timesjoke

Women are the only ones killing their babies, they have the choice of life and death. With great power comes great responsibility. I am not against all women for pointing out a very basic fact that only women have this power and responsibility. Once the woman decides to not kill her child, I am every bit as hard on the men for their responsibility to help care for the child they created, but these men cannot do their part until the child can be allowed to live. Just like women can keep their legs closed and even be a tad more selective about who they make babies with. Fact, please offer some supportive links for that claim because in my experience most men are very emotionaly damaged when they hear their children have been killed. I do believe that "some" men are real azzholes and push women to get abortions, but these same men were also considered desirable at some point to the woman who was having unprotected sex with them so still the woman made her choices, and the abortion is the method to get away from the results of her choice to intentionally have unprotected sex. Right, the fastest growing segment of society in both America and Europe is the single, never wed mother of two. Not a lot of moral character to show your kids in that situation. And while you love to claim I hate women, how about that little shot your trying to make against all men Anna? What does parenting have to do with abortion? Why do you need to try and put down men in this conversation? Men don't even get a chance to be good parents until their child gets past the mother and her abuility to kill their child. Consider that 1.4 million children are killed by their mothers every year so if we add that "fact" into your little claim the men come out looking much, much better indeed, lol. Heartless baby-killers? Why is it you radical liberal types always have to insert words into the mouths of those you dissagree with? I have never said anything close to that, in fact just a post or two back I clearly said I believed women were manipulated by society and the abortion clinic workers to kill their children and I felt sorry for these women. I also pointed out several times how women even 20 years later suffer from their choices to kill their children so where do you get that I think women are heartless? I do believe that the process, specifically the abortion clinic workers try to get the women to set aside her feelings and look at her decision to kill her child as nothing more than cutting off a wart. They use words life fetus to give the process a sterile and clinical appearance away from the emotional side of the decision. A "temporary" distence is created between a woman's normal emotional connection to her child and her decision to kill her child. BUT That distence only lasts so long and long after the abortion clinic workers have forgotten all about the woman even existing, that woman is reconnected to her emotional side and now the suffering begins. Now she has no support, no workers whispering into her ear about how innocent her actions are and she is tearing herself apart for the decision she has made. Now her family and other loved ones are all she has and if she at the same time has distanced herself from them as many do during these times, well the outlook is not real great. No, I do not hate women Anna, I am one of the few qho actually looks past the short term event that looks to some as a solutuin and see the real and heavy long term cost to both the women and society.

