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Originally Posted by The killing of female babies in China has absolutely nothing to do with feminism since it is not the women who decide to abort but the patriarchs of the family. The reason why girls are killed is because a Chinese family is only allowed 1 child and only the males are allowed to inherit the family possessions. The women are completely depended to their father or husband.
If the women also could inherit the family heirlooms in China there would be no more killings of children because of their gender.
And in China is where baby girls are put into dying rooms, because they can only have one child and boy's are more favored than girls. Lisa Ling did a report on this.
Who is talking about revenge?
Some people are so dense that they simply won't listen when they are told that delivering a child is no walk in the park. The way I phrased it might finally make expat007 understand this simple fact.
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Keep in mind that the technology already exists for you to scr*w yourself.
Screwing yourself and delivering babies are 2 completely different things.
Originally Posted by Yeledaf Who is talking about revenge?
Some people are so dense that they simply won't listen when they are told that delivering a child is no walk in the park. The way I phrased it might finally make expat007 understand this simple fact.
Screwing yourself and delivering babies are 2 completely different things.
if women whined like this a million years ago, we be all extinct
Pregnant women must be the most pampered people in the world, 9 pampered months to complete some studies and then give up the babies
if women whined like this a million years ago, we be all extinct
Sorry my mistake, it seems that expat007 is suffering from Venus-envy.
I hope he'll never get to suffer from kidney stones, which gives the feeling of pissing out a kidney stone the size of a baseball out of his penis, which is the closest equivalent a man will ever feel to the female experience of giving birth.
Hey hey! I just went to the store and picked up some coat hangers and yard sticks. Let them ban abortion, I mean, afterall, we are going into recession and I need to make a quick buck!
I pointed out the potential relevance of these factors in the original post, and Brooks himself has claimed to be something of a political maverick...once a registered Democrat, then a registered Republican, and more recently a registered Independent. Perhaps you do not know him quite as well as you think you do.
I must have missed the part where you said Brooks being a professional horn player is potentially relevant to his findings. And yes, he is registered Independent, but he was a long time Democrat.
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Originally Posted by saganista
Yes, as I pointed out, the book has been quite enthusiastically reviewed in right-wing and fundie circles. More mainstream reviewers have been somewhat less effusive in their praise for Brooks' work. Specifically, he has been taken to some task for relying heavily on the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey. This was a telephone poll done in 2000. It asked open-ended questions and assumed that each self-reported response was accurate. An interview took half an hour to complete. Twenty-one states were excluded from the population sample entirely. Other states were over-sampled, as were blacks and hispanics. As the result, these are essentially soft data. They are best suited as a basis for further research, not as a basis for direct analysis. Alternate sources such as the General Social Survey (which Brooks also uses) and the American National Election Studies are more representative and more reliable, but important data on which the thesis of his book will come to depend are taken from SCCBS -- including the self-reported frequency and amount of charitable giving, and self-reported relative placement on the political spectrum.
I don't know the details of Brooks's methodology, nor do I really care enough to look them up. However, simply because certain anonymous mainstream reviewers are suspect that Brooks's numbers aren't precise enough to be conclusive, isn't enough to convince me that his findings are completely in error. Brooks concluded that conservatives give 30% more than liberals, twice as much blood and found that the 25 states that give an above average percentage of their income are all red states except Maryland. From his findings liberals aren't even close to conservatives, he'd have to be pretty far off to conclude liberals are really the generous ones.
Anyway, of what relevance any of this has to abortion, I'm not quite sure. I don't even know why you would bother arguing the accuracy of Brooks study in the first place. Even if you're right and Brooks's findings are completely in error, it is still true that the religious give the most--and those who are religious are twice as likely to vote Republican than those who aren't.
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Originally Posted by saganista
As I noted earlier, there would have been no need to make that point. It has been long and well-established that the increased complexity of social interactions and networking that result from regular participation in religious activities increases one's tendency to participate in charitable causes. This is an effect of socialization, not of religion. It is now you who confuses correlation with causation. A well-run and well-attended bowling league would be expected to have the same types of effect.
Oh really? I've confused correlation with causation? I don't remember specifying the reason why the religious give more...just that they do. I could care less what reason they give, and tracing their exact intentions is probably impossible. Whether they give more because of "socialization" or because they have angel's wings was never something I mentioned nor do I concern myself with...again the point is that the religious give more and neither of us are disputing that.
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Originally Posted by saganista
Well, here again are your (apparently amazed) words...
I always find it amazing how women spontaneously get pregnant. They must spontaneously conceive because it's never their fault or their responsibility that they got pregnant...amazing.
Wow...I'm a total hypocrite! How could it possibly be that someone believes responsibilities are associated with sex, but that sex is also intrinsically good...complete contradiction there!
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Originally Posted by saganista
We have fortunately not enacted moral codes in this country for a long time. Instead we have enacted legal codes which may not be used to establish religious dogma or doctrine. These legal codes would be another thing that you seem to have a very limited sense of respect for.
No moral codes? So if there are no moral codes then why do I have to respect anyones rights? Both the concept of respect and of rights are rooted in moral principles. Without these moral principles, the only reason I have to obey the law is because of the threat of punishment...thus, all morality is reduced to power, and if I have the potentiality to break the law and get away with it, then I am justified by my own power to do so. Thus, if there were no morals, instead of respecting the law's legalization of abortion, I would do everything in my power to stop abortion as it would be my will to end it--something you can have no moral complaint against, and the only logical complaint you can make is that it conflicts with your own personal interests.
But, I think it is reasonable to say that essence of morality is contained even within the American law. The founding fathers' Declaration of Independence claiming that humans have inalienable rights. If human beings have such intrinsic, natural rights then this presupposes the existence of right and wrong and thus, morality for which, to some degree, our law is based upon.
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Originally Posted by saganista
Constitutional rights are not to be subjected to simple democratic process. This is one of the founding principles of the nation. I certainly don't know how you can have missed that part.
Constitutional rights? Nowhere in the Constitution does it explicitly state that women have the right to an abortion. Simply because some justices said restricting abortion is unconstitutional doesn't necessarily make it such. The are many justices who would argue otherwise including the deceased Rehnquist. I believe the Supreme Court once said that slavery is constitutional as well...so perhaps not everything the courts rule as constitutional really is. There seems to be a lot of ambiguity on the constitutionality of abortion, so perhaps it would be best to treat it as an issue like all the others and have states vote for it's legality or illegality.
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Originally Posted by saganista
Keep looking for your numbers. Women below the poverty line do have a higher rate of abortion than others. However, unless they face significant risks to life by continuing a pregnancy or the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, the abortions of indigent women are not being funded by Medicaid. And as I noted earlier, Title X does not fund any abortions at all.
[PS. The factor of more than four actually applies between women below the poverty line and women above three times the poverty line. If you are going to quote statistics, please try to quote them accurately.]
You are right though about women below the poverty line having four times more abortions than those living three times higher than the poverty line--I missed the last part of the stat.
Now, before the Hyde Amendment, Medicaid paid for one third of all abortions in the U.S. and now it pays for less than 1%--so that's great news! The government only funds abortion providers, but not many direct abortions--you're right--that's great news!
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The women are completely depended to their father or husband.
Who is talking about revenge?
The way I phrased it might finally make expat007 understand this simple fact.
Sorry my mistake, it seems that expat007 is suffering from Venus-envy.
Isn't abortion already legal in the States? Or don't the insurance companies cover abortions?
