Unbelievable! The nerve of President Obama, the most radical pro-abortion president in the history of our nation, has the gall, after working diligently to increase the number of abortions, to actually tell the pope he will do his best to lower the number of abortions performed in our country. Personally, I think his conscience has been completely seared.
Read from Gateway Pundit:
Audacity!... Committed Abortion and Infanticide Supporter Tells Pope He Wants to Reduce Abortions
"A year ago Obama told Pastor Rick Warren that he wasn't sure at what point a baby gets human rights.
It was above above his paygrade:
But that was last year.
A funny thing happened after the election.
Obama suddenly figured it out.
Already this year, Barack Obama has signed several pieces of abortion legislation including funding foreign abortions. He also signed legislation to use taxpayer money to kill embryos in research. And, democrats are pushing legislation that will force healthcare providers to perform abortions even if it violates their moral or religious convictions.
Barack Obama is the most radical pro-abortion and infanticide president in the last 35 years. Barack Obama even voted 4 times to support infanticide during his political career.
The Vatican already attacked 'arrogant' Barack Obama for using taxpayer money to fund foreign abortions.
But, that didn't stop Barack Obama from having the audacity today to promise Pope Benedict that he would reduce abortions.
Reuters reported:
'President Barack Obama promised Pope Benedict on Friday that he would do everything possible to reduce the number of abortions in the United States, the Vatican said.'
Unreal.
This man has no shame.
More... Pope Benedict lectured Dear Leader on abortion anyway"
23 comments:
From a theological and from a scientific point of view, the question is above Obama's pay grade. In other words, he does not know at which point in the pregnancy a baby becomes human. Yet, he supports unrestricted abortions.
This reminds me of an excellent analogy by Mike Adams. Adams says that a hunter who hears a noise in the brush will hold his fire until he knows what he is shooting at. There is a chance that the creature making noise in the brush might be human.
On the other hand, Obama seems to have no such qualms about killing a creature in the womb which "might" be human.
An "excellent" analogy? Hardly.
An embryo is not some unidentifiable creature. An embryo is an embryo is an embryo. An embryo is not a human being. It's settled law, has been for centuries, across cultures: a embryo becomes a human being when born. Period. Game, set, match.
How do we know a dead is person is dead? How do we know s/he won't just jump up off the table and miraculously come back to life? Unless we're "sure" comeone's dead, we shouldn't call them dead and bury them, should we? And we can never be "sure", can we? Just because every human being who's come before us has died, doesn't mean that they next dead one couldn't come back to life. I mean, it IS "possible", right?
The ability to separate "facts" from "beliefs" is one of the greatest failings of Religious Rightwingnuts. Both facts and beliefs are important, but they're not the same. And, in America, we don't base our government on religious beliefs... despite your best attempts to turn us into a theocracy. It simply will not happen. Even some of the most faithful people out there will stop you in your tracks, as they did when they wrote the Constitution.
There's that word again -- rightwingnut. Why do you insist upon using ad hominem attacks as a substitute for reason and substance? You sure presume to know a lot about me, despite our limited conversations on this blog.
I think you are being intentionally obtuse with me here. I said nothing about turning the US into a theocracy. I am not quite sure what you are getting at with your argument about dead people coming to life.
What I said is that by President Obama's own admission, he does not know if a developing embryo is human. If you do not know if something is human, then the responsible thing to do is to let it live. This is analogous to the situation of the hunter in the woods, who only pulls the trigger when he knows what he is going to kill.
Why did President Obama give this non-committal answer to Rick Warren's question, then? There are a few possibilities: (1)he is absolutely positive that an embryo is not human, but he wanted to give a politically-expedient answer. (2)he genuinely does not know if an embryo is human (3)he believes that an embryo is human and that it is morally acceptable to kill a human being. None of these three possibilites are morally sound.
If (1) is true, then Obama believes that it is morally acceptable to kill a human being.
Option (2) is slightly better, since, in this case, Obama does not know for sure that an abortion kills a human being. However, anyone who respects human life would err on the side of caution.
