Does Kermit deserve the death penalty for this?

[Sava]

I think that's because Americans are also **** drivers...

Everyone but me drives like ****... regardless of country of origin. At least we drive on the correct side of the road over here.

[MrFun]

We're not all as comfortable with mothers killing their defenseless children as you are.

I guessed you missed my posts in which I expressed disgust with killing newborn babies.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Newborns that are delivered alive are usually described as babies by normal people, MtG. I realize that may drive home the morality of what the man has done for your side of the issue which is what makes it hard for you to say. I only asked you when they become persons after you decided to defend the rather ghoulish description of children without the good graces to die immediately as a fetus outside the womb.

You're actually capable of not being a presumptuous ass, DD. I've seen you do it. "Baby" is an ooey-cooey emotionally laden term. I go all ooey-cooey over babies any time I see them. Enemy soldiers are "persons" too, but that hasn't prevented me from killing several at close enough range to see their facial expressions. Ooey-cooey emotions aren't particularly useful in medical or legal settings. I have no "moral" ambiguity about this case at all. As I've stated clearly, it's murder, and fry him.

You can call a non-viable fetus a "baby" if you want, but it's an emotionally laden, imprecise term. We're not talking live delivery in the context of the then-state senator Obama quote. We're talking a non-viable fetus temporarily surviving outside the womb after abortion. If that "baby" if you want to call it that, had been prematurely delivered, and not aborted, there would be no difference in the survival chances. They are zero in either case. Trying to link Obama's quote, taken out of context, to any discussion of this case is just trolling.

After-birth abortion: why should the baby live? published by the Journal of Medical Ethics of all places.

So? Why shouldn't JME publish it?

The journal seeks to promote ethical reflection and conduct in scientific research and medical practice. It features original, full length articles on ethical aspects of health care, as well as brief reports, responses, editorials, and other relevant material.

It got your attention, so there's your ethical reflection, and the paper you cite refers to its own position as an "argument" so it is clearly in the editorial category, not a report or scientific study. You think their position is repugnant and you disagree with it? So do I, and a lot of other pro-choice people too. It's also completely irrelevant to pre-viability abortion.

[MichaeltheGreat]

I do.

Abortion is a medical procedure. I trust a medical professional's morals and ethics more than I do a politician's. Politicians shouldn't be in between a person and their doctor.

So can anyone hang up a shingle and practice medicine? Or buy wholesale and dispense prescriptions for opiate medications? How about if doctors decide to **** their patients, or get their elderly patients to provide for them in their wills? Government has a regulatory role in all professions, whether medicine, law, accounting, engineering, or any other profession where the level of skills and knowledge required are so far out of the average lay person's knowledge that there's inherent inequality in the ability to freely engage in transactions between the lay person and the professional. That's why car wash attendants such as you aren't licensed by states, but doctors, dentists, shrinks and lawyers are.

Government ought to promote policies that lead to reductions in the need for abortions

It should, but that's a separate issue from appropriate regulation of the medical and other professions to prevent abuse and misconduct.

This particular doctor, as others have pointed out, is a psychopath. If these incidents are only going to occur as the result of some psychopathic person being in such a position... that to me is a victory. It's certainly no excuse to restrict rights for hypothetical late term abortions that simply are not happening on the scale that "pro-life" advocates would have you believe.

There's a balancing test. Once a fetus is viable, it is capable of independent existence and it is within the state's lawful powers to protect that person, just as it is within a state's lawful powers to prevent abuse of the person or estate of children, the severely disabled, seniors, mentally incompetent, or any other individuals or groups who can not adequately represent their own interests.

[Uncle Sparky]

Speaking of trolling - one thing I've really never understood, philisophically, how can the same person that doesn't trust THE GOVERNMENT to even know if they own a gun, trusts THE GOVERNMENT to carry out death sentences.

[MrFun]

It got your attention, so there's your ethical reflection, and the paper you cite refers to its own position as an "argument" so it is clearly in the editorial category, not a report or scientific study. You think their position is repugnant and you disagree with it? So do I, and a lot of other pro-choice people too. It's also completely irrelevant to pre-viability abortion.

