Not a gracious way to repay someone willing to at least step up and challenge the issue. You are claiming that considering a problem from a somewhat utilitarian perspective is leading to the moral decay of this country. Good luck backing up that "slippery slope" response. I'd say it's the exact opposite, the feminization of politics is today's greatest challenge to intellectual discourse: the crippling concepts of fairness, the knee-jerk emotional response, the disconnection of costs and benefits.
Sure, adoption works just fine. And what I'm saying considers the fact that there are a broad spectrum of beliefs at play in the situation. Those who cannot follow through on the tough decision, whatever the reason, can allow their child to meet the emotional needs of a different household. This meets my criteria of a wanted child. Some people find it so easy to damn one "type" of person (i.e. the irresponsible/unlucky college kids) and give the benefit of the doubt to another (the unborn child). Preserve he who steals bread for his starving kid, damn he who fights against foreign military forces in his land. I like you, but not you. Why not bring reason into the determination? Which option leaves society better off: 1) Two college kids become burdened with a child they cannot afford, with no real chance of creating a familial unit, therefore not only handicapping themselves but creating a child governed by a single parent (much higher rate of criminality). or 2) They clear the slate, continue on through college at an unburdened performance level, kick off careers, meet people they love, and create two separate familial units with higher chances of financial and marital success. I think 2 is the tougher, wiser, choice given the odds.
How do we define "wanted" children? Wanted by whom? Defining it simply by value to society (whatever that may be or however it is defined) is the first large step on the slippery slope to eugenics, in my opinion. Value in 2008 is different than it was in 1958, and different than it's going to be in 2058. And if we start defining human beings as expendable simply because of the maturity level of their parents, we make the children responsible for the sins of their parents.
Ah Eugenics, well I think we can go back a bit further than 1958 with that one, I do believe the 1st Internatiomal Eugenics conference was held in London in (I think) 1912 then in the late 20s early 30's it was taken up with much enthusiasm by this fellow Ernst Rüdin. I am afraid that his work had very very nasty effects on the world around him.
One more comment Hey, what the hell, if you cannot provide a Brady Bunch or Leave it to Beaver life for the kid, no problem. Kill it. They are easy to make again later.
sick, sick, sick Why stop at babies that are inconvenient? What about the elderly? Disabled? Mentally handicapped? Invictus, you embody everything that is wrong in our country today.
We can go MUCH farther back, remember the Spartans choosing whether to keep an infant or leave it to die of exposure? There's nothing new about the general concept..
Your messages are like when CSPAN is trying to have an adult conversation and some breathless, unprepared person calls in to complain about the political "others" being the root of any given problem. Mentally handicapped, huh? Is that defensiveness I detect in your message?
Some people think that this is no world for children, so you may be on to something. I'm not going that far. Children with dedicated parental support is good enough for me.
Don't children suffer the decision of their parents every day? Poverty, crime, hunger, political unrest- children do not put themselves into such situations. I don't believe I implied a systematic approach to the abortion choice, as eugenics is- if it read that way, let me clean it up here. This is about abortion being preserved as an option for people who know that bearing a child at the given time, no matter the reason, is worse than not at all. And all things must be considered; there's a trade off in play regardless of the ultimate choice. A choice not to have a child now, but to do so in 5 years, favors one life over another. Having the child now could very well preclude the existence of the one to be born in 5 years. It approaches a zero sum game.
But invictus, please don't take me as rude, but I think you seemed to miss my point, (or if you didn't, then please excuse me for this, as I must have missed it) adoption is a very good choice for people that can't raise a child. Why kill a kid because the "bioligical" parents don't want it, when there is most definetly other people out there that do want children? I feel adoption is a much more logical and ethical choice than abortion, but that is just me. Take care. Phoenix
Well put Phoenix but I'm not here to back you or Invictus. I had planned to stay out of this thread as I made my comments. Invictus' views are very unpopular but he has the right to say them. There is historical backing and China has a "one child" rule basically. Do I agree with this? No but in that society it is "practicle". There are a lot of people that want children and can't have them. There are also many "unwanted" children here in the U.S. that need mothers and fathers. Some have been in the "system" for years and have developed "emotional" problems. I can only wish that each and everyone of these children could be put in a loving home and overcome the obstacles they have endured. Unfortunately that's not the case. A real beef I have is the "big name" people adopting children from foreign lands. Glitz and glitter IMHO. "Oooh you're so wonderful because you adopted a baby from Surinam etc". Yes, may sound hateful but believe me it's not. We need to take care of our own first THEN worry about the rest of the world. The world is, in reality, a miserable place for SO many. TOO many are children and that just plain sucks. It's a sobering and real fact. Killing them is not an answer but we sure as hell need to make some strides both nationally and globally to solve it.
Ah but what the Spartans did was not abortion now was it, and lets look at what the effects of that policy along with other spartan ideas actualy did to them as a people, it basicly destroyed them They were allowing there gods to decide who lived and who died were as Eugenics was a so called scientific study into who should be allowed to breed and live and those that should be sterilized or killed. Hitler and his henchmen realy took that idea and ran with it, I doubt very much that you are sugesting that we follow those extremes.
I was pretty short with the subject of adoption, all I said was this: "Sure, adoption works just fine." But clearly we have an excess supply of kids needing adoptive parents. And the kids lose market value as they age, because the parents tend to prefer to start from scratch. If less unwanted kids are brought to term in the first place, the general supply decreases while adoptive prospects may have to become less choosy, therefore taking in a perfectly good older child. I think the preservation of both abortion and adoption are important tools, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. I think the consideration of abortion from a more logical view could contribute greatly to dealing with the problem.
I don't think it would be good for us to attribute the eventual fall of the Spartans to selectivity of their members. I'll have to go reread about the Sartans, you make it sound as if all infants spent time being tested by the elements, whereas I recall it being the treatment for those with undesirable traits. But the point with that is that people have long been choosing who enters and stays in this world. It's not an alien thought process, nor part of a modern downslide in reason.
Many of us here are meat eaters. As far as I can tell animals sense pain and exhibit fear/terror. They have similar, though far from identical, experiences on this Earth to our own. And yet we've eaten how many steaks and burgers? How many lives have we put beneath our own? I must have thousands of carcasses on my record, all died to serve my passing needs for protein. Is that right, if I value life so much as to deny abortion, that I could so callously disregard the greater suffering I've caused? Clearly I can deal with it. But I recognize that I am making a brutal decision, that's what's important.
Ah I dont believe that I said it was a downslide LOL and as for the Spartans it was there rather unusual practices that brought them down, they were renowned warriors but were eventualy defeted by there own slave population (With a bit of help from Athens ) the simple fact was they could no longer field enough Spartan soldiers to defend what was there homeland
And perhaps after the USA has fallen from the apex of power, they will laugh at our anti-choice proponents as having contributed to the overexpansion of the lower class. Let's not get smug before we see what history has in store for us!
