Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktI’m very interested in religion and religious views, although I’d prefer to read what others have to say than share my own thoughts……….hah. Seriously, religion has always been a highly personal thing for me and I don’t generally discuss my views. In some ways it’s because they’re always evolving so what I say today I may not actually agree with tomorrow and I don’t like to be held to a standard of consistency. Consistency isn’t something I’m well known for anyway, just ask Scott (that’s a joke btw).
I guess if I were to describe myself religiously it would be as an agnostic who enjoys attending church, but only very specific types of churches and each one for very different selfish reasons. I also consider agnosticism as a true cop out but there I sit nonetheless. I’m neither an atheist nor a Christian but I found this article on atheists, and agnostics to a lesser extent, enlightening if you will.
What kind of atheist are you anyway? I think everyone will recognize me right away but I’m curious about the rest of you atheists. Number six was my favorite but it’s not me.
6. Ritual Atheist/Agnostic. While you might think the anti-theist is the non-believer type that scares Christians the most, it turns out that it may very well be the Ritual Atheist/Agnostic. This group, making up 12.5 percent of atheists, doesn’t really believe in the supernatural, but they do believe in the community aspects of their religious tradition enough to continue participating. We’re not just talking about atheists who happen to have a Christmas tree, but who tend to align themselves with a religious tradition even while professing no belief. “Such participation may be related to an ethnic identity (e.g. Jewish),” explain researchers, “or the perceived utility of such practices in making the individual a better person.” The Christian Post clearly found this group most alarming, titling their coverage of this study “Researchers: ‘Ritual’ Atheists and Agnostics Could Be Sitting Next to You in Church,” and giving the first few paragraphs over to concern that people in your very own congregation may not actually believe in your god. The atheism, it seems, might be coming from inside the house (of God).
Another subject that interests me, and one I’ve been reading an awful lot about lately especially in the context of politics, is ageism. I don’t agree with everything in this piece but I did find it thought provoking. As a ‘B Word’ boomer it’s always in the back of my mind of course that a lot of us are much worse off financially that we imagined we’d be (not me necessarily) and that we’ve become so reviled (hopefully that’s too strong of a word) by younger generations. Republicans, and even some Democrats, are certainly using Hillary as an example of someone who is too old to run for President and it’s becoming pretty pervasive so I’m wondering who agrees. I’m not a Hillary fan, and I’ve stated publicly that I hope she doesn’t run, but it’s only partially because I’d prefer to see someone younger run.
Anyway, I thought this showed a unique perspective on us boomers and you millennials as well. For the rest of you……meh. And true to form for my posts, there’s obviously something for everyone to hate in this piece.
It’s corruption, stupid. Like the majority of ’60s radicals, who came from liberal families, millennials feel betrayed by their parents’ generation. Instead of placing the blame on the doorsteps of K Street lobbyists, many see government as the problem.
“Government has obviously become a place where opportunistic people go to get rich,” said a 32-year-old Internet entrepreneur. “Most millennials know only Bill Clinton, who seemed kind of cool until it turned out he was a shill for corporations and the banking lobby, and Bush, who was unabashedly awful as we all know. Then there’s Obama, who seemed great until he turned out to be a lying, spying, bailer-out who gets all his advice from the same lobbyists he promised over and over ‘will not work in my White House.’ ”
That disenchantment is emerging in voting numbers. In 2008, Barack Obama won the 18-29 vote by 34 points. But in 2012, as disappointment with his performance rose, Obama’s edge among these voters dropped to 23 percent. The erosion of support wasn’t lost on Republicans. Like Latinos, the millennials are considered up for grabs in 2016.
Although the feeling of betrayal is understandable, there is something regressive and childlike about ascribing so much power to your parents. Viewing history through the lens of a generation has its limits. Idealists are always flawed, and every generation has its complement of hustlers, toadies and arrivistes. Historical forces larger than the individual determine winners and losers: in this case, globalization, technology, and America’s rise and fall as an imperial power.
And just for fun:
Filed under: comics, Open Thread, religion | Tagged: Baby Boomers |
All Things in Moderation 
I probably fit into that Ritual Atheist model to some degree. I was raised Catholic but probably haven’t been to a service since my son’s Confirmation eight years ago. I culturally identify with the moral teachings but have become increasingly cynical about the Big Sky Daddy paradigm and the Jesus As Personal Savior mythos in particular.
