SCOTUS fails to stop TX abortion law.

Prenatal care has nothing to do with what I’m talking about. This Texas law implies that the fetus is a life at 6 weeks I believe, so if it is basically considered a child at that point then what’s the difference between life insurance at 6 weeks gestation and 1 week postpartum?

I'll answer your question when you've answered mine. To repeat:

Why would anyone carry life insurance on his unborn child? What loss would be made whole by the payout?
 
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Prenatal care has nothing to do with what I’m talking about. This Texas law implies that the fetus is a life at 6 weeks I believe, so if it is basically considered a child at that point then what’s the difference between life insurance at 6 weeks gestation and 1 week postpartum?
I was being sincere in my reply earlier. That is an interesting question imo.

For the narrow purpose of insurance I’m not sure what the difference is.

Perhaps that one is viable on its own, and one is not? But not sure that is really relevant with regards to insurability.
 
Judge rules Planned Parenthood clinics are exempt from new Texas abortion law and grants restraining order against pro-life group so they can't report women as part of 'vigilante system'

Abortion providers and pro-choice supporters have secured a minor victory in Texas after a state judge banned an anti-abortion group from suing Planned Parenthood under the new Texas law.

Planned Parenthood clinics protected from Texas' abortion law under temporary restraining order | Daily Mail Online

Good
 
I'll answer your question when you've answered mine. To repeat:

Why would anyone carry life insurance on his unborn child? What loss would be made whole by the payout?

The same loss as losing a birthed child. Life insurance isn’t all about monetary loss, which I think you’re implying that it is.
 
I was being sincere in my reply earlier. That is an interesting question imo.

For the narrow purpose of insurance I’m not sure what the difference is.

Perhaps that one is viable on its own, and one is not? But not sure that is really relevant with regards to insurability.
I’m being a bit facetious. Of course you couldn’t insure a fetus at 6 weeks gestation, the incidence of miscarriage is way too high. I’m pointing to an impracticality.

For instance another example is if you consider a fetus at 6 weeks a citizen for all intents and purposes, then if the mother is an illegal immigrant she couldn’t be deported because she’s carrying a US citizen.

Also, the child support should start at 6 weeks, if that’s the road we’re going down… again, impractical.
 
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I’m being a bit facetious. Of course you couldn’t insure a fetus at 6 weeks gestation, the incidence of miscarriage is way too high. I’m pointing to an impracticality.

For instance another example is if you consider a fetus at 6 weeks a citizen for all intents and purposes, then if the mother is an illegal immigrant she couldn’t be deported because she’s carrying a US citizen.

Also, the child support should start at 6 weeks, if that’s the road we’re going down… again, impractical.
The mother and the child should not be citizens. The 14th Amendment was improperly used as the support for allowing these "dreamers".
 
The same loss as losing a birthed child. Life insurance isn’t all about monetary loss, which I think you’re implying that it is.

I'm afraid you'll have to be much more explicit if your answer is to be comprehensible to me. I have eight different insurance policies (term life, short term disability, long term disability, medical, dental, vision, auto, and homeowner's). Every single one is a hedge against some particular kind of financial loss and nothing more. I've never taken a life insurance policy out on any of my children, and I can't fathom why any reasonably informed parent would. What my family would lose by the death of one of our children is not financial in nature, and the loss could not be softened by an insurance payout. So, please state explicitly what aspect of the loss of a child is made whole by a life insurance payout and in what way life insurance isn't all about monetary loss, since this is what you are offering as your answer to my question.
 
I'm an atheist. It is pastors like this that ran me out of the church.

In his rant, he is trying to call out pro-life people as being hypocrites.
On the other hand, I can't even get someone that is pro-choice to explain to me why the babies have to be killed.

Murderers calling out hypocrites. You can't make this s^^t up.
 