Option (3) is obviously immoral, since in this case, Obama would believe that murder is acceptable.
Here's the point: you cannot simulatneously say that (a)it is wrong to kill a human being, (b)abortion is morally acceptable, and (c)you do not know if an embryo is human. It's utter nonsense.
"It's settled law, has been for centuries, across cultures: a embryo becomes a human being when born. Period. Game, set, match."
So, then, the reason you know that an embryo is not human is that the law says so? Do you get all your moral values and scientific facts from the law? For example, there are laws against lying under oath, but to my knowledge, it is legal to lie in ordinary cirumstances, since it would be nearly impossible to enforce. Does this mean that lying is OK?
You've blurred the distincitions between religious morality and civil legality so much, you can't escape. You're trying to frame a moral, and largely reigious, question in legal terms. The civil government is nto built to enforce your religious beliefs. PERIOD.
For the sake of argument, let's agree lying is immoral. Does that mean that a liar should be punished by the government? No.
If you want to argue that people who have abortions have acted immorally and that they stand in jeopardy of being ultimately judged negatively by God, then fine, do that. But don't try to bring the judgment of the civil government down on them, to reinforce your religious beliefs.
As for your questions as to what Obama's answer to Rick Warren was, I'd bet on it being your first option, that he doesn't consider an embryo a human being, but he was trying to weasel out of giving that answer, knowing the negative political implications associated with that kind of response. That was a political batte he didn't want to engage in, and I can't say I bame him. He tried to sidestep the question and no, that's not change I believe in... but it's status quo that I understand!
What I don't get it why you would then say "If (1) is true, then Obama believes that it is morally acceptable to kill a human being. No, I would suggest that President Obama believes it is morally acceptable to terminate a pregnancy while a fetus is a fetus. I'm trusting that you must have mis-typed something in that sentence, because otherwise, it doesn't make sense.
And not to quibble, but I wasn't specifically referring to you as a Religious Rightwingnut. Ms. Moore, yes, but not you... unless you want to adopt that categorization. I was making a generalized statement about Religious Rightwingnuts after specifically responding to your comments. Sorry for the confusing juxtaposition on my part! That's what can happen with imprecise use of pronouns on a blog. My bad.
Diogenes, you said, "I would suggest that President Obama believes it is morally acceptable to terminate a pregnancy while a fetus is a fetus."
I must correct you on that statement because Obama believes it is morally acceptable to terminate the life of a baby outside the womb, when it is no longer a fetus, as when he voted in favor of infanticide when he was an Illinois state senator. What say you about that?
I say you've completely twisted the procedural history of what was going on in the Illinois Senate at the time. Either you're incapable of figuring out what was going on with a number of complicated, confusing votes, or you understand it all too well but you choose to misrepresent it for your own purposes.
If you've accepted other rightwingnuts' version at face value, I suggest you check it out for yourself and decide. or not -- it's certainly easier for you to accept and promote the worst about Obama, wheter or not it's deserved.
Here's a link to a decent summary of what Obama's actual record is:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/04/the-next-smear-against-ob_n_116891.html
But I warn you, it's complicated. And it doesn't portray Obama as being pro-infanticide or anything, so you probably won't want to bother trying to read it.
pro-choice is not pro-abortion. if a woman chooses to have an abortion it's her decision. there's millions of women out there that would never have an abortion themselves, yet support someone else has the right to choose. stopping the abortion process before it becomes dangerous to the woman-in-question is important and could risk infection & internal bleeding, so for the sake of health concerns there should be a limit on the length of the pregnancy before abortion takes place.... and there is.... so what is the debate about.
Listen to Obama's comment on the following video:
http://exposingliberallies.blogspot.com/2009/07/obama-out-of-mainstream-on-abortion.html
What I don't get it why you would then say "If (1) is true, then Obama believes that it is morally acceptable to kill a human being.
I must have made a mistake.
