harmonicminer

15 Responses to “It’s never the baby’s fault”

1. Amandolin says:
   August 29th, 2012 12:41 am

   Ive been checking in on this site for a few months now and all I see is blogs about abortion. Nothing about what happens to said children when their feet hit the ground. I know there are starving children around the globe, yet I see no articles about them. I hear stories about anchor babies here in our own country, yet I read no articles about how terrible it is to tear them from their illegal parents. Where is the outrage? When you post stories of fetuses surviving late term abortions I listen. It is tragic. Yet I read no stories of the children that are well beyond birth that have to survive below poverty. I am no fan of abortion. I am also no fan of people who howl for smaller government and still push for legislation that tells women what they can and cant do with their own bodies. Do you not trust women to make their own decisions? And, are you fit to judge those that may make decisions you oppose? I think not.

   Its political and thinly veiled at that. Its clear that all who contribute to this site are going to vote for the Republican. The Republican that was pro-choice not that long ago. Its also clear that you will be voting against the self proclaimed Christian. An irony I cant help but chuckle at. And as I listen to the whining from the right about all the left wants to do is distract people from the economy… I check in on harmonicminer.com and there it is…The War on Women.

   When I read blogs about how terrible it is for the children of the poor in this country, I might start taking you seriously. Until then, you are just against the black guy.
2. innermore says:
   August 29th, 2012 7:06 pm

   amandolin, I haven’t cast a ballot for Republicrats or Democans for years because they keep telling me I’m wasting my vote. Your liberal arguments are mostly eloquent. So are some of conservativeminer’s. Just as your views will be disparaged and mocked here, so will harmonicminer’s over there. And both hated parties continue to refuse to solve a 4000-year-old problem, along with most other problems. Politics these days are about as sincere as Vince McMahon. Love the harmonics.
3. harmonicminer says:
   September 1st, 2012 6:16 pm

   Amandolin, I think you miss the point that it is illegal to starve children, and we have plenty of programs in existence to feed them, educate them, provide medical care, etc.

   Sure, there are children starving around the globe. Fewer than there used to be, but still way too many. And there are plenty of people trying to do something about it.

   The point is that abortion is LEGAL, at essentially any point in the pregnancy, for essentially any reason, or none, by Supreme Court fiat.

   The world will never be perfect…. so if your point of view is that all the other problems in the world must be solved before we can outlaw abortion as after-the-fact birth control (which 99% of abortions are), then you’re as good as saying that abortion will always be exactly as it is now…. a holocaust of incredible proportions, the biggest (yet least recognized) social justice issue in American society, and the most clearly immoral abuse of power in our nation.

   In a larger sense, you sound like a “seamless garment” person, though you didn’t use the phrase…. that is, you’re “no fan of abortion” but you put it in the same category as other “social problems.”

   If you’re willing, I hope you’ll read this link. http://www.torenewamerica.com/index.php/the-seamless-garment
4. Mrs. Miner says:
   September 3rd, 2012 5:51 pm

   Amandolin, there are plenty of topics other than abortion here, and the point of view is mostly center right. It’s a blog. Bloggers have points of view.

   Concerning the focus on abortion, I have to confess to being the driving force behind much of that. As the gentler – and quieter – of the Miners, I don’t post much, but this particular post was my idea. I’m pro life, but I, like many, had not thought much about abortion in the context of rape. Rape is a horrific crime, the thought of which cuts to the core of who I am as a woman and a mother. But recently, I’ve begun to hear testimonies from those who were conceived in rape. (See Rebecca Kiesling, Ryan Bomberger and others.) Their stories are incredibly compelling, and I thought it important that their voices be heard. It’s really NOT the baby’s fault. Food for thought.

   To address just one of your comments, I think illegal immigration has caused enormous problems. But I, too, don’t think you can just round up the millions of undocumented immigrants and send them back to their home countries. People of good faith can, and will, disagree about how to solve our many problems, such as the plight of our undocumented. And yes, there are many children who are poor, undereducated, abused, etc. It’s just that I don’t see killing them before birth as a solution.

   You asked why I don’t “trust women to make their own decisions”. Politically incorrect as this is to say in some circles, I DO NOT consider 12 and 13 year old girls to be “women”. They are children. Consider the many minors who have abortions. In a fair number of cases, abortion is used to cover up crimes such as statutory rape and incest. Still, it is often grown women who make the choice to abort their children. If you view abortion as the taking of an innocent life (as I do), then your asking me if I trust women to make their own decisions is pretty much like asking why women can’t be trusted to decide if they need to drown their newborns. After all, some women have very tough lives. Besides, if you’re not willing to adopt all those unwanted newborns, who are you to say we can’t just drown them? (By the way, there is currently a waiting list of about 2 million who hope to become parents through adoption. Any ethnic group, any disability… The most generous, loving people I know are pro life.)

