toldailytopic: In principle, are laws that regulate abortion an effective strategy to

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Nathon Detroit

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The TheologyOnline.com TOPIC OF THE DAY for March 3rd, 2011 02:01 PM


toldailytopic: In principle, are laws that regulate abortion an effective strategy to end abortion?






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Nathon Detroit

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Is this good news... or bad news for the pro-life movement?


SD Senate votes to require 72-hr wait for abortion

PIERRE, S.D. – The South Dakota Senate voted Wednesday to require women to wait 72 hours before they can have abortions and to submit to counseling about why they shouldn't go through with the procedures.

The state Senate voted 21-13 in favor of the legislation, sending it to Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard for approval. Daugaard, who generally opposes abortion rights, declined to tell The Associated Press if he intends to sign the bill.

"I haven't looked at it," he said, adding that he had not studied the bill earlier because of the possibility it could be amended.

About half the states, including South Dakota, make women wait 24 hours before going through with an abortion. But the 72-hour wait would be the longest in the nation, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

Under the new guidelines, a woman would have to undergo counseling at one of several state-approved "pregnancy help centers," all of which seek to persuade women not to have abortions. No other state has such a requirement, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota.

Sen. Al Novstrup, R-Aberdeen, the legislation's main sponsor in the state Senate, said it would better protect women from being pressured into having abortions and better inform them of other options. He contends that women get little counseling at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Sioux Falls — the only place women can get non-emergency abortions in South Dakota — and that women only see a doctor once the procedure is performed.

"Defend the right of women to be informed and know the risk before they go forward," Novstrup said during the floor debate before the vote.

Opponents of the legislation contend it would place an undue burden on abortion seekers, violating their rights by interfering with their access to medical care, and is meant to make an already difficult choice even more so. They also predict that if signed into law, the new abortion guidelines will be challenged in court and will ultimately get overturned.

"If we send this bill out, it will not do what you want it to. This bill provides legs only to the courtroom." Republican state Sen. Joni Cutler, of Sioux Falls, warned her colleagues before they voted.

The South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, a group that supports abortion rights, might join a court challenge or refer the measure to a statewide vote Daugaard signs it into law, said Elaine Roberts, its co-chair.

Republican Sen. Deb Peters, of Hartford, said before the vote that she was troubled that women seeking abortions would have to visit pregnancy help centers.

"This bill inserts a stranger between a woman and her medical doctor," Peters said.

Leslie Unruh, the president and founder of the Alpha Center pregnancy help agency in Sioux Falls, which would be one of those approved by the state, said she thinks the bill is needed to protect women. "Women will be safer in South Dakota," said Unrah.

The South Dakota Legislature passed two measures in the past decade that would have banned nearly all abortions in attempts to generate court battles seeking to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, but voters statewide rejected those bills in 2006 and 2008.

source
 

bybee

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The TheologyOnline.com TOPIC OF THE DAY for March 3rd, 2011 02:01 PM


toldailytopic: In principle, are laws that regulate abortion an effective strategy to end abortion?



Law is one strategy among many. Teaching people the difference between right and wrong is another. Assisting poor women to care for their babies is another. I believe the use of birth control to avoid pregnancy is another.
Life is sacred. It is a gift from God.


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JoeyArnold

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Law regulation may not be the most effective path towards ending abortion.

Abortion starts out as an idea inside people's heads. Ideas are tough to kill. Abortion also seems like a representative of freedom. Some may argue that if you're pro-life, then you should be pro-decisions. They'll say that if the baby was a mistake, you forgot a condom, a birth control, if you can't afford a baby right then, or whatever, then you have that choice, as the parent. These are popular thoughts.

It's tough to regulate these popular thoughts.

A bigger democratic government can choose to regulate, to outlaw things (not sure if democrats would even consider getting rid of abortion), but anyways, when doing so, you may not eliminate private-practice abortions, because of the popular thoughts out there.

Regulating laws may only create more crime, more acts of unauthorized abortions:

Because stopping abortion can only truly come from the heart of each mother or parent or guardian, because that is where the decisions ultimately come from, whether abortion is regulated, redefined, reconsidered, outlawed, legal, or not.
 

Nathon Detroit

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Law is one strategy among many. Teaching people the difference between right and wrong is another. Assisting poor women to care for their babies is another. I believe the use of birth control to avoid pregnancy is another.
Life is sacred. It is a gift from God.
True, but what do you think of laws like the one I referenced? I'm not asking about what strategies exist to combat abortion, I'm asking specifically about this one type of strategy: laws that regulate abortion.

What do you think about laws that regulate abortion?
 

