Which is more frightening and more dangerous to you and to the American way of life?

Question

Today, by the slimmest possible margin, the Supreme Court outlawed the procedure that anti-abortionists have labeled "partial birth abortion." This was a big win for the Religous Right, Jerry Falwell, the "Moral" Majority, Pat Robertson, American Evangelicals and other Christian groups who have tried for years to outlaw a woman's right to choose.

Regardless of what you feel about this particular issue, here is the question: Which is more frightening for America, and more dangerous to your freedoms and personal beliefs:

1. Having the Federal Government make your most personal and intimate medical decisions for you, rather than you making those decisions with your doctor's advice

2. Having religious groups and zealots force their beliefs upon you and all Americans?

Before you answer, remember, the next powerful religious political movement could be Mormons, Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses, or Muslims. Would you still support religious groups dictating our laws?

First, let me admit that I should have worded part of my question differently.

I sincerely apologize to any Mormons, Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Muslims who were offended by my question. I realized too late that this might be the case.

My point was not to say that their religious or political beliefs were inferior or somehow bad, which I don't believe they are, but to demonstrate to evangelicals that while they LIKE laws which enforce their own religious beliefs, if a particular religion or religious movement is allowed to dictate our laws, the next group to gain power might be one with which they strongly disagree. The hope is that maybe they will see why others don't like having evangelical beliefs and their version of "morality" forced upon us.

So again, I apologize to my friends in the faiths I mentioned. Intolerance is abhorrent to morality, and that is precisely the point of my question.

Some folks aren't getting it. Did you notice the phrase "Regardless of what you feel about this particular issue" in my question?

The point is not about abortion in any form, it is about allowing a particular religious group or movement to dictate our laws. For the record, I personally dislike abortion and think it should be avoided at all costs. But that is MY opinion and I have no right to force it upon everyone else.

Ellen, Smartass, and others who say "abortion is murder" - I don't believe you when you say that you think that abortion is murder.

If you saw someone in a hospital nursery slaughtering one baby after another, wouldn't you rush in there to stop him, physically fight him & grab his weapon away from him to prevent him from doing so, even at the risk of your own life? If not, you are inhumanly immoral.

But if you *would* do whatever it took to save them, and if you believe that mothers & doctors are slaughtering innocent babies, then why aren't you in the operating room fighting them to the floor, ripping the implements from the doctor's hands, even if you have to fight security, & even the police to do so?

So either you don't really, *really* believe that abortion is murder, or else you are terribly immoral, far moreso than the mother, for not physically intervening to save babies lives.

So I don't believe you when you indicate that you are *that* hateful and immoral.

WINEMAKER - FYI, the Constitution does not mention abortion, and more Supreme Court justices have voted to uphold abortion than have voted to make it illegal.

MARK D - No, you don't support laws made by the majority, and you don't know much about the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Our founding fathers were VERY concerned about true majority rule, and very careful to protect the minority from the majority. If we truly allowed "majority rule" then slavery would be legal (there are more whites than blacks), whites could legally take lands from Native Americans (more whites than Indians), Catholics could require Baptists to obey the Pope, and fundamentalists could force their own will and interpretation of the Bible and morality on non-Christians...

Oh wait, that's what this question is all about...

ELLEN J - You said, "when abortion was made legal, abortion supporters didn't mind in the least that they forced their beliefs upon me and all Americans."

You were forced to have an abortion by abortion supporters? I am so sorry for you, and I hope those responsible are punished to the full extent of the law.

Forcing someone to have an abortion is as wrong as, say, gay couples ruining evangelicals' marriages by having their own relationship affirmed by legal marriage (By the way, if a gay couple getting married ruins YOUR marriage, which evangelicals say is the threat, then you have bigger problems than having homosexual neighbors).

Answer 1

As a muslim, I support seperation of church and state or for that matter mosque and state.