My current working theory is that a small cult around a minor prophet got hijacked by Saul who force fit it onto his own ideas. This cult filled a vacuum in the increasingly decadent Roman Empire and took root.
As for whether there is a Prime Mover Unmoved or other highly amorphous concept, I become increasingly agnostic the more abstract the Diety of LifeForce is because ultimately it becomes unknowable and/or irrelevant.
I read a lot of Kurt Vonnegut and agree with much of his Unitarian Universalist influenced Humanism that we should be kind to each other just because.
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“Not exactly news to anyone who has struck up a conversation while quaffing a microbrew at his or her local watering hole. Here in Montgomery County, Md., where I’ve been spending considerable time this year, every man under the age of 30 seems to be calling himself a libertarian.”
We’re coming for you yello!
also
“What few millennials seem to realize is that libertarian hero Ronald Reagan’s ”
???
either way …my Church as an institution and my favorite school growing up (Penn State) systematically hid monsters. yeah, I don’t have much faith in large institutions. they protect themselves first and foremost. government is the same.
I’m tired to the K street thing that people like to blame. K street has influence b/c of the size and scope of gov. People pay gobs of money to not be put out of business by government. .
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I’m an atheists with no rituals.
And this is perfect:
“Government has obviously become a place where opportunistic people go to get rich,” said a 32-year-old Internet entrepreneur. “Most millennials know only Bill Clinton, who seemed kind of cool until it turned out he was a shill for corporations and the banking lobby, and Bush, who was unabashedly awful as we all know. Then there’s Obama, who seemed great until he turned out to be a lying, spying, bailer-out who gets all his advice from the same lobbyists he promised over and over ‘will not work in my White House.’ ””
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every man under the age of 30 seems to be calling himself a libertarian
I think this phenomenon has more to do with the way that Dubya and the current crop of evangelical yahoos have tarnished the conservative brand. See also the rise in the number of ‘independents’.
I was a libertarian once. I had a high school teacher who assigned us Restoring the American Dream by Robert Ringer as the counterweight to The Communist Manifesto. Even earlier I was a rabid militarist but then the Soviet Union collapsed.
Now that I’m staring 50 in the face and have no nest-egg to speak of, the social safety net hammock is looking better and better. The same will happen to these starry-eyed baby libertarians.
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Thanks for the insight and I somehow knew most of this stuff already but you guys crack me up anyway.
jnc, I thought you’d like that guy.
And not to get too spiritual on a Friday or embarrass myself, par for the course, but it’s difficult for me not to believe in something I can’t quite put my finger on. I’ve been around too many dying people not to recognize a connection to those who have gone before us. If I die first I’ll let you know what I discover……………..somehow.
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I think my original ATiM post on on this issue.
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Nova, which issue?
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religion.
wow … from sept 2011. i didn’t realize i’ve been conversing w/ you all that long.
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I guess I’d classify myself as an activist, but that’s more than likely situational (it’s virtually impossible to avoid discussion of religion in Utah, where the question of whether or not you’d like a cup of coffee has religious undertones), but at heart I’d classify myself as a non-theist. It doesn’t matter to me much one way or the other what others believe so long as they do their best by society.
Over the course of my life I’ve been everything from an ultra-devout Christian (active in and then staffer for Campus Crusade for Christ) to a Quaker, an agnostic, and to now a “shruggy.” I will say that I got very annoyed at my mother for overlaying a lot of religious overtones onto my dad’s memorial service a couple of months ago; neither she nor dad were/are religious, but she suddenly found a need to invoke god at every turn. Since it was his service, and I was just the daughter and not the widow, I bit my tongue.
Interesting topic, Lulu. Maybe more this weekend while I’m traveling and have some down time.
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I think it was this one Nova. I’m going to re-read it later. Right now I’m taking a nap.