JoeyArnold

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If this new legislation means better reeducation (education):

In order to eventually eliminate the peer pressure of abortion, in order to give women resources before they make their decisions, whether that be abortion, adoption, or keeping the child(s), etc., or not: since it seems pro-life-like or pro-decision-like:

Then I am then therefore somewhat in favor for it.
 

Son of Jack

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I think laws regulating abortion are merely a bandaid on a gushing wound. The fact is that if people valued human life, all of it, then there would be no need for laws to regulate abortion. Until we address the culture of death that has grown up as a result of rampant individualism, with its insistence on the rights of the individual over and above the rights of the community, or, more importantly, the rights of the innocent, then all of the rest of our efforts are just grasping at the air in the end. "The center cannot hold."
 

Poly

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If this new legislation means better reeducation (education).....

The only education this law would give would be to inform people that as long as you just wait a few days, it will be perfectly legal for you to murder babies. It will also educate so called pro-lifers how to pat themselves on the back for supporting something they mistakenly think is some kind of accomplishment because it "seems pro-life-like" as you mention here...

since it seems pro-life-like or pro-decision-like:

Then I am somewhat in favor for it.

And there's where the deception comes in. It seems pro-life "like" but it's pro-decision-like death.
 

Lovejoy

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True, but what do you think of laws like the one I referenced? I'm not asking about what strategies exist to combat abortion, I'm asking specifically about this one type of strategy: laws that regulate abortion.

What do you think about laws that regulate abortion?

Creating mandates to the courts, and to medical authorities, without providing means of enforcement is a waste of time. How do you prevent the creation of men like Dr. Gosnell and his clinic with laws like that, when the laws governing the inspection of his clinic were not even abided by? For that matter, a waiting period placed on planned parenthood would only have driven his practice up.

Now, hypothetically, if the laws were obeyed and enforced, a waiting period might help. This, I think, is only because if you make any process more of a pain in the butt, more people are going to refuse to embark on it. A real law, though, (if we are going to entertain the idea that anything can be enforced) would be to require a woman seeking an abortion to meet with a potential adoptive family first. Meeting someone willing to love the unborn child, wanting it, and then proceeding with killing it? Now that's a law...
 

fool

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People who want to kill their children won't be stopped by waiting periods.
 

JoeyArnold

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The only education this law would give would be to inform people that as long as you just wait a few days, it will be perfectly legal for you to murder babies. It will also educate so called pro-lifers how to pat themselves on the back for supporting something they mistakenly think is some kind of accomplishment because it "seems pro-life-like" as you mention here...

And there's where the deception comes in. It seems pro-life "like" but it's pro-decision-like death.

You got the TOL Knight's POTD Post of the Day while commenting off me?

Good work. But I wasn't saying that abortion is pro-life. Abortion is murder. But government may have to play a parenting role to citizens of America, similar to how God issued out 613 laws of legislation to Israel. Sometimes, people would give a tooth for a tooth. Some who lived by the sword then died by the sword. Remember why God flood the earth to begin with. Remember why God knocked down the Tower of Babel. Remember why God destroyed Sodom, Gomorrah, Nineveh, the power or gates of Hades, etc. People killed, steal, murdered, lied, had affairs, or worse, etc. God allowed for that.

God still gave them the freedom to choose from right and wrong.

Educating people about the pros & cons of abortion, or giving them restrictions or rules or waiting periods, to abortion, may better enhance their ability or willingness to refrain from abortion or other bad things.

It's pro-life and pro-decision and pro-freedom to reeducate, to counsel, to help people choose abortion or not abortion.
 

bybee

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True, but what do you think of laws like the one I referenced? I'm not asking about what strategies exist to combat abortion, I'm asking specifically about this one type of strategy: laws that regulate abortion.

What do you think about laws that regulate abortion?

Sorry, I didn't read properly.
I think laws outlawing abortion are tragically necessary.
 

vegascowboy

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The TheologyOnline.com TOPIC OF THE DAY for March 3rd, 2011 02:01 PM


toldailytopic: In principle, are laws that regulate abortion an effective strategy to end abortion?


As long as folks continue to embrace evil and hate God, no law will be effective.
 

rexlunae

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I don't care where you sit on the for/against scale for abortion, I think everyone should at least be able to recognize the following as disingenuous:

"Defend the right of women to be informed and know the risk before they go forward," Novstrup said during the floor debate before the vote.​

It doesn't take three days, at government-designated reeducation camps to tell a woman all her options. This is about discouraging abortion by making it more inconvenient, and the people pushing it should at least own up to that.
 

JoeyArnold

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Creating mandates to the courts, and to medical authorities, without providing means of enforcement is a waste of time. How do you prevent the creation of men like Dr. Gosnell and his clinic with laws like that, when the laws governing the inspection of his clinic were not even abided by? For that matter, a waiting period placed on planned parenthood would only have driven his practice up.

