Abortion

[Oakvale]

I'm Pro-Choice, but I believe abortion should be illegal after the 2nd trimester and I also support banning partial-birth abortion.

I may dedicate my life to banning the term "partial-birth abortion".

[Oakvale]

G-d

Pardon the tangent, but I've seen people do this before - leaving out the 'o' in 'god' - what's the reason?

[Oakvale]

G-d

Pardon the tangent, but I've seen people do this before - leaving out the 'o' in 'god' - what's the reason?

Imitation of Hebrew Bibles.  The Jews developed a custom of leaving out the vowel points in YHWH or replacing them with the vowel points associated with Adonai (meaning My Lord) which they would say instead when reading the Bible aloud. The substitute vowel points are the origin of Jehovah, tho the evidence indicates the name was most likely originally pronounced Yahweh.

Ah, I thought it might be something like that. I've heard of the Jewish custom of not saying God's name out loud, but I didn't know it's done by some Christians, too (assuming Santorum 2012 is such).

[Oakvale]

My personal opinion on this - and I don't think it should matter all that much since, as a man, I'm never going to have to carry a [insert preferred emotionally-loaded term here] inside me for nine months - is that whether a fetus is or isn't "life" (not a concept I think we should necessarily fetishize, but I digress) isn't important - maybe a fetus is "life", but I don't think it follows that it's therefore wrong to end it.

I suppose there should be some kind of viability limit, which is (obviously) completely arbitrary, but that's inevitable considering we're having a ridiculous discussion about fuzzy, abstract concepts like "life" and "personhood" that are by definition arbitrary, and that will never be resolved because there aren't actually such thing as right answers. Let's come up with a messy, unsatisfying compromise for all concerned and move on. Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!

PS: FWIW, I think  that - slightly cliché at this point, admittedly - Flo Kennedy quote about how "if men could pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament" bears as much repeating as it gets.


EDIT: Quoting this for the ages -

Masturbation, although immoral

There are people alive in the 21st century who believes this? Okay.

[Oakvale]

Masturbation, although immoral

There are people alive in the 21st century who believes this? Okay.

I scratch my head at some people here all the time.

I wish I'd noticed that I apparently switched from the plural of "person" to the singular halfway through the sentence. D'oh.

Hypothetically speaking, what would our feelings be on the morality of aborting feti being gestated in vitro, were such a thing to become technologically feasible? They'd be, technically speaking, biologically independent of the mother (perhaps to a fault).

I wouldn't personally have a problem with it, but I imagine a lot of people might.

I, uh, know that's not exactly an answer that's going to win me the Nobel Prize, but there you go.

[Oakvale]

Again, I may dedicate my short time on this planet to eradicating the phrase "partial-birth" abortion.