Thoughts on a Barack quote?

[praying]

So how about we take out the word punish since people are misinterpreting it.

“Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old,” he said. “I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want a baby"

Do you disagree that this is actually the meaning of his words? Its how I see it. He would encourage his children NOT to have the baby. He is pro-abortion.

No I don't agree with that. I agree with Redguard. No one is pro abortion. That is an absurd statement. Again demonizing is so much better.

 

[praying]

Yes I do disagree. I think that most of the posteres here disagree. The “punishment” spoken of here is external.

On a related note do you really think that if it was Obama’s daughter, and not Palin’s that was pregnant that the Republicans would be saying that it is a private family matter and cheering on Obama because of the pregnancy?

No and we all know it.

 

[allhart]

I'm having a bit of trouble puzzling out what you're tryng to say, but it sounds as though you're stating that some liberal positions conflict with the notion of integrity. If this is indeed what you're saying, how do you imagine this to be the case?

The liberal have a saying. What ever you do is your business as long as it doesn't interferer with me. Its all Good,they say. This conflicts with Integrity and in morality. Positions on sex ,drugs, parenting and rights that govern. In which makes or breaks common ground.

 

[TooCurious]

The liberal have a saying. What ever you do is your business as long as it doesn't interferer with me. Its all Good,they say. This conflicts with Integrity and in morality. Positions on sex ,drugs, parenting and rights that govern. In which makes or breaks common ground.

I think what you're failing to understand here is the fundamental and vital difference between what a person might approve or disapprove of on a personal level, and what should be enshrined in law and enforced upon the populace as a whole. There are plenty of things that I disagree with personally, but would be horrified to see legislated against. I think smoking cigarettes is a terrible, unhealthy thing to do, and do not understand why anyone would want to do it. However, I don't think there should be any laws against smoking cigarettes, as long as the person doing so does not affect anyone else negatively. My personal disapproval does not give me the right to force my views on others.

Consider this: perhaps I think that religion is fundamentally unhealthy and bad. Would you want me to support legislation to make Christianity illegal, because it conflicts with my personal views? Or would you prefer that I recognize that we pride ourselves on being a free society in which the individual is welcome to make his or her own choices based on his or her own values, as long as those choices do not lead him to harm others? Because that very freedom IS an important value to me.

Moreover, I'm still not clear on how you imagine that respecting another individual's right to make his own choices negatively impacts a person's own integrity or moral convictions, or the way he lives his own life. Is a person's moral integrity maintained only if he tries to force others to live according to his own values?

 

[allhart]

I think what you're failing to understand here is the fundamental and vital difference between what a person might approve or disapprove of on a personal level, and what should be enshrined in law and enforced upon the populace as a whole. There are plenty of things that I disagree with personally, but would be horrified to see legislated against. I think smoking cigarettes is a terrible, unhealthy thing to do, and do not understand why anyone would want to do it. However, I don't think there should be any laws against smoking cigarettes, as long as the person doing so does not affect anyone else negatively. My personal disapproval does not give me the right to force my views on others.

Consider this: perhaps I think that religion is fundamentally unhealthy and bad. Would you want me to support legislation to make Christianity illegal, because it conflicts with my personal views? Or would you prefer that I recognize that we pride ourselves on being a free society in which the individual is welcome to make his or her own choices based on his or her own values, as long as those choices do not lead him to harm others? Because that very freedom IS an important value to me.

Integrity needs morals in our common ground like our constitution as a country is common ground. People do undermine common ground for what? It isn't for the good of the people. That s for sure. More for personal agendas.

 

[Godzman]

“Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old,” he said. “I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby"

Okay, go!

Basically he wants it to be their choice. Many parents act like there kids are punishments, burdens on them doesn't make it right but that is the view of many people.

 

[TooCurious]

Integrity needs morals in our common ground like our constitution as a country is common ground. People do undermine common ground for what? It isn't for the good of the people. That s for sure. More for personal agendas.

You haven't explained how guaranteeing that people have the legal freedom to make their own choices undermines any sort of morality or integrity. In fact, guaranteeing that people have the legal freedom to make those choices is upholding the Constitution, which you rightly said is the common ground for us as a nation.

You didn't answer my question: If my morals say that Christianity is bad and wrong, am I undermining my integrity to support other individuals' right to freedom of religion, even if their being Christian doesn't harm others? Should I campaign to make Christianity illegal in order to uphold my moral values? Am I displaying a lack of integrity if I don't?

 

[ReadingForOrders]

“Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old,” he said. “I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby"

Okay, go!

My thought is that I could never bring myself to vote for anyone who considers a child a punishment. I think it speaks volumes about his character.

 

[flicka]

My thought is that I could never bring myself to vote for anyone who considers a child a punishment. I think it speaks volumes about his character.

Yes, it shows that he understands what unplanned and unwanted pregnancies can do to a young girls life, the life of the child, and the effects on society in general should every pregnant female..be they happy, healthy and able or homeless, uneducated, unemployed...deliver a child into the world.

Do you?

 

[WatersMoon110]

I think that the end of that "sound bite" (text bite?) explains more about what he is saying:

“Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old,” Obama said. “I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby. I don’t want them punished with an STD at age 16, so it doesn’t make sense to not give them information.”

He is saying that he wants his daughters to have information about contraceptives. While he also might be Pro-Choice, I feel it is obvious that he is saying he wants his daughters to use protection, and doesn't consider a pregnancy to be "apt punishment" for having sex. And he doesn't agree with Abstinence Only Sex Education.

 

[ReadingForOrders]

Yes, it shows that he understands what unplanned and unwanted pregnancies can do to a young girls life, the life of the child, and the effects on society in general should every pregnant female..be they happy, healthy and able or homeless, uneducated, unemployed...deliver a child into the world.

