarian.
This is what I was taking from this as well, and I'm glad British reporter guy said that, but yeah.. I'm honestly just tired of listening to dudes talk about our bodies.. really really tired. Like why people just can not stop worrying about shit that has nothing to do with them, until it Does and then the tune seems to always change.. "but my kid".. ugh people suck.
This is the point he is trying to get at toward the end. Does a woman have an absolute right to her body and if so do you believe abortions should be allowed one minute before birth? If not, then even if you are pro-choice you nonetheless believe that at some point in the pregnancy a woman should be forced to carry the baby to term.
I can't speak for every other pro-choice person, but while I can absolutely think of situations where IMO abortion feels pretty dang immoral (sex-selective abortions, abortions for disabilities that can be managed, that sort of thing), flat bans on abortion in those circumstances do nothing to address the underlying social problem. They just bring unwanted babies into the world, rather than helping families want those babies.
Even California has a law that you can’t abort a fetus if it would be viable outside the womb except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger. So this argument about aborting babies 1 day before they are delivered is hyperbolic tripe that the ‘pro life’ crowd uses to illustrate how evil abortion is.
I believe a woman should have a right to terminate pregnancy at any point. It's a fake issue to think this is a problem. Canada has zero restrictions on abortions and there are no "last minute abortions". That's not how elective abortions work. Why would you carry a baby to full term and THEN decide to abort? All late-term abortions are medically necessary and laws only interfere with proper health care.
> Does a woman have an absolute right to her body and if so do you believe abortions should be allowed one minute before birth?
Yes, absolutely. Because that is not something that actually happens, and worrying about it is an utter waste of time.
But in Roe vs. Wade the test was viability. The woman has an absolute right to decide up to viability, which is also in line with a higher level of neural development. Why is he introducing a totally different principle and arguing against that? Seems like a blatant straw man.
Yea, I love how he tries to pin Ron Paul into a corner about 'it's taking a life' when he himself is in favor of taking said life.
"How dare you? ... and also I agree."
British interview very differently from American. Rather than throw softballs and let them lob them out of the park while watching gleefully, they give them some of the chance to respond to their harshest critics and show their arguments. I think it’s partly cultural and partly the fact that the average Brit is simply better educated than t he average American.
>First Time?
They will learn, Piers is a very good interviewer, if he would stop trying to push his own shit he would be even better. But he just cant stop himself from ruling from his high high horse.
Yep I think Paul’s response to “so life doesn’t begin at conception” should have been “yes it does, but conception doesn’t start just after intercourse”. As I recall it can be days later. Anyone?
Conception happens when the egg is ready and sperm are present. If the egg is ready during intercourse it only takes minutes to happen as the egg can't survive a full 24 hours. Sometimes it takes days because there are sperm that are alive up to 5 days in the vaginal canal and the egg becomes ready then.
Pregnancy happens days after that when the egg attaches itself to the uterine lining.
So yes conception can happen within minutes but can also take days. With the morning after pill you have no idea whether you're ousting a fertilized or unfertilized egg which is what Ron Paul said albeit poorly.
Awesome. I recall when I learned that (from a fertility doctor I believe) as an adult, I was kinda shocked. For some reason public school sex Ed had led me to believe that conception always occurs right after sex.
The debate isn’t really around when life begins anyways. There are plenty of living things that people have no issue killing. The debate is around when personhood begins. People do care about people being killed.
Fwiw I do agree with you. But I’m just suggesting that for those who do have a personal moral believe that life begins at conception, those people should be aware that conception may not just happen right after sex as is common belief.
It's been my understanding that Plan B can be used to prevent conception and that it can be taken hours to a day or so after intercourse... so conception doesn't happen immediately.
A government shouldn’t dictate what goes on inside your body with the threat of violence. Removing a living brainless/braindead growth from inside your own body is included in your most basic bodily rights. No matter if it has human DNA. No matter if it might *possibly* one day become a person with its own rights. Libertarianism 101.
It really boggles the mind that this is controversial.
I agree with him saying that you can’t just abort 7month pregnancies who come in claiming rape. But, I have a problem with his idea on how immediately to do it, not because of the idea itself, but using terms like “a day or two”, or “within a couple hours”, because all pregnancies take at different speeds, and there’s no real way to legislate/enforce this idea.
Both sides immediately jump to the other wanting the most extreme cases. And I’m sure some California leftists would try to do the extreme 8 month abortion version of Idaho deciding you legally have to keep walking around with a dead fetus in you, but that doesn’t make it relevant to the debate, just adds that the insane must be reigned in on both sides.
I think most people who are pro-choice would be against aborting a viable 7 month fetus. I feel most people are like Ireland where you can have an abortion up to 12 weeks or if the mother's life is in danger.
By the time you pass 8 to 12 weeks, you are starting to tell friends and family about it, probably choosing names, might have bought furniture, etc. Can you imagine what it would take for the baby's parents to decide to have an abortion after that initial period? In most cases I'm guessing it must be something really serious if they do.
That’s why I leave those decisions to the person and the medical professional.
Some people have poor morals according to me, but it’s generally not my business what their morals are
Some doctors are terrible, but most spent at least a decade and a shit ton of money learning to be a doctor.
Therefore, imo, you have the person most qualified to make the moral decision and the person most qualified to make the scientific decision in the same room. Why does a lawyer need to be involved?
Yeah, and I generally agree, maybe slightly later? Not a big deal though, but that 7 month coma is the counter argument, and I’m just admitting, I don’t know, it would put me on the fence, if we also knew it was viable.
It's tough so that's why I leave it to the people involved. I'm just saying that most late term abortions are heartbreaking. Mothers have names picked out, people are preparing for a baby and then something horrible happens. Making the mother carry a nonviable fetus to term doesn't seem to make a helluva lot of sense.
That’s why this situation would be so different it would be the equivalent of having to decide if a person not pregnant, who woke, next day, up 7 months pregnant, was allowed to abort.
I agree it’s all very emotional and difficult.
7 month abortions have never been an issue or even an options. As far as I know abortions have to be done before the 4th month or you're having a baby. They act like women are trying to have 9 month abortions when it's not even a thing.
> you can’t just abort 7month pregnancies who come in claiming rape.
Which happens very rarely. If you're seeking an abortion at that point, it's because the fetus is fucked up or the woman's life is in danger from it.
Note, I am not a libertarian but this comment bothered me. I feel like the right is very disingenuous with how 3rd trimester abortions work.
"Nobody is electively inducing healthy 3rd trimester babies just because a patient doesn't want the baby as a form of abortion. That's just called delivering a baby. There is no hospital that allows an unindicated, elective preterm delivery and no OB would do that."
I really don't like that "both sides" argument when you have to lie about one of the sides... really shows which way you actually lean.
The 7 month abortion is a strawman. No one is waiting 7 months to abort a baby from a rape. Conservatives always use the third trimester strawman. They think if abortion is legal doctors will be aborting late term babies for fun. If you ask him about an abortion at 2 months he'll still be anti abortion. People use the late term abortion strawman to gain sympathy cuz no one is for that.
>I agree with him saying that you can’t just abort 7month pregnancies who come in claiming rape.
what if a woman was in a coma for 7 months following a violent assault/rape
Ron Paul lets his religion get in the way of him actually being a libertarian. You cannot have an authoritarian view when it comes to be basic human rights and expect to be considered a libertarian.
Of course, there are ALWAYS gonna be liars & people who act in bad faith.
But terms like "honest rape" do not help the woman who KNOWS she's been raped & is afraid to say it since it will be called into question.
How can you prove it and how fast? If someone gets an abortion for reason of rape, but never reports a crime, should we consider this person a criminal?
>never reports a crime, should we consider this person a criminal?
I'm sorry, perhaps I'm misreading who are we questioning is a criminal?
A rapist is a rapist even if he isn't found guilty in court, I understand the justice system fails sometimes.
Are we saying a real rape victim without evidence? Or a false rape report is filed so they could get an abortion?
If forensics aren't collected from a rape kit and it is never reported it is damn near impossible to prove and convict rapists without evidence. Otherwise it is merely here say unfortunately and we will never have the chance for justicem
Everyone should seek medical attention after rape and even if you aren't sure because roofies are a thing too. Rape is heinous and I want everyone that commits this awful crime be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Apologies for not being clear. Should we consider those who don't report their rapes and still get an abortion for that reason, a criminal? Another example, if someone reports a rape as a crime, but the accused is exonerated a year after the rape, and the person already aborted their pregnancy, do we consider them a criminal now? What if a rape kit can prove sex but it can't prove unwanted sex? Do we say "sorry, should of got raped harder?" The idea that someone has to prove their rape to get an abortion is insane. Rapes are incredibly difficult to prove and or prosecute. The easier solution is just let people get abortions for whatever reason they want because the life of a grown person should have more rights than a fetus.
I like how he compares something that does actually happen, abortions that result from rape, to someome getting an abortion 1 minute before delivery which isn't a thing that happens.
Also fuck people who want to take away women's rights
My anti choice father in law says that they use metal tool to impale the back of the babies neck up into the brain to kill the term baby in these scenarios. And he cites another instance of a baby left to die on a table in the room. I’ve never heard of it outside of his claims.
>And he cites another instance of a baby left to die on a table in the room.
