❝❝Pardon, but attacking their compassion may not be the best way to go.

I don't have an answer either, but I think if you asked most conservatives if abortion was more compassionate than taking care of unwanted and/or disabled babies, they would laugh in your face. You would hand them both the issue and the moral high ground.

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First, those are different issues. Conservatives aren't a monolithic block. Not every conservative has issues with vaccines, and not every conservative thinks that autism is worse than death. I've not run the numbers, but I suspect the crossover with the pro-life crowd is pretty small.

Second, I'm not the one you'll have to convince. I have mixed feelings myself and it's one of those issues where I can see more than one side depending on circumstance. But when you tell most conservatives that "killing babies" is more compassionate, you've lost the argument with them and they will fight you to the end. It doesn't help that Democrats have defined abortion as their primary issue and practically THE only standard that matters for a Supreme Court justice. It doesn't help that Roe vs. Wade has no constitutional precedent and would be inevitably challenged as soon as the balance on the court changed.

This has always been a divisive issue. When conservatives look at Virginia, they see it as a call to action. This "slaughter of innocents" is something that they've been forced to accept for almost 50 years, and they are ready to fight back hard.

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By your standards.

By their standards of compassion, they are saving babies.

And that "they" includes many women who do not believe that feminists, liberals, and Democrats speak for them. You can't win this issue if you dismiss those women as objects who can't think on their own and must be "saved" from the evil patriarchy.

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I've my own issues with Christians.

But…

How is what they do that much different from what you just did? You just described a "come to Jesus" moment only with a different premise.

If faith means anything at all, it has to be freely chosen. That means that people are going to make choices that you don't like, don't understand, and don't approve of. You are no more entitled to judge their creed for them than they are entitled to judge yours for you. You can't win a battle of faith. Neither can they.

If you tell them that they are ignorant and living in fear and that everything they believe about their god is wrong, they have no reason to listen. All you are doing is feeding their perceived persecution. They don't believe they are victimized.

And not all of them are.

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Please don't misunderstand. I'm not saying that they are right. And I am certainly not defending them. My own feelings on the subject are way too conflicted.

What I am saying is that in this case the liberal/progressive ideas of compassion and sympathy are completely different from the conservative ideas. You're using the same words but you are having completely different conversations. Attack them in the name of compassion and in their minds you just made their case for them and without realizing it.

The assumptions and perspectives are completely different. Your logic won't work for them, just as theirs won't work for you. Both of you are starting from absolutes for one thing, even if those absolutes are mostly opposite.

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As a libertarian, I want less government than absolutely necessary. I'm not thrilled with idea of restricting rights, but I'm also not thrilled with the idea of government "picking up the slack" so to speak. And I oppose government interference with sex. But that doesn't mean I'm completely with the "left" on sex either. I don't think there should be government funding for private charities or other organizations. Which means Planned Parenthood shouldn't be getting grants or funding.

Or to cut through all the verbiage, rights good, government meddling bad.

I don't trust in the wisdom of government to "do the right thing."

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See, my problem is that I see both major parties using government to interfere and push their own agendas. "For Your Own Good!" "For The Greater Good!" "Think Of The Children!"

Sex is mostly a voluntary act. I see abortion mostly and commonly used as the "contraception of last resort." A hook-up and regret after a drunken encounter is not the same thing as rape or incest. I think a case can be made for abortion because of rape or incest provided we accept that a case can be made for adoption as well.

We forget that charity used to happen outside of government. Marvin Olasky wrote The Tragedy of American Compassion. Although I don't agree with all of his conclusions, Olasky does point out that charity used to be a short-term thing, privately and locally administered, and above all intended to get people on their feet and responsible for their own choices. Instead of a faceless bureaucracy that measures it's "success" by "clients" processed and money spent, private charity measures it's success differently.

If people had to take responsibility, maybe abortion wouldn't be casual.

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I'm not asking you to do anything else. I am saying that they have their own reasons which make sense to them. Their reasons are just as important to them as yours are to you.

Stars above, I get so very tired of the either/or dualism. It's never going to be winner take all. The longer we pretend that one side can decisively win, the longer the struggle will last. The people pushing hardest for either/or don't care which side wins as long as both sides are so blinded by the "righteousness" of their own cause that the never realize just how much they are surrendering to the "system."

All because somebody has to be in charge. All because we have to meddle in the lives and choices of others. All because we can't trust each other to make the "right choice" and take responsibility for that choice.

I'm not conservative. I'm not defending their position. I am not asking you to accept them on faith or anything else.

I'm saying that to really resolve this, we're going to have to sit down and talk through our differences. Smashing heads, pointing guns, and using the rule of law to declare one morality supreme above all isn't going to do anything for the long term. It will always be a holding pattern until the other side gets an advantage.

Think about all the passion we're giving away. There has got to be a better way.

ETA: I don't care who did it first. I don't care who did it more. I just want the whole mess over.

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Pardon, but the liberal party also regularly proclaims that they are for the children. The last Democrat nominee ran as the "women and children" candidate. In 1996 a Democrat president proclaimed that the era of big government was over.

I don't think that government is the first, best, and last solution to our problems. I don't think politicos are qualified to decide what should be taught in schools, sex ed or not.