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I'm afraid you'll have to be much more explicit if your answer is to be comprehensible to me. I have eight different insurance policies (term life, short term disability, long term disability, medical, dental, vision, auto, and homeowner's). Every single one is a hedge against some particular kind of financial loss and nothing more. I've never taken a life insurance policy out on any of my children, and I can't fathom why any reasonably informed parent would. What my family would lose by the death of one of our children is not financial in nature, and the loss could not be softened by an insurance payout. So, please state explicitly what aspect of the loss of a child is made whole by a life insurance payout and in what way life insurance isn't all about monetary loss, since this is what you are offering as your answer to my question.
Just because you base life insurance decisions solely on potential financial loss doesn’t mean that’s the only reason people buy it. I wrote plenty of policies where people insured their kids with term policies because they felt like they had the foresight to know that in the tragic event of losing a kid, maybe they didn’t want to rush back into work after a week or two. Some people insure their kids to cover funeral costs, others insure them with whole or universal life policies that build cash value with plans to hand that cash value back to their kids as graduation or wedding presents. Just because that’s not how you operate doesn't really mean anything. Some people do it differently, and that’s ok.
 
I'm an atheist. It is pastors like this than ran me out of the church.

In his rant, he is trying to call out pro-life people as being hypocrites.
On the other hand, I can't even get someone that is pro-choice to explain to me why the babies have to be killed.

Murderers calling out hypocrites. You can't make this s^^t up.

I don't believe that any baby that is viable outside the womb should die from medical intervention. The US also makes it too expensive and has too many illogical barriers to adoption (yet absolute crazies can foster, but that's another conversation).

You have good questions and I wish I had the answers.
 
Just because you base life insurance decisions solely on potential financial loss doesn’t mean that’s the only reason people buy it. I wrote plenty of policies where people insured their kids with term policies because they felt like they had the foresight to know that in the tragic event of losing a kid, maybe they didn’t want to rush back into work after a week or two. Some people insure their kids to cover funeral costs, others insure them with whole or universal life policies that build cash value with plans to hand that cash value back to their kids as graduation or wedding presents. Just because that’s not how you operate doesn't really mean anything. Some people do it differently, and that’s ok.

Fair enough. You've answered my question, so I'll answer yours.

If we're trying to determine whether or not a fetus is a living human being on the basis of his or her eligibility to be covered by an insurance product (and why anyone would regard an insurance company as a legitimate arbiter of this question one way or the other is completely beyond me), then the provision of prenatal care aimed at the unborn child's benefit should be quite relevant. Still, I'll play along on your terms.

First, I would imagine there's vanishingly little demand for such a product (although it does seem to be offered in parts of Asia). The reasons you've given above for why people purchase life insurance policies on their children seem to me, to be perfectly frank, to be concerns only those who have been solicited by an insurance advertisement or salesman would have (and only that subset of these people who are sufficiently naive as to be moved by such concerns). When parents learn they're expecting a child, they begin attending to a number of now very urgent tasks. It's hard for me to imagine that many expectant parents would regard the purchase of a superfluous insurance product as among these urgent tasks, nor will the insurance companies have yet had an opportunity to identify them as expectant parents and to prey upon their fears (though this may be changing with the web browsing data that's being sold to marketers -- we've recently received in the mail some solicitations from Similac and Gerber Life Insurance). Tell us -- how many times in your career did an expectant parent approach you to have a life insurance policy issued on his unborn child?

Second, the risk of miscarriage before twelve weeks -- and particularly before six weeks -- is quite high. There's yet further risk of death at and around the time of delivery. The premiums, then, would necessarily be quite high and would deter many even of those who could be talked into believing they needed such a product in the first place.

Third (and closely related to the above), the fragility of the fetus, especially in the early weeks, introduces tremendous moral hazard into any such policy and, due to the nature of pregnancy, it would in many cases be all but impossible to adjudicate whether a miscarriage were due to natural causes or to some nefarious intervention. There would doubtless be those who would seek to profit from this fact, and an insurance company is not going to make itself vulnerable to such persons.

If an insurance company could make good money from doing so, a parent could purchase a policy on the life of his unborn child (just as a pet owner can purchase a policy on the life of his pet). A reasonable person would not draw from the insurance company's issuance of a policy any conclusion as to when human life begins, nor should he now from the company's refusal to issue such a policy.

As it stands, the same insurance company that won't underwrite a policy at six weeks gestation won't underwrite one a minute before birth either. Are we to conclude from this that the fetus "is not a life" one minute before birth and magically becomes "a life" at the moment of delivery?

What about the fact that Gerber will not underwrite a policy until 14 days after birth? Is the neonate "not a life" until he is two weeks old?

What about those who are not eligible for life insurance due to a pre-existing condition. Are they too "not a life"?