If you want to argue that people who have abortions have acted immorally and that they stand in jeopardy of being ultimately judged negatively by God, then fine, do that. But don't try to bring the judgment of the civil government down on them, to reinforce your religious beliefs.
Ethicists and political scientists have probably written about some of these things in great depth, but I have not read much of it. Here are some of my thoughts, anyway.
The founders of our country understood that our rights are given by God. Some of the founders disagreed on what they meant by "God" (for example, I think Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were deists), but the consensus was that our rights come from a higher, divine power. Furthermore, we would have a very flimsy basis for our rights if they did not come from God. It would be a simple matter of one person's moral standard versus another.
Every law that I can think of, from murder to software piracy to traffic laws, has some moral value behind it. Most of these laws seems to be in place to protect people or their property. For example, theft is prohibited to protect a person's rightful property. Many traffic laws are in place to protect the safety and well-being of other people. Murder is prohibited because it is harmful to the victim's well-being and because it violates a person's ownership of his body.
An unborn baby in the womb is human and deserves the same protection from murder as any other person. (I wrote about some of the logical problems with defining an exact moment that an unborn baby becomes human in a comment here. You said that I should not impose my religious beliefs on other people, but think about what I just said about the values behind the law. There is probably somebody who has no concern for other people, and just about every law, with its concern for other people, imposes values on that person. This includes laws against murder, which give protected legal status to the un-unborn (commonly known as "people") by making it a crime to kill them. If it is OK for the un-unborn to be considered human in the eyes of the law, then why is it an imposition to consider the unborn to be human?
For the sake of argument, let's agree lying is immoral. Does that mean that a liar should be punished by the government? No.
This might not have been the best example. Still, moral principles are the basis for our laws, not vice versa. The only reason you gave for your unwavering belief that an embryo is not human is that the law says so. Is the law always right? Or is the law written by fallible humans and, therefore, subject to error?
I tend to agree with most of what you say, Anon, but there is a (rare) need for late-term abortions, either for the health of the mother or late-term catastrophic developments with the fetus.
The "debate" is that the Religious Rightwingnuts find abortion immoral, so they want the legal system of America to enforce their mroal code on everybody else. And, when they don't get their way, they pout. Or shout at senators. Or dump blood on young women making probably the toughest decision of their lives. Or murder the occasional doctor that has the nerve to perform a legal surgical procedure. It's that simple.
"An unborn baby in the womb is human..." Dude, that may be your BELIEF, but the law and the vast majority of Americans don't share your belief. And your "logic" about the born, the unborn, and the "un-unborn" (wow!) is simply mind-boggling.
There's nothing says that our legal system couldn't declare that a wombat is a human being, either. Except (a) a wombat isn't a human being, and (b) our egal system doesn't try to say it is. But, other than those two small quibbles, you're right: it absolutely COULD happen.
And if enough people bought into your BELIEF that "an unborn baby in the womb is human" then maybe the law would change. But it hasn't, and it likely won't.
But hey, keep trying.
You know, just to show you I try, I actually listened to your clip of Obama speaking, Ms. Moore. And, as usual, you and the clip you posted misrepresent what Obama said.
The graphic on the video says "Listen again as Obama coldly claims two doctors trying to care for a baby born alive is just too cumbersome on the aborting mom." But that's not what Obama was saying at all. Notice the clip picked him up in mid-sentence, first off. What he said was "... and that, essentially, adding an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation, to come in and make these assessments, is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion."
"These assessments" that Obama refers to is the original assessment that the treating physician has determined that the medical situation presented by the patient meets the legal criteria for a late-term abortion." What the law was trying to say is that one doctor's opinion isn't enough, you need to have TWO physicians make that assessment. Why? Because they know how difficult and unwieldy it would be to get two doctors together to say that. What other surgical procedure legally REQUIRES two physicians' assesment and agreement?
It's just another intentional lie generated by the anti-abortion crowd. The end, in their mind, justifies ANY means they can use. Their motto: "Lie, cheat, steal, murder.... whatever it takes. Because WE respect life!"