Maybe DD doesn't know the difference between an editorial piece and a scientific study/report.

[Alexander's Horse]

Speaking of trolling - one thing I've really never understood, philisophically, how can the same person that doesn't trust THE GOVERNMENT to even know if they own a gun, trusts THE GOVERNMENT to carry out death sentences.

The main reason we don't have em in Australia anymore.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Speaking of trolling - one thing I've really never understood, philisophically, how can the same person that doesn't trust THE GOVERNMENT to even know if they own a gun, trusts THE GOVERNMENT to carry out death sentences.

Not that I have issues with gun owner databases and registration, but in theory, it is not just state participation in a capital trial, but citizen participation via the jury system, a defense advocate (usually a private attorney in capital cases, though paid by the state) and multiple rounds of appellate review. I think the death penalty is overapplied, but there are cases (Manson, Dahmer, Bundy, McVeigh) where there is no doubt and the crimes are extreme enough that there's no reason the guilty should continue contributing to global climate change.

[DinoDoc]

Is Kermit truly the exception to the rule?



Seriously, I thought I was just trolling at the start of this thread. I didn't expect PP to High 5 me for making it.

[MichaeltheGreat]

I can't be arsed to listen to a six minute video. Is there a full transcript including the before and after and the location, context, etc.?

[DinoDoc]

Full Context. Out of sympathy, the relevant portion starts around the 30 minute mark.

[Hauldren Collider]

I opened this thread to post that video but you beat me to the punch, DinoDoc.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Some state legislative grandstanding? Yes, this proves the whole conspiracy. Got the specific text of the bill in question? I'm not real excited one way or another about verbal testimony of one individual in a state legislative committee hearing. The whole "child born alive" thing seems to me being a terminology issue. Are we talking about established viability? Or non-viable fetuses? The label attached to the video is hyperbolic bull****, of course.

[DinoDoc]

Yes, this proves the whole conspiracy.

Conspiracy? Who alleged a conspiracy?

I'm not real excited one way or another about verbal testimony of one individual in a state legislative committee hearing.

It isn't a random individual though. If it was I wouldn't have cared. She's the person chosen specifically by the Planned Parenthood Affiliates of Florida to represent them and their views. I actually admire PP for taking this stand. It’s a strange mindset that would suddenly demand that a doctor rescue a baby in peril after giving him the green light to kill it in the womb 10 minutes earlier. The only situation where someone is typically asked to switch from assailant to angel of mercy in the blink of an eye is when the police or soldiers wound an armed enemy in the course of defending themselves. In all other cases, a person who’s made the decision to kill will tend to finish the job. Pro-lifers have always argued that it’s silly and arbitrary to make birth (or viability) some key threshold for personhood. In her own honest way, the representative of Planned Parenthood is agreeing with that. If a mother and her doctor have decided to terminate the child, why stop at accidental birth? Why not let them finish the job?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Viability is far from arbitrary. Viability means the "person" is no longer biologically dependent on the mother for survival. How much of whose money do you mandate be spent to try to "save" the life of someone/something that is medically impossible to save?

I didn't hear anything in the testimony that made it clear that there's any reference specifically and solely (either in the testimony, or to the wording in the bill) that the aid requirement is limited to viabile fetuses.

As far as soldiers becoming an angel of mercy, lol, you're kidding, right? You do not leave a wounded enemy unsecured. You do not stop or delay your execution of a mission to tend to a wounded enemy. A wounded enemy may still have a capacity to resist, that you or one of your brothers might find out the hard way. So what do you think the solution is there? One in the head or three in the chest, and move on. Or if they happen to be exactly where you are and it doesn't take any extra time or effort, a knife is fine, thank you. **** any hand wringers or chickenhawks who haven't been there, they haven't earned the right to judge.

Back to abortion in Florida. Florida law allows abortions up to 24 weeks. Why? Fetal viability at 21 weeks is zero, but up to 10% depending on fetal mass at the end of 22 weeks. So push the limit back to 22 weeks and solve the problem.