Wez, stop it. Your going to that place where you try to stop honest debate by inserting unneeded crud into the mix. You know darn well I was talking about how women felt pressured to kill their child from the workers, this ultrasound issue is new and of course I have not spoken to any woman who had to deal with that specific thing. But, almost all studies prove that even 20 years later most women still suffer from their decision to kill their child. This rushed decision has ramifications for a lifetime, and not the short lifetime of the killed child but instead the full life of the mother who will forever regret their decision to kill. The supreme court is irrelivant when it comes to morals. The concept of laws are rooted in morlas to be sure, but many times laws are corrupted and hijacked by special interest groups to make something horrible seem reasonable. As another member of the forum said already, killing is killing. Intent is the defining factor for the moral possition of the killing. If your defending yourself from being killed then sure, your morally standing on solid ground. If your motivation for killing is to escape taking responsibility for your choices, that is not morally right. Wrong again Wez, as I pointed out to emkay, the abortion clinics are the people who will be conducting the ultrasound and those workers think killing babies is a good thing so there will not be any isolating or other stuff your trying to insert. "IF" the woman had to go to a completely different location with anti-abortion people running it would agree with you but that is not the case. People cannot be forced into feeling something they do not feel Wez. Feelings are inside us Wez, not outside. We express our emotions externally sometimes, but what we see is reaction, not emotions themselves. Guilt is a creation or byproduct of shame. You cannot make anyone feel guilt unless they are ashamed of something they have done, or want to do. Just seeing an ultrasound cannot insert shame if the person does not see their actions as wrong. Why is it so many people including you Wez seem like your real agenda is to insulate women from their true feelings? Is it because you know that if women see their child for what it really is they will not want to kill it? Is killing the baby your only concern? My concern is not my own moral feelings but instead the damage done to society with millions of women getting abortions based on short term pressures ending up living a life of depression and even suicide because later, down the road they see their action for what it really was. For too long the abortion clinics have had exclusive and isolated contact to these women and telling them it is normal and ordinary to get an abortion. These same clinics refuse to identify the baby as a being and brainwash each woman with the idea that this is nothing more than getting a wart removed. I believe it is time to make a small attempt to reinsert humanity into the discussion.. No, as usual issues like this are driven by the people, all the people and almost all Americans agree in over 800 studies and surveys that they do not want abortion to be seen as a normal form of birth control. American want "some" steps to be taken to take the killing of a baby more seriously than a wart removal Wez. Life really is special, we should treat it that way. What? You have got to be kidding.......... Just making Government smaller can easily be done by eliminating all police forces both federal and State, your all for blind reduction of Government right? You don't want Government to perform any function at all right? How about reducing the Government by cutting the armed forces in half? How about teachers and schools, you hate the idea of Government and want it smaller right? Get rid of all schools then........ I am all for cutting the size of Government "in areas they have no business being" such as welfare programs. Cutting the IRS out completely and inserting the fair tax proposal. No true conservative wants to blindly cut Government just for the sake of being able to claim it has been reduced. I want the Government to impose laws, and all laws are based on the values the community wants Joe. You not wanting abortion restrictions to be put into law is the same as Obama refusing to listen to the people who did not want his healthcare bill passed into law. The people of America are clear that they do not want abortion to be treated the same as a wart removal. Do you want to follow the moral direction desired from your communities or not IWS? Never place all your apples in one basket. I for one do not want to end all abortions for society. Incest, rape, severe medical issues are all areas that do not show any irresponsibility for the mother and are valid reasons for her to get an abortion. My personal beliefs would not allow an abortion but I do not want to impose all my own beliefs on other people. I am strictly a responsibility adovcate for society. I do want more measures to make people take responsibility for what they do and their own lives. Allowing abortions for any sorry reason is the ultimate in creating a society where irresponsibility is the main focus. To be honest, I would not even be completely against regular abortions if they required some counseling and a balanced information process. Right now people who want women to get abortions have 100% of the attention of women at the time they are considering it. Their presentation to the mother is one of "no big deal" and "it is only a few cells, not a life". To most people in America, life is something special, and ending a life should be a bigger decision than it currently is. No, I do not think it is easy or a party for the woman, in fact the event is nothing compared to the mess the woman will face years down the road, and it is that mess further down the road I am also concerned with and how that changes the dynamic of society when you have many millions of women in society all suffereing from their short term solution that had them killing their own child.

How do I know what who thinks Wez? The women? I pay attention, I have the studies, I ask the women who actually had abortions and felt pressured to make a rush decision because time passing only makes the procedure more difficult, etc...... And it is not a service, it is a contract killing. The doctor is killing a life based soly on the command of the mother to kill her child. No medical need, no harm to the mother. As explained already by more than just me, you cannot get guilt out of someone who does not think they are doing anything wrong. If only this image suddenly changes their mind they were not in the right frame of mind to kill their child in the first place. Sure, even I have had days that I wondered if I could keep going. But then times like seeing my son graduate his Marine bootcamp fills me with pride and the warmth that I have done a very good thing. Humans have doubts all the time. That is why we need things like morals to help us get past times of doubts. Well the woman did "choose" the man she was making a baby with you know. She could have refrained from making babies until she found herself a better man......right? Why is it some women try to put down their men as worthless or bad 'after' they seperate or make a baby with them? Don't get me wrong, I see and agree with your point that sometimes men also pressure women into getting a divorse but is that not all just part of the trainwreck lives of both the man and woman leading up to the unwanted child? I think men who pressure women to get an abortion are very bad, but at the same time she did choose him for mating, I had nothing to do with her choice and I also don't feel a lot of sympathy for men or women who are sleeping with people they know nothing about and make babies with them. Maybe a little bit of "let's get to know each other" before sex could limit some of these unwanted pregnancies before they happen? The clinic worker is the last person to talk to them, all the fears, all the doubts, all the pressures come to a head with the last meeting with the abortion worker and that worker can easily move a person to a desired result. Consider the recent case where the school nurse talked a teenage girl into getting an abortion, not telling her parents, and even called the teenager a cab, all telling the girl that if she kept it away from her parents, the abortion would be "FREE". Now tell me honestly that the nurse had nothing to do with the teen mother's decision to abort........ I for one would not change my mind, even with all the crap I deal with from my ex-wife to spend time with my younger two kids, I go through it all because I love my kids and could not imagine them not being a part of my life. Sure I have had doubts, but doubts are just stumbles on the path, we don't always have all the answers to all problems, but core values and morals can help us stay on the right path and not fall for despair or fear to do the wrong things.

