I will admit that my specific information is limited here behind the cheese curtain, but it strikes me that anything we can do to take the districting duties away from the self-same people who are being elected in those districts is a good idea.  Witness DeLay's recent Texas gerrymander.

Why did you (and obviously most Calis) oppose this measure?

Florida voted on the abortion thing last elections, and it passed.

I am not sure what my opinion on that one is yet....

Hades wrote: The big beefs with Prop 77 was that basically every time the political party changed hands the districts would most likely be redrawn to favor the party in power. The citizens would not have a chance to dispute the redrawn lines before they went into effect. To me, it would be like the President restacking the Supreme Court every time the party incharge changed hands to favor their political doings.

Sounds alot like good ol' fashion gerrymandering....

Hmm.  I thought the idea was to have an impartial panel evaluate the districts, specifically to remove the process from the politicians. 

Because the way it is now in most states, whichever party has the majority whenever it is time for a redrawing (or in the case of Texas, when they decide to redraw for kicks and giggles) takes full advantage of their power and redraws for their own benefit (Texas again being the most recent obnoxious example).

How would the panel be controlled by the political parties?  What am I missing?

Hmm.  Yeah, Hades, that doesn's sound so hot either.  There must be a better way.

I wonder what they do in other countries...

Jim Paint wrote: Why should the parents know that their daughter is having sex?

IF you had a daughter who was lets say 14, would you want to know if she was pregnant.

Jim Paint wrote: Why should the parents know that their daughter is having sex?

are you serious? 

i believe that women have the right to choose what is best for them, which means they can choose abortion.  but i do not think it is the only way.  but a 14year old should have to tell her parents that she messed up and now is pregnant.  but she should have the final say in if she wants to keep or abort the baby.  NOT EVER the parents choice.

now onto the real thing, i would want to know if my child is having sex.  from everything i have learned everyone needs to talk to their children very early in age (as young as they start asking questions) about what sex is.  and if you think that withholding information is the best way (aka absitance only programs) or work well, look at the statistics and information on those.  THEY DO NOT WORK.  but just like drug information, if you give young people information they will be less likely to ever try a drug.  with sex they will 1)  experiance sex later in life 2)  enjoy their sexual experiance more 3)  be more comfortable with talking about sex and 4)  they will be more likely to USE protection.

I disagree.

Abortion = Murder

ABORTION IS HOMOCIDE!!    How can you say a 14 year old child has the right to decide about abortion. She cant even drive yet  alone decide if she wants to abort a innocent baby! Abortion now is just a to erase a mistake,"oh were having a bay lets abort it thats the easy thing to do!" Just like divorce," oh were arguing lets get a divorce''(there are exceptions to the divorce thing) Why these kids are having premarital sex is... well I dont know. The point is parents should know and abortion should be outlawed. This is my beliefs and I stand by them.

Oh simple minded ryan... go hug a tree.  

So if you support abortion that means you support killing ,murdering, suking the life out of a baby that is innocent because of two people making a mistake? Its too easy for kids."oh im going to be having a baby, oh lets forget about this whole thing by killing a innocent baby". That will make it all better. WRONG! 14 years is way to young anyways to be having a baby. Our generation is horribly. Were lazy,overweight,we stick it to the man,on welfare and mooching off the people for going out and getting a job,destroying the ozone layer,not faithful to their spouses,PETA,using drugs, and alot of other things. That why you should vote Amishman for president! I could fix alot of problems in this world.

  Anyways what are we solving here anyways....right. were all going to forget this when we wake up in the morning.  We are just arguing over this stupud crap that we have no control over anyways. I guess just let it be. I know just because I say something no ones going to change their mind about this subject. Goodnight and goodluck.

amishman89 - again re-read what i had wrote.  i do not think that abortion is the only way but it is the mother's choice.  not ours, not yours, not the government and not religion.  you don't understand the fact that people as young as 14 do not have the concept of implications past what they are doing now.  they don't see the consequences because of 1)  their mind isn't fully developed yet ie mature and 2)  there is a lack of information about sex.

basically the 14year old people having sex are influenced by media and alot or almost all by peer pressure.  the parents neglected the fact of talking about sex to them thinking it will make them want to go and have sex.  which in ALL studies has been proven to be opposite. 

if we want to stop things it must start early and continue throughout the child's life until they are old enough to make decisions for themselves.  but we must not preach that it is bad.  we must preach that these things are natural.  we must make them understand what can happen the first time.  we must show them we love them no matter what.  and we must be open to the idea that they might have sex. 

we kill all kinds of people every single day legally (not including aborotion), where are your arugments about that?