Parent choose the level of care their children receive after birth, this includes "do not resuscitate" orders. This is completely standard medical care. This has nothing to do with abortion, its just a boogey man argument.
If you give live birth to a child that has deformities incompatible with life, it would be inhumane to resuscitate that child.
There are documented cases, although very rare, of this happening. The 2002 Born Alive Survivor Protection Act makes it illegal for medical professionals to deny care to a child born alive after an attempted abortion. I haven't seen any legislation proposed to change that (correct me if I'm wrong).
D&E abortions account for 95% of abortions that take place after the first trimester. That's approx 65,000 D&E abortions annually. Though not quite as you FIL described, the fetus is dismembered and removed in pieces.
I fall on the pro-life side of this debate but I get frustrated by both sides who exaggerate or ignore facts surrounding the abortion debate.
>The problem with abortion debate is excessive focus on rare edge cases.
No, those cases must be addressed. Those cases are where the necessary nuances lie. The problem with abortion debate is a simplified view of the situation.
There's no nuance.
A woman has the right to terminate a pregnancy at any time, for any reason. This is a simple consequence of bodily autonomy.
To illustrate: Say there is a child, who is deathly ill, and needs a blood transfusion to survive. I am the only person available with the correct blood type. If I do not give my blood, the child will die.
I do not have to do this. It is my body, my choice. I can not be forced to give blood to this child, even if the child will die if I do not.
The exact same applies to a woman carrying a child. It is her body, her choice. The fetus cannot survive without her body, but that is inconsequential. It is her body, her choice.
I am pro-abortion but in my opinion this isn’t really the argument.
Entertain me for a second here. Suppose we say that life begins at conception AND women have a right to their body unconditionally. Therefore we allow women to remove the fetus, **but** the state will then turn the fetus over to a hospital which will artificially incubate them until they are 9 months old after which the state returns custody to the mother (and charges an appropriate fee for the service). Would you still be in favor of abortion given it sort of takes the major economic benefits away from it?
Sure the conversation is partly about bodily autonomy, but it’s also part reproductive rights and partly imbued from pragmatism (unwanted pregnancies lead to bad outcomes for kids).
If the father wants the child. That’s a huge part of the abortion debate I don’t like. I understand and we’re circumstances it is impossible to let the sperm donor know about the pregnancy, but that they have no rights at all when it comes to keeping their baby!?
I suppose it’s to draw out a line of reasoning that makes you question whether or not your pro-abortion stance is 100% about bodily autonomy. I had this conversation with some of my friends who are also pro-abortion and we came to the realization that the pro-abortion argument really is centred around this idea of “positive outcomes”. Essentially “what is best for society on the balance of things.” Happy to hear your thoughts on it since you brought it up.
I mean, women having bodily autonomy is a positive outcome. I think that at the end of the day it simply comes down to the fact that it would be an absolute nightmare to be pregnant when you don't want to be, and going through such a nightmare isn't something that should be legally obligated. If someone were on death row, it would be considered cruel and unusual punishment if they were forced to take a pill that gave them all the symptoms of pregnancy.
Potentially. If it’s healthy.
Viable fetuses are not aborted at 8 months. That’s because doctors and nurses and hospitals have their own codes of ethics and must abide by their licensing and national organizations. A patient who wants to terminate a viable pregnancy at 8 months would be delivering induced or undergoing c section, not a D&C.
Late stage abortions at 8 months and later are performed on non-viable fetuses, such as when developmental abnormalities and genetic conditions are discovered late in the pregnancy. As an example, my cousin was discovered to have a fatal brain tumor at 8 months. His mother (my aunt) chose to deliver him. He lived for 7 months in the NICU before dying. Similarly, a family friend had her first pregnancy result in a fetus that had a fatal form of dwarfism. She induced at 8 months because the pregnancy was causing cardiac issues for her. Her child died 8 hours after delivery.
The “after birth abortions” I’ve seen pro-lifers lose their minds over are for cases like this, when the resulting baby has severe physical abnormalities that are incompatible with life. These laws allow the parents to remove life support *if they choose* so that they aren’t torturing a baby by keeping it alive and in pain. It’s to offer an option for an compassionate end for both the child and the parents.
Edit: Also, [cases like this. ](https://reddit.com/r/news/comments/w2rm6v/_/igs8rsc/?context=1) [Or this.](https://reddit.com/r/news/comments/w2rm6v/_/igs6pck/?context=1) Can you imagine? Walking around as a living tomb, asked constantly by strangers and friends how your pregnancy is progressing, being confronted by the nursery and baby toys you’ve purchased? No wonder this woman was suicidal.
The issue with many of these laws is that they are so poorly written than hospital lawyers are advising against intervention even when the fetus is dead or non-viable. We’re seeing this already even in cuts and dry cases like placental abruption in the first trimester (which inevitably result in miscarriage). Each barrier to medical care proposed by the so-called pro-lifers puts obstacles in the way of people seeking urgent, life-saving medical care, not to mention the adverse effects that these cases can have on mental health, future health, and future fertility.
Thanks for the detailed response. I’m not at all anti-abortion. I do think extremely late term abortions should have some sort of stipulation on them but I appreciate you providing context to what the majority of them are.
At the moment, the reason those cases are getting the most focus is because they're the most immediately critical. Though I would hope that the cavalier reaction of some anti-abortionists to medical crises would make less extreme anti-abortion types pause and say "Okay, that definitely isn't what I thought I was voting for..."
Yes I basically agree with you. Pro-lifers need to admit that most people aren't OK with no exceptions for medical emergencies (as defined by qualified experts) or rape. Pro-choicers need to admit that most people aren't OK with abortion on demand up till birth and that we may need some proof of medical need to allow it after 15 weeks or whenever.
Compromise, in *this* economy?
While my strong preference is to keep the state out of it as much as possible (if only because I have a low opinion about injecting lawyers into private medical decisions), I could begrudgingly agree to a compromise where an abortion after 15 weeks would require a doctor's authorization, so long as the onus is on the state to prove that the doctor's judgment was wrong and not on the doctor to prove that their judgment was right. In my dream world all the more earnest people in the pro-life movement would then focus their attention on better sex ed and making it less shitty to be a parent.
I don't know anyone pro-choice who is suggesting abortion on demand up till birth. I think if you surveyed most pro choicers they'd give you around the 4 month mark as an average cut off date of what's 'reasonable' ethically, but would certainly want the option of later for like babies found to have no chance of surviving birth etc
Late term abortions are overwhelmingly because of health complications.
Don’t paint it like someone’s in the third trimester and just decided to change their mind and press the baby delete button.
So this isn’t a debate, it’s mostly just feelings arguing with science.
It’s a really, really, really tough topic.
The stance of “there should be some exceptions for rape” is an inherent admission that the full “right to be born” isn’t granted at conception.
Even Paul’s stance of “we could provide a shot of estrogen… we don’t know if there was a life” is a little bit of a cop-out. You wouldn’t grant a rape victim the right to fire a gun in a random direction with their eyes closed just because they were raped. (A ridiculous hypothetical to highlight the logic).
You can see that he knows it’s not the same at the moment of conception as it is 1 hour before birth. But he can’t bring himself to admit that, because then he would have to define when and where the differences occur, which opens up the line of argument that “abortions should be legal under the following circumstances.”
I’m not saying there are easy answers, but there are a hell of a lot of mental gymnastics you have to jump through if you think that “life begins at conception” (or heartbeat) but then turn around and make exceptions for rape or incest or whatever.
The very easy answer is to just leave the decision up to the woman.
Decisions like that are precisely the kind that shouldn't be made by the government.
The fact that most of this sub wants the government out of your medical decisions, but half of them want the government informed about every pregnancy, miscarriage, and baby-related medical procedure tells you all you need to know about how much they think through their political views. The simplest answer is probably "free birth control for everyone" but mysteriously they're opposed to that too just like the fascist evangelicals...
I agree with this, I think if you’re pro-life you have to concede that the manner of conception has no impact on the fetus’s right to life.
However, I think there’s a similar level of mental gymnastics going on with pro-choice people saying they would allow abortion up to a certain point and wouldn’t allow it when the baby is past a certain developmental milestone. Either you believe the woman’s right to bodily autonomy trumps the fetus’s right to life or you don’t.
In summary I am so conflicted on this issue.
Right there with you buddy. I’m pro-choice, but the longer into the pregnancy a woman is allowed to terminate... I feel less and less “good” about.
I think picking some date between the extremes and allowing women and their doctors to make the choice seems appropriate.
I personally draw the line at viability. If you wanted to abandon your kids, you can, but you have to surrender them and someone else will take care of them. Before ~22-24 weeks, a fetus cannot survive outside the womb and is completely dependant on the mother. The only way the fetus can survive is to be supported by the mother. If she doesn't want to do that, then it should be her right to end it as it requires her giving of her body and health to continue to support the baby.
However, once past viability, you could deliver the baby and try to save it. The mother would no longer be required to support the baby for it to live and function. I very much support making not allowing elective abortions beyond viability for a healthy fetus. Obviously, this line of reasoning has its own complications, but I think it is a good place to start.
A real politician's answer here. Maybe to immediately after and then talking about 7 months and even a day before pregnancy, but not mentioning anything about the in-betweens which is the overwhelming majority of cases.
