I understand where you’re going with this, and I’d like to preface this by saying that I admire and respect both you and acat, and find you both to be value-adding posters. I don’t think you are advocating for forced breeding. I do, however, think that the logic is similar. Bans of certain products or lifestyles purely to effect a political, religious, cultural, or aesthetic program (even if there are good reasons to favor or disfavor such a regime) are part and parcel of an expansive government, and reproduction/family issues are the most personal and individual of choices to be trampled by government. I dislike lazy, unfocused prose — I think that the degradation of language has contributed to the decline of rational thinking. I am also in favor of the death penalty against certain crimes. If someone were to argue for the death penalty based on the average death row inmate’s use of prose, I would think it problematic — both because it obscures the main issue, and because it implicitly advocates the death penalty for those types of goals.

Being more pragmatic, I can tell you that we were losing on the fight for abortion when pro-lifers framed the issue exclusively using scripture verses and by coupling it with a very particular view rejecting birth control and promiscuity. I am wary of going back to that sort of rhetoric and policy position, for the same reason that I am against the ban of contraceptives (both morally and pragmatically). We should, I think, be careful to decouple things that we would like to happen in voluntary society (larger families and greater pop growth, for instance), and what we want government to undertake or deprive people of.

The species will survive with or without abortion. Millions of children have no such luxury under the current regime. The latter matters much more to me than the former, and I think is the thing to emphasize if we’re to end abortions.

As a matter of science, I think abortion as birth control is bad for the species. Unplanned births are the way of human advancement, as I understand the trek from Lascaux to NYC 2012.

The Dems in districts where they can be beat by Republicans can vote against this bill and say, “See — we’re reasonable on life issues” or “We’re pro-life”.

The Dems in other districts won’t care, since they won’t lose their races.

It will be a slight positive for Congressional Dems in seats that are at risk.

Looks like we’re there.

Mew

I think a lot these days about the election of Reagan and 1980-1983.

Special times.

Chaotic, unquiet, messy progress… but progress nonetheless.

Mew

(one can make the case that Red State is a response to the early successes of the “online left” …)

Mew

Mew

The statistical argument I find more compelling. Pick someone, one of those one-in-a-million people like .. not a Beethoven or Newton, but .. a Larry Page or a Paul Allen or a Scotty Pippin.

How many of them – allowing for one-in-a-million – are gone?

Whose lives haven’t they touched, because they’re gone?

What works of genius won’t we see, because they’re gone?

Put in those terms .. destroying potential for so very little in return … seems more effective an argument, at least to me.

Mew

Most profound thinker 1000 – 2000 A.D.

Today, young adults think they know what they want in terms of a child. The old school roll of the dice ALWAYS has been the best way for the species.

They’ve convinced themselves that they are saving children from what would have probably been unhappy lives (of course, they would probably avoid the term “child” as it would be too humanizing).

My younger sister is a smart woman (an MD), and she is a weird hybrid of a political creautre (generally fiscally conservative, but generally socially liberal), and she and I go round and round on abortion. She generally justifies it because she thinks the unborn likely would have had unhappy lives if born to parents (or a just a mother) that did not want them.

I always ask her – so you can live with “maybe would have had a bad life”? (or likely, or potentially) What about rising above your cirumstances? What about the resilience of the human spirit?

I’m Catholic, and while my ardent pro-life stance was probably born out of that (no pun intended), I can honestly say if has little to do with it now. My approach is much more fatalistic. Just what is that voice or light that was extinguished? Maybe he / she would have been the person to create a cure for cancer, or a longer-lasting light bulb. Or maybe he / she would be the next crack dealer. But the fact is, and there’s no getting around this no matter what juicy rationalization you contrive, that I don’t know. Nobody knows. And when in doubt, I think you just have to err on the side of life.