The Glade 4.0

Not to mention, many of the responses dispute the dichotomy of the choices offered, or point out that each and every one of them has stipulations that could be made that would dramatically change the replies (or imply heavy bias in their choice of wording, on a related note).

It's why I haven't replied; to do so honestly and without putting a wholly misleading record of my views would require so much stipulation that the questions themselves become meaningless in any sort of "classify your response as true or false" sense. Thus it's essentially worthless as a survey response.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

The problems of a true or false poll...

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Yup, as I stated, I put them into those buckets based on my perceptions of their postings.

Oh, no doubt. I didn't mean to imply you were trying to manipulate the results or anything.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Of interest, I'm surprised how many otherwise liberal/balanced people voted "pro-life" on the abortion issue. I see that as solely a religious thing, and cannot for the life of me reconcile that with those same people wanting church and state separate.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

What I've learned from this thread is that a "liberal" is someone that supports the Democratic party line, and a "conservative" is "everyone who doesn't".

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Even if they don't support the republican party line either, yes, I've noticed that.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Pro-life can be a rights thing, too. Just because you don't assign rights at the same time as other people do, doesn't mean that they're religiously motivated.

Nor, I think, is it fair to criticize somebody if their religious views inform their assignment of rights. Rights are an abstract thing approaching metaphysicality already (see Hellfire debates about inherence or not), so allowing other metaphysical views to become entangled with them is only natural and not, in my opinion, inappropriate.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Hey.... I'm not a sexist!

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In time, this too shall pass.

That's easy. I always say err on the side of caution. If we aren't 100 percent sure it's life or not life, why not treat it as if it is? And if it's life, it has rights. Any termination of said life would be an infrigement on the rights of that human. The same with the death penalty. I would support the abolition of the death penalty if someone supported a ban on abortion, save for life of the mother.

I think church and state should be separate insofar the government can't set up a nationalized religion, which is why I answered the way I did. But I do believe local governments and people within government should be allowed to celebrate religious holidays as they see fit, within the law. And it should apply to all religions. In other words, be all-inclusive rather than exclusive.

This to me is what it means to me to be pro-life.

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I was going to say something about that, but I didn't want to bog that thread down in an abortion debate. The answer to this was stated most succinctly by Khross in some thread a long time ago (though he disagrees with me on the issue [legally, at least -- I don't really know about morally]):

"If the right to life begins at conception, then the libertarian case against abortion is strong."

That's pretty much it, in a nutshell. It needn't have anything to do with separation of church and state any more than laws prohibiting murder or theft would necessarily have to be about the 10 commandments, etc. If the right to life begins at conception, then abortion is rationally no different than murder, except where justified by self-defense (and possibly rape, which is a point that I'll admittedly waffle on a bit).

Of course, there's not universal agreement as to when the right to life begins, but that's more or less what the law is for. I, unlike Elmo, do not believe that rights are inherent, per se, in any rational sense (even though they do map rather well to my personal sense of morals). I believe that it useful to treat them as such for the sake of keeping government in check and for resolving private conflicts between citizens. So this is something that the law should clarify. This is where we run into a problem, even from a purely secular viewpoint:

Nearly everyone agrees that late-term abortions ought to be illegal. So there is a pretty strong consensus that the right to life does begin some time before birth. As a matter of practical law, then, when do you recognize that right? To me, the most sensible delineation is conception simply because it is a clear delineation. I think it's true that the law needs to be bright-line as much as humanly possible. This is entirely practical matter. It needs to be known and predictable as to which actions are legal and which are illegal. Citizens can't be expected to follow the law, nor police to enforce them, nor juries to deliberate upon them if the statues are unclear or interpretive. Juries should be deciding whether the facts of the case and burden of evidence prove that the law was violated -- they shouldn't be called upon to try to interpret the law itself. This is bad state of affairs with many negative repercussions.

To that end, standards like fetal viability, or nervous system development are problematic precisely because we can't really know these things in any individual case. From a woman's perspective, under those standards, how can she ever be sure that an abortion will actually be legal in her specific circumstances, and that she won't be subject to criminal or civil penalties for something that she believed, in good faith, was a legal act?

That, in a nutshell, is the secular argument against abortion as I see it.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

I actually worded the first question to compensate for that rights-based approach, by using the words "before viability." If it can survive outside the womb, it would be murder to kill it outside, so it should be murder to kill it inside. Inducing labor is the ultimate proof of "right to life," since it will live or die of its own accord. Regardless of it's "right to life," it does not have a right to tresspass on the body of its mother without her permission any more than the freezing man has a right to tresspass in someone else's home to stay warm, and contrary to Elmo's ramblings, sex is not a contract with the as-yet-unconceived.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Perhaps not a contract, but inasmuch as it has no power to either create or change its own circumstances, and inasmuch as those circumstances were created by your own action*...

* again, see me waffling on rape, above. In the case of rape, I'm almost inclined to agree with your analysis there.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Really don't get where you got this.

there is such a thing as 'more liberal' or "more conservative" without being "a liberal" or "a conservative"

So the ability to live is the right to live

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I suspect there are a fair number of libertarian gladers you have listed as conservative, when in reality a libertarian has somewhat more in common with traditional democrat positions than they do with republicans.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

It becomes irrelevant. Does a dead person have a right to life? Does your right to life protect you from cancer? heart disease? automobile accidents? Does the right to life give a man a right to break into someone's house to keep warm because they would otherwise freeze to death?

Viability doesn't determine the "right to life" so much as it determines whether that right is even an issue. If the person can't survive when kicked out of the womb, then there's no point trying to keep them alive when you kick them out. Ideally, all abortions would be "induced labor," with whatever appropriate measures taken afterward to try to save the fetus. But if there is absolutely zero chance of survival, might as well take the cheaper option.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I disagree entirely with the trespassing argument. It would be like saying you've invited a person to your house and when they show up, you shoot them because they are now unwanted and trespassing on your property. Don't like the consequences of having sex? Don't practice it. That is the only 100 percent foolproof method of avoiding a pregnancy. If you can live with the consequences of sex, then do it however you wish.

Poor analogy. Unless the intent was to conceive a child, it's more like you left your door open, then kicked the uninvited guest out when they took advantage of the open door.

(Note that if it happens due to a failure of birth control, it's more like the uninvited guest picked the lock.)

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Fascinating analogy for sex.

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They weren't uninvited though. Sexual intercourse by it's very nature is for one purpose: to create babies. The pleasure aspect is just an evolutionary way of making sure we continue to do it.

Fortunately, pro-lifers are an anachronism. The civilized world no longer debates this issue. It's only still an issue for third world catholic countries, Islamic theocracies and America.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

So folks, when you lost the argument, use an appeal to popularity. God forbid we're responsible for our actions. Oops, I used the word God, I must be a hard-core religious nutjob from a third world Catholic country who went on sabbatical to an Islamic theocracy and eventually emigrated to America.