Dammit, you corked me Nova. It’s fun to go back and look at some of our earlier posts. It’s been almost two years now. We sure thought we were something special back then……….hah
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Judaism has been built around narrative theology for 2500 years, not catechism. What is ironic is that the most famous Rabbi in recorded history, Jesus of Nazareth, was a master of narrative theology, but the oldest Church established in his image generally rejects narrative in favor of catechism. However, I learned the following lesson from a Jesuit, who understood and practiced the method of story telling.
When I was 15 I won the NJ Optimist Oratorical Contest. I was to compete against the champions of 8 northeastern states in the Regional at Glens Falls, NY. I was pretty full of myself as I rode the Montreal train up from NYC. I found myself seated with a Jesuit. We introduced ourselves, talked a bit, and then I said, out of my ass, “How can you believe in the BVM and the IC?” He told me that he would answer if I allowed him a story from his life. My sanity temporarily regained, thanks to his good spirits, I said a story would be great.
He had spent 8 years in Japan, as a missionary, after WW2, and had been back in NY for about 4 years. In Japan he learned Bhuddism, Shinto, and Taoism. He read the Tao in Japanese. He said to me “you’ll have to trust me on this – the Book of Tao reads like this: gobbledygook, gobbledygook, respect your neighbor as you want to be respected. Gobbledygook, gobbledygook, do not steal. Gobbledygook, gobbledygook, do not murder. It gave me a headache. Then I learned that the people spent lots of effort attempting to plumb the depths of the gobbledygook!”
“I came to realize that my own religion was also gobbledygook, gobbledygook, do unto others as you would have others do unto you, gobbledygook, gobbledygook, honor your parents. What is your religion?” He asked me. I told him I was Jewish. He asked me if I had ever read Leviticus. I admitted that I had. “How does it read to you?” I had to sheepishly concede that it was gobbledygook, gobbledygook, proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof, gobbledygook, gobbledygook, love your neighbor as you love yourself.
He said it seemed it was that way for all religion. I asked why, totally fascinated. His answer has stayed with me. “When I get them in to worship, I preach the Golden Rule. But they would not come were it not for the BVM and the IC.”
I am a doubting believer most of the time, but an agnostic when I am feeling low. I wouldn’t try to explain my belief because I cannot make a rational case for it and because I am not in anyway called to do it by my religion. Jews have the notion of the “faithful” as opposed to “faith”. The “faithful” are those who practice the Golden Rule whatever their religion or atheism might be. The narrative of a loving God, the God of Jonah, for example, who cares exactly as much for the Ninehvites as he does for the Jews, precludes any demand that one have a religion at all. It only demands that we try for justice, mercy, and humility among us. Tradition has it that Jews were chosen to teach that lesson – to be a lamp unto the peoples – but modern Judaism assumes that other covenants with other peoples are valid too, unless they stray from consistency with the Golden rule.
I am never called to convert anyone and my religion is devoid of notions of a defined afterlife. I do not speak for fundamentalist Jews, of course.
There are, roughly speaking, five branches of Judaism, but more than five groups. These are: Orthodox [not necessarily fundamentalist, but ritual bound, with current practices rooted in the Rabbinic Period from 200 BC to 1492 AD, modernized by necessity], Chasidic [fundamentalist, with current practices rooted in the mysticism of the Ghettoes of Eastern Europe from the Inquisition to the French Revolution, and at war with modernity], Reform [modernist, which split from Orthodoxy in Germany in the 1840s and was carried to America with the wave of German Jews in the late 1840s and 1850s], Conservative [modernist, split from the Reform movement in America in the 1880s, served to introduce the wave of Eastern European Jews who immigrated from 1881 to 1921 to modernism while keeping a more traditional form of worship], and Reconstructionist [which is the left wing of the Conservative movement since the 1920s]. The three modernist wings all recognize each others Rabbis and all ordain women.
No current Jews in the world with the possible exception of the previously isolated Ethiopian Jews and the still isolated rural Indian Jews who are pre-Alexandrian in India are truly “Old Testament” Jews. The Oral Tradition – the Rabbinic Period, of which Jesus was a part, weighs heavily on Jewish practice and that tradition arose well after the Canon for the OT closed. Modernist Jews continue to evolve that tradition today. Fundamentalist Jews see it as having ended in Poland in about 1800.