Absolutely despicable of you, Ms. Moore.
Diogenes: The "debate" is that the Religious Rightwingnuts find abortion immoral, so they want the legal system of America to enforce their mroal code on everybody else.
Me: And there are liberal, libertarians, Democrats, atheists, and agnostics that oppose abortion on grounds that to them it is murder. So what's your point?
Let's turn that around on you- you see being for abortion as moral and want to force its acceptance on those who see it as murder.
I do recall one point in American history where Christian evangelicals were called fanatics for wanting to enforce their view of morality on others just because they see others as violating the rights of others. Oh yes, it was the slaveowners who accused those Christian abolitionists of that.
Diogenes: And, when they don't get their way, they pout.
Me: Pot. Kettle. Black. You spend most of the time I see here whining that you cannot get pro-lifers to see things your way.
Diogenes: Or shout at senators.
Me: Your side spend alot of time doing that over ban on partial-birth abortion or cry foul even at the smallest of limitations on abortion.
And guess what? You are pouting here. Funny, you are basically everything so far you ridicule pro-lifers for.
Diogenes: Or dump blood on young women making probably the toughest decision of their lives.
Me: If it is not murder, and abortion does not end innocent human lives, then why is it is tough decision? If it is just a blob of tissue and not a baby why is it a tough decision? If it just any other medical prodecure, why would it be a tough decision?
If it is indeed murder, then blood is on the hands of those who commit abortion, be it the woman and the doctor involved. Not just me who said it, but the earliest feminists like Susan B. Anthony who said that, too.
Diogenes: Or murder the occasional doctor that has the nerve to perform a legal surgical procedure.
Me: Except that the murder count is at 7 in 36 years. That is 1 in 5 years in the whole USA. Or 1 in 250 years per state. That is a low murder rate for any profession. It shows those who murder abortion doctors hardly reflect the whole pro-life movement as a whole.
And funny, there are cases of murders and attempted murders by pro-abortionists on pro-lifers. Should I use those cases and say those who do this are reflection of how you are? You are making bigoted remarks in your whining and pouting.
Diogenes: It's that simple.
Me: Of course, the slave trade was once legal. Slavery was once legal.
So by your logic if it is legal, then folks who oppose it and use strong rhetoric against these things as immoral are pouting when they don't get their way and whenever fanatics like John Brown killed pro-slavery folks, that makes abolitionists guilty by association there.
Diogenes: An embryo is not some unidentifiable creature. An embryo is an embryo is an embryo. An embryo is not a human being. It's settled law, has been for centuries, across cultures: a embryo becomes a human being when born. Period. Game, set, match.
Me: And you lose.
Do you know why? You badly misrepresented our law and history on this.
For centuries?
It was very much part of common law in England to see abortion as a form of homicide and this was passed down as common law to the original American colonies who retained that when they gained indepedence from England.
Later on in the middle of the 19th century, states enacted laws against abortion as statutes, thus putting into writing what was already common law against what was considered vile practice.
"But don't try to bring the judgment of the civil government down on them, to reinforce your religious beliefs."
Nice. I think I apply that to the rest of my philosopy: "if you oppose the right to murder an abortion doctor, then do not do so but do not bring down the civil government on those who exercise their freedom to choose to kill another human being" out of your own value system."
And before you throw the right wing religious nut ad hom attack or say I am parroting Ann Coulter, wrong on both counts.
It is an argument used way before Coulter- by an atheist for life website.
"I tend to agree with most of what you say, Anon, but there is a (rare) need for late-term abortions, either for the health of the mother or late-term catastrophic developments with the fetus."
Then how come Tiller bragged about 60,000 of those that he did?
And if the fetus is not a human being according to you, why should you care if there are castatrophes in the fetus? After all according to you, the fetus is just a blob of tissue.
http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/tay/tay_03foundingfather.html
Diogenes, I was being facetious with my coining of "un-unborn" by trying to closely mirror the language of pro-abortion people. I guess you missed that.