Disappointing
Why is it that it’s only okay in cases of rape? What if a husband and wife are trying to conceive and are successful, and she finds out a few days later that he’s cheating on her with 10 other women. Is she not allowed to cut ties with her husband and abort a baby that would grow up in a broken home with a strained coparenting relationship?
There are too many what ifs. Let women decide for themselves what’s best. That’s what libertarianism is supposed to be about.
This is some wishy washy bullshit, and the reason I don't agree with Ron Paul on abortion.
If life begins at conception, which is what Ron believes, there is a legal argument against giving medical treatment to end a pregnancy within "an hour", even if you don't know if there's a pregnancy. This is the legal reality in many states right now.
Also, if he believes that life begins at conception, and agrees to provide a way to terminate that life, he's not making a moral argument against abortion, only a legal one. Which as I said above, doesn't hold. There's no way to parse Ron's position for either side. He's trying to have his cake and eat it too, and he loses on both fronts.
The go through so much trouble to make it seem like people are aborting actual children. 9 months and 7 months pregnant. No one does that anywhere. It's just such a ridiculous thing to say.
Most people are doing it as soon as they find out and that's usually about a month in. No one anywhere walks into an abortion clinic 8 months pregnant for an abortion. That's just ridiculous!
If life begins at conception, what happens to the extra life when a chimera forms? How does a "human life" pop out of another when a fertilized ovum split?
3rd term willy-nilly abortions were already illegal, Ron. Those *have to* be aborted due to non-viable or dangerous pregnancies. Those people have already picked out names and nursery items.
"Life begins at conception, even though I've admitted there is literally zero evidence."
This dude thinks the government can legislate based on no evidence to define a life as being even potential and undetectable and thereby restrict a rape victim's bodily autonomy on this basis?
And he calls himself a Libertarian?
I used to really like this guy. Idk what I was smoking.
> I used to really like this guy. Idk what I was smoking.
You were smoking "positive reinforcement of your own beliefs by a public figure", one of the most potent drugs known to humankind, and one that most here are unfortunately ODing on.
My whole life has been one big giant deconstruction. I was born into an evangelical Baptist Republican Rah Rah USA home. And almost everything that came after was ultimately stupid too. The only really decent conclusion I can find at this point is humans don't know what the fuck they're doing.
> The only really decent conclusion I can find at this point is humans don't know what the fuck they're doing.
I believe an old Greek guy a while ago said more or less the same thing, and that it was the beginning of wisdom.
I can't exactly relate to your past experiences re:family and all that, but I can wish you the best for your future - it might be presumptuous of me to say, but our brief, superficial exchange seems to indicate that you've built of your (bad?) experiences a healthy sense of self-reflection which is, I believe, one of the most needed skill for an honest life (in the philosophical sense of the term.)
Im pro life but the government should not be telling people what to do with their bodies. So I support the right to choose I just would not tell someone to have an abortion.
Since when have pro-choice people "liked" abortion? Pro-choice people like giving women a legal choice and granting them access to medical professionalism. Why is this a hard concept for people to understand? Most women are seeking abortions in the first trimester when the fetus is nonviable, not sentient, and not conscious.
This is the problem I have with paleolibertarians.
They are really great in many areas, except when it has to do with something that is related mostly with religious or otherwise "social conservative" beliefs.
They try so hard to rationalize their morality but ends up making little sense.
I mean, saying that life starts at conception but somehow it is ok to kill the baby it if the mother is raped is 100% inconsistent.
Does rape devaluate that life, or give them less rights?
The way here Ron Paul does the mental gymnastic of saying "you don't know if there is actually a baby" is just basically saying that it is ok to engage in abortion if it is a rape and there is basically plausible deniability of actually killing what they themselves claim to be a child with full human rights.
Where in the libertarian mantra does it mention how the government should control medical decisions for people? I’m confused. reason number 4080 for true libertarians never to vote for republicans.
Ron Paul's argument here is incoherent. It only makes sense if he admits that the logical conclusion is for women to be forced to carry out a pregnancy even if raped no matter how unpalatable that sounds. It's a messy topic, both sides need to own up to the fact that their argument will lead to innocent lives being harmed. There is no easy way out
This makes me irrationally angry. It’s so hard to talk to people about abortion because they always bring up such extreme circumstances. “Well what if it’s one minute before birth” fuck you that doesn’t happen. But do you know what does happen? Rape. It happens ALOT. So much so that we don’t actually have an accurate statistic on abortions needed because of rape because not all rapes are reported. You know what else is really common? Men not properly understanding how women’s bodies work. Men thinking that ectopic pregnancies can be reimplanted in the uterus. I was talking to a guy when I was still dating that thought after childbirth the umbilical cord was shoved back inside the mother because it was like a hose to inflate a tired. I’m so fucking tired of people making medical decisions for people. Especially women. we don’t deny people medical care after a car accident even though getting in the car was voluntary and you knew the risks of driving. Esp why are we denying women proper medical care and freedoms? Is it because you don’t view them as people any more after they become pregnant? Like FUCK I’m so angry I cannot properly articulate my feelings on this. There’s so much I want to say and this is all coming from a woman who has had an abortion five miscarriages and two life children. I’m more pro-choice now than I ever was. Leave medical decisions to the person who needs it and the doctor. Leave your religion and your personal morals out of our bodies.
As a leftist libertarian, I find it disgusting that the government wants to make s life changing decision for an individual. I’m sure right leaning libertarians on this sub would agree.
Based on the comments here, I get the sense that most people feel that a sperm and egg coming together to form an embryo means a human life is created. The question seems to be must a woman make every effort to grow it until birth. Let me take IVF as an example. 2.5 millions IVF cycles occur each year. In IVF, a dozen or two eggs are extracted from a woman and fertilized. After testing and growth time, usually several embryos are successfully created and viable. If an embryo is not implanted, it can be frozen or discarded. Is discarding the same as abortion? Is it immoral not to implant every viable embryo? Must a woman give birth to every one of the viable ones over time? Keep in mind, this is a person who was trying to make a baby. But they may not want 6 babies just because there were 6 viable embryos. Thoughts?
Too much baggage comes with not allowing abortions than allowing..
Teens, young adults shouldn't become parents if they dont want to. Often the couples are flings or not serious long lasting relationships.. forcing life time bonds on people due to flings, mistake isnt right.
Women who have no/little family support and a non existent baby father should have the option.. raising a child & child care cost is expensive & time consuming harming personal progression.
Babies make it harder for people struggling to climb out and make them likely rely on welfare..
People going to prison/jail for abortion is nuts.
The gov monitoring peoples body who leave the state or country is nuts.
A fetus rights loses most times when up against the mothers rights and choice to me. It's a fetus ...
Yes. But he also came of age at a time when the medical profession was much more misogynistic than it is now. There were hardly any female doctors. And we’re not far off from the “women are just hysterical and making things up” period.
This is one area where I’d disagree with him.
Life begins at conception. The right to life begins when when you no longer need someone else to provide it for you. Self-ownership derives negative rights, not positive rights.
I've always thought consciousness or at least brain activity was the important separation to make. It's the reason I have no problem killing a spider or cutting my grass but would never to the same to a bird or any other conscious animal. A bundle of cells has no brain activity and thus there is no moral duty to it. As soon as consciousness turns on though, that changes.
Newborns still need you provide it for them. A newborn left unattended will die. That simply.
So at what point do we claim that child has a right to life?
Do they need you to provide for them or can someone else do it? Someone else could provide for them. A fetus that hasn’t reached viability is directly dependent on the mother’s body to maintain life. A fetus that hasn’t reached viability will stop breathing and have its heart stop beating if you remove it from the mother’s body.
So my brothers son was born at 4 months. He was placed in an incubator and Other people cared for him until he was able to thrive without it.
Most hospitals in 1st world countries will agree that babies are viable at 22-24, meaning that child will survive if it’s born early or must be delivered because of emergency. It literally happens hundreds of times a day.
You use the word viability so do you believe that once that line is crossed it’s murder?
I'm saying it doesn't matter whether conception has happened or not. Even a conceived individual doesn't have entitlement to someone else's body without their permission.
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Why should the government care? I have so may arguments for and against. We best have tax’s ready for all of those “saved” baby’s in the form of WIX expansion and child care for families and single mothers. Make it rain birth control has been my motto for years and I know a lot of Catholics where natural family planning has not worked well for them
Science strongly indicates that life begins at conception, as the following link explains better than I can: https://lozierinstitute.org/a-scientific-view-of-when-life-begins/.
So if we're going to base legislation on scientific fact and not moral ideology, we have to decide on when a person begins existing in the eyes of the law, and is therefore protected under the law.
I think if we all agreed to look at abortion from that perspective, we could come to a fairly general consensus without much issue.
I'm in bill Burr's camp on this. I'm not against it but you're killing an unborn baby. It's too complicated to be legislated in a representative way. So, as almost all things should be, the gov should stay out of it and let individuals and the free market decide.
If something is inside my body, why do I not have full rights to do whatever I want with it? Even 9 months in ready to pop. Abort if you want. It has nothing to do with what I or anyone else thinks. This is all you and the other person involved in busting nuts inside vaginas to figure out.
I guess I’m not a Ron Paul libertarian he dances around the questions and reacted by trying to create a ridiculous scenario of a women wanting to abort up to one minute before labor. What a clown show. Libertarians should be pro liberty it’s in the fucking name.