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Anna, the real shame is you wasted all the words in the first two sentences just to give you an excuse to take a shot at me. Of course you don't offer any substance to the discussion yourself or try to point out what is wrong in your opinion about anything I said and even emkay very reluctantly admitted I made some good points, hell even eddo agreed with one of my points so obviously I was not that bad. I don't hate women, I don't even hate women who kill their children, in all honesty I feel sorry for them because in my opinion most women get abortions because society and more importantly abortion clinic workers make women feel like that is their only choice and that choice is no big deal. Just because I speak what I feel and I am not afraid to face difficult topics like this without being politically correct, that does not mean I an against all women. In reality you would find it very hard to find a man would would respect and want to protect women more than me. Rolling over and blindly accepting any belief just because the PC crowd demands it is not showing women respect in the slightest. It is actually hurting all women to do so. If you have to turn to personal attacks, your the one with the problem. Fell free to do something more than point your finger and call names Anna. Snaf, in my opinion your second point is the most important in dealing with the death penalty and making it a deterrent. Too much time passes by for society in general to make a direct connection between the crime and the punnishment. In my opinion the appeal process needs to be streamlined and "ALL" the points to be appealed should be done in one trip, not hundreds of individual appeals that spread it out for 20 years.

So you believe all these women are loss causes? No amount of persuasion can get women to consider killing their children as bad? And if you truly believe that these women are that far gone, then obviously seeing their child in an untrasound will not have any effect either....right? You can't have it both ways emkay, if just seeing their child will create feelings of guilt then their not as far gone as you claim they are and there is a core of decency we can build on and help them. Interesting how the abortion cases only exploded once it was made legal though. By society accepting abortion as a normal form of routine birth control we have added to the problem emkay. Women do, they had 100% control over their bodies and made a "CHOICE" to have unprotected sex and intentionally created a child inside them. Why is it that "CHOICE" is always ignored by people who advocate for abortions? If you mean backwards in time to a day when people used to be held accountable for their actions I party agree, but this is not enough in my opinion. People never want to be held responsible for their choices, if we don't start working to change this new attitude in society it will end up ripping us apart. Your comparing apples and handgrenades emkay, one has nothing to do with the other. The only reason the requirement for the ultrasound is being asked for is because the women want to "KILL" their child. KILL, not create more life but to KILL emkay. Do you understand that some people believe KILLING is wrong on a society level and this kind of law is only serving that greater concept of killing being wrong? This is an untrasound emkay, a image created using sound similar to bat sonar. There is nothing intrusive or severe about it and it will be performed by people who feel killing babies is a good thing so how can you possibly claim that it will be misused? If you have better solutions I am sure everyone will listen because nobody wants to hurt people, we just need to find some way of dealing with a issue that is very, very bad.

Punishment? Is paying for your own car insurance a punishment or part of the responsibility of car ownership? My point is I was not part of the irresponsible behaviors so why should I or any other person pay the resulting costs from that behavior? One would assume the partisipants to the irresponsible behaviors were doing so because they were having a good time. Well, most good times have a cost, lol. I don't see this as reality, I would assume that the same people performing the medical procedure to kill the child would be the same people to perform the ultrasound, they ceertainly would not have a bad attitude tword the mother and would not be trying to make the mother feel like she is being punished. You know, every time anyone tries to hold people accountable for their own actions people like you try to say it is like Nazi Germany, well guess what, it is getting tired and old. None of this is even being discussed if people were just responsible for their own actions. Why do we tteach sex education in our public schools emkay? Because teenage pregnancy was getting out of control and "someone" had to act if the parents refused to act themselves. I hate that the Government has to sometimes take action on certain things but we can only blame ourselves and our own irresponsibility that gives Government the reasons (and excuses) to step in. My view of the bigger picture is 1.4 million killed babies every year and no sign of anyone caring enough to try for change. Sure, this may sound harsh, but the problem is also harsh. You can't expect to find a solution to a problem that is less costly than the energy that goes into making the problem. And unfortunately, a lot of energy goes into irresponsible sex, and the problems resulting from that irresponsible behavior are not limited to unwanted babies or even STD's. Forget this idea and everything else for a second emkay, let's pretend your the Queen of the world and you have the power to create laws yourself, just the way you want them written. How would you try to fix this problem?

