America has shifted its attitudes on privacy. While some Americans remain uncomfortable with a government that can step into their private lives at any moment to listen to their conversations, read their email, or inspect their online actions and purchase history, many Americans are accepting the call by their leaders to surrender a little privacy in the name of being protected against miscellaneous enemies. The message is that privacy in America is no longer a supreme right, and many, perhaps most, citizens and politicians are comfortable with that stance, though they may agree that there have been some extreme invasions of privacy that need to be corrected in the future.
So if attitudes and, for the matter, law is shifting regarding personal privacy in America, may I suggest that it’s time to address America’s most serious privacy problem? You know, that other privacy problem? The one where the government has told us that the right to personal privacy allegedly trumps all rights of others, including the right to life, when that other is an unborn child? If our politicians are now telling us that privacy is not such a big deal anymore and that privacy is something we must be willing to part with for our own good and especially for the good of others, perhaps this would be a good time to revisit Row vs. Wade and ponder whether this right to privacy actually exists in the 14th Amendment, where no hint of privacy as a fundamental right appears to be present to most readers. Perhaps this would be a good time to recognize what science is telling us about the life of that unborn child in the womb, correcting the very bad and primitive science used to justify the unnecessary extinction of that life.
Frankly, if we’re willing to give up enough privacy to let officials view our bodies in nude scanners and listen in on our conversations without a warrant, maybe we should be willing to drop the myth that our right to privacy trumps the right to life. Let’s start the conversation about that other, bigger privacy problem.
Excellent point.
At Least there is some good news, gamers around the world stood up for their privacy and ownership rights and have told Microsoft to do unrepeatable things. Even after removing their anti-consumer policies most people are still saying no based on privacy concerns over the Kinect. People are waking up slowly and I think we maybe on the cusp of a renaissance based on the founders ideals. Of course this could also just be the calm before the storm…
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It's not about privacy or anything else and never has been, it's just about whether the D or the R is next to the person's name who is saying it.
If the left says it's okay to go through your entire personal life, that's just fine for the majority of Americans now.
What I'm afraid is how far this will go. If the government can get away from this, who's to say that they won't start rounding up people who disagree with them and putting them in internment camps. The media could easily play it however they wanted to make the prisoners look like the bad guys.
Just look at Snowden, he's an American hero and he's being portrayed in the media as the ultimate villain.
Oops, better post anonymously for saying that or else I'll get blacklisted.
Any excuse at all to reach into a woman's personal life and start dictating their decisions and life trajectories. Disgusting!
Anon. said "Any excuse at all to reach into a woman's personal life and start dictating their decisions and life trajectories. Disgusting"
Perhaps you've fallen for a terrible scientific lie behind this emotion. It is important to understand what science actually shows: the unborn child is not merely a piece of the mother's body, an extension of her own person or her own personal life, but is actually a separate being. It has its own DNA, its own nervous system, its own circulator system, all distinct from the mother's body. It is not produced from the mother's body only, but is partly derived from a father as well. While the mother is obviously the one whose body is burdened and affected by the fetus, it is no longer her body and her life alone.
The mother continues to be burdened and affected by the post-natal fetus, sometimes for many years, and it may be years or even decades before the post-natal fetus becomes viable outside the home and quits affecting the personal life of the mother. But does any of that justify the termination of the fetus, prenatal or post natal, for the convenience of one of the parents?
Given that the woman will likely be entailed physically, emotionally and financially for about 20 years and that the child may never have it's emotional, physical and spiritual needs met, given that society faces a myriad of social consequences, many dysfunctional, and given that only the woman able to assess her readiness and burdened with the consequences of the decision I would say "yes, emphatically yes, that is reason enough to justify the choice".
So what are your thoughts about very late term abortion? Not just late in the womb, but the Gosnellesque post-delivery termination of unwanted post-natal fetuses? Emphatically yes again? Is there a point where you would object to termination? Maybe when the fetus reaches a post-womb age of 5 years? 15 years? 18 years? Or is age irrelevant, as long as a mother is being adversely affected by that non-viable post-natal fetus who still won't clean his room and get a job?
I think late term abortions, like ALL medical matters, are not the purview of legislators or the nosey next door neighbor. They are MEDICAL matters best left to the woman with a legitimate medical condition and her licensed physician who has taken a Hippocratic oath to do no harm.