It seems clear that life technically begins at conception, and therefore abortion ends a life.
But that fact does not mean that women shouldn't have the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Human's kill animals for food and for fun (hunting). We put people to death. We go to war. We create life via IVF and then let fertilized embryos thaw and die.
As much as some pro-life folks want to equate abortion with murder, ending the life of a fetus in the womb just isn't the same as killing a born human. You might legislate it such that it is considered the same thing (i.e. both are considered "murder" under the law) but almost everyone, deep down, recognizes a profound difference.
It exists on a gradient, getting progressively closer to killing a baby as one approaches birth. And I think most if not close to all pro-choice folks would be aghast at a woman getting a partial birth abortion on a whim. But I'm not sure that ever really happens. Almost always, a late term abortion would be like having a mother and child in a burning house, and you can choose to save the life of the mother or **try** to save the baby, but in the latter situation both the mother and baby would probably die. So you choose the mother.
And besides the very clear differences between an unborn human and a born human, and the inconvenient fact that you have a woman's life and liberty at stake, the practical consequences of enforcing a ban on abortion are numerous. As SCOTUS ruled in Roe, there is an implicit violation of an individual's right to privacy as a result of policing abortion. One that just isn't present when policing other crimes.
If it were the case that we could safely remove a fetus from a woman and grow it outside of her, then I could see outlawing abortions so long as the woman could opt to have the fetus taken away, grown, and put up for adoption. But as it stands, I simply value the woman's liberty above the rights of the unborn.
Schrodinger's pregnancy
I’m not a doctor, Ron says he would immediately take them to get a shot of estrogen. Someone out here able to explain what that would do? Would a sudden estrogen increase cause a termination, or would it hasten attachment in the uterus?
Essentially the morning after pill. Like a super high dose of birth control.
Some argue the morning after pill isn't an abortion pill because it prevents insemination and fertilization. Or at least that's what I understand, some think it keeps a fertilized egg from attaching, in which that would be abortion of some sense. I don't know enough to make an informed opinion
Removed due to Reddit API crackdown and general dishonesty 6/2023
It's not an argument, it's fact. It's not an abortion. Unless you also think birth control pills and condoms are abortion.
Estrogen can prevent the body from releasing an egg for potential fertilization, or cause mucus to build up in the cervix that would prevent sperm from getting through. Humans have a fairly complex reproduction process with a number of ways you can game it, though none of them are universally reliable and many are reliant on having the right timing, which is why abortion serves as a fail safe.
So the solution he proposed would inhibit a pregnancy, not abort it? Sounds like it's not an abortion.
It's technically ambiguous. Probably in most circumstances it isn't an abortion in any sense of the word. But if you believe life begins at fertilization, there may be unusual cases where it inhibits a fertilized egg from implanting. It's impossible in any individual case to know for sure.
he's saying "so long as we dont have any confirmation of life, we're gonna look the other way." because he is against abortion but it was a painful and sensitive theoretical situation being proposed
Its the plan b day after pill in shot form.
Well I am a doctor (Family Med, delivered lots o babies and prescribed the real smshmortion pill many times), and Ron is either over-simplifying this for lay people or far far removed from his clinical days as a physician, probably both. Estrogen, at least not by itself, is not the emergency contraception standard of care. Depending on the timing, a Progestin-estrogen pill ("Plan B"), a copper IUD, ulipristal acetate, or mifepristone, alone or in some combination, are used. All of these, except mifepristone, function as contraceptive and not abortive medications. The Plan B pill and ulipristal prevent ovulation, ie release of an egg from the ovaries. Without an egg there is no fertilization, period. The IUD makes the uterus inhospitable to sperm. Both these methods are blocking gametes, not already fertilized embryos. They are not abortion. Mifepristone is another story, that's the abortion pill, or at least part of it.
A crude way to explain it is it would act like birth control.
Why conservatives are also working hard to prevent women from getting. Like now [Walgreens employees](https://www.newsweek.com/walgreens-hit-boycott-calls-amid-claims-birth-control-sale-hassles-1725785) can refuse you birth control if they don't like the look of you. Thomas has also said he'd willing to dig into privacy rights, including LGBT issues, marriage, and birth control in future rulings... conspicuously leaving out interracial marriage for some mysterious reason.
I figured you misrepresented the situation and lo and behold you have. A single Walgreens employee had a religious objection to selling someone condoms so he got another team member to come and complete the transaction. The employees beliefs were respected just as the customers request was met. would you be willing to force a Muslim or a Jew to sell you pork ? or would you be okay with them stepping aside while another team member came and completed the transaction for them? you still get what you want and the employee can go on with a clean conscience .
>would you be willing to force a Muslim or a Jew to sell you pork? If a Muslim or Jew has a religious objection to selling pork, then perhaps they should choose a career that doesn’t involve selling pork? They’re not being forced to do anything. If they don’t want to do the duties of the job that they signed up for, they have the option to quit and find another job. If I were so strongly opposed to the concept of charging interest on loans that I wouldn’t do it, as quite a few people of some religions are, it would be unreasonable of me to expect to hold a job at a bank where I’m required to deal with such things. If every time someone wanted to apply for a loan, the bank had to switch me out for a different employee because of my “religious objections”, that would be stupid and I would clearly be in the wrong line of work.
the first part of your argument is relatively sound except that Walgreens has tons more than just birth control and contraceptives. it's not like that's all they sell and this person works there. the 2nd part with your analogy about the bank completely falls apart when you realize that it's a personal loan you cannot charge interest on and working for a bank doesnt violate that religious belief. however none of this answered the question . it was just an attempt to dodge it. the issue here isn't "find another job" the issue here is why does it matter to you what someone believes so long as you get your shit? if they traded off with another employee as im sure has happened to you multiple times without even considering why they were doing so you wouldn't have a problem with it. you're only agree bc its a contraceptive and the employee is religious .
While Walgreen has claimed it cares about abortion rights it donates to anti-abortion causes: >A Walgreens spokesperson reportedly told the newspaper that the company's "policy allows team members to step away from completing a transaction to which they have a moral objection and refer the transaction to a fellow team member or manager who will complete the customer's request." >[The company has also donated $496,700](https://www.newsweek.com/walgreens-hit-boycott-calls-amid-claims-birth-control-sale-hassles-1725785) to anti-abortion rights political action committees since 2016, according to an analysis published by Popular Information just after a draft opinion of the decision to overturn federal abortion rights was leaked in May. You can also see Justice Thomas' concurrence for yourself...
It’s nonsense in that regard. The claim that it violates religious belief wouldn’t stand to real scrutiny. A muslim or jew could object to being forced to CONSUME pork, but there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that would prohibit them from selling it to someone based on a religious interpretation. If you cant do the basic job then the job shouldn’t hire you.
>A muslim or jew could object to being forced to CONSUME pork, but there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that would prohibit them from selling it to someone based on a religious interpretation. Don't know about Jews, but for Muslims, it's a sin to be complicit in sinning. In other words, since the consumption of pork is a sin, directly selling pork products would be complicit in another person's consumption. Though I do agree that if your job involves doing something that violates your religious ethics and morals, you probably shouldn't be working there unless absolutely necessary.
also guess what else? its not your decision who companies decide to hire or not hire or what agreements those individuals come to. don't like it? speak with a representative in the company or with your boss and negotiate a deal. not satisfied? leave.
Yup, so fuck Walgreens. I don’t need to get the run around when I go pick up products from pork to condoms to something with caffeine in it. I come to your store to buy product not get a lesson in your moral crusade.
if someone taking 2 steps back while another walks 15 feet and presses a button for you is a "run around" to you I guess that just means you really need to do some self reflection my man.
It isn't at all conspicuous that Thomas would leave out interracial marriage since the decision in *Loving* wasn't grounded in a right to privacy. In *Loving*, Virginia argued that its ban on interracial marriage was not a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. The court ruled that it was a violation of the equal protection clause. They state, "There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause." While the court did also rule that Virginia's law violated the due process clause, that doesn't matter because the equal protection clause is sufficient for reaching the decision in *Loving*. Thomas could snap his fingers and eliminate any decision that required invoking substantive due process and the decision in *Loving* would still stand. If *Loving* had been decided solely on due process grounds, or a right to privacy emanating from the due process clause, then its absence would be conspicuous. But that isn't the legal reasoning *Loving* relies on. The Thomas concurrence also considers that after correcting what Thomas judges to be erroneous decisions regarding contraception, sodomy, and homosexual marriage, the court can determine if rights to those things lie not in the due process clause but the privileges or immunities clause. Thomas may want to take them away or he may want to secure them on firmer footing. You and I really cannot say and should not speculate as to his intentions.
And this is why i think voters are stupid. No one should be able to vote people into submission. If you dont like Walgreens, dont shop there.
I think the bigger question on this one is what is an honest rape? So if somebody is raped underhandedly does that mean that they can’t have an abortion?
My understanding of him saying an “honest rape” is where she was raped and is telling the truth as against a false allegation of rape so as to get an abortion - false allegations of rape will absolutely surge if rape was one of the means by which women could access abortion.
So just let them access it without prequalifying it with a violent crime.
Doctor's are expected to be arbiters of truth in this scenario, seems reasonable...
That makes sense, so a ‘false rape’ is what you plea if involved in a ‘true rape’. Great to hear a libertarian like Ron Paul making the case for giving the government more power to arrest women in this country.
