[adammichaelc]

I agree; I also think it's important to allow the people to decide these kinds of hot, controversial issues.

7 people shouldn't have the power to command millions of people.

It's better to persuade, discuss, debate, change hearts and minds, than to dictate top-down.

I personally believe only women should be allowed to vote on this issue. It's their bodies, and they bear the overwhelming brunt of childcare and labor associated with raising children. They take the risks. They ought to be in the driver seat.

[Levitz]

>I personally believe only women should be allowed to vote on this issue. It's their bodies, and they bear the overwhelming brunt of childcare and labor associated with raising children. They take the risks. They ought to be in the driver seat.

I fail to see how that conclusion follows the reasoning. If anything them having a dog in the race would make their opinion biased, and thus void. The discussion is not whether if women should have control over their bodies or not, it's about the morality of exercising that control over a living human being that might or not be considered conscious to some degree.

Any group when facing the option of giving itself more rights will be biased towards the positive and surely impartiality ought to be important in this kind of matter?

Note that this isn't something I desire, as I see it the whole of society has a say on how things are run, and so we all discuss things such as education even if we aren't going to undergo any more education, it's just if you want to make this a special case and make a differentiation, anyone capable of pregnancy should be the first group out the door.

[randcraw]

I appreciate the primacy of the mother's opinion over the father's or the courts' (since pregnancy affects only her body among those three parties), but I hate to dismiss the father as if he were just a bystander.

But surely there's another participant that deserves a voice. If it's a person (or even partly a person), then its most precious possession, it's life, is to be taken. Surely its voice cannot be dismissed outright. That's why I believe this issue is not as simple as letting only the mother (or the courts) decide. Historically, abortion has done a lot of harm, irrespective of Roe v Wade.

Personally, I think we need to try harder to minimize the injuries inherent in abortion. Let's not make a complex issue binary, as merely right or wrong. Technology and creativity are our friends. I believe it's possible to find 'cures' that do far less harm than is done now and to work toward even better ways until the rights of everyone involved are served.

[curtainsforus]

Get rid of child care laws, then. No taxation without representation!