   As innermore said (and he says this a lot), abortion has been around for thousands of years, and the problem won’t ever be resolved completely. However, the number of abortions has dropped – from a high of about 1.7 million per year to the current 1.2 – 1.3 million per year in this country. For the first time in many years, a majority of Americans self identify as pro life. This is a good thing, innermore. A reduction of nearly half a million abortions per year is HUGE. In large part, this has come about because people are being educated. I like to think I’m part of the collective pro life voice that is helping in this effort. It was nearly 30 years ago (when I was a religious agnostic, I might add) that I became pro life. I stumbled on information pertaining to fetal development, which began my own journey of exploration on the issue of abortion. I succumbed to the facts.

   Finally, I just have to comment on your final phrase “…just against the black guy”. I don’t know why something as trivial as a person’s skin tone has to be brought up constantly. I, too, am part black, and while I personally find my somewhat exotic genetic inheritance to be quite interesting, I fail to see how it has any relevance whatsoever to my arguments. I would rather focus on, as one of my African-American heroes put it, “the content of my character”.
5. innermore says:
   September 8th, 2012 7:54 pm

   Mrs. Miner, during your educational journey, did pro-lifers cursing you help? How would you feel if a Planned Parenthood nurse caringly said she’d like to assist you in deciding whether or not to drown your infant? If you where pro-choice, wouldn’t that sound insane? Can’t you guys see what you’re doing? Your idea against abortion is sound, but your argument of it is disgusting and extremist. Obviously these “pro-aborts” are completely ignorant of the fact they are committing infanticide. No other conclusion is morally possible! Hating them (oh, I’m sorry: I meant they’re actions, right?) and calling them Hitler holocausters right to their faces?! How is commonplace profanity going to “change our society towards the good”? Can we humanely talk about abortion? Or must we mortify people so when they spit back in our faces we can deny their integrity?

   I say this a lot too. More Americans naturally self-identify as pro life, despite Pro-life. Abortions are down because more options are available. Lynch mobs roaming around for mass-murderers to hang has extremely little to do with it.
6. harmonicminer says:
   September 9th, 2012 8:58 pm

   Innermore,

   I’m just curious. Do you perceive yourself to be winsomely winning us over to your style of not-quite-Olympian detachment and superiority to mere mortals who are foolishly contending for the right?

   You commit exactly the same sins of rhetorical overreach and exactly the same fallacies of failing to persuade, in your own comment here, that you accuse other people of making.  Read your comment carefully.

   Chief among them is putting words in other people’s mouths that they did not say.   Add to that failing to read carefully what they did say.

   A suggestion:  How about if you make what you consider to be a persuasive argument that might reach someone who is not now pro-life and illustrate for me the abilities that you apparently believe yourself to have in such rhetoric?
7. innermore says:
   September 10th, 2012 11:11 am

   Oh, so adding a few more illustrative expletives to your words “conceived in rape” “holocaust of incredible proportions” “drowning babies” “murder of the unborn” “killing infants” is somehow making it all sound more gross? It is utterly futile to “win over” anyone who spitefully puts those kinds of brutal words into their own mouths, and spews them disparagingly all over people who weren’t expecting it. A 6-year-old would sound “Olympianly detached” and aloof responding to it.

   You understate my “rhetorical overreach”, and I try to be as exact as possible. I’m feeding you a taste of your own poison to illustrate my perpetually recurring point. Which is, again and again, your anti-abortion IDEA is good and morally sound. However, your argument of it is outrageously the opposite. WHY DO YOU DO THIS? Uncontrolled wrath is a distraction to the truth. Outrage has established a pro-choice/life/rape/abortion/xxx cult. It is impossible to produce a persuasive argument in this environment. And I think some people know it, but keep doing it anyway.

   A suggestion: How about if you make what normal un-extremist people consider to be a persuasive argument that might reach someone who is not now pro life WITHOUT the political hyphen? Start by abandoning such violent word-pictures, if that’s feasible.
8. harmonicminer says:
   September 10th, 2012 8:37 pm

   Innermore, I take it you cannot meet the challenge of making what YOU consider to be a winsome argument. Since you deserted the field, I’m going to bed. Let me know if you change your mind and want to take a crack at it.

   You are acting like the perfect critic….. who has never acted, never written, never directed, never filmed, never scored, and never produced, but is full of advice to creative people about how they should do their work. I don’t buy it.

   I think you may truly not know how to proceed to construct the kind of persuasive argument that you think I should, but for some reason, known (maybe) to yourself, you get some gratification from criticizing others who actually try.

   I have never, ever, heard an argument from you that you consider to be an example of what you keep claiming I don’t do.

