Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. It is insane to say that more money needs to be spent on family planning.
Posted 2007.01.05 on Clean Cut Kid by Chad, quoting a report in the Yankton Press & Dakotan:
Leslee Unruh, the former manager of the Vote Yes for Life campaign which advocated the ban during the 2006 election, said legislators should expect to see the issue come before them.
"We promised the people of South Dakota we would not stop. I haven't changed my plans," she said. "I expect it to be an issue at every legislative session until abortion is banned in South Dakota."
Hi Cory,
ReplyDeleteSo I was thinking about your position on abortion (mostly based on the remarks from this post), and I'm wondering about the logical framework. Your argument was that in Holland, there are fewer abortions where abortion is legal and sex ed is ubiquitous. Therefore South Dakota should keep abortion legal and teach some sex ed.
Here's where my question in logic comes up. Are the fewer abortions attributable to a) being legal, b) sex ed, c) both, or d) something else?
Your assumption was automatically (c), both. However, I don't see where (c) can be picked over (b), sex ed alone. You were arguing that we should vote to keep abortion legal because it is legal in Holland... but the study might not say anything at all about the relevance between legality and abortion quantity, only a relationship between sex ed and abortion quantity.
So I think we can say that it is best to enact abortion legislation so long as we are in favor of sex ed, too.
And I still haven't heard a response to the moral-legal argument... If you seriously think that abortion is immoral, what prohibits you from saying it is illegal?
Kindly,
David
The point here is that Leslee Unruh could be doing numerous better things with her time and gobs of money than banging her head against the same wall.
ReplyDeleteMy short one-act season response to your question, though: I think lying is immoral, but I'm not going to fight for a law against it (lying is illegal in specific situations, far from all). Ditto drunkenness, plagiarism on homework, adultery, sloth, whining.... The conservative principle (I still have some) is tha law can't solve everything.
"The point here is that Leslee Unruh could be doing numerous better things with her time and gobs of money than banging her head against the same wall."
ReplyDeleteAnd if the wall were higher teacher pay, I think you would want her to bang on. Point being, she is not going to give up on what she thinks is right, and neither would you... so why are you criticizing her determination and sidestepping a debate on the merits of her position?
You want abortions "legal, safe, and rare," with an ideal number being 0. Why is that a better position than "illegal and none?" The articles from the other blogpost suggest that education is a big factor in decreasing teen pregnancy/abortion. Fair enough, but that information is no reason to crusade to keep it legal.
So, why do you want it legal?
"The conservative principle (I still have some) is that law can't solve everything."
Total red herring. Did law solve the issue of slavery? Why would it not be able to help solve the issue of abortion?
I'm going to keep nailing you on this, until you at least put forth a logical defense. A defense that says "I want 0 perjuries, but I want perjury to be legal" is not logical.
But David, you pose the wrong phrasing. Might I suggest that, given the status quo, I can say, "I don't want abortion to be illegal," and be saying something different from "I want abortion to be illegal." I'm not crusading to keep it legal; I'm crusading to keep people who are lying about their moral intentions from making it illegal. I will fight liars of any sort, because lies are wrong.
ReplyDeleteNow, you label my conservative principle as a red herring. Conservatism a red herring? Good heavens, I offer you one shred of resistance to my otherwise left-wing proclivities, and you dash it away? Well, see if I offer you any more philosophical gifts. (harrumph!)
But seriously, I reject the red herring label. It's my answer to your question. I oppose the massive efforts at outlawing abortion because (1) those efforts will not save many if any of the lives the effort-makers profess to care so deeply about; (2) a similar amount of effort could be directed toward other projects that would do much more clear and present good; (3) the passage of more laws indicates the failure of internal morality and of our moral leaders (parents, clergy, statesmen, etc.) to instill it.
If that's a red herring, then so's "The Pro-Life Handbook." You'll absolutely hate the text, but maybe you'll at least find some interest in the staging and soundtrack. Besides, the show only runs about 35 minutes, so it won't exceed your attention span for art (as cited in your 1/4/2007 essay on Baraka, which I am still processing for discussion after I handle the current artistic endeavor). Come see the show! Bring Melita! Bring your mega-striving-church friends! We count people too, and our play is all about why people count.
When two people are having a focused discussion on a particular topic and one of them tosses out an irrelevant decoy to throw the other person off, we call that red herring.
