Hm... didn't know. But when you look at the big names-George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, etc. They were all Christians.

Also there is a statistic out there that some large percent of Christian politicians lose their faith after a certain number of years. It's a risky business. These politicians lose their faith because they allow themselves to become drawn into political correctness. Those who stand firm are usually outvoted.

Godly morals... I guess for you this is the only kind?

Hell let's give them a chance to start with honesty... oh, ha ha.. no, never mind...

Those who stand firmly tend not to have the flexibility (faith) to accommodate a variety of views. They probably should be out voted.

Coming full circle, it's the Christian involvement in the 'pro-life' movement which is attempting to prevent others, who hold different beliefs, their freedom to choose

From Wiki:

The religious views of Thomas Jefferson diverged widely from the orthodox Christianity of his day. Throughout his life Jefferson was intensely interested in theology, biblical study, and morality.[88] He is most closely connected with the Episcopal Church, Unitarianism, and the religious philosophy of Deism. As the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence, he articulated that mankind was "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights", namely, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"; a statement that most Americans regard as nearly sacred. Together with James Madison, Jefferson carried on a long and successful campaign against state financial support of churches in Virginia. During his 1800 campaign for the presidency, he had to contend with critics who argued that he was unfit to hold office because he did not have orthodox religious beliefs. It is Jefferson who is credited with propagating the phrase "separation of church and state".

I would have to say that Abortion should be the choice of the individual only. It should be no one else's business to dictate. Having said that certain safeguards would need to be adopted. I can't be used in place of a morning after pill for instance or as a causal means to rid themselves of a 'mistake'. To take away the right of an individual to choose abortion after events such as Rape, family abuse, drug addiction or just medical issues that may lead to serious problems for the individual is wrong. There are a million arguments as to how this is wrong/ right but it should remain the individuals choice.

As for Murderers being decent human beings....i think not. Everyone is born into the rights they carry, you are taught right and wrong, the law of the land you reside in and generally ethical values that support the value of life. If you choose to abandon these things and stab to death someone you know or a stranger then you deserve the full weight of the law, which should include capital punishment. Why should the hard working, law abiding citizen pay for the up keep and education of someone like that? Only then to be told that 8 years has passed and they are magically rehabilitated. Reoffending rates across the globe are huge, rehabilitation is not a method of ridding ourselves of those that prey on the weak so a term inside is useless. Only death or a full life sentence secures the public from the most dangerous in society but again, why should we pay for them when they have chosen that kind of path.

To say that Murderers are decent people and suggest that judges are equally responsible for their position as dealers of death is naive and very wrong.

Thomas Jefferson was a hypocritical, slave-owning adulterer. He has nothing to teach us about morals.

@Giapeep - this thread was your way of inflating your own ego rather than continuing with the existing abortion thread. So it got hijacked. Tough shit. Deal with it.

"The U.S.A was founded by firmly devout Christians. Under God...The pledge of allegiance?"

Zaza, its actually scary that you would write this. Your beliefs seem to be so deep-seeded in you, but as the above misinformation shows, you are either believing everything you read/hear as dogma, without trying to establish the truth of it, or you are misunderstanding what is being taught/fed to you.

Believe what you want to believe, seriously. But at least examine your own beliefs every once in a while. Otherwise, they aren't yours, they are someone else's that you adopted as fact, not belief.

The pledge of allegiance was modified in the 1950s, during the height of the McCarthy era, to include the words "under god."

and @ Jamie: there were not very many people in the 1770s who are what we would consider "good" under our current morals. To subject a historical figure to 2009 standards is a little ridiculous, just as it would be to subject a modern figure to 1770s standards.

@ Daug
Your need to attack, me directly and women in general, the "leg spreading"comment is truly revealing of the limitations in your thinking, is pathetically obvious.

I'm guessing, buy your inability to contribute much that is related directly to the topic, that you didn't take the 10 minutes to prove for yourself that breath is not a requirement of life?

Big Z
Thanks for your thoughts, it seems though, if we are going to give the freedom to choose, that we will have to risk stupid choices (like not using birth control when having sex). The upside is that we often learn best by making stupid choices.

@ Gloverloaf -- good input on the side bar topic.

@groverloaf: "Jamie: there were not very many people in the 1770s who are what we would consider "good" under our current morals. To subject a historical figure to 2009 standards is a little ridiculous, just as it would be to subject a modern figure to 1770s standards."

I think, however, that most people in the 1770's would have found adultery morally unacceptable. In addition by that time there was already a growing campaign against the slave trade. By the time Jefferson became President in 1800 that campaign had grown and there was a clearly-established moral argument against the cruel practice of slavery. Jefferson argued that every man had a right to liberty, yet he himself kept around 600 slaves, to whom he allowed little or no liberty. I haven't even mentioned his treatment of native americans. The man was a hypocrite of the first order, and the fact that he lived a couple of hundred years ago is no excuse.