   So go for it, if you actually want anyone to believe you have some idea of how to do what you believe yourself to be expert at doing.

   Note that this is attempt NUMBER TWO on this thread to get you to create, instead of just criticize.

   Are you up to it? Or will your next comment just be more criticism and hyperbole?
9. innermore says:
   September 13th, 2012 8:02 am

   I wake up, go to the bathroom, eat. I am living life, I am pro-life. I set my alarm and grind my own coffee. I make decisions every minute, I am pro-choice. What sane, living person would be against these things? I see no need to make a persuasive argument for either concept.

   As far as convincing someone not to have an abortion: it doesn’t matter right now if what you have growing in your womb is a he she or it, or what it might become. What matters right now is you. You are parenting. You are feeding, nurturing, comforting, and giving that thing a loving part of you, right now. You are making whatever it is more human. Your parenthood began at conception, despite the circumstances. Speaking of bad circumstances, I can’t think of anything more inspiring, motivating, or more overcoming of suffering than being a parent. I don’t understand how letting someone take that away from you helps your situation. But if you feel otherwise, at least let your last parental act be to give that child a better life than you have.

   As far as policy: those who have abortions are primarily harming themselves. Obviously this is not true morally. But law must be built on facts, not morals. So law looks to science for facts. In this case, they make viability charts. I think I’ve heard you say this before: suicide is illegal and there are penalties. But it’s all symbolic. The same is true for laws on alcohol and drug abuse, and abortion. Laws can’t prevent someone from harming themselves. If abortions were eventually not taking place collectively, it would be accomplished by individual moral choice. Laws about it would be largely symbolic. Now, if you guys think the eventuality isn’t coming fast enough, or fair enough, go ahead and symbolically give women coat hangers and drown babies. It just seems like a huge waste of energy to me.

   My offerings on policy: the church built homeless shelters to compete with streetlife. They built drug centers to compete with prison. The church needs to build an institution that competes with Planned Parenthood’s monopoly. Also, certain aspects of divorce and child custody law should be used to protect conceptional parenthood. Instead of rehashing the 4000-year-old argument, I’d like to see harmonicminer post articles about stuff people might be doing right about the problems the argument has caused.
10. harmonicminer says:
    September 14th, 2012 10:27 am

    Innermore, response:

    paragraph #1: unrelated to any aspect of the issue under discussion. Complete non sequitur.

    paragraph #2: not bad, in a way. You’re a parent the moment you’re pregnant, or have impregnated someone. Call this paragraph the “appeal to niceness” I guess. But it presupposes the acceptance on the part of the pregnant woman that the being living inside her is fully human, deserving of her protection even at considerable cost to herself… which is the very point that is often denied. So it is no argument at all for those who most need to here it.

    paragraph #3: You’re just wrong, or else mis-focused. It is scientific fact that a human in the womb is a human being. Nothing else. Nothing less. The suicide comparison has some merit…. and we have severe penalties for anyone who aids another in the commission of suicide. The laws changed…. and abortion went WAY up. If the laws changed again, and were enforced, there would still be abortion…. but far less.

    paragraph #4: I take you don’t know much about homeless shelters, which mostly do not “compete” with street life, but rather enable it, more often than not. “Drug centers” do not make it legal to do illegal drugs. People who push the drugs are still arrested and jailed. The church needs to BE the institution that competes with Planned Parenthood, not merely “build” one. And much of my commentary on the topic has been on the failure of the church to do that. Above all, the church needs to stand united against abortion on demand, and tell the truth about what abortion is, who profits from it, the human being it always kills, and the damage it does to the mother. There are MANY, MANY people, Christian and otherwise, waiting to adopt ANY newborn. It’s a canard that the church needs to do something to support adoption. It is ALWAYS available, right now, for any pregnant woman who wants to take advantage of it to place her baby. All that is necessary is for that pregnant woman to recognize that she has a BABY inside her, and that killing it for her convenience is unjustified homicide.

    You’re on the wrong side of this, Innermore, in the sense that you fail to recognize the growing success of the pro-life movement, a success which, albeit slow in developing, is because it has been making the arguments you’ve seen on these pages, not because the pro-life movement has “softened” its message, or tried to avoid hurting the feelings of people who have aborted, or are planning to do so. Abortion is down, a little bit, admittedly, not because of “more alternatives” but because of tiny legal restrictions here and there that have passed legal muster, and because more and more people recognize it for the evil it is.

