Wonder Gem PigtailsOfDoom wrote:
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But you're asking people to pay for something that they think is immoral. Your argument is like saying that a frugal vegan is being hypocritical because he's occasionally willing to pay $50 for a dinner at a high end restaurant that provides vegan meals, but wont pay $5 for a bacon cheeseburger.
A lot of the vegans I know don't mind buying their friends a meal on occasion, even if that meal is a bacon cheeseburger. Sure they're not going to eat one themselves, and some might not want to have to smell it, but they're not going to force their opinions down someone else's throat. I get what you're trying to say, but your analogy is stupid.
The analogy was addressing the claim of hypocrisy on the part of the vegan. If he's ok with occasionally paying for the $5 burger, that's his choice. But what I'm arguing against is the claim that any vegan who *ever* is willing to pay $50 for a vegan meal must also pay on demand for a $5 burger for anyone who wants it. And that is similar to an argument saying that it's somehow hypocritical for a conservative to be ok with occasionally paying for pregnancy care, but not for an abortion.
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It's not the government's responsibility to protect you from your own choices. That's your job. We don't want to pay for pregnancy care *or* abortions. That's our starting position. Seems pretty consistent to me.
You may not want to, but you already do.
But that's a slippery slope argument. You're saying that since we already pay this, we may as well pay for
that as well...
And you're conveniently ignoring that by and large conservative have opposed paying for those existing services as well. So because conservatives failed to prevent some government spending, we should just abandon attempts to prevent even more? That's a pretty weak argument, don't you think?
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It would seem logical to me from a fiscal perspective, that if you don't like the government using your taxes to pay for other people's "mistakes," wouldn't you prefer to go the cheaper rout so there is less government control? Or does that just lead to the tin foil hat argument that the government will start mandating abortions for low income women?
Or suggesting that it's a lower cost solution, like you did earlier with the whole "Why pay $30k for pregnancy care, when you can pay $1k for an abortion, tops?". The lowest cost solution is to not pay for either. And I don't think it's a tin-foil-hat counter to say that paying for one will lead to more of the other, when you yourself made exactly that argument. We're not wrong to say that once government starts paying for something, it will start controlling that thing. That doesn't require some heavy handed mandate though. It can take the simple form of people being more willing to accept government funding for abortion "because it's cheaper than what we're paying for now".
Where's the tin-foil hat now?
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We don't care what you do. Freedom to do whatever you want comes with the responsibility for whatever results occur. It always amuses me when people try to argue that by *not* paying for abortions or welfare or whatever that conservatives are somehow trying to control what people do. It's really the exact opposite if you stop and think about it.
I know we're talking about abortion here, but there are several other issues (including gay marriage) that speak otherwise.
How so? Gay marriage is specifically about not extending the government's funding of an activity (marriage in this case). What you're arguing is pretty darn similar to the whole "We already fund pregnancies, so why not abortions?" argument. We already provide benefits to straight couples, so why not gay couples as well? In both cases, the conservative position is in opposition to expanding the range of things that the government (taxpayer ultimately) is paying for.
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I get that some people only have the political issue with state funded abortions. I disagree with it, but I understand where they're coming from. What about personhood amendments though, or amendments to try and make abortion illegal no matter what? Those are issues where conservatives are most definitely trying to control what people do.
This brings us back to what a "conservative" is though, doesn't it? Some people do argue for those sorts of things. But they are not even remotely close to being representative of all conservatives, and I'd argue strongly (I have in fact) that their motivations have nothing to do with their conservative positions, but with their own ethical take on the issue itself. Anti-abortionists tend to be conservative, but that does not make all conservatives anti-abortionists. Just as I would never argue that the desire to legalize abortion up to the instant of birth is a defining liberal position. Some liberals do want this, but most are sensible not to agree.
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A personhood amendment would essentially make it illegal for women to use hormonal birth control, because it prevents implantation of the embryo. Same thing with IUDs, which is the method of birth control I use. I don't know about you, but I don't want go back to the days where the only BC methods were condoms.
As long as we agree that there's a difference between "illegal" and "not funded by the government". Unfortunately, far too often, we conservatives get unfairly accused of wanting to ban something, when all we're really doing is fighting against the government paying for that thing.