Breath is not a requirement of life. I don't need to prove it, giapeep, because I don't believe it. YOU need to prove it to ME if you want me to accept it. So far, you haven't done anything of the sort. Everything you have provided has rebuttals and contrary evidence. If breath were a requirement for life, then someone in an ironlung is no longer alive.

And, giapeep, I notice you don't deny that this thread was your egotistical way of attempting to take center stage by starting a new thread based on an existing one, rather than contributing to that thread.

@ZaZa " (i said) 'orathaic-Oh, and religion hasn't had any part in the discussion of what is and isn't a 'life'.'

Which is precisely why pro-choice wins the argument every time. Government needs to look to God before there is to be a change in abortion laws."

No, we collectively believe that the government should not be allowed decide certain things for us. If you want to live in a society where all things are determined according to the law of God then i suggest you move to Iran or Somalia.

I don't know of any Christian society which exists that would enforce such laws. Nor would i like to live in one. The United States of America is certainly not one, however many of your citizens might like it to be otherwise.

However Americans are free to choose to not abort their fetuses, that is one of the things which is to be admired about america. That said a number of religious people in america are proponents of abstaining from sex as the only method of preventing unwanted children. NOT educating your children about contraceptives is the best way to increase teenage pregnancy rates, and unwanted children, including some abortions. (because the girl/woman will always have the ability to choose, whether it is law or not) Mainly because teenagers aren't mature enough to make the 'right' decision, and will at some point rebel against the authority of their parents (or God)

But if you choose to follow such a strategy in what you teach your children, I believe you should be free to make that choice.

@orathaic - I would say abstinence is the best way to avoid pregnancy and disease, but I agree that not teaching teens about birthcontrol and about STDs and preventing their spread through condom use does a great disservice as teans are want to A) rebel against authority and B) explore their developing sexuality.

@Draug: Re: Ironlung.

I never claimed a person with an Iron lung wasn't alive. They are however dependant on a piece of technology. It would be wrong to take that piece of technology away from the person, as this would be taking a life.

A fetus is however not an alive human and dieing, it is a bundle of cells and developing.

You can't kill it until it is alive; It is dependant on a person who is alive and has rights, not a piece of technology (and therefore society)

to be clear, Dieing and Developing are two DIFFERENT processes, and in both cases a process is something where there are no definite/clear lines drawn. In both cases there is some controversy about the right/wrong of morale issues.

Feeding tubes, Assisted Suicide, and Abortion.

I believe an individual should have a choice on when and how they die when they are going through the process of dieing. (which we all will) see this article for what a progressive society is doing in regard to this issue:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8270320.stm

So breathing with the assistance of a piece of technology is still breathing. To support giapeep's ascertion, a fetus is not breathing, it is getting oxygen from the mothers blood, from her lungs via the umbilical cord.

The two are not comparable. (I do not ascert life as breathing, so i don't need to prove it, however your remarks about Iron lungs are not relevant to abortion except in that death raises similar morale questions; but they really deserve their own thread.)

@Draug, and i would agree the abstinence will prevent pregnancy(and disease) 100% of the time.

That doesn't mean it is more effective than contraceptives, because it is a given that some people will slip up, perhaps under the influence of alcohol, perhaps under the influence of their hormones and peer pressure.

The human body is designed to have sex and reproduce. In any case (abortion, abstinence) we are choosing to deviate from the natural or 'wild' behaviour of the human animal. We should decide on useful strategies to better our society, an educated and empowered women tend to make better choices, (and have fewer kids and smaller families, possibly motivated by financial reason)

The iron lung aspect has been done to death, pardon the macabre pun. Life support is not life giving, it is life sustaining. That you don't "believe" that breath is a requirement for life deputes the need for the iron lung in the first place. If we don't need to breath in order to be alive, then we don't need iron lungs.

As for defending myself to your further attacks, why would I bother? Keep in mind it your assertion only proves that when you have nothing of relevance to contribute, you go on the attack, which is what the ignorant and helpless do to make themselves feel better.

Something else that deviates from the "wild" animal kingdom:

This whole thing about how there are wanted and unwanted children. In the animal kingdom, they smash, and they know that kids are going to come out, and no one has a problem with that. Humans are unique in our squeamishness about producing offspring. In that sense your argument is bunk. If not wanting a lot of kids or not wanting any kids at all is a uniquely human thing, then abstinence too can be a uniquely human thing too. It's hard but it works. If you absolutely want to avoid all risk or possibility of producing children, well.... there's only one thing to do.

Thucy,
I would not want to anthropormorphize our animal cousins. They give birth as a result of "smashing" is true enough. They also lack the conscious ability to decide. I will say that nature often decides for them, in drought it's harder for them to conceive or the babies are eaten by predators as one example. But man's intent all along is to find a greater understanding of nature so that we can make choices that give us some power over ourselves and over nature. The first of these, I believe, was agriculture.

I am not sure 'squeamishness to produce offspring" is accurate for all.