Do you?

Actually I think it shows that he believes children to be disposable when inconvenient and a "punishment." As for choice; I firmly believe in a womans right to chose whether she has a child or not, and that choice should be made before it involves the murder of an innocent child.

We don't have the choice to murder them at birth, why before birth?

 

[TooCurious]

My thought is that I could never bring myself to vote for anyone who considers a child a punishment. I think it speaks volumes about his character.

I didn't at all read it as though he were saying that he thought the baby itself was a punishment; when I read it, I gathered that he meant that being forced (by the law, particularly) to keep and carry the baby when one was not physically, emotionally, or financially prepared to do so, because of some perceived sexual immorality and the notion that such is what she "deserves," is punishment. And believe me, I've heard the sentiment that that a woman faced with an unplanned pregnancy deserves the "consequences of her actions" from more than one conservative Christian, generally delivered in a superior and judgmental tone-of-text.

 

[TooCurious]

We don't have the choice to murder them at birth, why before birth?

Because after birth, the woman is not being forced to surrender her blood, bodily nutrients, and the use of her internal organs to another person against her will. The law does not have the power to force one person to give another person his body's resources (blood, tissue, organs, etc.), even if the consequence is that the second person will die. This fact doesn't change when that second person happens to be tenanting the first. If you really want the court case where this was upheld, I can probably find it for you at some point.

In parts of this country, if I enter your house without your consent, you have the legal right to use lethal force to defend yourself and your property. My uterus is much more my personal property than the building in which I live.

However, this is a topic probaby best suited for another thread.

 

[ReadingForOrders]

I didn't at all read it as though he were saying that he thought the baby itself was a punishment; when I read it, I gathered that he meant that being forced (by the law, particularly) to keep and carry the baby when one was not physically, emotionally, or financially prepared to do so, because of some perceived sexual immorality and the notion that such is what she "deserves," is punishment. And believe me, I've heard the sentiment that that a woman faced with an unplanned pregnancy deserves the "consequences of her actions" from more than one conservative Christian, generally delivered in a superior and judgmental tone-of-text.

Once an innocent life is involved it shouldn't matter if the pregnancy is what the mother deserves or not, that shouldn't even be a consideration. By the way he has been asked a number of times to explain the baby as punishment remark. All I've seen so far is political back pedaling.

 

[ReadingForOrders]

Because after birth, the woman is not being forced to surrender her blood, bodily nutrients, and the use of her internal organs to another person against her will. The law does not have the power to force one person to give another person his body's resources (blood, tissue, organs, etc.), even if the consequence is that the second person will die. This fact doesn't change when that second person happens to be tenanting the first. If you really want the court case where this was upheld, I can probably find it for you at some point.

In parts of this country, if I enter your house without your consent, you have the legal right to use lethal force to defend yourself and your property. My uterus is much more my personal property than the building in which I live.

However, this is a topic probaby best suited for another thread.

The point is in the vast majority of cases the mother has knowingly participated in an activity that can and often does result in the creation of a human life. Once that life exists you should not have the right to chose whether it continues to exist. Neither should I or anyone else. And before I am asked yes I am a consistent pro-lifer. While I do believe that some situations do justify homicide such as self-defense, I do not support Capital Punishment or unjust warfare.

As for the self-defense argument in favor of abortion, most pregnancies do not end in loss of life of the mother. Thus it is not a true case of self-defense. The mother is rarely in imminent danger.

However you are right this is better left for another thread and I apologize for derailing it thus far.

 

[TeddyKGB]

Once an innocent life is involved it shouldn't matter if the pregnancy is what the mother deserves or not, that shouldn't even be a consideration. By the way he has been asked a number of times to explain the baby as punishment remark. All I've seen so far is political back pedaling.

Obama was echoing the anti-choice lobby's own rhetoric, or at least the inferences that can be drawn therefrom. Though they would never call it such, the anti-choicers are indeed leveraging pregnancy as a punishment by juxtaposing it with the choice they say the woman should have made - to abstain from sex.

 

[TooCurious]

Obama was echoing the anti-choice lobby's own rhetoric, or at least the inferences that can be drawn therefrom. Though they would never call it such, the anti-choicers are indeed leveraging pregnancy as a punishment by juxtaposing it with the choice they say the woman should have made - to abstain from sex.

Exactly! Thank you for saying what I wasn't eloquent enough today to manage. That's precisely what I wanted to articulate. Reps coming your way.

 

[ReadingForOrders]

Obama was echoing the anti-choice lobby's own rhetoric, or at least the inferences that can be drawn therefrom. Though they would never call it such, the anti-choicers are indeed leveraging pregnancy as a punishment by juxtaposing it with the choice they say the woman should have made - to abstain from sex.

Or perhaps they recognize that an innocent human life is involved.

 

[Robbie_James_Francis]

Most of us here, having been teenagers at one point in time, must've had our parents sit us down and explain to us why they didn't want to have pre-marital sex.

Three main reasons come to mind.

1. Christianity doesn't promote it.
2. Risk of STDs
3. (Probably the most important) You don't want to know the challenges of having a baby before you're prepared.

No, actually. I was sat down and told:

1. Do what you want with your body but don't visit any sites that might get viruses on our computer.
2. If you want to sleep with someone, wear a condom because you're not ready to have kids and we don't want you to get a disease.

But we are talking about the parents whose response to "I'm gay" was "I love you" and "Yeah, I knew that anyway" so maybe they're more liberal than most.

 

[TeddyKGB]

Or perhaps they recognize that an innocent human life is involved.

Of course they do. It is for that reason they believe the 'punishment' is justified.