H.R.3 - No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion ActFollow

Yeah, I imagine that a woman who was drugged and raped would consider her pregnancy something that went right.

Do you mind answering the question? Why should we provide federal funding for erectile disfunction, but not for abortion? Both are basic, legal medical issues. Both are, technically, uneccessary. Why is it ok for one, but not the other?

ETA: Also, I don't know if I would agree that erectile disfunction (assuming we're talking about old men here) is something that "biologically went wrong." From a biological perspective, I would think that's just nature taking it's course. We get old, our bodies start to break down. Women go through menopause, men start to lose the ability to fuck.

Edited, Feb 3rd 2011 4:49pm by Belkira

That's not a biological perspective, as can be seen from the word 'right'. If you've got a useless, floppy little **** then that's natural for your body. Abortion is correcting a previous intervention with your body with another, viagra is just fucking with your body natural impotence.

Ah. Lack of a satire smiley I guess.

My intent was to write something absurd, but based upon the same reasoning used by existing racial politics to illustrate how selectively that reasoning were applied. If abortion wasn't a womens rights issue held strongly by the left, and the same racially disproportionate ratios of abortions existed, wouldn't black and latino groups be condemning government funding of abortion as exactly the kind of "population control" I talked about? Wouldn't it be labeled as racist? Wouldn't we all be talking about how wrong it is for the government to promote something that so disproportionately harms young black people?

I mean, we're talking about encouraging people to kill their unborn children, not because they are unhealthy, but because the person is too poor, or too young to take care of that child. Add in a racial component and then add in comments like Kachi's? He'd be seen as one step short of wearing the white robes and lighting crosses on people's yards, right?

I'm very much against those. First trimester or no-go.

It's funny because any 6th grader could tell you that you are wrong. Life begins before conception. Zygotes don't just spontaneously engender themselves; they come from gametes, which are living human organisms.

That's why the "killing a zygote is killing a person" argument is stupid, because killing gametes are also killing people, and men murder millions of humans naturally each day. Ladies, you only kill about once per month.

Apparently not since you've yet to convince anyone.


If you can find me a state which doesn't meet those federal criteria for defining a rape crime, let me know. I think it's pretty safe to say that each state considers sexual coercion via threat of violence or drugging a crime. You're welcome to tell me which states do not.


Nope. Why would it? If it's "rape" enough to warrant arresting and imprisoning someone, it's "rape" enough to warrant a subsequent abortion supported by the fact that she was raped. If there's a reason why those rapes shouldn't count, it's on you (or them, really) to make a legitimate argument why those rapes shouldn't count.

Do you believe it's possible for a woman to be threatened with death (let's say with a gun) if she doesn't submit to sex?
Do you believe that this is rape?
If so, can you explain why this rape is less eligible for an abortion in the eyes of the GOP than one where the same woman was beaten around the head with a length of chain?

If you can't, why are we having this discussion?

You're making a purely semantic argument though. The word "life" in the context it was used is clearly meant to mean "live cell(s) with all the DNA necessary to form a complete complex organism separate from the host organism". Even more specific, we're talking about human life, so it's a cell or cells with all the internal requirements to form a completely new human person. Just needs an environment to grow in, is all.

That's clearly different than a gamete. A gamete will never become a new separate person without combining with a gamete with opposite sexual characteristics (sperm and ova). So your comparison is just plain wrong. It's also why comparisons to cancer cells and whatnot are also wrong. It's just such a weak argument to make and really just makes you look like you're avoiding the issue instead of addressing it directly IMO.

No, idiot.

It's all a matter of it being voluntary. If people want to voluntarily be sterilized or have abortions, that can serve a social good, and in those cases where it does, some sort of gov't assistance is worthwhile.

You're starting assumption is also your conclusion though. There are many cases of crimes in the US which do not warrant federal funding to help pay the victim to alleviate harm done by the crime.


Remember. They are *not* redefining the criminal definition of rape. What they are doing is changing the criteria under which the federal government will provide funding for abortions. And while politicians often simplify that language down to "cases of incest and rape" when giving speeches, there is no requirement that everything that meets the criminal definition of rape much qualify for federal funding. You're just assuming that this must be the case.



I've given you reasons Joph, you just don't want to hear them. So what's the point? Here. I'll give you another:

In the case of abortion funding, we are presumably not waiting around to see if someone is convicted of raping the woman in question. Thus, the criteria for funding must be more rigorous than those used to define the criminal charge since we don't have the benefit of a trial process to determine if a rape actually did occur. Therefore, it's reasonable to limit funding to cases where, regardless of any conviction of the charge itself, it should be abundantly obvious to all parties that a rape occurred and a pregnancy resulted from that rape. A woman showing up in the hospital with injuries and clear signs of having been raped, should not have to wait for a legal process to take place in order to get an abortion if she wishes it.