Finally, Modernists and non-fundamentalist traditionalists [like UK and American Orthodox] do not take the OT literally or as inerrant. In the Hebrew, the various strains of storytelling within narratives are glaring and all are taken as allegory. Two different creation myths. Two different Noah stories. Two different Passover stories. Four revisions to Job. Jonah is neither science nor good history and everyone knew that when it was canonized. It was about a Jew sent to preach to the Ninehvites to clean up their act, but who wouldn’t do it because he thought Jews were better than Ninehvites, and that God shouldn’t have cared what “they” did. Allegory. One I wish the Likud Party in Israel understood or cared about.
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nova:
wow … from sept 2011. i didn’t realize i’ve been conversing w/ you all that long.
I know what you mean. lms and I go all the way back to september ’09 on PL.
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I was still in my fifties then!
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Thank you so much for sharing that Mark. It’s so interesting because when I was young until I was 15 our neighbors were Jewish. I spent a lot of time at their house, babysitting, teaching their kids how to swim and even watching the riots unfold from their television. The father and his father owned a small business in South Central which was damaged.
I credit them with my spiritual awakening, such as it was. They were so kind and understanding about all of my questions and never tried to sway or confuse me, but I was able to talk out all of my thoughts with them. My parents weren’t thrilled, but considering it was around this time that I also learned my own parents weren’t actually believers, it was nice to have that kind of sounding board.
I went on to take several religious studies courses in college because of the curiosity they sparked in me.
And this, I am a doubting believer most of the time, but an agnostic when I am feeling low sounds very familiar.
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Mark: thank you so much! I’ve spent some time studying Judaism (Chaim Potok’s books were my entrée, then I became more interested just because) and you’ve answered years’ worth of questions with that essay.
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I don’t know if any of you have read this story yet but I found it very moving and current and sad. Religion and homosexuality.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-robertson/just-because-he-breathes-learning-to-truly-love-our-gay-son_b_3478971.html
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A very sad story, indeed, and well told.
I know there is no condemnation of lesbianism in the OT. Is there a passage reviling lesbians in the NT? The OT condemnations of male homosexuality are closely connected to male rapes in the narrative. Rabbi Elliott Dorff, who was Chancellor of the University of Judaism at the time, and current Chair of the Conservative Committee on Jewish Law and Ethics and prof at UCLA Law, wrote about this in about 1991. As a result of his scholarship and advocacy, the Conservative movement now will permit the ordination of homosexual men and women. OTOH, there are many congregations that won’t hire them.
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This should be good news.
The U.S. government posted an unexpectedly large budget surplus in June, a further sign of the rapid improvement in public finances that has taken the heat off Congress to find savings and raise the nation’s borrowing limit.
Rising tax revenue, public spending cuts and big payments to the Treasury from government-backed mortgage companies helped the government take in $117 billion more last month than it paid out, the U.S. Treasury said on Thursday.
Analysts polled by Reuters had expected a surplus of $39.5 billion.
June’s surplus was the largest on record for that month.
While the government is still $510 billion in the red with three months to go in the fiscal year, June’s big surplus will buy it time before it runs up against the limit on borrowing set by Congress. Analysts expect the Treasury to hit the debt ceiling by early November.
The surplus in June also highlighted how much an improving economy and existing legislation have helped improve the fiscal outlook. That has made overhauling public pension and healthcare systems a little less pressing.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/us-posts-surprisingly-big-budget-surplus-6C10607875
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I just came across this from a guy I’ve met several times and campaigned for in the 90’s, as he ran against my rep twice. He finally made it to the House from a different Riverside district last year. He’s always been one of my favorite local Democrats. This is typical of him.
Democratic Representative Mark Takano of California was elected to the House in 2012. Before election night, he had been an English teacher for 24 years. So perhaps it was a matter of fate or plain old bad luck that Republicans would do something that would allow Takano to use his experience as a former teacher to thoroughly embarrass themselves.
In response to the major immigration reform bill passed by the US Senate, members of the House GOP decided to write a letter to Speaker John Boehner to decry the bill and convince him not to bring it up for a vote. Republicans circulated copies of their letter around the chamber in an effort to gather signatures of endorsement. But Mark Takano had a very different and brilliantly hilarious idea. He would grade their letter, complete with red ink, as a veteran teacher and post it on his tumblr page for all to see.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/07/13/house-democrat-and-former-teacher-mark-takano-grades-gop-letter-to-john-boehner-hilarity-ensues-image/
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“Republicans would do something that would allow Takano to use his experience as a former teacher to thoroughly embarrass themselves.”