Answer 2

What part of "sucking the brains out a baby who was deliberately stopped from being completely born so the 'doctor' could suck it's brains out legally" don't you understand. This is infanticide (murder) and I cannot understand how anyone in their right mind can possibly find a reason that can even remotely justify it.
I just witnessed a woman on TV justify her partial birth abortion by claiming that her baby would suffer an awful death if she allowed it to be born. As if having your skull pierced and your brains sucked out wasn't painful!! Let's face it--her real reason is that she didn't want to WATCH the baby suffer. She didn't care if it suffered as long as she didn't have to see it.
Having a partial birth abortion doesn't benefit anyone. The woman still goes through labor and delivery so how does her "health" get spared that? The baby is almost out of the vagina so what is the difference between it and a "born" baby except, maybe, 2 inches? The real point of this abortion is a dead baby and there is no other reason for it.
1. The government is involved in every "intimate" decision you make to some extent so give that stupid excuse to murder children a rest.
2. Whenever a law is passed it means that someone is forcing his beliefs onto other people so how would outlawing abortion change that process? And all laws find their foundation in religious beliefs in one way or another. (You will not murder, You will not steal, etc.) Oh, by the way, when abortion was made legal, abortion supporters didn't mind in the least that they "forced their beliefs upon me and all Americans" regardless of how we felt about it (and especially the 40 million infants which have lost their lives so far).

Answer 3

Taking the RU-486 "morning after pill" and partial birth abortion are two VERY different topics.

Just to be clear here....

A partial birth abortion is when a woman is induced into labor at 7, 8, or 9 months of pregnancy. Rather than delivering the baby, letting it breath on it's own, and then adopting it out, they choose to use scisors to cut open the babies head when it's visible durring delivery. A large suction tube inserted into the scull of the baby. It then sucks the baby's brains out of it's head, and it's skull colapses. It is born dead, rather than breathing and crying.

As a HUMAN, this should be outrageous. If that same mother, delivers the same baby, walks outside, and puts it in a dumpster, it's considered murder.

I think that abortion is a complex issue, however NOT in the case of partial birth abortion.

I think a better question is, how have we gone so far as to call this a "medical procedure" and not murder? Afterall, Scott Peterson was prosecuted for killing 2 people, not just his wife Lacy.

So if a doctor kills your baby, it's abortion, if someone else does it it's murder?

If the pregnancy has progressed to the point where a healthy baby can be born and survive, then abortion should NEVER be allowed and should be considered murder at that point.

This isn't a "Right wing nut job" issue here, this is a human issue here.

Early term abortion, rape, incest, physical deformities, concerns with the mothers health....these all are complicated issues, however partial birth aborion is an incredibly sick practice.

You should be embarrassed for defending it.

Answer 4

What about choice number three? or four?

I can think of worse things than having a government run by the Mormons. At least we believe the Constitution to be a God-given document. We also would not force our faith down anyone's throat. We believe in free agency, and free choice.

That said, I am going to saysomething that is probably not real popular with a lot of Christians, even Mormons.

I am pro-choice, and anti-abortion.

I do not believe that laws to outlaw abortion are good. Some people will find ways around it. Others might just resort to abandoning their babies.

I don't know what is needed. Adoption. More stringent birth control. Self-esteem classes for teenagers, along with abstinence counseling.

Answer 5

Thanks for giving us only 2 biased answers to choose from.

I'll never understand why it is that when liberals don't like a law that conservatives have made, they are always quick to make demagogic insults like "religious groups and zealots" have taken control of whatever level of government being talked about.

I suppose that you are inclined to blame perjury laws on "religious groups and zealots" who have the audacity to take a biblical command -- "Thou shalt not bear false witness" -- and translate that into law, too.

I support laws being made by the majority, period. Sometimes that majority includes conservative religious groups and on other occasions it includes liberal religious groups.

Majority rules, period.
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Raoul,
"The Founding Father’s greatest concern, and the thing they most feared would destroy the nation, was an uneducated voting public that would elect politicians even more stupid, self centered, and greedy than themselves."

I guess that the worst things that have happened in American History were the expansions of suffrage -- to non-property-holders, then to blacks (at first, just officially; then later, practically), then to women, then to eighteen-year-olds. The more people that there are voting, the stupider the electorate gets. Hence, the greater need for constitutional control over what the stupid electorate does, directly via the ballot box or indirectly in the legislature.
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Funny how the word "minority" never appears in the Constitution.
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(I've been away for several hours but now I'm back.)
Don, I have spent a great deal of time studying constitutional law. I have spent countless hours reading Supreme Court decisions and books by law scholars as they discuss their theories as to how to interpret the Constitution.

