I once chatted with a rather grumpy young latino girl, she was 15. It wasn't about abortion but during the conversation she said, matter of factly that many of her friends, the same age, had had illegal abortions :( so very sad and dangerous... so much wrong with that on all levels :(
Yet abortion providers fight safety regulations such as an abortion should only be performed by a Dr and the Dr should have admitting rights to a hospital in cases of emergency. Yes there is crime when drugs are illegal but as CO shows crime does NOT go down after drugs are made legal. Crime in CO is up.
So you don't take aspirin, drink coffee, or ever have wine/beer/mixed drinks?
Whether drugs are good or bad isn't the issue( they are neither). The morality of punishing people for personal choices and restricting them from being in charge of their own body and consciousness is. Prohibition has never mitigated any of the negative effects on society or individuals. It has only multiplied the negative consequences and increased any destruction they may cause.
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at November 28, 2016 12:03 AM MST
I am talking about drugs for recreational use. Not true medical use. But no I don't drink alcohol, I don't drink coffee (I don't like the taste). But for pain my choice is aspirin.
I am in favour of legalising gay marriage, abortion, and cannabis.
The reasons for gay marriage are several. When two people wish to make monogamous vows, I believe they deserve to have those vows respected and honoured by their relatives, friends, and society at large. I realise that this is a severe challenge for people who follow conservative sects of the Semitic faiths, perhaps impossible for many. In such cases, the married couple is better off moving to a location where acceptance is normal. Currently, when a married person is unable to express their wishes to medicos or lawyers, it is the married spouse who has the right to say what happens. If the member of a gay partnership is dying, in a vegetative state, or highly vulnerable and unable to communicate, the recognised next of kin is legally and only a blood relative. These relatives, often after years of separation, make life and death decisions against the wishes of the man himself, based on their values rather than his. Usually, it is the life partner who knows the man best and knows what decisions he wants or is most likely to want. Yet the relationship is not legally recognised and so the will of a vulnerable person is violated. A similar thing occurs if the man dies intestate. The inheritance goes to the nearest blood relatives who may be people from whom he is estranged and who have during their lives wronged or disowned him. Where normally a wife would inherit if a man dies intestate, in a gay relationship, the man who has supported the deceased for the best part of a lifetime is cut out of the will by virtue of the legal non-recognition of a primary monogamous commitment. So the right of gays to marry is a matter of social justice.
The reasons for abortion should be widely well-known by now. ADayDreamBeliever expresses them eloquently in this thread. But it might be worth remembering the history of what it was like before abortion became widely legal. Women with unwanted pregnancies frequently either committed suicide or attempted self or back-street abortions and died of the infections. No, it was not an aberration in time, not a phase or an epoch. From the evidence of palaeolithic grave sites, we know that abortions have been practised since pre-history. The reality is that when a woman strongly does not want the pregnancy, she will take any risk to get rid of it. So pro-lifers need to think - is it better to lose one life or two? Because, irrespective of moral objections, safe, legal abortions now save thousands of women's lives. There is another problem. The right to life, based on Biblical mores, evolved at a time when 10% of women died in child birth. Poor water, hygeine, sewerage, and lack of modern medicines and surgery meant that far fewer people survived and the average human lifespan was at least twenty to thirty years shorter. At that time, the ability of the tribe to defend itself and continue depended on having plenty of warriors and women to care for the wounded, children, and aged - so survival depended on having as many babies as possible. But now this planet's ecology is severely strained due to too many people populating the Earth. In parts of the world, such as Africa and the Middle East, over-grazing and over-use of agriculture has produced deserts, as well as leading to wars and mass genocide in the competition for resources. The world's oceans are producing fewer fish each year as the parent stock are fished out. Global warming from carbon dioxide is threatening all ecologies, with the most sensitives ones already starting to die. Nuclear and chemical pollution is now recorded in the rocks of the Anthropocene Era in geology. It is time to create a new ethic for having fewer children, and one way to do that is to make it easier to have fewer children by choice.
On pot. It would not have been made illegal in the first place if it weren't for the FDA's bungling of the research on Thalidomide. The FDA lost such face that it was in danger of being dismantled. They had to push hard and fast to find new reasons to justify their existence. They targeted three recreational drugs, one of which was Cannabis. They created experiments which caused damage to animals by overdosing with THC far beyond the levels ever experienced by anyone using the drug recreationally or medicinally. The herb had been used medicinally and socially in China since 2000BC with no ill effects. It is one of the safest drugs on the planet, far safer than alcohol or tobacco. It does have the disadvantage of triggering anxiety disorders and schizophrenia in those who are already genetically pre-disposed and I do not know a satisfactory answer for this, except that those people should avoid it. The unfertilised flowers produce a biochemical which has been proved to be a potent antipsychotic with no negative side-effects - schizophrenics can use this variant to prevent episodes. Smoking it is no better for the lungs than cigarettes - so if it were legalised, people could take it as cookies or tea. As with alcohol, it should remain illegal to drive or operate machinery while under the influence because it slows reflexes.
But I am against banning religion - I strongly believe people should have the right to follow their faith and conscience so long as it does not impede the equal freedom of others to live according to theirs.
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at February 4, 2021 7:23 PM MST
my2cents 