Good question, as with all laws the Government always ends up paying for it on one end or the other. Ted Bundy cost Florida taxpayers around $7 million dollars to prosecute counting initial and appeal precesses. There was not a single doubt in any person's mind of his guilt but still we had to go through the motions. But hey, we can thank Obama for fixing this question for you emkay, ultrasounds will definately be covered under the free insurance everyone will be getting under his new law. But I will not do as some and dodge your question as you intended it, if not for the free insurance would I still want to pay for the ultrasound as a taxpayer? No, not directly. People need to learn there are responsibilities for their actions in this world, if they do something stupid like drive drunk, the costs associated with their mistake are part of the learning process. If two people intentionally have unprotetected sex, then there is the possibility of a child being created and all the things that follow are part of that mistake. Would you want to pay for someone else's speeding ticket? The entire unwanted pregnancy issue is one rooted in the lack of taking responsibility. The abortion is only a symptom of the original act to not take reproduction seriously. We would not need abortions at all if man and women took responsibility for their sexuality. Why is it people want the Government to pave the way to make it easy to avoid taking responsibility for their actions? The abortion is the act taken to escape taking responsibility for the "choice" made to have unprotected sex. The abortion discussion should be about how we get people to take more responsibility for their sexuality so they don't have unwanted babies in the first place. I love old sayings, "an ounce of prevention, beats a pound of cure".

Hard to induce what is not already there. It would be more accurate to say that this is designed to elicit a attachment emotion that "may" be inside the mother but up to this point she has not considered that aspect of her decision. This is why so many pro-abortion advocates have created entire new ways of speaking to avoid emotion connections. They speak of a zygote or a fetus instead of using the term baby because they want to keep the woman away from the emotional side of her decision. By shielding the woman from this emotional side they are trying to lead her to the decision to kill the child. These abortion clinics have survived for a very long time by refusing to offer women a complete picture before they pressure her to kill her child. The decision making has been 100% one sided and kept completely away from the emotional and moral side of the coin. This law reinstalls the complete picture. You know, as I was typing this I was thinking that if the woman would forever keep her thoughts to the more clinical and steril elements she would most likely save herself a lot of grief after the abortion but in my experience women cannot be forced to leave out the emotional side for very long and after all is "done" the reinsertion of the emotional elemts after the fact might be why so many women have a lifetime of mental issues following an abortion. I just can't imagine a lifetime of blaming myself for killing my own child, it has to be as close to hell on Earth as is possible to find. So nothing is changed in reality by showing the ultrasound to the mother, if she already knows everything then the image cannot change her mind if there is no feeling of doubt inside her. So why not do it? It seems to me some people just want to shroud the action in a protective bubble, keep the mother away from as much of the reality as possible, control her and guide her to make a cold unemotional decision to kill her child. What do you consider "proper couseling"? Killing her child is a very specific act, and should include a very specific example of what she is killing and this ultrasound will do exactly that. No longer is she killing a drawing in a pamplet, no longer is the action limited to whatever the clinic wants to show woman just so they can get paid to conduct the abortion. Imagine how many people would be out of work if women no longer wanted abortions.........