That’s only true if you agree with him to begin with. He didn’t persuade anyone that he was right, he just comes off as condescending.
He’s not their teacher, and they aren’t his students.
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Leaning forward.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2362762/The-dirty-secret-Britains-power-madness-Polluting-diesel-generators-built-secret-foreign-companies-kick-theres-wind-turbines–insane-true-eco-scandals.html
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This is what we want right?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10141476/NHS-is-worse-than-communist-China-say-doctors.html?fb
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“Simply put, this bill would take away access to the most fundamental form of health care women need.”
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/12/opinion/davis-standing-up-for-texas/index.html
Abortions after 20 weeks is the most fundamental form of health care women need ?
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McWing:
Abortions after 20 weeks is the most fundamental form of health care women need ?
Interesting that it can be both the most fundamental form of health care women need and only a rare procedure hardly worth fretting over, all at the same time.
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At least read it first before commenting, guys.
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I know what she wrote. I don’t believe their conclusions and I don’t think she believes them either. As a result, I can only conclude that she is referring to abortion on demand at 20 weeks and/or greater is the most fundamental health care women need.
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George, why don’t you believe it? What about closing all these clinics so that there are only five left is not to believe?
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I believe that the overwhelming majority of clinics will make the necessary adjustments. The only sources for the information have come from what I consider partisan sources.
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Time will tell. A clinic operator here in Austin interviewed by the A A-S claimed a conversion price that was prohibitive.
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Mark:
A clinic operator here in Austin interviewed by the A A-S claimed a conversion price that was prohibitive.
Would it still be prohibitive if they stopped offering abortion services but maintained all the other services? I thought the conversion cost had to do with making their abortion services comply with standard surgical outpatient regulations.
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Mark:
According to The Dallas Morning News:
[The bill] includes four major elements: a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, a requirement that abortion physicians have admitting privileges at local hospitals, a requirement that abortion facilities meet the same standards as surgical centers and restrictions on abortion-inducing medication.
None of these elements should interfere with or increase the cost of the provision of other services such as cancer screening, birth control, obgyn exams, etc. So it seems to me that the only reasons a clinic might have to close as a result of this bill are 1) the only service it provides is abortion services, 2) its abortion services are a profit center which subsidizes the rest of it’s activities, 3) the managers of the clinic only provide the other services in order to facilitate (politically or otherwise) the provision of abortion…ie the provision of abortion is their raison d’être, so if they cannot economically do that, there is no point in doing anything else. Outside of these reasons, I cannot see why cancer screenings, birth control services, or other obgyn services would be threatened by this bill. Why do you suppose other services will be threatened?
BTW…is anyone else surprised that abortion facilities, especially ones that provide post-20 week abortions, do not already have to comply with standards that other surgical out-patient facilities have to comply with? Why would abortions be exempted from these standards in the first place?
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Why would abortions be exempted from these standards in the first place?
Because abortions are not surgeries.
Ambulatory surgical care facilities charge twice as much for abortions as PPs and other outpatient clinics. Abortions are not a profit center unless the supply becomes restricted.
It is possible [likely, I think] that the loss of the abortion trade would not cause the PPs and outpatient clinics to close. It is possible that the ambulatory surgical care facilities would pick up the slack for middle class abortions. We shall see.
What would be lost in the process is the ability of the poor woman to obtain a legal abortion.
However, the federal court in Austin will enjoin the operation of the statute and the Fifth Circuit will sustain. The purpose of passing these laws is actually to get another case before the Supremes. A R legislator from Houston, who thought the twenty weeks period would pass muster, was sure the rest would not. She asked why we were passing an unconstitutional piece of legislation as she offered an amendment to avoid the “surgery” trap.
