Do you support abortion?

[Jake Featherston]

Abortion is one of the best things that's happened to society, sorry to say but its the truth. It may possibly be responsible for a thirty-year steady decline in violent crime.

Kill 40 million gestating humans, so that there can be 50,000 fewer rapes per year? GREAT SUCCESS!!!

Oh, and I'm 41, and the media keeps telling me the crime rate has been going down since 1985 or so, but nothing I've seen indicates those media reports are actually true. Things just seem to be getting worse and worse, but the media cheerfully assures us they're getting better and better.

[Balmung]

Well one good thing about America is we won't get arrested for something as little as putting up a Nazi salute or speaking our opinion about a race or religion.

You have a rather ahistorical, post-60s conception of what it means to be an American. Freedom in the American, Puritan influenced sense, has never meant an unbridled license to do whatever. That's more like what we could expect in Sweden.

We are not flipping puritans!

I think you wanted to use Netherlands instead of Norway. Thats the nation with the laws many western nations would find questionable. Scandinavia's real problem is feminism. Norway with its forced gender equality. Forcing corporations to gender balance.

[The Lawspeaker]

Well one good thing about America is we won't get arrested for something as little as putting up a Nazi salute or speaking our opinion about a race or religion.

Alright then. That's one good thing about America but America doesn't have the historical baggage European countries have.

We are not flipping puritans!

I always find it somewhat fascinating that Americans are so obsessed with family values (or at least their strange definition of it --while not caring much for healthcare or childcare or proper social security: we are family-friendly values) but continues to be the world's biggest producer of pornography....

I think you wanted to use Netherlands instead of Norway. Thats the nation with the laws many western nations would find questionable.

I take it you're referring to same-sex marriages, cannabis, abortion and prostitution ?

Same-sex marriages ? I am not a huge fan of it myself. Blame parliament. It's not like they granted us a referendum.

Well thanks to the cannabis legislation our percentage of drug users is not even half of the percentage of American users (they are actually the biggest customers together with the French.. which is somewhat amusing given the fact that France is pretty hardcore on drugs and has a real drug problem).

Abortion: Roe vs. Wade was in 1973. The Netherlands legalised abortion per November 1, 1984. The number of abortion cases in the Netherlands is also relatively low compared to America and let's not even go into teenage pregnancies which are a mere fraction of what is taking place in the United States.


Live births per 1000 women 15-19 years old, 2002. UNFPA, State of World Population 2003.


And when it comes to prostitution. Brings down the number of rape cases, I suppose. I don't support the current policy as I believe that only Dutch women should be allowed to "work" and that they should be unionised in order to stamp out criminals.

[Balmung]

Alright then. That's one good thing about America but America doesn't have the historical baggage European countries have.



I always find it somewhat fascinated that Americans are so obsessed with family values (or at least their strange definition of it) but continue to be the world's biggest producer of porn....



I take it you're referring to same-sex marriages, cannabis, abortion and prostitution ?

Same-sex marriages ? I am not a huge fan of it myself. Blame parliament. It's not like we were asked to vote in favour or against it.

Well thanks to the cannabis legislation our percentage of drug users is not even half of the percentage of American users (they are actually the biggest customers together with the French.. which is somewhat amusing given the fact that France is pretty hardcore on drugs and has a real drug problem).

Abortion: Roe vs. Wade was in 1973. The Netherlands legalised abortion per November 1, 1984.


And when it comes to prostitution. Brings down the number of rape cases, I suppose. I don't support the current policy as I believe that only Dutch women should be allowed to "work" and that they should be unionised in order to stamp out criminals.

I didn't say i was against your laws. I think some laws work in some nations and in some they don't because of cultural differences and its no secret we have far more diversity than practicaly all western nations. It would be extremely harder to implement such liberal laws for the whole of the US. The U.S is a bit different. We are all so close yet still so culturaly far from each other. Our states are like their own small countries with completely different mentalities and ways of handling things. Some of our laws reflect that.

Some of the northern areas have legalized same sex marriage. But then you have a state like Indiana that allows 12 year olds to serve in an adult prison. Just a small example of how different Americans trully are from each other.

I was just correcting Joe that Netherlands would be a stronger contender for the title he gave Norway.

[Leliana]

I've seen plenty of these pictures and I have no problem looking at them. Except for the 2nd and 3rd pictures, I don't feel much of anything when viewing them.

Then you have no heart, have an own abortion history or you're hardened. It's incomprehensible that people look at such photos and feel nothing. I can't believe that people are so cold and clinical.

Those don't look like human babies to me

They're working organisms! Their heart beats, their muscles flex, their brain works, their blood flows, their metabolism is active and their cells grow.

now that I read the caption on the first picture, it clearly states that it's a 12 week old fetus.

80% of all abortions are carried out in the late first trimester or at the beginning of the second trimester which is exactly the span of weeks depicted on the captioned photo. You need to lie if you continue to say that they aren't human, aren't persons and aren't alive.

The heart begins to beat between the fifth and sixth week of pregnancy.

[Hevneren]

Scandinavia's real problem is feminism. Norway with its forced gender equality. Forcing corporations to gender balance.

No, our real problem is immigration and having NATO and the EU sucking up our resources, while solving crime isn't quite as important as building asylum centres and opera houses or politicians granting themselves higher salaries.

[Joe McCarthy]

We are not flipping puritans!

I think you wanted to use Netherlands instead of Norway. Thats the nation with the laws many western nations would find questionable. Scandinavia's real problem is feminism. Norway with its forced gender equality. Forcing corporations to gender balance.

I said Sweden, not Norway, but in any case both you and Hevneren seemed to have misunderstood my post.

And while it's true we're not exactly Puritans (any longer, or at least to the extent we once were), we're certainly not the lax Swedes or Dutch. To the extent we have lost our way it's been a recent development, and in key ways a product of the sort of immigrant culture you yourself are representative of.

[rhiannon]

Well, in the US teenage pregnancy rates are sky high (highest in the West), the homicide rate is the highest in the West, the child abuse/maltreatment rate is the highest in the West, HIV/AIDS prevalence rate is higher than in most European countries, cocaine use is the highest in the West and most of the rest of the world, the US has the largest porn industry in the world, the lobbyism and cronyism of a corrupt government and blood sucking corporations, and a US that worships violence and murder through the media and endless war mongering. Perhaps if you'd look inwards at your own rotten, corrupt snake pit of a nation, you wouldn't be writing ignorant bullshit like this.

Ouch, Hev....that was harsh Even if you are right....still....not all of us Americans are that fucked up

[research_centre]

Ouch, Hev....that was harsh Even if you are right....still....not all of us Americans are that fucked up

I agree. I am not seeing is a breakdown of how many were Amerindian and Negroid teenagers.

[Joe McCarthy]

Ouch, Hev....that was harsh Even if you are right....still....not all of us Americans are that fucked up

It was mostly just irrelevant as it didn't actually address what I said.

It was red meat for Europeans and liberal Americans though.