Anon,
"Any excuse at all to reach into a woman's personal life and start dictating their decisions and life trajectories. Disgusting!"
Women (and men) give up their choices when they behave in a certain manner or make certain choices. The Lord gave us free agency but there are natural consequences to those choices. If I choose to exercise and watch what I eat then the natural consequence will be a body that is healthier and one that will probably fit in the clothes I want to wear. Bad choices in my diet will make it so I am unhealthy or maybe not as healthy as I would like and would more than likely would be embarrassed to take off my shirt at the beach.
Same thing goes for sex. If I choose to have unprotected sex then there are natural consequences such as pregnancy and disease. Married or not those consequences will apply.
Once we make the choice to eat that extra handful of oreos or have unprotected sex then the choice we had before disappears.
Our bodies are left to face the consequences. Problem with abortion is the baby doesn't get one.
The problem with your analogies, bunker, is that you are equating actions you take and their consequences which fall on you with decisions you are making about someone else's body and the consequences that fall on her.
You are using as your justification a fetus which is a potential person. IF a fetus does not fall within the protections of a woman's privacy as the OP asserts grasping at some overreach of the NSA, that still is no guarantee that the fetus will endure until a viable delivery. Third term miscarriages and still births of seemingly healthy fetuses are far from unknown. So what, exactly, are you demanding consequences for when you have no certain knowledge which fetuses will be born and which not?
Anon
" Third term miscarriages and still births of seemingly healthy fetuses are far from unknown. So what, exactly, are you demanding consequences for when you have no certain knowledge which fetuses will be born and which not?"
Pregnancies after 12 weeks have a miscarriage rate of about 3-4% and pregnancies that make it past 20 weeks have a stillborn/miscarriage rate of less than 1%. So if we believe those numbers are close and the stats are good then any pregnancy past 12 weeks would more than likely succeed in a live birth. So 'far from unknown' is a bit iffy of a statement.
To answer the question about consequences, I did not demand consequences. I simply pointed out the natural consequences of one's actions. Getting fat, getting pregnant are the two examples of consequences I used. Not ones I demanded but the ones that occur.
The last part of that sentence you ask how do I know which fetuses will be born and which will not. I will simply say that almost 100% of aborted babies will not survive. That I can say with confidence.
"Potential person", really? That would be a funny statement if it wasn't so sad.
I think your analogy is bad. Gathering information about what people do and telling them what to do are two very different things. On the former, Americans say "meh". On the latter, Americans are zealously overprotective of their rights. They insist on the right to own an unlimited number of firearms, sell or purchase any kind of good or financial product with no oversight, and engage in almost any type of contract that the two parties see fit to negotiate. Abortion rights are squarely in the latter category.
Cowgirl said: "Americans … engage in almost any type of contract that the two parties see fit to negotiate. Abortion rights are squarely in the latter category." Thanks for the comment, though I'm puzzled about your reference to abortion rights as a contract that two parties see fit to negotiate. Actually, I think it would be a much more civilized phenomenon if we did treat it that way, i.e., as something to be fairly negotiated between two parties, but the receiving party unfortunately is routinely excluded from any representation by the first party. If the second party, the receiving party, were allowed to come to the negotiating table and have a voice, I think that voice would generally say something like, "Let me live, please, even if you need to give me to someone else. "
If we can recognize what sound science and compassionate humanity has long told us, that there are in fact two distinct parties involved, not just one inconvenienced party, then we will be closer to finding more fair solutions that consider the needs and rights of both parties, with the fundamental right to life naturally being one of the key considerations in the solutions so negotiated.
Last year I saw a commercial about abortion. The lady doing the talking was the lady who started the Roe v Wade lawsuit, the one who wanted the abortion and got is. Has any one else seen this commercial? In the commercial she states she was wrong in aborting the baby and she now fights against abortion. Some people can change for the good.
Now, if all people could go through what I went through with one of my pregnancies then everyone would see that abortion is pure evil; that babies, regardless of what trimester, are human beings that can feel, move on their own, respond to stimuli, etc. I always believed abortion was wrong, but after my experience I have no doubt.
Abortion gets my blood boiling. And I fight it tooth and nail. How anyone can abort is beyond my comprehension. Put The Baby Up For Adoption!!!!