I think of abortions in the same way I think of drugs – the law is not the appropriate means of social control because the law will be scoffed at if it criminalizes or severely restricts the conduct. Scott, you often point to the difference between morality and law. Surely you see that here. The law is only one means of social control. It works best when most people already know that the prohibited conduct is “wrong”. I truly believe that the most the law can do in this area is help to make abortion safe, rare, but accessible.
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Mark:
Because abortions are not surgeries.
Of course they are. That is why most abortion procedures are called “surgical abortions“. Only those that make use of an abortion pill are non-surgical.
So, again, I wonder why abortion facilities have so far been exempted from regulations that govern other surgical facilities such that it requires a special law to bring them into compliance like everyone else.
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Mark:
It is possible [likely, I think] that the loss of the abortion trade would not cause the PPs and outpatient clinics to close.
I agree. There just seems to be no plausible reason to believe they would be forced to close. And I also find it hard to believe that the political abortion lobby doesn’t know this too. So when Davis says the things she says, I think she is knowingly trying to deceive her audience as part of a political strategy. Which makes her less a heroine in my eyes than a typical, dishonest politician.
Scott, you often point to the difference between morality and law. Surely you see that here.
Sure.
The law is only one means of social control. It works best when most people already know that the prohibited conduct is “wrong”.
I definitely agree. As it happens, almost twice as many people already know abortion after 20 weeks is “wrong” as don’t.
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almost twice as many people already know abortion after 20 weeks is “wrong” as don’t.
“know”[?] or “think”.
The 20 wk argument is purely legal/bioethical.
Having no clinics for the poor is where the social control problem lies. Having no clinic close enough to drive to in less than three hours is where the social control problem lies. Even if “only” 1/3 of women thought abortion was OK at 5 weeks that would be too many for the law to successfully suppress the procedure, which would become back alley once again, for the poor.
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Mark:
“know”[?] or “think”.
Well, I was just copying your own formulation. I’m good with either.
Having no clinics for the poor is where the social control problem lies.
Just as law is not the only way to manage social problems, neither, I don’t think, is abortion.
Even if “only” 1/3 of women thought abortion was OK at 5 weeks…
I wonder why you don’t care about the thoughts of men.
…that would be too many for the law to successfully suppress the procedure, which would become back alley once again, for the poor.
And if back alley abortions were seen by most to be a greater social problem than legal abortions after 5 weeks, then they would, presumably, change the law to increase the time limit. As ever, it is a matter of value judgments that must be made by the electorate. Just because you or I rate the potential for back alley abortions as a greater evil than aborting babies at, say, 12 weeks doesn’t mean our judgment must prevail over a majority of our fellow citizens.
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I wonder why you don’t care about the thoughts of men.
In this instance I do care about each male who decides to abort the fetus he is carrying, and each fetus carried by a male. The social control, whether by religion, or community disapproval, or by legislation, will affect pregnant men equally with pregnant women. I misstated, obviously.
Just as law is not the only way to manage social problems, neither, I don’t think, is abortion.
“Neither, do I think, is abortion”. As edited, I agree. But I think it is a non sequitur. Prohibition was popular enough to pass into constitutional law, but compelled abstinence failed as social control. The constitution itself was unable to control drinking, and created organized crime in America with that misstep.
In each of these two cases the conduct that the public attempts to socially control is one considered by many to be an inherent problem with society; alcohol consumption and abortion are parallel here.
But charging that abortion is not the way to socially control abortion or drinking is not the way to socially control alcoholism is a meaningless circuitous exercise.
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Mark, in your opinion should makes be allowed to legislate on abortion?
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Mark:
In this instance I do care about each male who decides to abort the fetus he is carrying, and each fetus carried by a male. The social control, whether by religion, or community disapproval, or by legislation, will affect pregnant men equally with pregnant women. I misstated, obviously
See, I think this gets back to something we talked about a long time ago, and is an example of what I mentioned back then, namely the tactic of abortion advocates to ignore the central argument of abortion opponents by trying to define the issue as strictly a “women’s” issue. But contrary to what abortion advocates seem to think, they do not have a monopoly on concern about pregnant women. The difference between abortion advocates and opponents is that opponents also care about the being that is being destroyed, and this is central to their opposition to abortion. And when it comes to concern about the thing being destroyed, female opinions have no moral authority over the opinions of males. Hence, I don’t think it makes any sense, except strictly as an evasive political tactic, to speak of abortion in terms of what women only think.