But this brings us back to the point Tori made, if the woman was already fully informed and sees nothing wrong with her decision, showing her the ultrasound would change nothing. Guilt can only come from someone who believes they are doing something wrong. If just this image is enough to change their minds they were not solid in their decision in the first place. Again Wez, your missing the point, if you kill your neighbor it is wrong no matter what my feelings on the subject are at the time. It is wrong because society has said murder is wrong, not any one person. I respect the idea of morals and values that are greater than the one Wez. Everything selfish should not be the rule of the land. Against her wishes? How do you think the little baby got there Wez? Did the fetus appear from nowhere and crawl up her leg and implant itself there against her will or did the woman engage in dangerious and risky sexual exposures and put that baby there herself? As far as the 18 years comment, that is easily handled with adoption, waiting lists for healthy babies are measured in years so plenty of good loving homes for the baby if the woman does not want it. Either way the Doctor is still playing God. There is no medical emergency requiring a decision to kill, the doctor is killing on command, like an attack dog who is blindly doing the bidding of his master to attack whoever the master points out. All the higher court did was send this back to the States, they never said limiting abortions was wrong Wez. That is exactly what has been done in this State and if it survives challenge, several other States will be following suit. The court is not the will of the people but instead a ruling based on their opinion of what the Constitution says concerning a topic. Individual freedom from responsibility is not the ultimate American experience Wez, although many young people do seem to think it is.

Another complete failure of the public education system to teach the truth. The European Government took over religion and used the curch as an extension of their rule. The freedom of religion in America was to allow people to openly and freely practice their religious beliefs in their every day life without the Government comming along and telling people they had to do it this way or that way. Consider the prayers before and after every meeting to draft the Proclamation of Independence as a clear sign that our founding fathers wanted America to follow religious based moral values. So still this does not take away from my point that all laws are based on "the desired" morality of the community. Every poll to ever ask people how they feel about abortions has shown clearly that the moral standard they want is not being reflected in reality. People do not want women killing their children just because they were acting in irresponsible ways. I go back to my example, if a man gives a woman a pill to force an abortion, that man is charged with murder, if a woman kills her child it is no crime at all, in fact most women's groups will call her killing her child a great success for all women everywhere. Same dead baby. The bad part is what I posted is part of the Hippocratic Oath. Playing God is clearly defined as the choice of life and death, not blindly following the wishes of a patient (or not). As I already pointed out, at the time the doctor is seeing them, there are two completely seperate patients, one who can talk, one who cannot talk. The doctor must choose to kill a life without any medical reason to back this life/death decision. This is elective surgery based soly in the desire to escape responsibility and for this to happen, a doctor must set aside the concept of not doing harm. A doctor must play God and kill a life. Above all "for me" is to do right. I will never do wrong just because someone else asks me to. Wez where you are right is this law is based in desired moral behaviors. But where your missing the boat is "ALL" laws suffer from the same burdon. We cannot have a law until someone says "this is wrong and we need to take steps to protect against this thing". At that point someone has made a moral decision about something. The process starts to spread to like minded people who agree with the moral possition. Then when there is enough support the people move to trying to make a law to defend or protect the moral aspect they care about. If enough people agree on the moral point, it will become a law and enforcement is then put into play. All laws have moral connections Wez, at least at their beginning.

Okay guys, stop with the silly possitions, you all know damn well that all laws are founded in the moral desires of the communities to establish a set of guidelines we want to stand for. Murder is only illegal because the communities "feel" murder is wrong. The Government enforces that moral possition to the point of even killing the offender. Granted, the establishment of the lawyer elite have twisted the system up into knots to make practicing law more like theater these days but still the basic concept of National laws is to support and enforce morals the majority of people in society agree are important. The vast majority of people in America agree that killing a child just because you were not responsible enough to use protection is wrong on a moral level. By the way Wez, at the time the woman walks into the doctor's office there are "TWO" people your supposed to be caring for, not just one. The baby in the womb deserves the same consideration for responsible medical care as the mother. If the woman wanted to keep the child you would fight tooth and nail to save the child, consider how many premature children are born in America every year and how much money and work this takes.....but why is it nurses and doctors are only willing to go that extra mile to care for a baby if the mother says she cares for the baby? If that same mother said she wanted too kill the child these same hard working nurses and doctors would turn off a little switch in their brains and no longer give a crap. I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God. Not only is the Doctor playing God selecting who lives and who dies without serious medical facts to support the need to make such a choice, it is also clear based on almost all long term studies that a doctor performing an abortion on a woman is forcing her into massive depression that she will never recover from her entire life. Studies done on post abortion women even 20 years later show a much higher than average number of substance abuse, depression medication usage, problems with relationships, promiscuity, STD's, the list goes on forever...... Abortions are elected surgery/procdures. There is no threat to life other than the threat to the unborn baby. Murder in society is considered wrong........unless a mother wants to murder her own child, imagine that. If a man slips an abortion drug into the drink of a woman and the child is killed, that man faces murder charges in almost every State in America. But a woman killes the same child and it is not murder. Same dead baby.

