Things obviously can become jumbled when you’re not reading the cue cards.

He believes firmly that human rights should be conferred on the zygote at conception. Yet, he does not wish to outlaw destructive embryonic stem cell research (or fertility treatments that require destruction of fertilized embryos, for that matter).

Actually, McCain believes that the right to life should be conferred on the baby human at the moment of conception. If you believe Barrack Obama, whose most agonizing decision was “to vote against the war in Iraq when he was still in IL”, then you believe that those embryos are about to be discarded that he is referring to. I still disagree with both of them on the stem cell research, however.

Are you going to call Obama out on his vote to put babies to death who have survived abortion or are they still zygotes?

Both candidates knew what the general questions would be according to Rick Warren. We still do not know who knew exactly what, since Obama acknowledged he knew and “cheated” on one question.

it’s ’something’ that causes the inner-self to wonder about its potential.

I think everyone knows that it’s ’something’ that has potential, and that the potential is to become something very precious. That’s why the choice can be agonizing. I don’t think just this much information is enough to tell us that it is “something” that should be illegal to terminate. That’s a deeper discussion.

Just that potential makes it something to agonize over.

Sorry, but no dice.
If you don’t agonize, or even shrug, then you don’t think it’s some form of life & therefore have no need for any sort of guilt for ridding your body of a mass of cells. It truly is just getting rid of some blood from the uterus.

If you agonize, then your own conscience is telling you that you’re BSing yourself while trying to rationalize away that it’s just tissue mass.

It’s either a bundle of cells & thus there’s no cause for revisiting when they’re removed, or it’s ’something’ that causes the inner-self to wonder about its potential.

There is no in between. There is no gray. There is no nuance. It’s just BS.

or it’s SOMETHING that you must agonize over.

If the latter is the case, that does not necessarily imply that it is also a specific SOMETHING That is entitled to human rights. We all know that the SOMETHING that it is could one day be a newborn infant suckling at its mother’s breast. Just that potential makes it something to agonize over, whether we perceive it to be a sentient being, conscious of a will to live, or not.

Yes, every politician has viewpoints out of harmony with each other. Hell every person does. However, it is difficult to believe that a person says “Every embryo has a right to life just like a newborn” and, in the same breath says “It’s ok to destroy embryos for research” really holds both of these values.

The supposed ‘difficult’ choice that a woman makes when deciding to have an abortion is a contradiction. There’s no difficulty and no agonizing if you believe it’s only a mass of cells. If you truly don’t consider it some form of life, then it’s no different than having your wisdom teeth removed or some scar tissue cut out. It’s either NOTHING and therefore just another procedure or it’s SOMETHING that you must agonize over.

But, neither side can step back and accept their own contradictions (not that everyone has one, mind you, just the overwhelming majority).

According to Obama’s sentiments as I understand them, err on the side of women’s choice until the final weeks of pregnancy. Presumably, the notion of conferring a right to life that outweighs the woman’s choice earlier than that does not seem sensible to him.

Personally, the ethical reasoning I use leads to a similar position, but not precisely the same. And, of course “right to life” on the part of the fetus and “right to self-determination” on the part of the woman are not the only issues that figure in. Naturally, each person’s reasoning on those other issues will have some impact on their position about RvW and the legality of abortion more generally.

I meant my comment exactly as jokingly as McCain meant his.

Sorry, can’t denote sarcasm/humor all the time simply by reading text. My bad!

FYI, the glaring contradiction by McCain is his support of a state ban on abortion except in the cases of rape & incest. Apparently, it’s only a life if the man & woman aren’t related & agree to the act.

Whether you agree with his position or not, it has the virtue of being logically coherent.

Erring on the side of termination?

I think that makes the count “every single time” that a debate between a Republican and a Democrat has resulted in the GOPer being the snake oil salesman and the Democrat being the intellectual that is too darn smart for the rubes. Go figure.

I think you have Lee Atwater to thank for that, even if it is true of Democrats only by comparison.

Really? You didn’t get that joke? Even though he pointed out that the comment would be taken out of context, you still took it as a straightforward answer?

I meant my comment exactly as jokingly as McCain meant his. His “joke”, if you can call it that, was a poor attempt to make humor about the fact that he doesn’t know or care where the life of work ends and the life of wealth begins.

Personally, I thought Obama’s admission that he’s not sure when life begins – but go ahead and terminate it at your leisure since it’s above his pay grade – was the hit of the night.

Whether you agree with his position or not, it has the virtue of being logically coherent. McCain’s stated position does not have that virtue – it is a contradiction.

It may be that McCain is just too dumb to figure out that embryos are never seen before conception. Or it may mean that he doesn’t truly hold the values that he claims to. Either way, it reflects poorly on him.

Your prior statement not-withstanding, I always wish that the democrat had a stand-in expert in ethics to answer questions like this for them, and were given all the time they needed.

If I were on the stage, I would say “Stop the clock. First off, your question is meaningless. You don’t want to talk about human rights generally speaking. You want to talk about state protection of the right to life. Many human rights – to be free from physical violence, for instance – aren’t conferred in our society until the child has been out of the womb for 18 years. Since Roe v Wade, and in many states since the founding of our nation, that right is conferred at birth. Should this be so? Let’s discuss the arguments on each side, and weigh them against the rights of a woman to self-determination.”

I hope that the likes of Rick Warren, together with the likes of John Rawls, will someday create a forum where people can hear a conversation like that.