Need I remind you that the Constitution itself is a product of majority rule? Need I remind you that the First and Thirteenth Amendments were proposed by at least a two-thirds vote in Congress and were ratified by at least three-fourths of the states?

As to whether or not our Founding Fathers were "very careful" about writing the Constitution, I wish that were true. I wish everything in the Constitution -- including all amendments to it -- were "very carefully" written to explain clearly what it is that legislatures may and may not do. I DO understand why a legislature may not make a law compelling a belief in any religion. I do NOT understand why legislatures are not allowed to legislate based on moral values. Indeed, I have never seen any Supreme Court opinion which has ever purported that the Constitution comprehensively disallows any legislated morality. On the contrary, it used to be said -- over and over again -- that protecting the "health, safety, MORALS, and welfare" of the public are legitimate governmental goals.

If a legislature believes that life begins at conception, then why can't that legislature ban abortion, to whatever degree it wishes to ban it, incrementally or otherwise?

Answer 6

I do not believe in religion dictating laws. That is a violation of the first amendment.

When religion dictates moral laws, rather than preaching, they are saying that God's word is ineffective.

And it would be good if Jehovah's Witnesses become the next powerful group and good would only be accomplished.

Answer 7

This goes beyond a religious issue. It is sucking the brains out of a baby as it is being born. That should be reprehensible to anybody that doesn't have blinders on. I am in favor of legal abortions for 1st term and I don't have strong moral objections to later abortions in certain cases. Partial birth abortion is an abomination. I would strongly support the government not allowing such a procedure to be performed.

Answer 8

Well, the two are tied. The "government" - in this case, puppet judges set up by a fundamentalist, Dumbya, made the decision. So it is both fundametalism and government, because the Chimp has surrounded himself with obedient lap dogs. It's a twisstedd and corrupt government, therefore, which is no surprise, seeing a thug like the Dick in it, and a stupid chimp as the "prez." Its hould never have happened, and the ancient Rome also fell apart after retarded sons of political dynasties got the throne through manipulation and crime.
Can you tell any difference between zealots like Dumbya, or Mormons, and Islamic findamentalists? Oh, yeah - a different book.

Answer 9

The decision to kill your child is not a "personal medical decision". There is no essential difference between a child 1 minute before it's born and 1 minute after it's born. To kill a child 1 minute before it's born is murder even though it's legal.

Remember, it's only due to religious beliefs that it's illegal to kill a child 1 minute after it's born. If the early Romans didn,t want the child after it was born, they simply threw it into the woods and let it die by exposure.

Answer 10

Jehovah's Witnesses believe that true Christians are "no part of this world". Thus, Witnesses pursue NEUTRALITY in political, nationalistic, and social controversy. The bible quite plainly teaches that Jesus himself refused to become involved in the secular controversies of his day, but instead devoted himself to preaching the "good news of the Kingdom".

The benefits of that Kingdom are permanent, while every human work can only benefit temporarily.

(John 17:14-16) The world has hated [the followers of Christ], because they are no part of the world, just as I am no part of the world. ...They are no part of the world, just as I [Jesus] am no part of the world.

(James 4:4) Adulteresses, do you not know that the friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world is constituting himself an enemy of God.

(John 12:7,8,48-50) . . .Jesus said: “...You have the poor always with you, but me you will not have always. ...The word that I have spoken is what will judge [a person] in the last day; because I have not spoken out of my own impulse, but the Father himself who sent me has given me a commandment as to what to tell and what to speak. Also, I know that his commandment means everlasting life.

Learn more:
http://watchtower.org/e/19950501/article_01.htm
http://watchtower.org/e/19980522/article_01.htm

http://watchtower.org/e/pr/index.htm?article=article_07.htm
http://watchtower.org/e/rq/index.htm?article=article_05.htm
http://watchtower.org/e/dg/index.htm?article=article_10.htm
http://watchtower.org/e/lmn/index.htm?article=article_01.htm
http://watchtower.org/e/ti/index.htm?article=article_09.htm

Answer 11

Well politicly we Witnesses are NO threat as we strive to remain nuetral in politics. Thus we do not create or give support to any laws, referendums, etc.