Who are American politicians beholden to? The People? The Constitution?

[DinoDoc]

So this thread is about abortion now... I see...

I don’t think that a Hagel exit would hurt President Obama much. SecDef nominees have blown up on the launch pad before: Remember John Tower (picked by the first President Bush) and Bobby Inman (picked by President Clinton to replace Les Aspin)? Interestingly, both were succeeded as nominees by men who went on to be very successful stewards of the military establishment: Dick Cheney and William Perry. Calling Michèle Flournoy?

The prospect of a Hagel regime at DOD is a real problem now because the next SecDef will need to do two things: Work with Congress to reduce the defense budget thoughtfully, and work with the military to re-shape the military to make it relevant to future conflict. At the moment, Hagel appears to lack the political capital to do the former, as well as the intellectual appetite to do the latter.

Bottom line: Every business day that the Senate Armed Services Committee doesn’t vote to send the nomination to the full Senate, I think the likelihood of Hagel becoming defense secretary declines by about 2 percent.

Will Hagel Withdraw? I'd Say 50/50...

[DaShi]

http://www.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/314640/abortion-and-gender-gap-numbers-ramesh-ponnuru

http://spectator.org/blog/2012/08/22/do-men-and-women-view-abortion

http://www.rtl.org/prolife_issues/abortionpolls.html

(As noted, I consider myself pro-life but see abortion as sometimes being the best option (medical danger) or that there seems to be nothing ethically wrong with it (1st trimester, possible some period of the 2nd)).

It seems to me, despite what I See on forums like this one, that people as a group tend towards right morality. It is just the politics/options provided to them which gives the mess we have now.

People have a mostly reasonable view of the ethical concerns (from rtl page):
To Save Woman's Life - Legal: 88% Illegal: 10%
To Save Woman's Health - Legal 82% Illegal: 14%
In Cases of Rape/Incest - Legal 81% Illegal: 17%
Physically Impaired Baby - Legal 54% Illegal: 40%
To End Unwanted Pregnancy - Legal: 42% Illegal: 57%
D&X/Partial-Birth Abortions - Legal: 23% Illegal: 69%
Pregnancy is 6 Months or More - Legal: 11% Illegal: 86%

The only one I disagree with is cases of rape/incest... I think the emotions involved upset peoples thinking (I would also require a doctor to defend that the baby was really seriously physically impaired and not just gay/deaf/female).

JM

None of those support HC's statement. And at least two of them are terribly biased.

[MichaeltheGreat]

If you believe that a fetus is a human life then almost anything is justified to protect it, kentonio, that's what you will never understand--that people like myself actually believe that and it has nothing to do with women's rights at all.

At a certain point in it's prenatal development, a fetus becomes close enough to a human life to deserve legal protection. (as affirmed in Roe v. Wade, though I disagree with the lateness of the timing).

Prior to that point in it's development, it goes from a clump of cells and develops incrementally over time. A fetus has a beating heart long before it has other capabilities necessary for life other than as a biological attachment to the woman carrying it. It also has a beating heart well before sufficient brain development to go from the same reflexive reactions as invertebrate, so brain activity similar to a neonate infant. To say that a 5 day blastocyst is "the same" as an 8 week embryo is "the same" as a 24 week fetus is "the same" as a newborn is an absurdity.

[Elok]

Well, hell, it's not like I looked at all like I do now back in December 1983. Clearly that little pant****ter got swapped out for me somewhere along the way. Couldn't possibly be the same, nossir.

[Elok]

At any rate, infants who can only suck, **** and scream certainly shouldn't be granted personhood like full-grown, independent humans. The little parasites.

[Aeson]

It's actually quite simple. Either it is a human life with meaning and significance in which case its right that its death should be anguished over by all involved or its not and its removal should bear as much emotional weight as removing a cancerous tumor.

False dichotomy.

[Elok]

More seriously: a blastocyst, like a fetus, an infant, a toddler, a teenager, an adult, or an old man, is a life, i.e an ongoing, continuous process. No discrete points, no clear lines. Lines can only be created by applying ultimately arbitrary standards. Brain activity? What, you think an infant in his crib is going cogito ergo sum? An infant's brain is a set of instinct-parts trying to assemble themselves into a machine capable of something resembling coherence. If there's profound existential significance there, it's also found in a lab rat, a cow, or any number of animals we readily kill. As the idea of later potential for growth or development is already ruled out as an irrelevance (the blastocyst has the same capacity), why does the infant deserve special consideration?

Also, the famous violinist is a transparent and, quite frankly, dishonest ploy to make a perfectly healthy biological function seem freakish and abnormal.

[DinoDoc]

False dichotomy.

How so?

[Elok]

Crap, I got lured into this stupid argument yet again. Ah well, not much better to do right now, I guess.

[Aeson]

How so?

You are ignoring all possibility for emotional attachment other than the significance given to a (current, accepted) human life. Thus denying the possibility for emotional attachments to ideas, hopes, or dreams or even the future possibility of human life. You deny the possibility for any physical response procedure. You also don't account for any form of social/family pressures, self-doubt, or a huge array of possible irrationality.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Good lord you're ****ing stupid. It's like you don't even realize half of women in the US are anti-abortion as well.

Good for them. ITS THEIR CHOICE.

[kentonio]

Oh gosh, and here's those famous liberals Rasmussen polling pro-choice/pro-life at 54%-38% just back in November.

I'm going to try be a little more calm about this now, but for those men who are so quick to want a ban, please do a little research into what happened last time abortion was illegal. Backstreet operations, sexual abuse and blackmail, horrific medical consequences and frequently death. Women are never going to give up the right to terminate an unwanted pregnacy. They've done this for thousands of year and are not going to stop now. A child means putting their life on hold for 16-18 years and that is not something every woman will accept at any stage in her life.

If you ban abortion the only thing you achieve is the criminalization of many perfectly law abiding women and drive them into unsafe environments. We're talking about your mothers, sisters and daughters here, and if you don't believe that then you are deluding yourselves.

[Krill]

I'm still waiting for a pro-lifer to state how they would stop a pregnant women self aborting.

[DinoDoc]

Oh gosh, and here's those famous liberals Rasmussen polling pro-choice/pro-life at 54%-38% just back in November.

Polling from the conservative bastion of CNN in which 52 percent took a pro-life view saying abortion should be illegal in all (15%) or most circumstances (37%).

[DinoDoc]

You are ignoring all possibility for emotional attachment other than the significance given to a (current, accepted) human life.

It either is or is not a human life. If it isn't as the pro-abortion side asserts, suffering emotional pain from the removal of the fetus makes as much sense as being depressed over the removal of a hang nail.