This is all I want to say about the Colorado Planned Parenthood shooting:
First of all, I do not condone mass shootings. I feel like I shouldn’t have to say that, but I just want to make it clear.
As per the issue of abortion. On principle, I don’t like it, but I accept it as an ugly reality of modern day life. A necessary evil. The least worst option available at that moment. Consequently, I am pro-choice, but from a mainly libertarian perspective. I just don’t like the idea of the government having the power to make that choice on another person’s behalf. Done.
Here is what I noticed in the media coverage of the PP shooting compared to other recent events.
Following the PP shooting, Democrat politicians and liberal pundits took to the airwaves and internet to #StandWithPP and condemn the “violent rhetoric” of the GOP that (supposedly) caused the shooting. The undercover PP videos were roundly condemned again. The left mounted a national media defense of Planned Parenthood and an attack on gun rights.
Following the Charlie Hebdo massacre and Texas “Draw Muhammad” shooting Democrat politicians and liberal pundits took to the airwaves and internet to bend over backwards to explain how there are limits to the 1st Amendment, freedom of speech doesn’t mean we should go around insulting Islam just because we can, we shouldn’t “punch down” by criticizing Islam, and how #JeSuisCharlie is defending white privilege. The left mounted a national media attack waffling on the freedom of speech.
Watching all of this has left me with one conclusion.
If the right to kill unborn children is more important to you and a more defensible position to you than the freedom of speech, there is something fundamentally wrong with your political ideology and perhaps your soul.
Oh, but there is a huge huge massive difference between the two groups involved. Pro-life folks are also loudly and stoutly condemning the attack. They want the killing (all of it, including the unborn) to stop. They are not, however, advocating attacking and killing abortion doctors, blowing up clinics or beheading anyone who is pro-choice.
The other group will attack and behead, blow up or maim, shoot or stab anyone that dares to draw their false prophet.
So, you see, it’s easy for them to condemn the group that isn’t violent. They won’t blow you up, or kill your family because you called them names or condemned them.
It’s sort of like police departments and alphabet soup federal agencies that go after the guy who cut a barrel of a shotgun a half inch too close, making a huge case out of it, rather than going after the violent criminal gangs who might shoot back.
I honestly don’t see how even a Libertarian can be pro-choice on any level. Abortion is the killing of an innocent human being, and it is only tolerated on any level because the people most affected by it are by nature unable to speak up for themselves, being generally 2 years away from even being able to form basic sentences, let alone understand that “Because Mommy was pressured by her 9th-grade classmates and doesn’t want to pay the consequences for her stupid decision, you have to die.”
I maintain that everyone who supports abortion should have been aborted. Vigilanteism will only make matters worse, though.
This is more than I wanted to get into it, but I draw the line at sovereignty. If the baby (fetus) is not developed enough to live outside the womb on its own, the mother’s choice is supreme. If the baby is developed enough to survive outside the womb, it has established personhood and its life is supreme.
I use the same standard for brain death. If the person cannot survive on its own off a machine, its dead.
By survive I mean breath and heart beat on its own. Incubators are not heart/lung machines.
Many people go into states of not being able to survive without machinery, heal, and then go back to normal life. Sometimes even while conscious through the entire process. What is that…coming back from the dead according to your definition?
It just seems really odd to me that your definition of “brain death” rides on whether or not the heart/lungs are functioning rather than whether or not the brain is dead. Just a really odd definition…
Agreed on not condoning mass shootings. In fact, I’ll go further and soundly condemn them. It’s ridiculous that we have to include that, like a disclaimer, but if we don’t (and sometimes even if we do) we’ll be accused of supporting them.
On abortion, I’m solidly morally opposed with very narrow exceptions. My moral opposition does NOT, however, mean I would support a law banning the practice entirely. Rather, I believe it should be available and medically safe for those instances when it is the “least worst option”. I’d strongly advise and suggest seeking an alternate ending, but it’s not my place to dictate someone else’s life.
Thus, my senses of morality and freedom are somewhat in conflict with each other on this, but that internal discomfort is the price I pay, as a conservative-leaning libertarian American Christian, to keep my personal morals from infringing on others’.
And I 100% agree with your last statement. It’s a truly damaged mind and/or soul that would choose to draw the line there, on that particular patch of sand.