Prohibition was popular enough to pass into constitutional law, but compelled abstinence failed as social control. The constitution itself was unable to control drinking, and created organized crime in America with that misstep.
An excellent point, but you are drawing the wrong lesson. The lesson with Prohibition was that a national policy could not succeed. Prior to Prohibition, and even to this day, smaller constituencies have successfully implemented and maintained prohibitions on alcohol. And anyone who doesn’t like it doesn’t have to live there.
As I have stated time and time again, we need to de-nationalize the issue of abortion, just as we have de-nationalized the issue of alcohol consumption, and allow more local communities to make and implement their own value judgments about it. Roe/Casey must go.
[FYI…I edited the above a bit to make it clearer.]
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Scott, a longer reply I wrote was apparently swallowed in the ether. Short: A D&C involves no stitches or cuts. It is an outpatient doctor’s office type procedure. Ambulatory Surgical Care facilities must have wide halls for stretchers and all the bells and whistles of hospitals including meal service and bed care for days at a time, and lots of electronic infrastructure that a doc’s office is not required to have and which bear no relation to the previous requirements for a D&C in TX, which do include the same or more sanitary and oversight rules as at any doc’s office.
See http://info.sos.state.tx.us/pls/pub/readtac$ext.ViewTAC?tac_view=3&ti=25&pt=1
and check out Chapters 139 and 135. There are other Chapters in the same list that are worth reading too, like 137 and 125, to get the idea of how different these facilities can be depending on what they do.
George, as a matter of representative government, of course male voter and legislators have voices and votes. What they never have to do is actually deal with having a fetus inside of them. In that respect, this has been a women’s issue. Scott is certainly right to point out that worrying about the fetus’ prospects is something men can do too. And valuing the fetus as a fully formed human is something some whole religions do. The point remains that pregnant women have to deal with their pregnant selves in a whole different way then anyone else does.
I never impregnated a woman I dated, but I know what I would have done if I did, because another lawyer and his brother and I helped a pregnant female law student all through her pregnancy. Hid her in a duplex. Fed her steak most nights. Paid her med bills. I’ve told the story here. The father was a PhD psychology candidate who ran off to Canada to avoid the draft. The 12# steak fed baby boy was adopted and by reason of a later event, we learned that he went to A&M and was very well adjusted.
I know I would have urged against abortion and offered to help. But I would have respected the woman’s choice because it would have been so much more personal for her than for anyone else in the world*.
*[except the embryo, for those who believe embryos should be treated like fully formed humans, which I don’t].
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Mark:
A D&C involves no stitches or cuts.
Neither does lasik eye surgery. I wonder if a center that performs lasik eye surgery has to comply with the Ambulatory Surgical Center Act. I’m guessing that it does, based on what I read qualifies as an ambulatory surgical center, which doesn’t mention anything about stitches or cuts being required.
According to the link you provided, an ambulatory surgical center is legally defined as:
A facility that primarily provides surgical services to patients who do not require overnight hospitalization or extensive recovery, convalescent time or observation. The planned total length of stay for an ASC patient shall not exceed 23 hours. Patient stays of greater than 23 hours shall be the result of an unanticipated medical condition and shall occur infrequently. The 23-hour period begins with the induction of anesthesia.
Seems to me both an abortion clinic and a lasik eye surgery clinic would qualify under that definition.
except the embryo, for those who believe embryos should be treated like fully formed humans, which I don’t
And therein lies the sensible argument against restrictions on abortion, and is the subject around which the abortion debates properly belong. And is why I objected to your resort to what women alone think while ignoring what men might think, because women as women do not have any special insight into this question, which, again, is THE central issue regarding abortion policy.
It is logical to defend an abortion-rights position by claiming that a 5 day old embryo, or a 12 week old fetus, or a 8 month old unborn baby is not a “fully formed human” and therefore does not merit the same state protection afforded to other “fully formed humans”. But it is not logical to argue against someone who claims differently by maintaining that pregnancy is a “woman’s issue” and a man will never have to deal with the consequences of being pregnant, so we should only consider what women think. That is a complete non-sequitur.
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