janc
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response 28 of 33:
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Oct 20 01:33 UTC 2003 |
You were talking how the evil liberals support late term abortions. Turns out
the liberal (me) and the conservative (you) actually have the same opinion on
that - it's OK to save the life of the mother. OK.
Then you accuse me of deflection, raising the subject of rare cases instead of
focusing on the usual situation. Actually, it was you who raised the subject
of partial birth abortions and late term abortions, which it turns out you
don't even oppose. I mentioned rape, but not as an argument for or against
abortion, only as a demonstration that there are people on both sides who are
willing to support seriously nasty stuff if it is consistant with their
opinion. I wasn't raising it to deflect the discussion from the core issues
of abortion, because I wasn't talking about abortion at all. I was discussing
the bad habit of arguing with your favorite liberal/conservative stereotypes
instead of arguing with the actual people in the room with you. I was not
putting rape forward as an argument for the liberal side. If I was, I wouldn't
have pointed out that many conservatives approve of abortions in such
circumstances.
You also accuse me of deflection by raising the subject of incest. I didn't
mention incest. Yes, I know "rape and incest" is the stock phrase, but I
didn't say it. Most incest is rape. I don't actually understand why people
think the rare cases of non-rape "incest" should be a special case. Certainly
such children have a higher risk of birth defects, but so do lots of other
categories of children (children of older mothers, children of mothers who
smoke or take drugs, etc, etc). The whole question of aborting children with
birth defects or genetic disorders is it's own big topic.
On the whole, your responses to my postings would be much more interesting
if there were any indication that you actually read my posting instead of
noticing "liberal said 'rape' and 'abortion' in same sentence" and popping out
a stock response to what you think all liberals believe. But, hey, I can
handle it. I've spent enough time with Alzheimers patients and the severely
senile to have learned to sustain a conversation with people whose
responses don't actually connect very well with what you just said.
Let's review - I am not actually arguing my opinion on abortion in this item.
That's not what I think this item is about. In fact, I haven't even stated
my opinion on abortion, beyond indicating that I think it is OK in the cases
of rape and danger to the mother's life. Lots of people way right of Arnold
Schwartzenegger believe that.
What I'm arguing about here is getting real. Becoming a real person engaging
in real interactions with other real people.
You starting this item arguing the superiority of a mode of conferencing
where nothing matters. Other people's opinions can't be changed, so there
is no point in talking about anything real. Instead, everyone just competes
to see who can throw the cleverest insult at someone else, and everyone
agrees to ignore the actual insults, proving that they are tough as well
as clever. It's basically like a multiplayer Quake game - entertaining,
but extremely limited as human interactions go. There is plenty of that
both on M-Net and Grex, but thankfully both systems have a lot more going
for them. There actually are people saying real things to each other.
But you aren't one of them. You seem to have nothing real to say about
anything. When challenged to be real, you pop up with the abortion topic,
the one subject you claim not to be joking about. But you can't even do
that right. Instead of reading the things people say, trying to understand
what that person is talking about, and trying to address it, you just try
to match them up to some imaginary category in your head and argue with
your own imaginary category.
OK, I admit to a degree that is all anyone does. When I talk to you, I'm
really talking to some guess I've made about who you are. However, I'm
willing to modify my guess in response to your postings, which I actually
read. More than once even.
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janc
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response 29 of 33:
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Oct 20 02:19 UTC 2003 |
Oh yeah, to address some of the other peripheral issues in your smoke
screen....
Big of you to choose your wife over your unborn child, but why should it be
your choice? Maybe your wife would be willing to risk her life to bring a
baby to term, and maybe she wouldn't. In either case, I don't think your
opinion has much to do with it. If your wife is unconscious, and has not
previously established her opinion, then I think the doctor's duty is to
save the mother, with little or no consultation with the father.
I think almost all women have had sex at times when they didn't want to have
babies, including most married women. Do you believe that almost all women
are sluts?
The fact that banning abortions will not stop abortions is not an argument
against banning abortion. It is an argument that those seeking to reduce
the number of unborn babies getting killed maybe ought to be looking at
other approachs to achieve that goal. Improving birth control, getting
women better access to it, and better education about it, would probably
do more to reduce the baby death toll. The fact that many advocates of
banning abortion violently oppose these things tends to suggest that those
people aren't really that interested in reducing the number of babies
killed. It makes us wonder what their real motives are.
I think you make way too much of all this gay/straight stuff. Unless
you are contemplating getting involved in their sex lives, a person's
sexual orientation is hardly more important than their hair color. My
hair is brown, threaded with gray.
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