In the other direction, we can't make any determination at all if a woman shows up at an abortion clinic with no signs or history of forcible rape, but claiming her pregnancy occurred as a result of rape. How do we confirm this? Do we require that charges have been filed? What if the suspect hasn't been found? Do we wait until a conviction? That is even more absurd, right? So we're left with any woman effectively being able to elect to have an abortion and get the federal government to foot the bill just by checking a box on a form.



Of course. To both questions.



Because any woman can claim to have been forced to have sex because some unnamed man aimed a death ray at her and told her to have sex with him. And since we're presumably not actually tying the abortion funding to the outcome (or possibly even existence) of any criminal investigation, she has no reason not to claim she was raped.

Seriously. If I put a check box on a form that said "I was raped", with no other repercussions except that by checking that box, the federal government will pay for something you want which might otherwise cost up to a thousand dollars, wouldn't everyone check the box?



I've explained it several times. You just refuse to listen. The broad definitions in the existing Hyde amendment have been misused in the past, so it's a good thing to narrow them a bit. Did they go too far? Maybe. For example, I'd argue that forcible-rape should include clear cases where date-rape drugs were used (and this is verified, not just claimed). Um... But the language doesn't preclude that either. I think that in the interest of trying to close the loopholes, I'd rather they close them a bit too tight then leave them too open.

I think abortion should be a choice. But it's the choice of the person seeking one and the cost of that choice should not be shouldered by others. The exemptions in this legislation should be the rare exceptions and should not become a rule used to rubber stamp funding for abortion. If that isn't a risk, then we aren't hurting anything by having the tighter rules. But if it is, then those tighter rules are a good thing.

Because you don't really understand the argument. It's a jab at the question of where the cutoff is, and that it is silly to say that it begins at conception, as it is essentially a single celled organism. You don't cry every time you kill an e.coli cell, do you? (If you do, you should find a really good psychiatrist or something.)

The cutoff is nebulous, but it's pretty easy to say on the extreme ends, if it is or is not progressed to the point where abortion would be unsavory. Past the first trimester, it gets messy, and action really should be taken ASAP.

Of course there are. Do they refuse to pay for medical care for a victim who is otherwise eligible to receive federally paid medical care? Are there assaults in which the government will refuse to pay to set a broken arm or stitch a cut? We're not talking about buying a theft victim a new car here, we're talking about medical procedures to restore the victim to where they were before the assault.


I never once claimed they were so why you're trotting out this strawman over and over again is beyond me. They are, however, ignoring the already set federal definition of rape to meet a social agenda at the expense of the victims.


That's a terrible reason because it puts off a very time sensitive procedure for absolutely no fault of the victim whatsoever to her detriment on the behalf of the social agenda of some Congresscritters. Perhaps if you said the government should be eligible for restitution should the case prove to be fraudulent you might have an argument but saying that we should shut out a group of people who, again, have been raped by the federal criminal definition because you think they might be lying is anything but "reasonable".


What's absurd is that, during capital punishment debates, your argument is "Despite the proven issues with the system and tremendous increase in cost over life imprisonment, we should continue with the capital punishment system and look at those failings as an incentive to improve the system rather than discard it". In other words, you're happy enough with the financial and human cost of Death Row because, hey!, it's a good poke to make the system better. But here you'd rather see the rape victims put aside because finding ways to improve accountability is too much of a hassle when we can just scrap the system.

Yeah, that's definitely absurd. Personally, I think that the harm in denying aid to legitimate rape victims is worth more than a couple saved bucks. Apparently you feel the opposite. Why can't you just admit that this is about supporting the social agenda and drop the incredibly weak fiscal argument?


So because it's possible that a woman can lie about it, you sincerely feel that a woman who WAS legitimately raped is undeserving of this aid because you're afraid of losing a couple of bucks. I'd say "good to know" but it's not "good". Just sad and disturbing.

Edited, Feb 3rd 2011 6:48pm by Jophiel

That's a completely contrived definition you've invented on the spot, and you won't find it in any dictionary or technical reference book.

The exact same as a gamete. A zygote having access to the resources of other cells providing it what it needs to develop into an adult human isn't different than a gamete having access to the resources of other cells providing it what it needs to develop into an adult human.



That's the problem with this whole abortion debate. There is no magic cut-off point that determines when something is an insignificant cell we can cast aside and when something is a human being worthy of legal protection. It's a process and a matter of degree. It's the same question we get with questions of when we should deem minors to be adults, when they should be able to vote, when we can have sex with them, etc. Even if the pro-life side is deemed to be correct, it is entirely for the wrong reason.