And that is the style of the radical, assign socialist ideas to someone who has never had them in order to justify moving all the way to the radical edge on the so called distant right. This is why he calls a good person like Sarah Palin a socialist, he has to make her and other great conservative minded people look like the enemy for his completely radical fringe selection to seem reasonable. Ronald Regan was never considered a nobody who could not get elected. His actong background ensured he had a big enough name for a National ticket. 99% of all alternative choices for an office like President of the United States are virtually unheard of and do not have the financial backing to get their name out enough to give them even a hint of a chance against a better known (or better funded) canidate. Even as well known as Ron Paul is he gets almost no votes to support him on a National level. Ron Paul is not a 'bad guy' but he is a radical. He desires to withdraw into ourselves and isolate America from all other Countries. Ron Paul will refuse to help even our longest held friends if they are attacked under his interesting intepretation of non-interference where he believes the founding fathers wanted America to be more like Switzerland in that they never take sides on anything. The only interaction Ron Paul wants with other Countries is free trade. "Trade, talk, but no troops" ~ Ron Paul hugo is the product of the very successful attempts of the Liberals/socialists/progressives in their subversion attempts. They have planted key people into these radical groups to rally folks to their causes so this will take away support from true challenges against them. Consider examples like teacher Jason Levin who has promised to infiltrate the tea parties and to pretend to be a part of their movement in order to disrupt them from the inside out. He has been gathering names and even has stated he wanted to steal social security numbers and other personal information to use this info to hurt members of the tea parties. While Conservative minded people are getting distracted and splintering away from people who could actually stand up against the Socialists, those guy are not sitting still, they see their goals and are willing to do what they have to do in order to stop conservatives. They are working together, we are not.

Just one more campaign promise tossed on the fire.

The very concept of laws are written morals Joe. Murder for example is illegal because society as a whole believe is morally wrong. Every study and poll ever conducted about abortion has the majority of people all saying that abortion should be more restricted and not just seen as a regular birth control method. At the same time most people agree that things like rape and incest should be treated as different than irresponsibility based abortions. So, society has spoken and says they want people to take more responsibility for their decision to kill a child, I see no problem with that myself. As far as your guilt comment is concerned, you missed the point Tori made: They can't feel guilt if they believe they are not doing anything wrong Joe. If just seeing their baby inside them suddenly changes their mind then they were not killing the baby with the right mindset in the first place.

