Abortion should never be used as birth control. There are many over-the-counter products today to prevent pregnancy before and immediately after intercourse. Individual accountability.

The 'trap' was his own inconsistency. If he thinks he has been given an invalid question with a false premise built in he should identify what it is. Instead, the latest conservative fad has been to refuse to take "liberal" questions seriously at all.

hog wash.

Agreed. +1

There is no proof that Federal statutes have been violated. The anti-abortionists are hysterically demanding to tell us what to think, while they hope to find some way to "get" Planned Parenthood on legal technicalities, in addition to "getting" them with an hysterical stampede to shift their funding to someone else. This was never an objective investigation, it has been an anti-intellectual, militant anti-abortion crusade from the beginning.

You don't get to MURDER someone because you didn't think before you acted. Personal accountability, or are you liberal enough to think otherwise?

oh my...condoms, birth control, post-coitus over-the-counter birth control...yeah, no need for abortion. How is that forced?

Thanks for the additional input.
I've pretty much given up on wondering how a rational, principled person can cloud up their minds with religious fantasy. I like Carson. Compared to most candidates, I find him refreshing, and while he seems very mild-mannered I detect a steely spine under it all. You are right about him to an extent, but ain't none of them perfect. There will have to be compromises on all of the candidates. The question is, what is it that you are willing to compromise on?

According to the hysterical narrative and "interpretation" accompanying the release of the videos Planned Parenthood is to be denounced as criminal. The whole hysterical campaign is based on the anti-abortion agenda whether or not any actual illegality is ever objectively discovered. The religious anti-abortion crusade trying to shut down everything it can is not a "myth" and everyone knows it. Even the "subsidy" argument is a sham. They don't want to eliminate subsidies, they are trying shift the funding to "get" Planned Parenthood.

Oh, Please. I do not proselytize at any time anywhere. You're myopic angst against anything other than what you believe is again showing through.

The 'fear' is the inevitable theocratic consequences if religionists control the government and impose their agenda. The drive to ban abortion is not an academic discussion.

It is entirely appropriate to denounce claimed moral or political "accountability" to religious duties at any time. When religion dominates a culture, it's politics follows.

You don't get to impose your belief of what someone else's choice in her own personal life is restricted to. There is no duty to refrain from sex or any risk of pregnancy under penalty of having an unwanted child. That is a barbaric religious injunction, not a rational assessment of all the possible choices.

This is true, but roneida was emphasizing a proper change in emphasis from religious pronouncements to upholding the Constitution.

Let's turn the question around: should anyone be able to engage in an action with a known potential outcome and not be responsible for the outcome? What you are arguing is that even though she chose to engage in behavior that carries with it a risk of a specific outcome that somehow her desires should somehow negate the reality of those consequences.

If you take that approach, it is the same as condoning drunk driving. Every two minutes someone is involved in a drunk driving accident here in the US (MADD). I would find it difficult to believe that any of these people thought to themselves - I'm going have a few drinks and then try to kill someone with my car on the way home. No, they are simply too preoccupied with the decision at the time to enjoy in a few too many drinks to think about the consequences later. Reality, however, is not subject to whims or desires. Choices have consequences.

I would also point out that the apparent onus here is solely on the female, yet it takes both sexes to induce pregnancy. Responsibility for this is not limited to the female gender alone.

Herb, Ben Carson may generally have the most admirable individual characteristics of all of them, but his religious premises are not among them. The interviewer didn't change the subject. It wasn't a discussion, he was asking a serious of questions.

Here is another interview where the interviewer did try to follow up on questions to get him to explain his position and he wouldn't do it. He takes the stance that once he says something there can be no further discussion on topics he doesn't want to talk about, as if questions from a "liberal" are not worthy of a "conservative" taking seriously. That won't work past the religious conservative base in a primary, if he gets even that fare. http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/20...

Well said.

It is difficult to support either of those propositions given that PP is receiving a half-BILLION dollars from the Federal Government alone. They've got money. I suspect that the truth is that they don't perform them because it isn't part of their core business - birth control. I think it would be a good question to ask them, though.

Ayn Rand did not "struggle" over when rights begin. This has all been explained to you in detail and you continue to ignore it. Stop pretending that you have not been answered and that your militant, repeated promotion of the anti-abortion agenda is reasonable discussion.

The "ideological viewpoint" of this forum is Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason. Your religious proselytizing has no place here at all, let alone demanding that rejecting your religion be regarded as "hijacking". Neither do your personal attacks of "zealotry", "temper tantrum", "beating people over the head", and demands that people who reject your religious attacks against Ayn Rand's philosophy leave belong here.

Good for you. I'm against my tax money going to PP. Wasn't there something in "Atlas Shrugged" where someone in Washington wanted to kill small children to ease the economic problems in the country? There is such a thing as a slippery slope.

She missed the boat on this one. Very simple it forces a doctor to perform murder. That side of the decision seems to be completely left out.

Where is the right of a doctor to say no, I will not do this procedure. Completely gone. I am surprised she failed to recognize this shortcoming and removal of the doctors right.

I completely agree. This is important. If you don't get the basic economic moves that desperately need to happen in this country-the removal of hangman regulation, the understanding of how wealth is actually created (met few medical doctors who get that, btw) we are all sunk! For those social issues you find important and want to focus on-do so at your peril not MINE! When you have a thriving middle class again-guess what happens-people have the time and can offer up talent to the social issues that are of importance to them. But we're back at the 70s man. PP was all the rage and projects were burning. Everyone was on welfare and there were NO opportunities. that is us around the corner. It took 3 years to turn things around for the positive and it was economics first-then people had the wealth to promote the social issues they wanted. That said, we all should be acting in accordance with rational thinking which includes the promotion of liberty and not slavery. LF capitalism, not crony versions. ECONOMICS FIRST. Dr. Carson is clueless about economic policy and how to grow wealth.

Somebody here in the Gulch not that long ago characterized Dr. Carson as "Mr Smith Goes To Washington". Indeed.

The poor guy would be chewed up in the media and frontline politics by those that lay all the relativistic traps honest folk fall prey to. BUT, in the analogy, wouldn't it be cool if he could stand firm and send various frustrated high power politicians to go and shoot themselves?

A nice day dream.

Could that be because up-to-date mammography equipment is outside PP's budget? Or that its radiology techs/ radiologists (if any) are in short supply?

So: Let's assume that a woman is romantically involved with someone, or married to him. She or they take appropriate contraceptive measures, but a pregnancy nevertheless ensues. They agree that they are not yet ready to become parents, or do not wish to do so.

Should the woman be forced, in effect, to endure nine months of discomfort and pain (facetiously, nine months of cruel and unusual punishment), plus the rigors and risks of childbirth, plus 18 years of involuntary servitude (unless she finds an appropriate adoptive family)?

Reducing this position to its base, apparently a woman should not have sex unless she wishes to become a mother.

I don't advocate it either from a government perspective, but I give weight to where a candidate stands on the issue. It's also difficult to make that leap that an unwanted pregnancy is automatically a failure. My son was born when I was 22, one way or another, we figured it out and life has been fine and he's a very wonderful young man. It means no more clubbing or hanging out with the friends... but it wasn't that long ago that having children at 16 or 18 or 20 was more the norm than the exception.

If abortion wasn't such an easy option, I suspect more care would be taken on the front end, or maybe just saying "no" to getting it on until you have the measures in place may work too...