I think choice is a uniquely human thing and the advent of medical technology has increased what we can choose in life and death matters.

Back in the day before birth control, many women died because their husbands could/would not abstain. Rape was harder to prove because of the implicit belief in men's sexual "rights" in the context of marriage and because the woman's sexual history was always brought into to judgment. So if a woman was married or ever had sex before, her rapist would almost always get off, assuming a trial was ever set. She could not choose to abort, and so had to bring her offspring into an environment full of threat and if raped and on her own, likely privation -- because, work for single women back then was hard to come by and paid shit, and because the fact that rape produced her offspring did nothing to mitigate the label of bastard, and probably made it a lot worse for the life of her child.

With our new choices, thanks to medical advances -- which have not come without a cost-- we as humans are able, though not all of us choose it, to find a more fair balance in male and female relations. Abstinence remains a choice, but so too does exploring our human sexuality with relative safety. Is it a good idea to only have sex with someone you like and trust, who if you got pregnant with as a result would likely support at least the child, yes; do we humans make this the basis for our choice to have sex with some one or not, not always.

With these choices half the population now has something to choose beyond lying down and taking it and I personally think this adds to the male-female experience and often makes it quite smashing.

Humans can see the downside of having their time taken up caring for a child (selfish), or the limited resources which will be spread out more by having more children (planned parenthood). In the past we went to war to increase our available resources (some countries still do).

We have a developed sense of fairness (some other primates do aswell: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4207351.stm ) and this has resulted in the universal declaration of human rights. And the wish to avoid causing suffering among our own species (which is sometimes trumped by greed, or the desire to improve our own circumstances, especially when one does not empathise with those people they hurt).

Now you can accuse me of not empathizing with a fetus, and even claim that i am using logic to distance myself from this state of life. This is entirely true, except i'm not advocating abortions for all, I am advocating choice and empowerment for woman. They may empathize and choose to allow the fetus develope until it can suvive on it's own, and then give it up for abortion. Or they may rationalize and abort their fetus thus (rationally) protecting the potential child from suffering and neglect which would reduce it's standard of life.
(note: again i don't claim that logical(rational) or emotional(empathetic) decision making is better, just alternatives)

@giapeep: i've said all along that i believe some human rights should be extended to animals. I hope my links help ease your pro-human bias.

I would not consider it a bias, I was not as qualified in my response as I intended as Elephants and Dolphins, along with primates, have shown some higher order reasoning skills; and, I'm attempting to stay on point ;)

There's a great book, called How We Decide, by Jonah Lehrer which speaks to the primate's sense of fair play and extrapolates from this the damaged that is caused when our power to choose is manipulated and the evolutionary advantages of our power to choose, among other things. Highly recommend it to all.

an ineresting book, from the synopisis:

"Since Plato, philosophers have described the decision-making process as either rational or emotional: we carefully deliberate or we "blink" and go with our gut. But as scientists break open the mind's black box with the latest tools of neuroscience, they're discovering that this is not how the mind works. Our best decisions are a finely tuned blend of both feeling and reason?and the precise mix depends on the situation. When buying a house, for example, it's best to let our unconscious mull over the many variables. But when we're picking a stock, intuition often leads us astray. The trick is to determine when to lean on which part of the brain, and to do this, we need to think harder (and smarter) about how we think."

Perhaps i am again at fault, when describing two types of decision making, and the it is again not a black and white issue, but a continuim where we mix. Humans like to simplify things (into black and white, or reducing them to their constituant parts as physics describes matter by it's most basic parts) to help in understanding them.

That said there is another way of understanding things which instead being reductionist is holistic - considering the whole rather than just the constituent parts.

The whole human is a holistic view of a person, rather than the reductionist description of skin cells and ceratine... etc.

For deciding whether a fetus is a human life we should consider the whole, not just the cells, but the whole system. Which includes not just a static fetus, but a processing of development. Constantly changing, developing toward something. The whole must include the mother as part of the system of development, and the part she takes, both before and after birth. The whole may in some people's view include God, but it is wrong for them to proscribe their views about God on others, (as it is wrong for Islamist fundamentalists to attack the western decadent values which they see as destroying their healthy way of living)

I like your last paragraph, Irish, well put. (where are you by the way? I go to Nenagh in Tipperary to see my family there. I cannot wait to take my husband there, but ... I will)

I think you'll like that book, Malcolm Gladwell's books are enlightening as well.

Zia,

Your use of the simplistic catchphrase, "the right to choose", is unfortunate.

All Morgenthaler fought for was the right to set up his illegal abortion jiffy-lube.

Re: Mapleleaf:

Thank you for showing our neighbours that Canada's pro-choice policy does not prevent ignorance. Your comment also shows that you do not understand what abortion means, how it effects, and what a hard decision it is.

We can still choose to be fools in Canada, which also explains how Harper is managing to stay in power despite our lack of confidence in his leadership.