• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

PRENDA - Prenatal Non-Descrimination Act

Should mothers be allowed to abort because of gender, race, or sexual preference?


  • Total voters
    14
  • Poll closed .
If a nation is staunchly pro-choice, but doesn't allow sex-selective abortions, then it's likely some people aren't progressive enough to "progress."

Wouldn't staunchly pro-choice mean that at least half the country supports abortion?
 
Disagree. It might be somewhat difficult to enforce, but then so are a lot of laws... we need to be aware that gender-bias abortions tend to have severe social consequences and take such steps as we reasonably can to suppress the practice. It is a terrible reason to abort, arguably even worse than "I forgot to take my pill".

Why is accidental pregnancy a bad reason to have an abortion? That seems like it would be a pre-requisite, no?

The penalty is for doctors. So it would only come into play if a woman came in and said that she was planning on aborting because of the fetus's gender. If anybody does that now, which I doubt, they just would remember not to mention it to their doctor. And, heck, even if they did mention it, the doctor would just say no and they would just go to a different doctor...

It's not a real attempt to address the issue. It's just empty posturing. The GOP knows gender selection abortion is unpopular, so they want to be able to make speeches about how they don't like it. That's all it is.
 
Last edited:
In China, they know all about aborting girls in order to try again for a boy. Recent undercover videos are showing that Planned Parenthood is advising the same thing in the US for mothers who wanted one gender and are getting another. Kill it and try again. Should aborting girls (or boys) in order to try again for a different gender be legal? Or is that a form of sex discrimination? Same with race. What if they discover a gay gene? Should parents be allowed to abort a gay child and try again for a straight one?

Here's another question. Does endorsement of sex-selective abortions diminish the value of women in our society? Also, the President voted to deny medical care to babies who survive abortions based on the mother's intent. What if the mother intended to abort if it is a girl and the doctor screws up and says its a boy? Should the mother now have options when the baby is born as a girl?
 
Wouldn't staunchly pro-choice mean that at least half the country supports abortion?

I wouldn't know. That was referring to nations excluding the U.S.A.
 
I wouldn't know. That was referring to nations excluding the U.S.A.

Many nations other than the US allow abortion but prohibit sex-selection abortion.
 
Here's another question. Does endorsement of sex-selective abortions diminish the value of women in our society? Also, the President voted to deny medical care to babies who survive abortions based on the mother's intent. What if the mother intended to abort if it is a girl and the doctor screws up and says its a boy? Should the mother now have options when the baby is born as a girl?

I guess what they could do is treat every birth where the mother wants a boy like a partial birth abortion. When the bottom half comes out, if there's a penis they can birth the baby the rest of the way. If not, suck out the brains and try again.
 
Recent undercover videos

I just can't even believe there are actually still people out there that are still falling for that kind of video lol. Do you not follow the news at all or something? That's just absurd... After soooooo many of them have been debunked over and over and over, you're still buying into them? Why?

In case you honestly were not understanding what they are doing, I'll give you a brief explanation I guess. They send in tons and tons of people to whatever organization they are trying to take down. They wear costumes and lie about their situation and so on, and collect as much video as they possibly can. Then they go home and edit in new parts for their side of the conversation and splice together different responses from the other person to make it seem like something other than what is happening happened. For example, maybe I'd film myself asking you "do you like the tea party?" and you'd gush about how it is the best thing since sliced bread, then I'd go home and edit in audio of myself asking you "do you like that the tea party lynches people?" instead. And then the next day brietbart or whatever fake news site would post it. And then a week later it would be debunked, but brietbart.com certainly isn't reporting that part, so some folks never know better I guess.

For example, take the hoax that started it all- the ACORN videos. I bet you didn't even know that they were faked... lol. That says something really striking about where you are getting your news because it was widely reported. He even lost lawsuits over it. Remember how in his video it looked like he was wearing a pimp costume and telling the ACORN people that he needed a place to keep one of his hookers and wanted their help lying on the tax forms? First off, the film of him wearing that costume was taken in an empty room some other day and edited in. Secondly, what he actually said to the ACORN people was that he was a local politician who had a constituent who came to him who was a 16 year old girl that had run away from a severely abusive home and and been kidnapped by a pimp who was beating her. So, he wanted to help her get out of that situation. Her biggest concern was that she had nowhere to live except the pimp's house, and there was a program that provided transitional housing in a shelter that she could get away from the abuse where they would have security that would keep the pimp out. She was wearing makeup to make it look like she had severe bruising on her face and she cried as she told her story. She said that she was scared to go into the transitional housing because the form asked if she had had a job and she was afraid that if she wrote down "prostitution", she would be arrested. So, the ACORN people told her it was ok if she just told the shelter that she preferred not to answer that question. That's it. That's all they did. But then he went home and edited it up to make it sound like something totally different happened. And guess what, he had to visit a dozen or so ACORN offices before he even got footage that he could pretend depicted them saying that.