NEW YORK — Without fanfare, the United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged "immodest." Just days after Iran abandoned a high-profile bid for a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council, it began a covert campaign to claim a seat on the Commission on the Status of Women, which is "dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women," according to its website. Buried 2,000 words deep in a U.N. press release distributed Wednesday on the filling of "vacancies in subsidiary bodies," was the stark announcement: Iran, along with representatives from 10 other nations, was "elected by acclamation," meaning that no open vote was requested or required by any member states — including the United States. The U.S. currently holds one of the 45 seats on the body, a position set to expire in 2012. The U.S. Mission to the U.N. did not return requests for comment on whether it actively opposed elevating Iran to the women's commission. Iran's election comes just a week after one of its senior clerics declared that women who wear revealing clothing are to blame for earthquakes, a statement that created an international uproar — but little affected their bid to become an international arbiter of women's rights. "Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," said the respected cleric, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi. As word of Iran's intention to join the women's commission came out, a group of Iranian activists circulated a petition to the U.N. asking that member states oppose its election. "Iran's discriminatory laws demonstrate that the Islamic Republic does not believe in gender equality," reads the letter, signed by 214 activists and endorsed by over a dozen human rights bodies. The letter draws a dark picture of the status of women in Iran: "women lack the ability to choose their husbands, have no independent right to education after marriage, no right to divorce, no right to child custody, have no protection from violent treatment in public spaces, are restricted by quotas for women's admission at universities, and are arrested, beaten, and imprisoned for peacefully seeking change of such laws." The Commission on the Status of Women is supposed to conduct review of nations that violate women's rights, issue reports detailing their failings, and monitor their success in improving women's equality. Yet critics of Iran's human rights record say the country has taken "every conceivable step" to deter women's equality. "In the past year, it has arrested and jailed mothers of peaceful civil rights protesters," wrote three prominent democracy and human rights activists in an op-ed published online Tuesday by Foreign Policy Magazine. "It has charged women who were seeking equality in the social sphere — as wives, daughters and mothers — with threatening national security, subjecting many to hours of harrowing interrogation. Its prison guards have beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted and raped female and male civil rights protesters." Iran's elevation to the commission comes as a black eye just days after the U.S. helped lead a successful effort to keep Iran off the Human Rights Council, which is already dominated by nations that are judged by human rights advocates as chronic violators of essential freedoms. The current membership of the women's commission is little different. Though it touts itself as "the principal global policy-making body" on women's rights, the makeup of the commission is mostly determined by geography and its membership is a hodge-podge of some human rights advocates (including the U.S., Japan, and Germany) and other nations with stark histories of rights violations. The number of seats on the commission is based on the number of countries in a region, no matter how small their populations or how scant their respect for rights. The commission is currently made up of 13 members from Africa, 11 from Asia, nine from Latin America and the Caribbean, eight from Western Europe and North America, and four from Eastern Europe. During this round of "elections," which were not competitive and in which no real votes were cast, two seats opened up for the Asian bloc for the 2011-2015 period. Only two nations put forward candidates to fill empty spots — Iran and Thailand. As at most such commissions in the U.N., backroom deals determined who would gain new seats at the women's rights body. The activists' letter sent to the U.N. Tuesday argued that it would be better if the Asian countries proffered only one candidate, instead of elevating Iran to the commission. "We, a group of gender-equality activists, believe that for the sake of women's rights globally, an empty seat for the Asia group on (the commission) is much preferable to Iran's membership. We are writing to alert you to the highly negative ramifications of Iran’s membership in this international body." A spokeswoman for the U.N.'s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which oversees the commission, did not return phone calls or e-mails seeking comment. When its term begins in 2011, Iran will be joined by 10 other countries: Belgium, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Estonia, Georgia, Jamaica, Iran, Liberia, the Netherlands, Spain, Thailand and Zimbabwe.

The reason the tea party people exist is because of disatisfaction with how the current Government is doing things. Right now the only large group who is universally against what is happening now is the Republicans so it may appear to some that the Republicans are taking over the tea party movement but that is not the case, Republicans are just falling into line with what these people want out of their politicians. I am sure many groups like the Libertarians would like to also gain some traction with the tea party but to be honest, they are way too small on a National scale to be electable in every state. The party members know this and are wanting to support people who can win and toss the idiots out of office, not just talk and end up helping more progressives/socialists get into office by splintering the vote. Being divided is what got Obama elected, being divided is what will keep progressives in office. It is time to stop looking for a perfection that will never happen and get behind people who will not vote for things like the recent healthcare bill. Progressives/liberals/socialists want conservative minded people to be divived, this is their plan, they add their own comments in support of the most radical elements like Ron Paul because they want votes wasted on idiots like that so that will take away votes for people who could actually beat them. They all stick together, no matter how much anger the Clinton supporters may have had against losing to Obama in the primaries, they still showed up to vote for Obama for President but many conservative minded people did not support McCain. Some say it was out of spite, some even openly supported Obama because they believed his promises to bring people together. But the result was clear, the house was divided, and it did fall.

Impressive, my Neice is going to school to be a lawyer as well but all she talks about is being a trial lawyer, imagine someone related to me who loves to argue, hard to believe, lol.