Unicorn wrote: The abortion issue is black and white to both sides. It's either murdering a person who just hasn't happened to be born yet, or it's just part of the women's body until birth, or near birth anyway.

Absolutely not true.  It is is black and white to SOME people (the stupid ones) on both sides - and there are more than two sides.  To thinking people, abortion is quite complex with many degrees of variety.

Abortion is an incredibly tricky moral issue.  Simplifying it into a binary proposition does everybody a disfavor.

Take Roe v. Wade - the court didn't say "all abortion is murder" or "all fetii are part of the woman's body".  The court created a distinction based on viability, which is still basically the law today - you can get an abortion early but not late, generally speaking.

Whether you agree with the decision or not, it is pretty clear that the court did not think abortion was a simple yay-or-nay issue, and those people are pretty smart.

And this complexity is borne out in the public debate as well.  Some people think in-vitro fertilization amounts to abortion; others do not.  Some people support abortion rights while opposing abortion itself.  Some people support late-term abortion rights, others only support day-after pills.

Whether something (a fetus) is a moral object is not binary.  There are degrees of moral objects.  The folks who think that the debate swings on whether a fetus is a "person" or not are missing the boat.  Some moral objects are given greater moral value than others.

It's just really really complicated.

I can understand if a woman was raped. And was proven raped to then have the morning after pill. That would be the only cause of this. everyone here makes a good point of arguement.

Why allow an exception for rape?  I never understood that.

If the reason that abortion is bad is because the fetus is a person, isn't a rape-fetus just as much of a person as a one-night-stand-fetus?

Clark Kent wrote: Why allow an exception for rape?  I never understood that. If the reason that abortion is bad is because the fetus is a person, isn't a rape-fetus just as much of a person as a one-night-stand-fetus?

What about Back-of-a-'92-Dodge-Spirit-after-one-too-many-Natural-Lights -fetus?

DBibeau855 wrote: Its a medical operation and can be hazerdous to the persons health, it causes bleeding, scarring and can cause infertility. It is a medical procedure.

Childbirth is much more dangerous than an abortion.  Should parents have the right to FORCE their minor daughter to have an abortion against her wishes?

DBibeau855 wrote: I think the reasoning behind a "rape fetus" being allowed to get flushed is that it isnt the "womans fault" the woman isnt using abortion as a form of "contraception" that reasoning is really.... really... sexist.

I was being vaguely rhetorical - I guess I knew the reasoning, goofy as it is.  But your response highlights the internal conflict.  Half of the time abortion opponents focus on the fetus-as-person position, other times they focus on the personal-responsibility-of-parents position, despite the rather obvious conflict between the two.

DBibeau855 wrote: No. Parents should not be able to force an abortion on a child. ... The bottom line is. Children cannot get medical procedures without the concent of the guardians.

You don't find those positions inconsistent?  There are a lot more doctors/nurses/equipment involved in childbirth than in an abortion...  I don't see how childbirth isn't a medical procedure.

Hades wrote: I best most forummers on this site dont have much of a clue either.

I would like to point out for the record that I in fact DO know everything about sex.

EDIT - ugh, I just pushed my own post to the previous page

Hades wrote: Da Hui wrote: Pregnancy is no walk in the park. But Girls should be aware that if there going to have sex, they can get pregnant. Having an Abortion is just wrong. If you dont want a kid, use a condom(not foolproff but generally efective) and birth control. Or dont have sexy. How many 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 year old girls do you know that know everything about sex, contraception, and pregnancy? Hell, I know several that are 18+ and still dont have a clue. I best most forummers on this site dont have much of a clue either. I had to explain to someone what a female condom once was on this site. Experts or informed about sex and pregnancy my foot.

I have a few friends with kids (their 14). Pregnancy is no joke. Its hard.

If people knew more about anything this world wouldnt be so damn dumb.

So maybe its  the parents fault. If they taught their kids about this before they choose to become active. They would be far more catious.

