gadgetlady

I will find some studies on it later and post them. Don't judge me. Maybe I have been in the position before. You don't know. I'm not advocating judgment of a personal action which affects no one but oneself. I'm advocating a law against killing people. There's a big difference. If you believe we shouldn't judge anyone, then there should be no laws at all.

My apologies, and you are absolutely right. I misplaced the decimal point in my calculation (and I was a math minor in college; I'm so embarrassed!). And while the numbers are much smaller, I'm sure if there was something else killing 1168 babies per year, people would be screaming bloody murder.

Such a teeny, tiny number. Not, of course, teeny tiny when you multiply it by 4,000 abortions a day and 365 days a year. 320 a day. 116,800 a year. That's a massacre, really. Of viable babies.

LOL! Yeah, uh, no.

There is no correlation between an unplanned pregnancy and abuse, abandonment, and neglect. In fact, most children who are abused were planned, wanted pregnancies.

I'm sorry you had to go through that.

You can type until you're blue in the face. You will not hear me say I would allow my children to be "euthanized", and you will not ever, under any circumstances, see me do it. I'm done talking about it.

I know what it means. I watched it happen once.

Is life only the ability to sustain a heartbeat? If so, there's a whole heck of a lot of people with pacemakers who aren't alive. It's the presence of a heartbeat.

I'm saying never. Those who have the authority to decide for themselves whether they want to give me that authority know that I would never do it, so if they want it done they won't ask me. Because I won't do it.

My parents put me in that position precisely because they knew I would not allow them to be killed. If they didn't want that to be the decision made, they would have selected one of my brothers to be in charge. It's THEIR decision, not mine.

Well maybe it should. Seems pretty cut and dried, logical, absent of arbitrary criteria.

It is not. It is a violation of the Hippocratic oath. It is a death sentence without a trial. I do not have the right to decide for another person whether they live or die. Period. I will not make that decision for another person, and I will not pull the trigger (or the cord, as it were) on another person. The people who know me know better than to ask. My parents put me, their youngest, in charge of them in the case of failing health. My two older brothers were none too happy about it. Why am I in charge? Because my parents can trust me not to off them. And so can my husband and so can my children.

How about if we look at the criteria for when life ENDS? There are medical criteria for THAT; all we have to do then is reverse them. Actually, I am anti-death penalty. I wasn't always, though. I was pro-life before I was a Christian (thus violating the "law" that all pro-lifers are Christians), and it was my pro-life beliefs that reversed my thinking on the death penalty. And, BTW, I would never sign a DNR for anyone.

The ability to make medical decisions for our children is different from owning them. If you walked into a doctor's office with your child and told the doctor to amputate your child's arm, they certainly wouldn't grant your request because you have medical authority over your child. My kids have caused me to suffer from time to time. But they also bring me unmeasurable joy. And they would bring me that same joy if they were "defective". They are precious, precious human beings; just as precious as children with Down Syndrome or Spina Bifida or any other physical or mental defect. I don't gauge whether they have a right to live by whether the happiness they bring exceeds the suffering. And I certainly had no way at their birth to predict whether the one would exceed the other or not.

And one more thing -- the principle is that no one has the right to decide for another person whether they should live or die.

Actually, I think they should be limited to specific, logical, consistent, scientific parameters. Not how someone "feels", not based on the most emotional point in a woman's life (when she's pregnant), not based on arbitrary medical techniques (viability used to be 35 weeks, now it's down to 21 or 22). Based on the principle of the protection of human life and the definition of when human life begins.

Again, we don't own our children. No one has the right to decide for another. Given the fact that it is a highly controversial opinion, I'm sure he's justified his opinion. While he may not have in the quote you gave, doesn't mean that he hasn't in other statements. for instance in the case of severely disabled infants whose life would cause suffering both to themselves and to their parents. A "for instance" is not exhaustive. It's an example. And all kids cause suffering to both themselves and to their parents. This isn't just a slippery slope. It's greased with Crisco.

That isn't what he SAID, so I have to assume, being a highly educated man, that that isn't what he MEANS. Leaving it up to the family is still allowing one person to decide for another. Suppose you have a highly psychotic parent? Look, if you want to "euthanize" yourself, that's totally up to you. And if your spouse (or whoever) wants to write it into their living will that you should snuff them out under certain circumstances, that's totally up to them. But don't go advocating the "right" for one person to do it to another person under the guise of parenthood. We don't OWN our children.

She was unable to see people, to hear people, or to communicate with people. The only reason YOU think she had the ability to lead a happy, productive life is because SHE taught the world that SHE could do so. Up until that point, virtually nobody would have believed she could be happy and productive. But that's NOT what Singer says. Again, WHO decides? In your opinion. Who are you to decide for another person? After all, all Hitler did was decide for other people. The ethnic groups he "euthanized" was, in his opinion, defective and sub-standard. And Margaret Sanger was his "bud". It's a full circle, really. Can you make a hole in a dike and expect it to be limited to YOUR parameters?

Wow. So you get to decide who's going to have a happy productive life? Helen Keller -- who the heck let HER slip through the cracks? Euthanize is such a nice word. Much nicer than kill or snuff out. Love those euphemisms. Didn't Hitler use them a lot?

He didn't say vegetables or physically painful to live. He said "defective". Some people define obese as defective. Scary thing, that. It's really a problem when we allow the average "Joe" to define life by HIS standards. If anyone's defective, it's the serial killer in prison, after all.

You guys are scary. You've rendered me speechless, which isn't easy to do. Wait, aren't you both against the death penalty? Oh, oh, that's only for guilty people? Innocent children need not apply.

Actually, that's the argument that early Americans used for owning slaves -- they weren't fully human. So yes, it's sarcastic now, in 2007, but it certainly wasn't sarcastic 150 years ago.

:omg::omg::omg: Let me get this straight. You believe it is OK to kill a baby up until a month after birth? If so, why not two months? Why not two years? Heck, that'd be more reasonable. After all, it's when the kids are going through the terrible twos that they're most difficult to deal with. This would be a great "out" for frustrated parents! Let's pass a law!