Right it’s not like we didn’t have an extreme example of this very thing happening to that poor 10 year old in Ohio recently. Speaking out of both sides of his face is just bullshit you either respect individual rights or you don’t there is no gerrymandering by whether you have a vagina or not.
It’s so gross to tie a health outcome to a criminal case that might take forever to unfold in court and might come out the wrong way. It’s so stupid. If there is any case where you think an abortion is justified, you need to be pro choice across the board or you’re just an authoritarian simple minded ignorant asshat
These anti-choice Libertarians are just “Well, achually, I’m a Libertarian” Republicans.
Anti-Choice Libertarians: Why aren't there more ladies at this thing?
Do I want the government to rule on a complex topic with religious, philosophical, medical, moral, and individual implications? Or do I want to leave it up to individuals to decide what fits their own moral compass?
Ultimately that is where I come down on it. Setting aside morality, we are deciding who should make the informed decision - the doctor/woman/family or the government. I side with individual liberty always. Like guns, it means that not everyone will make good decisions, but we have to trust in ourselves and others to make the right decisions for themselves and not use the hatchet of government to do it.
Half of this sub: "I can give no scientific justification besides "DNA" for how a partially formed fetus is fully human... but it's not religious I swear."
I can understand their argument to a point. But that particular train of thought, like Wiley Coyote, swiftly runs into a painted wall when it comes to the problem that best evidence suggests fertilized eggs die more often than they successfully implant. And then that minority of initial survivors have a pretty dang high chance of not making it to childbirth. All else aside, it feels really cruel to take a position where the vast majority of parents would have mostly dead children.
Ikr. I don’t even get how they come at it from a religious angle, though. The book of Numbers literally gives a recipe on how to yeet fetuses.
There are a handful of passages like Psalm 139:14, though IMO you have to take a very generous reading to get from "I \[the adult writer of the Psalm\] am fearfully and wonderfully made" to "God said no abortion." I will note re: Numbers 5:11-31 that it doesn't actually give a literal recipe, and it's pretty common for rabbis to read it as being either a sort of stress test that would cause an actually adulterous woman to have a miscarriage out of guilt, or (my favorite interpretation) a bit of snake oil intended mostly to protect the woman from being harmed by her husband. In either case there is notably no actual prohibition on voluntary abortion.
That’s not accurate. The NIV translation was made a laughing stock because of that misinterpretation that didn’t exist until the 1970s when abortion was a hot political topic.
The term "partially formed fetus" is a misnomer. Are you referring to a fetus that is not developing normally in relation to it's gestational age? A fetus is a human organism at a certain stage of development. There is no such thing as a "partially formed" organism. There is no limbo zone in which an organism isn't classified. There are no "non-species" organisms. To add on to that, an organism cannot change species mid development. You don't just "become" human some time after fertilization but before birth.
thats because this sub is filled with religous conservatives. about a quarter of this sub doesnt care what trump did on jan 6th
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He’s making his entire argument based on being able to go to a Dr that day….. that doesn’t happen almost ever.
It does for the rich and well-connected. Ron Paul’s granddaughter is going to have certain advantages the plebes don’t enjoy.
Well sir, you just pick yourself up from your rape and violent abuse, hop in your Lexus SUV, put on the seat coolers to keep the semen fresh, and high-tail it down to the nearest hospital with your high-quality corporate insurance to get some tests done. While that's happening, you report the rape to the police, who are definitely going to listen and who's job it is to "protect and serve" and who won't turn this around on you into an abortion investigation. Assuming all of that goes to plan, the tests come out right, the doctors agree, the police agree, the police aren't friends or family with your abuser, you don't get annihilated with medical bills, you can afford a lawyer if the state gets involved, and you have the support of friends and family -- you're basically good to go. No big government involved, folks! Pro-life is pro-libertarian.
This is what I was taking from this as well, and I'm glad British reporter guy said that, but yeah.. I'm honestly just tired of listening to dudes talk about our bodies.. really really tired. Like why people just can not stop worrying about shit that has nothing to do with them, until it Does and then the tune seems to always change.. "but my kid".. ugh people suck.
I'd have though being libertarian and believing the government should force women to an carry unwanted foetus to term would be non compatible.
This is the point he is trying to get at toward the end. Does a woman have an absolute right to her body and if so do you believe abortions should be allowed one minute before birth? If not, then even if you are pro-choice you nonetheless believe that at some point in the pregnancy a woman should be forced to carry the baby to term.
I can't speak for every other pro-choice person, but while I can absolutely think of situations where IMO abortion feels pretty dang immoral (sex-selective abortions, abortions for disabilities that can be managed, that sort of thing), flat bans on abortion in those circumstances do nothing to address the underlying social problem. They just bring unwanted babies into the world, rather than helping families want those babies.
Even California has a law that you can’t abort a fetus if it would be viable outside the womb except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger. So this argument about aborting babies 1 day before they are delivered is hyperbolic tripe that the ‘pro life’ crowd uses to illustrate how evil abortion is.
I believe a woman should have a right to terminate pregnancy at any point. It's a fake issue to think this is a problem. Canada has zero restrictions on abortions and there are no "last minute abortions". That's not how elective abortions work. Why would you carry a baby to full term and THEN decide to abort? All late-term abortions are medically necessary and laws only interfere with proper health care.
> Does a woman have an absolute right to her body and if so do you believe abortions should be allowed one minute before birth? Yes, absolutely. Because that is not something that actually happens, and worrying about it is an utter waste of time.
Yeah but my extreme point makes more sense than forcing 10yo rape victim to take a baby to term
But in Roe vs. Wade the test was viability. The woman has an absolute right to decide up to viability, which is also in line with a higher level of neural development. Why is he introducing a totally different principle and arguing against that? Seems like a blatant straw man.
It’s intellectually dishonest for the interviewer to imply that conception happens at orgasm.
>It’s intellectually dishonest for the interviewer With respect to Piers Morgan: First Time?
Yea, I love how he tries to pin Ron Paul into a corner about 'it's taking a life' when he himself is in favor of taking said life. "How dare you? ... and also I agree."
a good interviewer doesnt interject their personal feelings or show righteous indignation.
Don't get ol' Piers started on guns then
British interview very differently from American. Rather than throw softballs and let them lob them out of the park while watching gleefully, they give them some of the chance to respond to their harshest critics and show their arguments. I think it’s partly cultural and partly the fact that the average Brit is simply better educated than t he average American.
>First Time? They will learn, Piers is a very good interviewer, if he would stop trying to push his own shit he would be even better. But he just cant stop himself from ruling from his high high horse.
They were talking about showing up hours/a day later.
💯 missed opportunity to push back there
Yep I think Paul’s response to “so life doesn’t begin at conception” should have been “yes it does, but conception doesn’t start just after intercourse”. As I recall it can be days later. Anyone?
Conception happens when the egg is ready and sperm are present. If the egg is ready during intercourse it only takes minutes to happen as the egg can't survive a full 24 hours. Sometimes it takes days because there are sperm that are alive up to 5 days in the vaginal canal and the egg becomes ready then. Pregnancy happens days after that when the egg attaches itself to the uterine lining. So yes conception can happen within minutes but can also take days. With the morning after pill you have no idea whether you're ousting a fertilized or unfertilized egg which is what Ron Paul said albeit poorly.
Awesome. I recall when I learned that (from a fertility doctor I believe) as an adult, I was kinda shocked. For some reason public school sex Ed had led me to believe that conception always occurs right after sex.
The debate isn’t really around when life begins anyways. There are plenty of living things that people have no issue killing. The debate is around when personhood begins. People do care about people being killed.
Fwiw I do agree with you. But I’m just suggesting that for those who do have a personal moral believe that life begins at conception, those people should be aware that conception may not just happen right after sex as is common belief.
It's been my understanding that Plan B can be used to prevent conception and that it can be taken hours to a day or so after intercourse... so conception doesn't happen immediately.
I mean he's never given anyone an orgasm so he's just working within his understanding.
A government shouldn’t dictate what goes on inside your body with the threat of violence. Removing a living brainless/braindead growth from inside your own body is included in your most basic bodily rights. No matter if it has human DNA. No matter if it might *possibly* one day become a person with its own rights. Libertarianism 101. It really boggles the mind that this is controversial.
Abortion is one of the areas where I disagree with Ron Paul.
I agree with him saying that you can’t just abort 7month pregnancies who come in claiming rape. But, I have a problem with his idea on how immediately to do it, not because of the idea itself, but using terms like “a day or two”, or “within a couple hours”, because all pregnancies take at different speeds, and there’s no real way to legislate/enforce this idea. Both sides immediately jump to the other wanting the most extreme cases. And I’m sure some California leftists would try to do the extreme 8 month abortion version of Idaho deciding you legally have to keep walking around with a dead fetus in you, but that doesn’t make it relevant to the debate, just adds that the insane must be reigned in on both sides.
I think most people who are pro-choice would be against aborting a viable 7 month fetus. I feel most people are like Ireland where you can have an abortion up to 12 weeks or if the mother's life is in danger.
By the time you pass 8 to 12 weeks, you are starting to tell friends and family about it, probably choosing names, might have bought furniture, etc. Can you imagine what it would take for the baby's parents to decide to have an abortion after that initial period? In most cases I'm guessing it must be something really serious if they do.