DBibeau855 wrote: We set up "age of concent" laws in an effort to protect our children from the devients of society. ... this age is 18, like it, or not. In this society, we are not viewed upon as adults capable of making our own decisions until we reach the age of 18

Actually, the age of consent varies from state to state.  16 in many states, lower than that in some. 

And minors have many rights.  In many states minors can marry without parental consent.  In every state minors can own a car and drive, endangering themselves and others, without parental consent. 

Simply pointing to 18 as a bright-line rule is too simple.

Da Hui wrote: Like the new title. To bad my thread got locked

Nothing personal.  Topics like this just have a tendency to spread and take over the forum.

The distinction between a right and a privilege exists only in civics class.  The reality is that minors have a number of rights in terms of what they do to and with their bodies and lives, and these rights accrue at different stages of their lives.

(And even 18 isn't a total win - consider alcohol, for instance)

My point is simply that we cannot hang the minor consent requirement on the statement that minors don't have rights over themselves - because they do.  In particular they have the right to have sex, which tends to lead to pregnancy.  There are NO states where it is actually a crime to have sex as a minor - the crime is committed by the adult.  This is different from buying alcohol, for instance, or driving underage, both of which are actually crimes when committed by people of insufficient age. 

Having sex is never a crime due to your own age.  And if we don't make sex illegal for minors, we cannot hang a minor consent requirement for abortion on age alone.

And, BTW, responding to an earlier post - childbirth is not an inevitability after pregnancy.  That is really the subject matter of this discussion.  Once you are pregnant, A medical procedure will follow (barring miscarriage) - the question is which one. 

And if parents have the right to force their minor child to have the MORE dangerous medical procedure instead of the LESS dangerous procedure, then it should logically follow that they should also have the right to force their child to have the LESS dangerous procedure instead of the MORE dangerous procedure.  Anything else would be silly.  Unless, of course, the whole "medical procedure" argument is post hoc, in which I will feel free to ignore it completely.

aGUYnamedLARRY wrote: She hasn't had sex for many reasons and one of them is because she could not provide for this child as of yet.

Good for her.  Hopefully she'll be able to stick with that plan.

Sucks if you are getting raped by your daddy, though.

I am the third oldest of 9 kids,  my neighbors the O'Riellys have 12,  my OTHER neighbors the buyers have 8,  my OTHER neithbors the deerdurrfs have 9, the Mcmahons have 9, the Delaneys have 8,  my OTHER neighbors have 15, my OTHER neighbors have 9.  This girl who recently graduated from the nearby  college was the youngest of 20,  the Mcshurleys have 9 also.

Good lord!  Where do you live?!

I live in a catholic community

Oh.  Every sperm is sacred, right.

ALL of these huge familys are getting a good education

Either these families are all obscenely wealthy, or by "good education" you mean "public H.S. followed by community college".  Normal folk can barely afford to put one or two kids through college, let alone a zillion.  College is expensive.

How come  you "pro choice"  people think it's ok to ruthlessly murder innocent children and DON'T tell me it's because they're not people.  If there is ANY BOUBT that they are human they should not be killed.

How do you feel about dropping bombs in a populated area?

If you think  "I choose to kill this kid cause it'll make my life easier"

How about "I choose to have an abortion because childbirth is a major trauma on the body, which can have serious permanent debilitating effect, or might even kill me"  or "I choose to have an abortion because I will lose my job (or get kicked out of school) if I don't"?

Seriously,  it's immature to have sex if you're just going to kill the kid.  Even under rape there is no negotiation whatsoever,  this kid still has the right to live whether you like it or not.

And you don't see the inconsistency between those two sentences?

aGUYnamedLARRY wrote: . She had sex and accepted the consequences.

As Hades once said - how is having an abortion not accepting the consequences?  Having an abortion is making a choice and doing something about it.  Having the baby is doing nothing, just one step shy of denial.

Her boyfriend ran off of course  so that leaves her with nothing.

So as a result, this girl is now probably doomed to a life without education, a life without meaningful employment, and a life in poverty.  And since nothing predicts poverty better than parental poverty, the same is probably true of the child.  It's not a matter of "easier" - a child at the wrong time is a completely life-changing event.

Hoytshooter wrote: As the bible says, the poor will always be among us. Poor people can have too. basically clark what your saying is money is the key to happiness?

If relevant thought was right here --->

Your statement was right about...

<---- There.