And if enough people bought into your BELIEF that "an unborn baby in the womb is human" then maybe the law would change. But it hasn't, and it likely won't.
All you have done is to dismiss my argument without even attempting to refute it. Let me summarize, since you seem to have not even read it.
The personhood of children and adults out of the womb (referred to facetiously as the un-unborn) can just as easily be considered merely a belief. Yet, nobody is up in arms about "imposing" a belief on anyone.
All you have done so far is to appeal to the law's stance on the personhood of human embryos and opinion polls. (By the way, do you have any polls to back up your claims that the "vast majority of Americans" do not support my belief?)
CHOICE.
It's really a simple word, and a simple concept.
Pro-choice advocates are not imposing their morals on you. Nobody is forcing anyone to get an abortion. If you don't believe abortion is a morally proper chocie, then don't have one. If someone else believes it's morally acceptable, then fine.
Abortion is not murder, under the law. Murder occurs when someone intentionally causes the death of another human being. By definition, fetuses are not human beings. That's a factual distinction that's acceptable to the vast majority of Americans.
Now, if you disagree with that definition, you're free to try to change the law. Many states have seen referendums put on their ballots in recent years to define what a "person" is in such a way that it includes fetuses. EVERY TIME that option has been offered to an American electorate, it's been voted down quite handily.
As for catastrophic developments in the womb, the most common problem is a late discovery (because it's often not discoverabe earlier) of a massive malformation of the fetus that wil absolutely preclude a live birth that is sustainable. Fetuses without brains, for example. That fetus will NEVER function as a human being but, once delivered, it's theoretically possible to keep whatever it is breathing on a respirator ad infinitum. Why do that to the fetus OR the mother?
You folks were probably the same ones who were egging on Terri Schiavo's parents in that whole horribly sad spectacle.
I'm sure that there are people of all political and all religious stripes that are against a person's right to choose. But the vast majority of them ARE Religious Rightwingnuts. If you're some other kind of nut and you're offended by the generalization, I apologize. Just let me know what variety of nut you are, and I'll try to be more inclusive in the future. Bt, I assure you, I would never accuse you of parroting Ann Coulter. I've heard her speak in a few snippets here and there, and she's so vile, I don't believe I've ever read anything she's written -- and that comes from someone who will actually listen to El Rushbore (in small doses) on a semi-regular basis.
Diogenes, you are constantly calling us pro-lifers rightwingnuts. I've got news for you, you are not exactly in the mainstream. A recent poll stated that more Americans oppose abortion than favor it. I guess that makes you a leftwingnut.
That statement that you "personally oppose abortion" must be absolute BS because no one fights as hard as you do for an issue that he opposes.
It's interesting that you conveniently responded to my question about "why you oppose abortion if the fetus is not a person", and I never received your response. That's an easy way to avoid answering the question.
Kind of like when I asked you if you had a born-again experience and accepted Christ as your Savior, and you refused to answer. You may not believe me, which I frankly don't care, but I pray that the answer to my question is "Yes". But, based on your response, my guess is the answer is "No".
Regarding your comment about churches being "exclusive", you act as if I was the one who chose the standards for being a Christian. I was just stating what the Bible said. I nearly forgot; YOU are the one who "picks and chooses" which part of the Bible you are willing to follow. You are a VERY DECEIVED man.
Ms. Moore, I'll try to make this as simple as I can, so you have a chance of comprehending.
I did not "fight for abortion". I fight against Religious Rightwingnuts who would take away a woman's right to choose.
And that difference is the fundamental problem with the polls you cite. They ask "Do you oppose abortion?" not "Do you think the government should prohibit a woman from having an abortion?"
I've never had to face the question of abortion in my personal life, so I don't know what I'd do in that circumstance. I have no problem whatsoever in clearly saying there is a important quantifiable difference between a fetus and a baby, but I think I would opt to allowing that fetus develop and be delivered as a human being. But I would not want to impose my views on a personal choice on anybody else. I cannot, and should not, under the First Amendment, use the power of the government to impose my religious views on anyone else.