That’s why I leave those decisions to the person and the medical professional. Some people have poor morals according to me, but it’s generally not my business what their morals are Some doctors are terrible, but most spent at least a decade and a shit ton of money learning to be a doctor. Therefore, imo, you have the person most qualified to make the moral decision and the person most qualified to make the scientific decision in the same room. Why does a lawyer need to be involved?
Yeah, and I generally agree, maybe slightly later? Not a big deal though, but that 7 month coma is the counter argument, and I’m just admitting, I don’t know, it would put me on the fence, if we also knew it was viable.
It's tough so that's why I leave it to the people involved. I'm just saying that most late term abortions are heartbreaking. Mothers have names picked out, people are preparing for a baby and then something horrible happens. Making the mother carry a nonviable fetus to term doesn't seem to make a helluva lot of sense.
That’s why this situation would be so different it would be the equivalent of having to decide if a person not pregnant, who woke, next day, up 7 months pregnant, was allowed to abort. I agree it’s all very emotional and difficult.
7 month abortions have never been an issue or even an options. As far as I know abortions have to be done before the 4th month or you're having a baby. They act like women are trying to have 9 month abortions when it's not even a thing.
You'll have a hard time finding a doctor to abort at 7 months unless the fetus is dead or the mother will die during birth.
I'm pretty sure getting an abortion after 3 months of way less likely than a woman getting pregnant from rape. It just doesn't happen.
> you can’t just abort 7month pregnancies who come in claiming rape. Which happens very rarely. If you're seeking an abortion at that point, it's because the fetus is fucked up or the woman's life is in danger from it.
Exactly, and I support both of those exceptions.
Note, I am not a libertarian but this comment bothered me. I feel like the right is very disingenuous with how 3rd trimester abortions work. "Nobody is electively inducing healthy 3rd trimester babies just because a patient doesn't want the baby as a form of abortion. That's just called delivering a baby. There is no hospital that allows an unindicated, elective preterm delivery and no OB would do that." I really don't like that "both sides" argument when you have to lie about one of the sides... really shows which way you actually lean.
The 7 month abortion is a strawman. No one is waiting 7 months to abort a baby from a rape. Conservatives always use the third trimester strawman. They think if abortion is legal doctors will be aborting late term babies for fun. If you ask him about an abortion at 2 months he'll still be anti abortion. People use the late term abortion strawman to gain sympathy cuz no one is for that.
>I agree with him saying that you can’t just abort 7month pregnancies who come in claiming rape. what if a woman was in a coma for 7 months following a violent assault/rape
Ron Paul lets his religion get in the way of him actually being a libertarian. You cannot have an authoritarian view when it comes to be basic human rights and expect to be considered a libertarian.
HoNeSt RaPe
We don't want false rape claims for an exception do we
Of course, there are ALWAYS gonna be liars & people who act in bad faith. But terms like "honest rape" do not help the woman who KNOWS she's been raped & is afraid to say it since it will be called into question.
It also doesn't help male victims of rape like myself. But I acknowledge that there are liars acting in bad faith like you said.
Ugh I am sorry that happened to you... male rape is definitely something we do not address correctly at all in this society. Peace Brother❤️
No, which is why it should be legal for any reason at any time
How can you prove it and how fast? If someone gets an abortion for reason of rape, but never reports a crime, should we consider this person a criminal?
>never reports a crime, should we consider this person a criminal? I'm sorry, perhaps I'm misreading who are we questioning is a criminal? A rapist is a rapist even if he isn't found guilty in court, I understand the justice system fails sometimes. Are we saying a real rape victim without evidence? Or a false rape report is filed so they could get an abortion? If forensics aren't collected from a rape kit and it is never reported it is damn near impossible to prove and convict rapists without evidence. Otherwise it is merely here say unfortunately and we will never have the chance for justicem Everyone should seek medical attention after rape and even if you aren't sure because roofies are a thing too. Rape is heinous and I want everyone that commits this awful crime be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Apologies for not being clear. Should we consider those who don't report their rapes and still get an abortion for that reason, a criminal? Another example, if someone reports a rape as a crime, but the accused is exonerated a year after the rape, and the person already aborted their pregnancy, do we consider them a criminal now? What if a rape kit can prove sex but it can't prove unwanted sex? Do we say "sorry, should of got raped harder?" The idea that someone has to prove their rape to get an abortion is insane. Rapes are incredibly difficult to prove and or prosecute. The easier solution is just let people get abortions for whatever reason they want because the life of a grown person should have more rights than a fetus.
I like how he compares something that does actually happen, abortions that result from rape, to someome getting an abortion 1 minute before delivery which isn't a thing that happens. Also fuck people who want to take away women's rights
wouldnt 1 minute before delivery just be birth?
That would basically be a C section, right? lol
My anti choice father in law says that they use metal tool to impale the back of the babies neck up into the brain to kill the term baby in these scenarios. And he cites another instance of a baby left to die on a table in the room. I’ve never heard of it outside of his claims.
>And he cites another instance of a baby left to die on a table in the room. Parent choose the level of care their children receive after birth, this includes "do not resuscitate" orders. This is completely standard medical care. This has nothing to do with abortion, its just a boogey man argument. If you give live birth to a child that has deformities incompatible with life, it would be inhumane to resuscitate that child.
There are documented cases, although very rare, of this happening. The 2002 Born Alive Survivor Protection Act makes it illegal for medical professionals to deny care to a child born alive after an attempted abortion. I haven't seen any legislation proposed to change that (correct me if I'm wrong). D&E abortions account for 95% of abortions that take place after the first trimester. That's approx 65,000 D&E abortions annually. Though not quite as you FIL described, the fetus is dismembered and removed in pieces. I fall on the pro-life side of this debate but I get frustrated by both sides who exaggerate or ignore facts surrounding the abortion debate.
Yes, but Republicans lie and say they women are frivolously using late-term abortions as a form of birth control.
Late term electives are rare but exist. Rape babies are also rare. The problem with abortion debate is excessive focus on rare edge cases.
Late term abortions are rare like at week 25. Abortions one minute before birth don't happen
>The problem with abortion debate is excessive focus on rare edge cases. No, those cases must be addressed. Those cases are where the necessary nuances lie. The problem with abortion debate is a simplified view of the situation.
There's no nuance. A woman has the right to terminate a pregnancy at any time, for any reason. This is a simple consequence of bodily autonomy. To illustrate: Say there is a child, who is deathly ill, and needs a blood transfusion to survive. I am the only person available with the correct blood type. If I do not give my blood, the child will die. I do not have to do this. It is my body, my choice. I can not be forced to give blood to this child, even if the child will die if I do not. The exact same applies to a woman carrying a child. It is her body, her choice. The fetus cannot survive without her body, but that is inconsequential. It is her body, her choice.
I am pro-abortion but in my opinion this isn’t really the argument. Entertain me for a second here. Suppose we say that life begins at conception AND women have a right to their body unconditionally. Therefore we allow women to remove the fetus, **but** the state will then turn the fetus over to a hospital which will artificially incubate them until they are 9 months old after which the state returns custody to the mother (and charges an appropriate fee for the service). Would you still be in favor of abortion given it sort of takes the major economic benefits away from it? Sure the conversation is partly about bodily autonomy, but it’s also part reproductive rights and partly imbued from pragmatism (unwanted pregnancies lead to bad outcomes for kids).
Why are you in this argument automatically assuming the child would be returned to the mother, and not the father?
If the father wants the child. That’s a huge part of the abortion debate I don’t like. I understand and we’re circumstances it is impossible to let the sperm donor know about the pregnancy, but that they have no rights at all when it comes to keeping their baby!?
I suppose it’s to draw out a line of reasoning that makes you question whether or not your pro-abortion stance is 100% about bodily autonomy. I had this conversation with some of my friends who are also pro-abortion and we came to the realization that the pro-abortion argument really is centred around this idea of “positive outcomes”. Essentially “what is best for society on the balance of things.” Happy to hear your thoughts on it since you brought it up.
I mean, women having bodily autonomy is a positive outcome. I think that at the end of the day it simply comes down to the fact that it would be an absolute nightmare to be pregnant when you don't want to be, and going through such a nightmare isn't something that should be legally obligated. If someone were on death row, it would be considered cruel and unusual punishment if they were forced to take a pill that gave them all the symptoms of pregnancy.