ReplyDeleteIn this instance, you proposed that since we cannot outlaw lying, we therefore should not outlaw abortion... hardly a valid argument. If we cannot outlaw lying, then why do we outlaw rape, slavery, and murder? It's a nonsense statement that you threw into the debate merely because you wanted to humoristically label your pro-choice position as being conservative... and have me chasing political labels rather than a substantive argument for why abortion should be legal.
Fortunately my internal beacon of truth disintegrates logical fallacies on sight.
Ok, but now you have a new argument:
"I'm not crusading to keep it legal; I'm crusading to keep people who are lying about their moral intentions from making it illegal. I will fight liars of any sort, because lies are wrong."
Lying about their moral intentions? Doesn't Mrs. Unruh have the same moral intentions that we have... to reduce the number of abortions to zero? She may be ignorant of the best way to achieve her intentions, and we may not agree that every cell after conception is a 100% full human being, but what exactly is she lying about?
Or let me ask it this way. If Mrs. Unruh was completely out of the picture, then would you vote in favor of an abortion ban? I don't see why not, since you only object to the (perceived) hypocrisy of one person, and apparently not at all to the concept itself.
Is that how you vote on other issues, too? Is it all about the casting your judgment on the integrity of the lawmakers rather than giving a solid appraisal of the integrity of the law? Would you protest the Emancipation Proclamation if it were proposed by Stalin?
Barring death or dismemberment, I shall be at the Brandon showing of your play. Heck, even if I'm dismembered, I'll make a noble effort to attend. Attention span shouldn't be an issue, since I'm assuming that your play will be at least partly verbal. But if it's liturgical dance... then yeah, you get about a half hour.
My position on abortion as a Grandma who lived in the era before Roe v Wade is that abortion should be legal and safe for the people that choose it. The fact that it is legal doesn't mean that the people who don't want one have to have one,but leave it for the ones who do. Also when most abortions are performed the fetus or embryo isn't a baby, a human being, nothing more than a cluster of cells or blob of tissue, whatever you want to call it.
ReplyDeleteApparently the new bill is going to have exceptions for rape, incest, and life/health of the mother.
ReplyDeleteAny objections to that?
The exceptions in this bill aren't real exceptions. If a woman has to spend money on a second opinion to prove her health is at risk, and they can't afford the second opinion what do they do. Also many rape victims don't want to report the rape because of the harrassment that they get in court. Plus for everything to be brought to court and for the alleged rapist to be convicted, if he is ever caught, takes so long that it would be too late to have an abortion. The pregnancy would either be too far along or delivered.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the conversation, foxg and dberg! I'm busy directing a play right now and watching as many the 45 other plays at State One-Act Festival as I can take in! Keep an eye out for the results on SDPB; then get ready for some more posts from me on all the shenanigans (and ignoring of the million other pro-life issues) in the Legislature.
ReplyDeleteSo foxgrandma,
ReplyDeleteIs it your opinion that casual abortion is a good thing? Is it a responsible choice? Do you stand up and cheer when someone has a one-night stand without protection, and then goes into Planned Parenthood to suck the fetus out of her body?
It's appalling to me that we live in a society where dropping a gum wrapper on the sidewalk is a crime, yet having unprotected sex and extinguising the potential soul in one's womb is perfectly legal.
Responsibility is what a just legal system is founded on, and responsibility insists that people accept the consequences of their actions.
dbergen, so now you're the one whose lying...
ReplyDelete"It's appalling to me that we live in a society where dropping a gum wrapper on the sidewalk is a crime, yet having unprotected sex and extinguising the potential soul in one's womb is perfectly legal[.]"...
and throwing out red herrings. Having unprotected sex is legal, of course (as long as one has achieved the age of consent) but it is a choice as to whether one protects their sex or not. But "extinguising (sic) the potential soul in one's womb is perfectly legal" in South Dakota only in the first trimester and with health/life exceptions for the remainder of one's pregnancy.
and in Holland, I would venture to guess that free and unfettered access to reproductive health care has much to do with abortion quantity in that fair country.
Lying and throwing out red herring? I get that reputation because I didn't explicitly say that abortion can only occur in the first trimester?
ReplyDeleteThe comparison is still the same: It is currently illegal to throw a gum-wrapper on the sidewalk, and currently legal to have unprotected sex and extinguish the potential life in one's womb (in the first three months). That's appalling.
Where's the lie? Where's the red herring? What irrelevant nonsense did I toss before the dogs of logic to throw them off the scent of valid argumentation?
Show me my error, and I shall recant. But please do not fabricate fallacies and attach them to me.