It's kind of a corollary to the old cliche of "I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it."
As for how I came to be a Christian, I tod you before, but I'll repeat it: it's none of your business. My faith is a personal matter between me and my God, and neither one of us needs me to hang it out on a clothesline for your inspection as to its adequacy. And spare us the "I don't make the rules, I just follow the rules" cop-out. You know (or you should know) that, if you look hard enouh, you can find a piece of Scripture that will support virtually any position. I will say this: I have not, do not, and wil not buy into the idea that every word of the Bible is to be taken literally. If that was the case, why would Jesus have used parables, metaphors, etc to explain it to the rest of us? If you choose to take the unthinking fundamentalist route, you're free to do that, but don't pretend that that's the only way to interpret the Bible. Thousands of people far smarter than you or I would disagree with that.
As for praying for me, please don't bother. Whoever it is you're talking to won't help me one iota.
Now, Dude: I don't feel like I have to address your "arguments" because you're trying to re-argue an issue that's long since been decided. It's like "debating" if the earth is flat or not. Spin yourself into the ground, arguing that not allowing you to impose your beliefs on anyone else is the same thing, because my belief in not allowing you to impose your belief is imposing my belief on you. IN a theoretical sense, you could scurry down that rabbit hoe if you wish, but there are some important differences.
1. I'm not using the power of the government to impose my religious beliefs on anybody else.
2. I'm not the one advocating the overthrow of the current system, so the burden isn't on me.
3. If we have to choose one option or the other, I would always choose the option that is less imposing and is more conducive to personal freedoms.
Remember, if you want to say I'm imposing my choice on you, all I'm doing is allowing you to make whatever call you think is right. That's what most Americans believe is the way to go. I am NOT saying you have to have an abortion. I am NOT intruding on your life at all. There is a significant difference there.
And I'm not trying to convince you that you're wrong in taking the mora stance you are. I'm trying to show you that's it's wrong for you to impose that on someone else using the full power of the government.
Diogenes, I have one last comment on this. This is not about creating a theocracy. This is not about freedom of choice. This is not primarily about imposing religious views on anyone.
I love freedom. I love choices. I greatly dislike busybodies who try to regulate the behaviors of other people which do no harm to any other person. (For example, teetotalers who enact "blue laws" regulating the sale of alcohol.) I think that people should be free to make choices according to the dictates of their consciences, as long as those choices are not made at the expense of another person. On this, I think we agree.
Where we disagree is that a human embryo is a person, and therefore, abortion is a choice made at the expense of the developing baby. Scientifically, a developing baby has many of the physical characteristics of an adult by the fifth or sixth month of pregnancy, if not before. (Here's a link to a resource on the National Right to Life website. Linky linky. Go ahead and check a different source if you don't like this one. I'm not trying to pull a fast one on you.)
Theologically, the Bible does not explicitly tell us that a developing baby is human. However, there are many places where the Bible discusses pregnancies (e.g., the psalmist writes that God knit him together in the womb; Psalm 139:13), and none of these passages give any indication that a developing baby is anything less than fully-human.
So far, you have only appealed to court rulings and public opinion as support for your unwavering belief that a developing baby is not human until he breaks the plane. A court could rule that I am a baked potato, but that would not make it true. Also, public sentiment is a lousy means of settling scientific matters.
I urge you to do a little research on human pregnancies, and also what the Bible says about pregnancy. Ask God to show you if you are right about the humanity of a developing baby. If you are absolutely positive that you are right, then you have nothing to fear by asking.
Unless you have some further explanation for your belief, I think we have exhausted this topic. Over and out.
On an unrelated note, I would be interested in talking about your faith and mine. I am not trying to critique your faith or put you under a microscope. (I see that you strongly objected to discussing this with Ms. Moore.) I just enjoy discussing spiritual things with people, and I do not get many opportunities to do so. You can contact me at some.dude_99@yahoo.com if you wish.
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