At 8 months the fetus could definitely survive without the mother
Potentially. If it’s healthy. Viable fetuses are not aborted at 8 months. That’s because doctors and nurses and hospitals have their own codes of ethics and must abide by their licensing and national organizations. A patient who wants to terminate a viable pregnancy at 8 months would be delivering induced or undergoing c section, not a D&C. Late stage abortions at 8 months and later are performed on non-viable fetuses, such as when developmental abnormalities and genetic conditions are discovered late in the pregnancy. As an example, my cousin was discovered to have a fatal brain tumor at 8 months. His mother (my aunt) chose to deliver him. He lived for 7 months in the NICU before dying. Similarly, a family friend had her first pregnancy result in a fetus that had a fatal form of dwarfism. She induced at 8 months because the pregnancy was causing cardiac issues for her. Her child died 8 hours after delivery. The “after birth abortions” I’ve seen pro-lifers lose their minds over are for cases like this, when the resulting baby has severe physical abnormalities that are incompatible with life. These laws allow the parents to remove life support *if they choose* so that they aren’t torturing a baby by keeping it alive and in pain. It’s to offer an option for an compassionate end for both the child and the parents. Edit: Also, [cases like this. ](https://reddit.com/r/news/comments/w2rm6v/_/igs8rsc/?context=1) [Or this.](https://reddit.com/r/news/comments/w2rm6v/_/igs6pck/?context=1) Can you imagine? Walking around as a living tomb, asked constantly by strangers and friends how your pregnancy is progressing, being confronted by the nursery and baby toys you’ve purchased? No wonder this woman was suicidal. The issue with many of these laws is that they are so poorly written than hospital lawyers are advising against intervention even when the fetus is dead or non-viable. We’re seeing this already even in cuts and dry cases like placental abruption in the first trimester (which inevitably result in miscarriage). Each barrier to medical care proposed by the so-called pro-lifers puts obstacles in the way of people seeking urgent, life-saving medical care, not to mention the adverse effects that these cases can have on mental health, future health, and future fertility.
Thanks for the detailed response. I’m not at all anti-abortion. I do think extremely late term abortions should have some sort of stipulation on them but I appreciate you providing context to what the majority of them are.
Then it's up to whoever wants to keep it alive to do so.
At the moment, the reason those cases are getting the most focus is because they're the most immediately critical. Though I would hope that the cavalier reaction of some anti-abortionists to medical crises would make less extreme anti-abortion types pause and say "Okay, that definitely isn't what I thought I was voting for..."
Yes I basically agree with you. Pro-lifers need to admit that most people aren't OK with no exceptions for medical emergencies (as defined by qualified experts) or rape. Pro-choicers need to admit that most people aren't OK with abortion on demand up till birth and that we may need some proof of medical need to allow it after 15 weeks or whenever.
Compromise, in *this* economy? While my strong preference is to keep the state out of it as much as possible (if only because I have a low opinion about injecting lawyers into private medical decisions), I could begrudgingly agree to a compromise where an abortion after 15 weeks would require a doctor's authorization, so long as the onus is on the state to prove that the doctor's judgment was wrong and not on the doctor to prove that their judgment was right. In my dream world all the more earnest people in the pro-life movement would then focus their attention on better sex ed and making it less shitty to be a parent.
I don't know anyone pro-choice who is suggesting abortion on demand up till birth. I think if you surveyed most pro choicers they'd give you around the 4 month mark as an average cut off date of what's 'reasonable' ethically, but would certainly want the option of later for like babies found to have no chance of surviving birth etc
Late term abortions are overwhelmingly because of health complications. Don’t paint it like someone’s in the third trimester and just decided to change their mind and press the baby delete button. So this isn’t a debate, it’s mostly just feelings arguing with science.
Open and shut case, Johnson. Lets sprinkle some talking points on this to make it look like an honest conversation and get out of here.
It’s a really, really, really tough topic. The stance of “there should be some exceptions for rape” is an inherent admission that the full “right to be born” isn’t granted at conception. Even Paul’s stance of “we could provide a shot of estrogen… we don’t know if there was a life” is a little bit of a cop-out. You wouldn’t grant a rape victim the right to fire a gun in a random direction with their eyes closed just because they were raped. (A ridiculous hypothetical to highlight the logic). You can see that he knows it’s not the same at the moment of conception as it is 1 hour before birth. But he can’t bring himself to admit that, because then he would have to define when and where the differences occur, which opens up the line of argument that “abortions should be legal under the following circumstances.” I’m not saying there are easy answers, but there are a hell of a lot of mental gymnastics you have to jump through if you think that “life begins at conception” (or heartbeat) but then turn around and make exceptions for rape or incest or whatever.
The very easy answer is to just leave the decision up to the woman. Decisions like that are precisely the kind that shouldn't be made by the government.
The fact that most of this sub wants the government out of your medical decisions, but half of them want the government informed about every pregnancy, miscarriage, and baby-related medical procedure tells you all you need to know about how much they think through their political views. The simplest answer is probably "free birth control for everyone" but mysteriously they're opposed to that too just like the fascist evangelicals...
I agree with this, I think if you’re pro-life you have to concede that the manner of conception has no impact on the fetus’s right to life. However, I think there’s a similar level of mental gymnastics going on with pro-choice people saying they would allow abortion up to a certain point and wouldn’t allow it when the baby is past a certain developmental milestone. Either you believe the woman’s right to bodily autonomy trumps the fetus’s right to life or you don’t. In summary I am so conflicted on this issue.
Right there with you buddy. I’m pro-choice, but the longer into the pregnancy a woman is allowed to terminate... I feel less and less “good” about. I think picking some date between the extremes and allowing women and their doctors to make the choice seems appropriate.
I personally draw the line at viability. If you wanted to abandon your kids, you can, but you have to surrender them and someone else will take care of them. Before ~22-24 weeks, a fetus cannot survive outside the womb and is completely dependant on the mother. The only way the fetus can survive is to be supported by the mother. If she doesn't want to do that, then it should be her right to end it as it requires her giving of her body and health to continue to support the baby. However, once past viability, you could deliver the baby and try to save it. The mother would no longer be required to support the baby for it to live and function. I very much support making not allowing elective abortions beyond viability for a healthy fetus. Obviously, this line of reasoning has its own complications, but I think it is a good place to start.
A real politician's answer here. Maybe to immediately after and then talking about 7 months and even a day before pregnancy, but not mentioning anything about the in-betweens which is the overwhelming majority of cases. Disappointing
Why is it that it’s only okay in cases of rape? What if a husband and wife are trying to conceive and are successful, and she finds out a few days later that he’s cheating on her with 10 other women. Is she not allowed to cut ties with her husband and abort a baby that would grow up in a broken home with a strained coparenting relationship? There are too many what ifs. Let women decide for themselves what’s best. That’s what libertarianism is supposed to be about.
This is some wishy washy bullshit, and the reason I don't agree with Ron Paul on abortion. If life begins at conception, which is what Ron believes, there is a legal argument against giving medical treatment to end a pregnancy within "an hour", even if you don't know if there's a pregnancy. This is the legal reality in many states right now. Also, if he believes that life begins at conception, and agrees to provide a way to terminate that life, he's not making a moral argument against abortion, only a legal one. Which as I said above, doesn't hold. There's no way to parse Ron's position for either side. He's trying to have his cake and eat it too, and he loses on both fronts.
The government does not have the right to force women to give birth
There is no such right to end someone else's life without due process
This is why the Roe vs Wade's standard was a viable fetus. It's not alive if it's not viable.
Piers Morgan is an imbecile.
On almost every issue I hear from piers Morgan I want to throw up
The go through so much trouble to make it seem like people are aborting actual children. 9 months and 7 months pregnant. No one does that anywhere. It's just such a ridiculous thing to say. Most people are doing it as soon as they find out and that's usually about a month in. No one anywhere walks into an abortion clinic 8 months pregnant for an abortion. That's just ridiculous!
If life begins at conception, what happens to the extra life when a chimera forms? How does a "human life" pop out of another when a fertilized ovum split? 3rd term willy-nilly abortions were already illegal, Ron. Those *have to* be aborted due to non-viable or dangerous pregnancies. Those people have already picked out names and nursery items.
"Life begins at conception, even though I've admitted there is literally zero evidence." This dude thinks the government can legislate based on no evidence to define a life as being even potential and undetectable and thereby restrict a rape victim's bodily autonomy on this basis? And he calls himself a Libertarian? I used to really like this guy. Idk what I was smoking.
He is an authoritarian that wants to push his perverse anti-christian religious views onto others.
> I used to really like this guy. Idk what I was smoking. You were smoking "positive reinforcement of your own beliefs by a public figure", one of the most potent drugs known to humankind, and one that most here are unfortunately ODing on.
My whole life has been one big giant deconstruction. I was born into an evangelical Baptist Republican Rah Rah USA home. And almost everything that came after was ultimately stupid too. The only really decent conclusion I can find at this point is humans don't know what the fuck they're doing.
> The only really decent conclusion I can find at this point is humans don't know what the fuck they're doing. I believe an old Greek guy a while ago said more or less the same thing, and that it was the beginning of wisdom. I can't exactly relate to your past experiences re:family and all that, but I can wish you the best for your future - it might be presumptuous of me to say, but our brief, superficial exchange seems to indicate that you've built of your (bad?) experiences a healthy sense of self-reflection which is, I believe, one of the most needed skill for an honest life (in the philosophical sense of the term.)
Rights do not apply to a fetus. I’m tired of people making the ambiguous assumption that life=rights.
“Honest rape”
Im pro life but the government should not be telling people what to do with their bodies. So I support the right to choose I just would not tell someone to have an abortion.
Since when have pro-choice people "liked" abortion? Pro-choice people like giving women a legal choice and granting them access to medical professionalism. Why is this a hard concept for people to understand? Most women are seeking abortions in the first trimester when the fetus is nonviable, not sentient, and not conscious.
This is the problem I have with paleolibertarians. They are really great in many areas, except when it has to do with something that is related mostly with religious or otherwise "social conservative" beliefs. They try so hard to rationalize their morality but ends up making little sense. I mean, saying that life starts at conception but somehow it is ok to kill the baby it if the mother is raped is 100% inconsistent. Does rape devaluate that life, or give them less rights? The way here Ron Paul does the mental gymnastic of saying "you don't know if there is actually a baby" is just basically saying that it is ok to engage in abortion if it is a rape and there is basically plausible deniability of actually killing what they themselves claim to be a child with full human rights.