In the end he destroyed the largest charitable organization in the country with his lies. You may think of ACORN as a political organization. It wasn't. It ran more battered women's shelters, soup kitchens, job training programs, etc, than any other organization in the US. You may think ACORN was primarily funded by the government. In actuality, 95% of its funding came from private donations. You may think it was mostly about election fraud. In actuality all that business is about is that they had a program where they would pay unemployed people a couple bucks for every person they got registered to vote and a few of the people they hired conned them by filling out fake registration cards with names like "Bart Simpson" to get their $2 or whatever without having to actually go walk around talking to people. All the registration cards were rejected by the board of elections and ACORN immediately fired the people involved when they learned about it.

You need to become harder to fool. People are tricking you into supporting evil. That ought to be a lot harder thing for them to accomplish than this.
 
I just can't even believe there are actually still people out there that are still falling for that kind of video lol. Do you not follow the news at all or something? That's just absurd... After soooooo many of them have been debunked over and over and over, you're still buying into them? Why?

In case you honestly were not understanding what they are doing, I'll give you a brief explanation I guess. They send in tons and tons of people to whatever organization they are trying to take down. They wear costumes and lie about their situation and so on, and collect as much video as they possibly can. Then they go home and edit in new parts for their side of the conversation and splice together different responses from the other person to make it seem like something other than what is happening happened. For example, maybe I'd film myself asking you "do you like the tea party?" and you'd gush about how it is the best thing since sliced bread, then I'd go home and edit in audio of myself asking you "do you like that the tea party lynches people?" instead. And then the next day brietbart or whatever fake news site would post it. And then a week later it would be debunked, but brietbart.com certainly isn't reporting that part, so some folks never know better I guess.

For example, take the hoax that started it all- the ACORN videos. I bet you didn't even know that they were faked... lol. That says something really striking about where you are getting your news because it was widely reported. He even lost lawsuits over it. Remember how in his video it looked like he was wearing a pimp costume and telling the ACORN people that he needed a place to keep one of his hookers and wanted their help lying on the tax forms? First off, the film of him wearing that costume was taken in an empty room some other day and edited in. Secondly, what he actually said to the ACORN people was that he was a local politician who had a constituent who came to him who was a 16 year old girl that had run away from a severely abusive home and and been kidnapped by a pimp who was beating her. So, he wanted to help her get out of that situation. Her biggest concern was that she had nowhere to live except the pimp's house, and there was a program that provided transitional housing in a shelter that she could get away from the abuse where they would have security that would keep the pimp out. She was wearing makeup to make it look like she had severe bruising on her face and she cried as she told her story. She said that she was scared to go into the transitional housing because the form asked if she had had a job and she was afraid that if she wrote down "prostitution", she would be arrested. So, the ACORN people told her it was ok if she just told the shelter that she preferred not to answer that question. That's it. That's all they did. But then he went home and edited it up to make it sound like something totally different happened. And guess what, he had to visit a dozen or so ACORN offices before he even got footage that he could pretend depicted them saying that.

In the end he destroyed the largest charitable organization in the country with his lies. You may think of ACORN as a political organization. It wasn't. It ran more battered women's shelters, soup kitchens, job training programs, etc, than any other organization in the US. You may think ACORN was primarily funded by the government. In actuality, 95% of its funding came from private donations. You may think it was mostly about election fraud. In actuality all that business is about is that they had a program where they would pay unemployed people a couple bucks for every person they got registered to vote and a few of the people they hired conned them by filling out fake registration cards with names like "Bart Simpson" to get their $2 or whatever without having to actually go walk around talking to people. All the registration cards were rejected by the board of elections and ACORN immediately fired the people involved when they learned about it.

You need to become harder to fool. People are tricking you into supporting evil. That ought to be a lot harder thing for them to accomplish than this.

