I think in the interest of opening the dialogue, Obama should have some holocaust deniers on stage with him at the inauguration. Failing that, I'm sure Pat and Bay Buchanan are available.

Also, OT, just listened to the podcast thing and I want to know the story about AllahPundit

I agree that's an awful comparison. And in the previous thread, I made a note of how statements like this - where Warren is projecting his own opinions onto the opinions of his opponents - are unfair, and not conducive to dialogue - same way some of our arguments with Warren have been projections, and not conducive to dialogue.

QT

Umm,

I read the entire article, and I'm trying to figure out where you get that Warren is saying that raped teenagers who abort their fetus are like Nazis. Pretty extreme, Bob.

It's also pretty extreme to say that anyone who denies gay's the right to marry is intolerant. That's kind of like calling them a Nazi.

So, let me get this straight; you think Rick Warren is a gay hating Nazi, with everything that implies, right?
How's that for using extremes?

>>I read the entire article, and I'm trying to figure out where you get that Warren is saying that raped teenagers who abort their fetus are like Nazis.

Warren's implication:

Abortion = Holocaust. Therefore... People who have abortions (even teen rape victims) = Nazis.

Follow?

Just stepping in to say I won't be touching this thread with a 39 and a half foot pole.

I just want to tell you both good luck. We're all counting on you.

I just want to tell you both good luck. We're all counting on you.

I just want to tell you both good luck. We're all counting on you.

So, Bob, can you tell me exactly at what moment a fetus becomes viable and is, from that day on, unacceptable to terminate?

Camel: Stop calling me Shirley.

Bob, please insert a disclaimer before a thread about not eating while reading if you are going to use a remark as funny as "(begin McCain dick fingers) 'health of the mother' (end McCain dick fingers)". I nearly choked on a potato. You don't want me to choke on a potato, do you?

Looks like I picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue.

What's your vector, Victor?

Okay. Let's untangle this: "I believe a human life begins at conception." No it doesn't. This is to make the mistake the anti-choicers make, and that is to confuse a social construct--"a human life"--with a scientific one, which is "a zygote". To define someone or something as a "human life" is to say that it is something which society, for its own purposes, defines as "human". However, to say something is a "zygote" simply means that two haploid chromosomes have combined to form a diploid organism, easily defined scientifically.

In other words: The anti-choicers "bootstrap" themselves into indignation by first, and without any basis whatsoever, declaring a zygote (or embryo, or fetus) to be a "human life", then go about accusing anyone who disagrees with them to be a "holocaust denier" or something, thereby according their own solipsistic definition of a "human life" the same dignity as real, living, breathing, feeling human beings. It's moral sleight-of-hand and should be recognized as such. If they want to try to make something out of the value of a zygote, let them try. But we shouldn't let them get away with defining something as a "human life" just because they wish to do so.

That it "commences" in potential is pretty evident.

But if it stops that commencement days after attaching to the side of the uterus, and the woman has a few days late period of unusually heavy flow, is that the "loss of a child?"

To suggest that one feels the same loss at that than one would with a born-child, brought to full term, or a grown child sent to war is beyond lunacy. It is profane.

Unfortunately, I know all too well about mourning the potential of life. We had two successful pregnancies, and two unsuccessful ones.

One was a trisome 18 pregnancy, with the brain growing outside of the skull. If allowed to grow, it could have died anywhere from 6 months into the pregnancy to actually making it to term, to die. But along the way, it could have ended my wife's ability to ever have another, healthy, viable child. We found out at 12 weeks, and we ended the pregnancy. By the way, in blue-state CT, this was not as easy as you'd think. But that's a different story.

Both instances, we tried again soon afterward, and we have two wonderful daughters.

But in both instances, we experienced the "mourning" of the expected potential. I am not minimizing it, it was a loss.

But it was NOT the loss of A HUMAN LIFE, in the manner that a death is a loss. To equate the two is to diminish and profane the fully realized life. We grieved for what *may have been*, but it wasn't "a death." It was a change of potential futures. There's such an implicit difference that to conflate the two is almost criminal.

Whatever that reason that a woman arrives at as to why, in her specific cirumstances, she decides to NOT see the potential into the actuality, that has to be her choice, because each circumstance is so unique, personal and private.

You said you feel that "life commences" at that point. OK. But commencement is not actualization.

It is like assembling the paints on the table, then deciding not to paint. (Or, in our circumstances, finding that the paints were not going to work with the canvas.) What MAY have occurred could have been the next Mona Lisa, but to say that by pouring out those paints, you have effectively destroyed a Mona Lisa is like some time-travel paradox bullshit.

This view, taken to the next step, is the comical Python song EVERY SPERM IS SACRED, abjuring the listener that for every heathen spilling them on the dusty ground, God shall make them pay for each sperm that can't be found.

At what point is the potential of life simply that? Potential? Is a woman a murderer of a possible child by refusing to have sex on a given night that may have resulted in a pregnancy?

To equate a zygote or a blastula to a person is this same logic, only one step beforehand.

But again, it ultimately is such an intensely personal and private affair that to think a law addressing it can encompass every and all circumstance is the height of arrogance and cruelty.