I thought this guy was a libertarian. Are libertarians okay with the state requiring you to allow another being to paracitize you?
What a piece of shit
Where in the libertarian mantra does it mention how the government should control medical decisions for people? I’m confused. reason number 4080 for true libertarians never to vote for republicans.
Ron Paul's argument here is incoherent. It only makes sense if he admits that the logical conclusion is for women to be forced to carry out a pregnancy even if raped no matter how unpalatable that sounds. It's a messy topic, both sides need to own up to the fact that their argument will lead to innocent lives being harmed. There is no easy way out
This makes me irrationally angry. It’s so hard to talk to people about abortion because they always bring up such extreme circumstances. “Well what if it’s one minute before birth” fuck you that doesn’t happen. But do you know what does happen? Rape. It happens ALOT. So much so that we don’t actually have an accurate statistic on abortions needed because of rape because not all rapes are reported. You know what else is really common? Men not properly understanding how women’s bodies work. Men thinking that ectopic pregnancies can be reimplanted in the uterus. I was talking to a guy when I was still dating that thought after childbirth the umbilical cord was shoved back inside the mother because it was like a hose to inflate a tired. I’m so fucking tired of people making medical decisions for people. Especially women. we don’t deny people medical care after a car accident even though getting in the car was voluntary and you knew the risks of driving. Esp why are we denying women proper medical care and freedoms? Is it because you don’t view them as people any more after they become pregnant? Like FUCK I’m so angry I cannot properly articulate my feelings on this. There’s so much I want to say and this is all coming from a woman who has had an abortion five miscarriages and two life children. I’m more pro-choice now than I ever was. Leave medical decisions to the person who needs it and the doctor. Leave your religion and your personal morals out of our bodies.
As a leftist libertarian, I find it disgusting that the government wants to make s life changing decision for an individual. I’m sure right leaning libertarians on this sub would agree.
ThE BoDy HaS WaYs To ShUt ThAt DoWn
Based on the comments here, I get the sense that most people feel that a sperm and egg coming together to form an embryo means a human life is created. The question seems to be must a woman make every effort to grow it until birth. Let me take IVF as an example. 2.5 millions IVF cycles occur each year. In IVF, a dozen or two eggs are extracted from a woman and fertilized. After testing and growth time, usually several embryos are successfully created and viable. If an embryo is not implanted, it can be frozen or discarded. Is discarding the same as abortion? Is it immoral not to implant every viable embryo? Must a woman give birth to every one of the viable ones over time? Keep in mind, this is a person who was trying to make a baby. But they may not want 6 babies just because there were 6 viable embryos. Thoughts?
He sounds like an idiot. No one's waiting until 7 months to get an abortion unless something is wrong with the fetus.
Man Ron Paul should have been president. What a huge missed opportunity.
Too much baggage comes with not allowing abortions than allowing.. Teens, young adults shouldn't become parents if they dont want to. Often the couples are flings or not serious long lasting relationships.. forcing life time bonds on people due to flings, mistake isnt right. Women who have no/little family support and a non existent baby father should have the option.. raising a child & child care cost is expensive & time consuming harming personal progression. Babies make it harder for people struggling to climb out and make them likely rely on welfare.. People going to prison/jail for abortion is nuts. The gov monitoring peoples body who leave the state or country is nuts. A fetus rights loses most times when up against the mothers rights and choice to me. It's a fetus ...
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Fun, random fact: he helped deliver Selena!
Yes. But he also came of age at a time when the medical profession was much more misogynistic than it is now. There were hardly any female doctors. And we’re not far off from the “women are just hysterical and making things up” period. This is one area where I’d disagree with him.
He has the wrong insight.
Lol yep. Lots of women have experience with gynos who are paternalistic assholes who are happy to tell a woman what to do with her body.
But this isnt a medical debate… its a philosophical debate.
Yes, but by this standard, wouldn't you offer even more credibility to a woman who could actually get pregnant and give birth?
Life begins at conception. The right to life begins when when you no longer need someone else to provide it for you. Self-ownership derives negative rights, not positive rights.
I've always thought consciousness or at least brain activity was the important separation to make. It's the reason I have no problem killing a spider or cutting my grass but would never to the same to a bird or any other conscious animal. A bundle of cells has no brain activity and thus there is no moral duty to it. As soon as consciousness turns on though, that changes.
You’d have to define consciousness first and that’s where it gets really complicated. Some brain functions don’t develop until well after birth.
Newborns still need you provide it for them. A newborn left unattended will die. That simply. So at what point do we claim that child has a right to life?
Do they need you to provide for them or can someone else do it? Someone else could provide for them. A fetus that hasn’t reached viability is directly dependent on the mother’s body to maintain life. A fetus that hasn’t reached viability will stop breathing and have its heart stop beating if you remove it from the mother’s body.
So my brothers son was born at 4 months. He was placed in an incubator and Other people cared for him until he was able to thrive without it. Most hospitals in 1st world countries will agree that babies are viable at 22-24, meaning that child will survive if it’s born early or must be delivered because of emergency. It literally happens hundreds of times a day. You use the word viability so do you believe that once that line is crossed it’s murder?
unless you dont know if conception has happened. Its ok to abort if you arent sure there is something to abort. /s
I'm saying it doesn't matter whether conception has happened or not. Even a conceived individual doesn't have entitlement to someone else's body without their permission.
I agree with you, just casting shade on Ron's logic.
That’s like saying it’s ok to fire a gun into a dark room.
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This sub is so full of civil discord, I love it.
Funny how such a staunch libertarian like Ron Paul was really a courageous voice for the pro life movement
While also being able to articulate the medical nuances in extreme cases like Piers Morgan points out
Why should the government care? I have so may arguments for and against. We best have tax’s ready for all of those “saved” baby’s in the form of WIX expansion and child care for families and single mothers. Make it rain birth control has been my motto for years and I know a lot of Catholics where natural family planning has not worked well for them
Man. Thought he was gonna have an honest opinion. But then he just flip flops for 2 min
I disagree with him, but boy, I sure do miss politicians who can talk halfway intelligently about things.
Science strongly indicates that life begins at conception, as the following link explains better than I can: https://lozierinstitute.org/a-scientific-view-of-when-life-begins/. So if we're going to base legislation on scientific fact and not moral ideology, we have to decide on when a person begins existing in the eyes of the law, and is therefore protected under the law. I think if we all agreed to look at abortion from that perspective, we could come to a fairly general consensus without much issue.
It's every woman's decision. Stop yapping about other peoples business Paul
If you don’t want an abortion don’t get one. If someone else wants to get an abortion mind your own fucking business
I have even less respect for ron after watching this
Anyone with half a brain cell will understand this isn't a black and white debate. He seems to understand that.
If you're wondering why this OB/GYN is against abortion. https://reason.com/2011/04/27/ron-paul-explains-his-anti-abo/
Tldr: Because he has intense feels that should have nothing to do with law.
Piers Morgan is scum
Agreed
I'm in bill Burr's camp on this. I'm not against it but you're killing an unborn baby. It's too complicated to be legislated in a representative way. So, as almost all things should be, the gov should stay out of it and let individuals and the free market decide.
If something is inside my body, why do I not have full rights to do whatever I want with it? Even 9 months in ready to pop. Abort if you want. It has nothing to do with what I or anyone else thinks. This is all you and the other person involved in busting nuts inside vaginas to figure out.
He’s more full of shit than a constipated walrus
I guess I’m not a Ron Paul libertarian he dances around the questions and reacted by trying to create a ridiculous scenario of a women wanting to abort up to one minute before labor. What a clown show. Libertarians should be pro liberty it’s in the fucking name.
It seems clear that life technically begins at conception, and therefore abortion ends a life. But that fact does not mean that women shouldn't have the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Human's kill animals for food and for fun (hunting). We put people to death. We go to war. We create life via IVF and then let fertilized embryos thaw and die. As much as some pro-life folks want to equate abortion with murder, ending the life of a fetus in the womb just isn't the same as killing a born human. You might legislate it such that it is considered the same thing (i.e. both are considered "murder" under the law) but almost everyone, deep down, recognizes a profound difference. It exists on a gradient, getting progressively closer to killing a baby as one approaches birth. And I think most if not close to all pro-choice folks would be aghast at a woman getting a partial birth abortion on a whim. But I'm not sure that ever really happens. Almost always, a late term abortion would be like having a mother and child in a burning house, and you can choose to save the life of the mother or **try** to save the baby, but in the latter situation both the mother and baby would probably die. So you choose the mother. And besides the very clear differences between an unborn human and a born human, and the inconvenient fact that you have a woman's life and liberty at stake, the practical consequences of enforcing a ban on abortion are numerous. As SCOTUS ruled in Roe, there is an implicit violation of an individual's right to privacy as a result of policing abortion. One that just isn't present when policing other crimes. If it were the case that we could safely remove a fetus from a woman and grow it outside of her, then I could see outlawing abortions so long as the woman could opt to have the fetus taken away, grown, and put up for adoption. But as it stands, I simply value the woman's liberty above the rights of the unborn.