HitsRus;1403501 wrote:^^^^well some of us feel there is a compelling interest that people act responsibly where human life is concerned and that given the number of options for preventing pregnancy and allowing for the usual exceptions of rape, incest, medical threat ...that is enough
From other posts, you argue against allowing responsible gun owners from having what is explicitly guaranteed in the Constitution, yet you are in favor of permitting irresponsible behaviour without consequence on something that is certainly less clear cut constitutionally. Don't really buy the "compelling interest" in that.
You're doing a couple of things in this post.
I'm not really sure responsibility has anything to do with it as it is about a fundamental liberty. Even if a woman willingly chooses to get pregnant, intending to get pregnant...and then 4 weeks after conception she decides she no longer wishes to be pregnant...it would be a tremendous violation of her personal liberty for the government to compel her to carry it to term against her will. We do have an interest in more children being born and protecting human progeny but given that these particular progeny feel no pain and are not alive in a real sense, we cannot justify the the gross infringement on liberty.
As it relates to guns I never really said anything about "responsibility" either. As I've noted even "responsible" gun owners are more likely to kill themselves or their family than engage in a justified homicide of an attacking criminal. The issue is whether the social and moral costs of attempting to regulate firearms justify the the infringement on liberty.
So it is not really about "responsibility" at all. This seems like something a conservative who is opposed to big government would be against.
In the social contract we necessarily infringe on certain pure liberties to try to make us all have more liberty and wealth in the aggregate. So we in must choose when and why to infringe on certain liberties based on this utilitarian analysis. Modern wealthy societies wherein You infringe the liberty to buy any and all firearms with certain types of regulation and yet we can create freer and better societies the evidence seems to indicate. Societies wherein pregnancy is compelled against the will of women who are pregnant are in the aggregate less free and worse off the evidence seems to indicate. So it is not about punishing or rewarding those "responsible" individuals among us but balancing what will lead to a more perfect union.