Now, hypothetically, if the laws were obeyed and enforced, a waiting period might help. This, I think, is only because if you make any process more of a pain in the butt, more people are going to refuse to embark on it. A real law, though, (if we are going to entertain the idea that anything can be enforced) would be to require a woman seeking an abortion to meet with a potential adoptive family first. Meeting someone willing to love the unborn child, wanting it, and then proceeding with killing it? Now that's a law...




I agree. At best. I'd outlaw abortion within an ideal perfect universe.

But in a perfect world, nobody would get an abortion. Because abortion is wrong, and because people do wrong things, people will still choose to make wrong decisions.

But then again, because we don't live in a perfect world, and because outlawing abortion may be just as hard as outlawing gay-marriages, or anything else that may just be bad, then my second best vote would be for what Love Joy wrote above.

Love Joy wrote, above, that waiting periods, and required adoption suggestions may alter the woman's decision for abortion. Making adoption as easy as possible may also help, also.

But even if adoption is as easy as possible, some girls may pass because they don't want anybody to know what she did, or what the guy did, or maybe the guy said that he would do something bad if she didn't get an abortion, or it may be the pain, the shame, the regret, the responsibilities, the potential, the possibilities, even when the child is adopted.

Years later, the child could come back and find the birth mother and cause problems, "How dare you give me up for adoption." Mother could response, "At least I didn't abort you."

The adopted child may grow up, find the birth mother:

And get her onto Jerry Springer, a talk-show, or Dr. Phil, or something. And that doesn't have to be bad. But young girls may have their reasons why adoption may not be best. It may be any combination of all sorts of things.

So, I'd vote for a law that would educate people about adoption.

I'd include visiting adoption agencies, meeting with parents who may be incapable of having their own children. I saw something like that on Friends, a sitcom TV show, where Monica & Chandler couldn't have children. Then Monica lied and said that she was a Priest and that he was something, too.

But Chandler later had to convince the girl into letting them adopt the child (who ended up being twins). But that was due to personal contact, interaction, from wannabe parent people and people who have unwanted kids or are going to have unwanted kids (or kids they can't afford or something).

But a legislative law bill thing would have to encourage people to get past the mindset that adoption could be a bad thing. Some people don't like the idea of adoption.

I can only pray that those people may reconsider.
 

Lovejoy

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I agree. At best. I'd outlaw abortion within an ideal perfect universe.

But in a perfect world, nobody would get an abortion. Because abortion is wrong, and because people do wrong things, people will still choose to make wrong decisions.

But then again, because we don't live in a perfect world, and because outlawing abortion may be just as hard as outlawing gay-marriages, or anything else that may just be bad, then my second best vote would be for what Love Joy wrote above.

Love Joy wrote, above, that waiting periods, and required adoption suggestions may alter the woman's decision for abortion. Making adoption as easy as possible may also help, also.

But even if adoption is as easy as possible, some girls may pass because they don't want anybody to know what she did, or what the guy did, or maybe the guy said that he would do something bad if she didn't get an abortion, or it may be the pain, the shame, the regret, the responsibilities, the potential, the possibilities, even when the child is adopted.

Years later, the child could come back and find the birth mother and cause problems, "How dare you give me up for adoption." Mother could response, "At least I didn't abort you."

The adopted child may grow up, find the birth mother:

And get her onto Jerry Springer, a talk-show, or Dr. Phil, or something. And that doesn't have to be bad. But young girls may have their reasons why adoption may not be best. It may be any combination of all sorts of things.

So, I'd vote for a law that would educate people about adoption. But it would have to encourage people to get past the mindset that adoption could be a bad thing. Some people don't like the idea of adoption.

I can only pray that people may reconsider.

Ideal universe/best situation arguments using countfactuals are always full of holes, aren't they! I guess I just want love to win, and if they could see the love that someone else would be willing to give to that which they are, literally, throwing away, then maybe everyone would be changed by it! We (my wife and I, my church) help out with a Christian adoption group that allows the mother to continue to have contact for just as long as she wants to, for just that reason. But, as you say, there will always be those that will not participate. I guess, we just try to get everyone of them that will. What else are we here for?
 

Town Heretic

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People who want to kill their children won't be stopped by waiting periods.

But people making an emotionally impulsive decision might. And if this were to cause one differing outcome what value do you place on it? There goes the starfish example again.

While I believe the only clear path to victory is a moral education along the lines utilized by those who once defeated slavery and ended segregation, this sort of legal action that stands even a slim chance of preventing a needless death should be commended. Not rested upon or confused with the desired outcome, but advanced nonetheless.
 
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