The Pennsylvania Platcomm rep was elected by delegates in convention. It was known he was an alternate regional LNC representative, but there was no reason to negate the will of the delegates.

I don’t know how many applications LNC received, but apparently not many LP members are up for the requisite travel and the non-stop deliberations — to say nothing of keeping abreast of the email traffic. At least one first-time member told me in Vegas that he wouldn’t be applying again.

Darryl, the LNC appoints 10 members after advertising for applicants in LP News, and the top 10 states each pick their own representative.

With 15,000 members I would think we could find the people to be on the various committees without this cross pollination. This nonsense needs to cease.

There is no right or wrong answer. This is where the privacy of that person and G-d comes in.
Those who have not sined can throw the first stones.

There are other issues that needs to be discuss, if all you can look at and make abortion the main topic here, we have a problem.

I’ve since been trying to figure out whether you realize that the LP Platform draws a bright line at birth, and whether you think the LP should continue to oppose any law that would outlaw discretionary killing of late-term fetuses.

In the other thread, you’ve now apparently said that your respective answers are “yes” and “no”. I like these answers better than what I understood you to mean by what you originally wrote: I also want to add my thanks to the women’s caucus for once again helping to protect the “abortion” plank, which I really see as more the “it’s not the government’s business” plank.

If a child is viable at the 7 month mark, then it’s a delivery and not an abortion, but at no point should the mother be forced to continue a pregnancy against her will. If the child is NEVER going to be viable or is hopelessly doomed to die within a few days of birth in horrible agony, then at any point within the pregnancy it should be the mother’s right to end the child’s suffering, including refusing heroic life support once the child is born. That’s her right as a parent.

You keep trying to tie it to a calendar, and I don’t find that reasonable, not in every case or even the majority of cases. Some infants have reasonably developed lungs sooner than others, for example.

Since no two pregnancies are identical, putting a calendar date (100 days, for example, like the old platform had) is unreasonable, especially since it’s very hard in a lot of cases to pinpoint exact dates. You need a better criterion than that, and my suggestion for that criterion is, as I’ve said a few times now, viability ex utero without heroic intervention.

Y’know what? It occurs to me what the issue here is. I’m talking about terminating pregnancies, you’re talking about killing the fetus. I guess I should clarify that I don’t necessarily see the termination of an unwanted pregnancy ending in the death of the baby. If the child is born alive and is (again) viable on its own, then there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be allowed to live, perhaps given over to an adoption agency. But MY point on all this is that the mother should not have to carry a child she does not want. Period. And she should be able to take some steps in that regard, even in the last trimester. THAT is why I so stridently oppose fixing a particular date after which a woman is stuck going through with the whole thing.

Does that help clarify my position for you?

An adult human being could not coopt the body of another against her will as life support, assuming such a thing were even possible. He cannot command her blood supply for his use, he cannot demand use of her kidneys for dialysis for a period of months, and so on.

If she were to agree to this and then change her mind and stop, he could not hold her to it, nor could the law, even if it meant his death. So personhood isn’t the issue. The adult man in this hypothetical IS an adult human being, a citizen and let’s add for good measure that he’s a contributing member of society. Maybe even a hero of some kind. Doesn’t matter. It’s enslavement of one person to the life of another that’s the issue here.

I said in the other thread that I would like to see our “abortion” plank expanded into a more global (and useful) reproductive rights plank, to include MEN’s reproductive rights, such as not being financially liable for a child the mother who is not your legal spouse insisted on having against your wishes or the converse situation of women aborting children that the fathers wanted — this is a very touchy and controversial issue that warrants consideration — or the rights of minor women to seek reproductive counseling and abortions without parental interference, forced (or enticed) sterilization for certain demographics, forced (or enticed) breeding for certain demographics, forced birth control, forced LACK of birth control, reproductive education, that kind of thing.

Granted, not everyone will agree on these issues, and that is exactly why they should be open to discussion, so we can hammer out a more general reproductive rights plank that works for people. But instead, we’re getting so caught up in the abortion plank, talking about the weird cases where some woman somewhere might want to abort one day before the child’s born (the statistics for which I’d love to see) and trying to decide where personhood begins that we’re ignoring important issues that affect far more people every day.

*threads

I do not advocate laws which cannot be equitably enforced. A third or a half (how to count?) of fertilized eggs, conceptions, naturally fail to implant and/or carry on to recognizably human life.

Not to take a position on this, but as a logical analogy, 100% of living humans eventually die. Does that mean it’s OK to kill them?

See the link bleow, Libertarians For Life.

http://www.l4l.org/

The anti-abortion faction in the LP has been growing for years.

On one of the Duensing tasing incident trolls, you admitted to being an anti-libertarian. Why are you so interested in libertarian factional issues?

No, that is not the case at all. Self -defense comes from removing a threat. If there is no threat, there is no self-defense. In all cases there is a risk of harm to the life of the mother during childbirth. In some cases the risk is greater than others, but a significant risk is always there with the biological process. It is simply not the same as walking down the street where others may consciously act to harm you.

That said, it is an issue where people can reasonable and with sound principle make decisions both ways. The question is what should the public policy position be. I think one that allows those decisions to be made, both by individuals and health care institutions, is the best one.

Yes, those are some important points, although I think you give the self-defense aspect short shrift in a way that invalidates it.

Per your logic, I shouldn’t have the “option” of shooting everyone who crosses my path taken away from me, since any one of them might be planning to murder me. In fact, most people I pass on the street are no threat to my life, just as most pregnancies are no threat to the mother’s life.

All that aside, and while I tend to favor Holtz’s approach to the issue, I just don’t see the LP making any political money on the abortion issue.

Holtz (probably accurately) states that 60% of the American public would support the line he sets. What he misses is that the whole issue is probably not just a big deal to most of that 60%, while it’s a VERY big deal to much of the other 40%.

If it was a question where the application of principle was clear, we’d be bound to apply the principle, popular or not. This isn’t such an issue. Most of us agree on something like the same principles, but we disagree on important and relevant questions of fact which haven’t yet been satisfactorily answered and may never be.

Every minute we waste on abortion is a minute we’re not spending on real issues that we might be able to have a real impact on.