Excellent point. The arguement against it seems to be that people don't want women to face the full truth of their actions. Invasion of privacy? I don't see this, everything is still kept between the woman and her doctors, all they are saying is if your going to end that life, at least be completely informed and aware of exactly what you are doing. The ending of a life should be something we take seriously. As far as fathers are concerned, I agree that they should also see the ultrasound if they want the woman to get the abortion but this could also be very cruel for the men. What if the father becomes more attached to his child once he has seen it but the mother still wants to kill the baby? Didn't you just increase the man's pain? Seems a little cruel to me.

You have to take my words out of context to try and twist them into a flame, when the "entire" sentence is looked at you see my first words were that you ran away, then I describes a style of running away, that is the only way to take that comment for a reasonable person. Now you have put me on moderation unless I admit I flamed you, and I cannot admit to something that never happened. You see RO, your staff now, and your supposed to be setting the example. When you flam someone that is telling everyone on the forum that your behavior is what is expected. We even have rules against direct flames and still you have done it and have never apologized for your flame. Your comment was not on topic and had nothing to do with the discussion but was instead designed only to belittle and demean. Your purpose was evil and nasty RO. My comment on the other hand was designed to get you to respond to the question you had dodged, there was nothing evil about trying to get you back on topic RO.

No they do not pay even one cent in taxes. Tax revinue "gains" are when the Government collects a "new" dollar. A Government employee is paid from taxes already collected so when they give back some of the tax funds, there is no "gain" to the Government because the Government supplied 100% of the funds in the paycheck in the fist place. Consider it this way, if you give me 2 dollars, then I give you back 1 dollar out of the two, did you make money or lose money? And they do such a great job delivering your electric bill and lose money at the same time, lol. I honestly have not paid any bills through the mail for a very, very long time. If the postal service were to end tomorrow, I would not see a single negative result in my life.

This is one of the reasons I laugh at people who live in cities, lol. Every person who lives in a big city is dependent on the Government for their survival from one degree to another. This is why people who live in cities tend to be very liberal/socialist while people who live in the country are conservative. Conservative people tend to be very self-reliant, while liberals/socialists want the Government to do everything for them. Actually she did: But even without that consider this, if the Government suddenly got into the farm business what would be the first result? The smaller and less financially secure farms would have to close down because they could not compete against a Government farm that does not have to make a profit. Where do you two believe the Government resources (tax money) come from? So first you tax the crap out of farmers and the produce they grow, then you take some of that tax money to start Government run farms and put that farmer out of business? Interesting you mention the postal service Bender, are they doing a great job managing that service? While the Government has the power and the unlimited resources (tax money) to do anything they please, they do not possess the knowledge or the capability to actully do the work in an efficient way. Then of course there is the private sector to consider, the mosre private sector jobs you eliminate and replace with Government workers your losing tripple the tax income each worker represented. Every time the Government grows, tax funds decline because there are less workers to collect taxes from.

What the hell was that crack for Joe? Even when I am not talking to or about you there is nothing on your mind but me? My point about teachers has nothing to do with the students, in this case your trying to make my possition fit the students of the Catholic church and that would be a horrible misrepresentation of my points. But to be honest, I do think the vast majority of the Catholic church leadership does cover these things up and should be held accountable. To me the guy who molests a child and the guy who helps to hide the molestation have performed the same crime. The average members of the Church do not know, but the leadership does. Just so even Joe does not misunderstand my point let me give a teacher style of example to better make my point. If the school has a teacher who is known for molesting students and instead of exposing the piece of garbage they simply move him around from place to place as the heat builds up, that would be the fault of the leadership of the school, not a problem with every child in the school.........I hope I made that clear enough.

Those who do not want to believe never will. If you were really hurt by my comment about your running away from the question then you can also help me find new ways of saying the same thing in a 'softer' way RO. What would have been a better and nicer way of saying that you were intentionally avoiding the question but still be firm that the running away was not an honest thing to do if the person running away is interested in reasonable debate? Another concept comes to mind, you could have just answered the question instead of running away in the first place, and then no comment from me about running away at all...........right?

You know, there was a time way, way back in the day when humans were capable of growing and hunting their own food, lol..... I keep a couple cows for personal use beef and my father has had a garden for as long as I can remember. We don't do it to make money, just for personal/family use. The city folk may get trapped into eating nothing but lab created pretend meat, but there are still a few people in America who would not have to be rich to have real meat to eat