What sort of work have you actually done with ACORN? Have you had any sort of professional interaction with them or done any sort of work related to them? I actually have, that's why I'm asking. One of the ways this "non-profit" made money was by selling a business services scam to wealthy individuals under another name. Basically what they would do is set up a Nevada corporation with a (possibly fake) person as the registered agent to create anonymity. Then they supposedly would also run the wealthy individual's health insurance and health costs through that company as a tax loophole (except they sucked at doing it, at least based on the instance I had to clean up). I ran a search on the registered agent's name and calculated it out based on what they were charging in registered agent fees, and your "non-profit" saintly organization ACORN was making more than $10 million a year just on scamming wealthy people into setting up these Nevada corporations.
 
What sort of work have you actually done with ACORN? Have you had any sort of professional interaction with them or done any sort of work related to them? I actually have, that's why I'm asking. One of the ways this "non-profit" made money was by selling a business services scam to wealthy individuals under another name. Basically what they would do is set up a Nevada corporation with a (possibly fake) person as the registered agent to create anonymity. Then they supposedly would also run the wealthy individual's health insurance and health costs through that company as a tax loophole (except they sucked at doing it, at least based on the instance I had to clean up). I ran a search on the registered agent's name and calculated it out based on what they were charging in registered agent fees, and your "non-profit" saintly organization ACORN was making more than $10 million a year just on scamming wealthy people into setting up these Nevada corporations.

Well I've never heard of anything like that with them, so you'll need to give me a link.

But, what does it even mean for a non-profit to "make money"? You just mean covering the costs of providing services, right? There aren't any shareholders or anything, so nobody can take profits...
 
Well I've never heard of anything like that with them, so you'll need to give me a link.

But, what does it even mean for a non-profit to "make money"? You just mean covering the costs of providing services, right? There aren't any shareholders or anything, so nobody can take profits...

Even non-profit CEOs get compensated. And there is no link, this wasn't a news story. It was an actual situation that I encountered in my profession.
 
Even non-profit CEOs get compensated.

Sure. What is the issue with that? They generally make less than CEOs in the private sector, which in my opinion is messed up.

And there is no link, this wasn't a news story. It was an actual situation that I encountered in my profession.

Well, no offense, but I'm not going to believe that your description is an accurate reflection of the situation without some kind of outside evidence. Not saying you're lying, but everybody sees things differently. Being "very conservative", your perceptions of things ACORN does isn't exactly unbiased.
 
Sure. What is the issue with that? They generally make less than CEOs in the private sector, which in my opinion is messed up.



Well, no offense, but I'm not going to believe that your description is an accurate reflection of the situation without some kind of outside evidence. Not saying you're lying, but everybody sees things differently. Being "very conservative", your perceptions of things ACORN does isn't exactly unbiased.

Well, you're a liberal so I can't imagine you are looking at ACORN completely unbiasedly either. However, the questions regarding sex-selection abortion still remain despite this rabbit trail.
 
Well, you're a liberal so I can't imagine you are looking at ACORN completely unbiasedly either. However, the questions regarding sex-selection abortion still remain despite this rabbit trail.

Well the question isn't really whether sex-selection abortion is a good thing. Most people don't think it is. The question is what effects this law would have. Seems to me it would have essentially no impact on sex selection abortions. People just wouldn't tell their doctor that was their reason for having the abortion and that would be it. The only real impact I see is some overzealous doctors trying to pry into people's personal lives and whatnot. Obviously nobody would tell them if they were doing it for sex selection, so what's the point really? Just to make a painful experience more painful for women?
 
Well the question isn't really whether sex-selection abortion is a good thing. Most people don't think it is. The question is what effects this law would have. Seems to me it would have essentially no impact on sex selection abortions. People just wouldn't tell their doctor that was their reason for having the abortion and that would be it. The only real impact I see is some overzealous doctors trying to pry into people's personal lives and whatnot. Obviously nobody would tell them if they were doing it for sex selection, so what's the point really? Just to make a painful experience more painful for women?

If it's such a painful experience, maybe you can explain why women are killing their babies so that they can try again for a different gender.
 
According to ABC, England, Canada, Germany, France, and other states already have laws banning abortion based on gender. Why do you suppose they do? Is this just a "hollow gesture" for them? Maybe it is. I mean, we're never going to stop people from stealing or murdering, and most people don't steal and murder, so what's the big deal? It's not a significant issue in the U.S., and those seeking an abortion for this reason will only lie, so why bother? What a sad rationale.