    I’m just curious…. do you actually believe that what you wrote as your “kinder, gentler argument” would change the mind of anyone?
11. innermore says:
    September 15th, 2012 9:13 pm

    No, you are not curious. Your passion is too rancorous and colorless to accommodate curiosity. I’ve circled the final lap with you on this .
12. harmonicminer says:
    September 16th, 2012 3:17 pm

    Innermore,

    It’s interesting, as I pointed out several comments earlier, that you employ negative rhetoric (name calling, in particular) and vitriol with me, all supposedly in the service of trying to get me not to do the same with people who are “pro-choice,” all the while claiming that you are, in some way, pro-life. You have used much more violent, abusive rhetoric than I have, it seems to me, in attacking my approach to the pro-life issue.

    Odd. Like hitting someone with a club to persuade them not hit other people with sticks. Especially when you agree that the people being hit with sticks need to pay attention to something they’re ignoring, something that is causing the loss of human life in the millions.

    I truly do not understand your perspective on this point. You essentially seem to believe that the cause of defending human life is not worth contending for. I do.

    Simple as that, I think.

    So: as I’ve asked you before, is there anything you’re so passionate about that you’re willing to speak strongly about it, even at the risk of offending some people?

    Oh, I forgot. Of course there is. As you’ve demonstrated here.

    I just can’t quite understand why you picked reforming my rhetorical style as the main issue for your attention.
13. innermore says:
    September 17th, 2012 7:44 am

    Judging by your responses, you completely missed what I was attempting to say in comment 9. You conclude: “All that is necessary is for that pregnant woman to recognize that she has a BABY inside her, and that killing it for her convenience is unjustified homicide.” OK, follow my silly logic. Ask yourself: WHY is it necessary to convince her that she’s going to kill her baby? It’s just a way of convincing her not to have an abortion, isn’t it? I was suggesting we try other, less controversial ways to convince her not to have an abortion. Now keep that in mind and go back and read it again.

    I don’t think it’s logically possible to convince a mother, by sheer definition, that she’s capable of killing her own baby! That’s mainly why we’ve been at it 4000 years. My vitriolic rhetoric has always been directed at those who seem so superbly blinded by the urgency of the situation that, while desperately defending the unborn, you attack their mothers; not by choice, of course. Then all the yelling ensues. And politicking, and publishing, and profiting.
14. harmonicminer says:
    September 18th, 2012 7:25 pm

    innermore…. if she does not believe that she has a BABY inside her, which deserves her protection, what OTHER reason can there be that will convince her to go through a pregnancy she doesn’t want? It’s like trying to convince someone contemplating unjustified violence against another not to do it for reasons that have nothing to with the rights of the other person, and nothing to do with what is legal. What other reason is there not to do what one wishes?

    Here’s a fact: in states where the mother is required to see an ultrasound of her child before she consents to the abortion, abortion rates are ENORMOUSLY reduced from what they were before that law was in place. Proving, I think, that when women understand that it IS a child, and their actions will kill that living child, they tend to change their minds about doing it.

    This sentence makes no sense: “I don’t think it’s logically possible to convince a mother, by sheer definition, that she’s capable of killing her own baby!” Of COURSE it is. That’s what this is. I don’t know what you meant to say here…. but it just doesn’t track.

    Many women have chosen to kill their babies, in and out of the womb, knowing exactly what they were doing. But there are many who, if they think of it that way and can’t “hide” from what they’re doing, are less likely to abort. That’s just history and sociology, my friend. You can’t deny it without denying how attitudes towards the act have changed. You need to read some “pro-choice” literature. In it, you will see women who say they knew exactly what they were doing, and did it anyway, and are now proud of it. But there are many women who can be convinced of the horror of the deed, who might refrain if they are forced to confront themselves on the matter, and to confront the facts of what they’re about to do.

    Innermore, I don’t want you to ignore my question: what makes you think that by employing the rhetorical devices that you accuse me of using, you can convince me not to use them? Doesn’t your choice in this regard undercut your entire argument about their effectiveness?

    It’s just a bit like people who make an absolute rule that there are no absolutes. Self-refuting…..
15. harmonicminer says:
    September 18th, 2012 7:34 pm

    BTW, innermore, you keep referring to “4000 years” of history on the issue. But infanticide (“abortion after the fact”) has been common for all that time in some cultures. The people who engaged in it didn’t claim it wasn’t a baby. They just didn’t think it mattered.

    This debate is not old. It is new. Practitioners of infanticide didn’t claim they weren’t killing a baby. But modern practitioners of “hidden infanticide” often DO make that claim. Sure, abortion occasionally happened before the 20th century… but it wasn’t common, and it was often deadly to the mother…. which is why it wasn’t common. Infanticide was simply safer for the mother. And repeat abortion (common in the USA now) was very rare in past times, because the clumsy means available either killed the mother (often due to infection) or rendered her infertile.

    So in all honesty, you need to stop claiming this is a 4000 yr old argument. It isn’t. It is a controversy largely made possible by modern, uh, “medicine.”