And here's the opinion that is not going to make me popular. If you can't afford children, you should rethink sex. People keep throwing in things like rape and incest, but most sex in this country is consensual. Mixing rape, incest, and consensual sex objectifies the woman and makes her not responsible for her own choices.

No, I am not ignoring the man in these cases. I am saying that rape and incest are the exception to the rule. Even under the ever changing definition of rate in today's culture, where some women do believe that regret equals rape.

At the moment, we're in a mess with both major parties wanting control over sex. You can blame the Republicans all you want, but thanks to #MeToo it's not the "patriarchy" that is collapsing, it's how we deal with one another and how we share sex.

I'm not going to make the conservative arguments for them. I'm telling you how they feel and how they are going to react.

Kavanaugh was asked about abortion. Most of the articles about Gorsuch speculated on how he might rule in abortion cases. And most of the concern about Trump picking judges gets coached in the impact it will have on abortion cases. Like it or not, this has become the standard.

The natural conclusion to the argument that if only a woman has the right to decide, then the man has no financial obligation to ending the abortion or paying child support.

Personally I don't think that tax dollars should go to any organization providing services, medical or otherwise. But that's not the conservative argument. I'll also point out what any accountant can tell you, if government pays for a certain class of services, that frees up funding for other things.

Government involvement in health care (all types) has raised the cost of "essential services." It's no accident that health care prices have skyrocketed since Medicare and Medicaid became law, boosted by every attempt to "control costs." It doesn't help that since health insurance became an employee benefit, people don't know what they are paying for.

If we're really going to have this discussion about solutions, one thing that has got to be on the table is removing government intervention. Yes, that means no government restrictions on abortion, but that also means no government (taxpayer) funded healthcare.

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“The difference here being that Democrats support policies that help women, children, and families of all demographics.”

I'm sorry, but that is not true. For much of my life I've lived next to the Diné and Hopi. Democrat policies are very selective as to which groups get "helped" under which circumstances. I am not saying that the Republicans are better. I am saying that "public solutions" to social problems don't usually work, especially when they are administered hundreds or thousands of miles away from the actual problem. There are other reasons of course. Words matter, actions matter more, intentions don't.

Politicians are not qualified to determine curriculum, but neither are technocrats who don't live near the school and whose kids don't go to the school. Problems get solved when the people responsible for solving the problems have "skin in the game." Look at this. I say I don't believe that government is the first, last, and best solution and you're telling me why the Democrat experts are better. I'm not praising the Republicans. I'm criticizing the assumption that any Federal experts are better equipped to solve problems because they are Official and sanctioned by the appropriate authorities.

Responsibility for what one chooses to do is conservative? I know that is not what you meant, but it comes off as sex without consequences. Responsibility is important, and as long as sex is voluntary and consensual it's only adult to consider the consequences. Just as it's adult to consider before driving drunk, or stealing a protest sign that you don't agree with. Actions have consequences, the mark of an adult is the ability to make the right choice despite the threat of punishment.

Now I am not talking about not punishing people for their crimes or bad behavior. I'm saying that PIV sex is usually a choice and that, protected or not, might result in pregnancy. If you don't want kids, if you can't afford kids, the best time to think about that is before the moment when the hormones start carbonating.

I've never disputed that women have human rights. What I pointed out was the standard for a Federal judge has become their opinion on abortion. That's become one cornerstone of Democrat policy. Regardless of if I personally believe if abortion is right or wrong or if a women's choice should govern if abortion happens, I do find myself agreeing with those who say that the only way abortion could be made legal nationwide is through judicial declaration and not through the democratic process. Small d there. Throw in public monies and suddenly a right becomes a privilege.

I'm pointing out the logical fallacy of claiming it's a "woman's right" until it comes time to pay the bill. Choice without responsibility usually gives us spoiled brats, no matter what the gender or orientation.

The unregulated world is a charitable one. It's when charity becomes part of government that it becomes Somebody Else's Problem and Americans stop paying attention to what is needed. Americans voluntarily give more to charity than anyone else on the planet. Whether it's a child fallen down a well or a hurricane flooding New Orleans, we're there. More times than not, it's the Official™ charity and relief that gets in the way.

There's a good reason for that, and It is something I touched on earlier. Charity is supposed to be short term. When you tell someone that they will have government health care no matter what or that they will have financial aid to help pay the monthly bills no matter what, what incentive do they have to do for themselves? When you say someone needs government help, aren't you really saying that they are not good enough to do it on their own?

I'm not the first one to point out that the rising costs in heath care drastically outpaced inflation starting right after Medicare and Medicaid became law. Or that continued attempts to "fix healthcare" keep causing prices to go up and availability to go down. Think about it. The relative costs of Happy Meals, pocket calculators, cell phones, and bathroom towels have decreased while the availability and selection has gone up. That's not true with medical care, one of the most regulated industries out there. The disparity in pharmaceutical costs alone should make you wonder.

Removing government from the solution does work even if the government experts and the experts who depend on government tell you it won't. There's a couple of dozen special interest groups right there, all of them greedy for power and money. Somehow the accepted solution is always more government.❞❞

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