One particular answer--that the state has an obligation to prevent "gendercide"-- is suggested here:

"States have an obligation under human rights laws to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of girls and women. ...This OHCHR, UNFPA, UNICEF, UN Women and WHO joint interagency statement reaffirms the commitment of United Nations agencies to encourage and support efforts by States, international and national organizations, civil society and communities to uphold the rights of girls and women and to address the multiple manifestations of gender discrimination including the problem of imbalanced sex ratios caused by sex selection."

http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2011/9789241501460_eng.pdf
 
If it's such a painful experience, maybe you can explain why women are killing their babies so that they can try again for a different gender.

In the US they aren't in any significant numbers. Children born here still are for all practical purposes split 50/50 between male and female.

In the countries where it is a problem, it has to do with survival mostly. Subsistence farmers that believe that they will not survive without a son that can work the fields and whatnot. Don't get me wrong, I think it is a terrible thing even in those circumstances. But, that's why a mother is willing to make that kind of emotional sacrifice.
 
Oh, and by the way. The line at the bottom of your post about tax rates is highly inaccurate and misleading. My guess is it doesn't take into account the Earned Income Credit, or corporate tax rates. But that's another rabbit trail for another time.
 
Oh, and by the way. The line at the bottom of your post about tax rates is highly inaccurate and misleading. My guess is it doesn't take into account the Earned Income Credit, or corporate tax rates. But that's another rabbit trail for another time.

That's my signature. It does not take corporate taxes, but that isn't relevant to taxes a person pays IMO. Companies can form many different ways and can choose whether to pay taxes or not. Choosing to pay taxes gets you things like limited liability. If they decide that is worth it, that's up to them.

Earning income credits and all that are included. That is total taxes actually paid. It includes state and local and is totally accurate. The source is right there in my signature.
 
In the US they aren't in any significant numbers. Children born here still are for all practical purposes split 50/50 between male and female.

In the countries where it is a problem, it has to do with survival mostly. Subsistence farmers that believe that they will not survive without a son that can work the fields and whatnot. Don't get me wrong, I think it is a terrible thing even in those circumstances. But, that's why a mother is willing to make that kind of emotional sacrifice.

So why are those small numbers statistically insignicant women willing to make that "emotional sacrifice" in the U.S.? And why does the fact that the numbers are small matter? If it doesn't happen often, do eugenics matter?
 
So why are those small numbers statistically insignicant women willing to make that "emotional sacrifice" in the U.S.?

I dunno. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that it does. But, it's a big country. Every thing that a person can do somebody does sooner or later. /shrug.

And why does the fact that the numbers are small matter? If it doesn't happen often, do eugenics matter?

Well, obviously you need to weigh the advantages of a policy against the disadvantages, right? So it's super rare in the US to start with, so that means the advantage is definitely very low. But then you have the fact that it would presumably never actually prevent a gender selection abortion, since people presumably already aren't telling their doctors that that is what their reason is, and even if they are, they wouldn't after a law like this went into effect. And, even if they did still tell their doctor, that would just mean that doctor couldn't perform it, so they'd just go to another doctor and not tell them that time... So, in the advantage column we seem to have a zero.

In the disadvantages column we have some doctors feeling like they need to pry into women's motives. That would have a pretty massive impact, right? Digging around in women's personal lives and questioning their motives at a sensitive time like that? So, that certainly outweighs zero, right?
 
Then why have other countries passed laws banning sex-selection abortions?

You have a zero in the "advantage" column only if you think that human beings can't do any better than to abort based on gender (or race or whatever). I think we can do better.
 
Then why have other countries passed laws banning sex-selection abortions?

The same reason it was proposed here- empty political gesture.

You have a zero in the "advantage" column only if you think that human beings can't do any better than to abort based on gender (or race or whatever). I think we can do better.

No... Again, I have a zero in the advantage column because it's super rare in the US to start with, so that means the advantage is definitely very low. But then you have the fact that it would presumably never actually prevent a gender selection abortion, since people presumably already aren't telling their doctors that that is what their reason is, and even if they are, they wouldn't after a law like this went into effect. And, even if they did still tell their doctor, that would just mean that doctor couldn't perform it, so they'd just go to another doctor and not tell them that time...
 
Back
Top Bottom