To be perfectly frank, eligibility for life insurance seems to me an utterly stupid criterion by which to answer the question of when human life begins, and you've so far given me no reason to think otherwise.
 
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Fair enough. You've answered my question, so I'll answer yours.

If we're trying to determine whether or not a fetus is a living human being on the basis of his or her eligibility to be covered by an insurance product (and why anyone would regard an insurance company as a legitimate arbiter of this question one way or the other is completely beyond me), then the provision of prenatal care aimed at the unborn child's benefit should be quite relevant. Still, I'll play along on your terms.

First, I would imagine there's vanishingly little demand for such a product (although it does seem to be offered in parts of Asia). The reasons you've given above for why people purchase life insurance policies on their children seem to me, to be perfectly frank, to be concerns only those who have been solicited by an insurance advertisement or salesman would have (and only that subset of these people who are sufficiently naive as to be moved by such concerns). When parents learn they're expecting a child, they begin attending to a number of now very urgent tasks. It's hard for me to imagine that many expectant parents would regard the purchase of a superfluous insurance product as among these urgent tasks, nor will the insurance companies have yet had an opportunity to identify them as expectant parents and to prey upon their fears (though this may be changing with the web browsing data that's being sold to marketers -- we've recently received in the mail some solicitations from Similac and Gerber Life Insurance). Tell us -- how many times in your career did an expectant parent approach you to have a life insurance policy issued on his unborn child?

Second, the risk of miscarriage before twelve weeks -- and particularly before six weeks -- is quite high. There's yet further risk of death at and around the time of delivery. The premiums, then, would necessarily be quite high and would deter many even of those who could be talked into believing they needed such a product in the first place.

Third (and closely related to the above), the fragility of the fetus, especially in the early weeks, introduces tremendous moral hazard into any such policy and, due to the nature of pregnancy, it would in many cases be all but impossible to adjudicate whether a miscarriage were due to natural causes or to some nefarious intervention. There would doubtless be those who would seek to profit from this fact, and an insurance company is not going to make itself vulnerable to such persons.

If an insurance company could make good money from doing so, a parent could purchase a policy on the life of his unborn child (just as a pet owner can purchase a policy on the life of his pet). A reasonable person would not draw from the insurance company's issuance of a policy any conclusion as to when human life begins, nor should he now from the company's refusal to issue such a policy.

As it stands, the same insurance company that won't underwrite a policy at six weeks gestation won't underwrite one a minute before birth either. Are we to conclude from this that the fetus "is not a life" one minute before birth and magically becomes "a life" at the moment of delivery?

What about the fact that Gerber will not underwrite a policy until 14 days after birth? Is the neonate "not a life" until he is two weeks old?

What about those who are not eligible for life insurance due to a pre-existing condition. Are they too "not a life"?

To be perfectly frank, eligibility for life insurance seems to me an utterly stupid criterion by which to answer the question of when human life begins, and you've so far given me no reason to think otherwise.
There is no demand for such a policy and the inquiry is a waste as it doesn't qualify who should be determined as human.
 
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One must be careful to not map their own personal belief system or lifestyle on others.

I know several women who were not allowed to take birth control pills and their husbands refused to wear condoms. The wife did not want more children, the husband did. The women would not refuse sex for fear of physical or emotional abuse and were not financially or spiritually able to leave the marriages.

It's not so simple. We have to stop pretending that everything is so damn simple.

If you're simply pushing back against the idea that birth control is in all circumstances easy to practice for all who wish to practice it, your point is very well taken.

If, however, you mean to suggest that legal abortion should be available as a remedy to the difficulty women living in such circumstances face, then you're effectively (though unwittingly, I'm sure, given the thoughtfulness and compassion you regularly exhibit in these fora) offering cover for domestic violence and spousal rape.

The fact of the matter is that an abortion is often the means by which a man evades responsibility for his maltreatment of a woman.
 
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I'm an atheist. It is pastors like this that ran me out of the church.

In his rant, he is trying to call out pro-life people as being hypocrites.
On the other hand, I can't even get someone that is pro-choice to explain to me why the babies have to be killed.

Murderers calling out hypocrites. You can't make this s^^t up.

I'm just going to leave this here for now.
 

"These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone." There's no reason Rev. Barnhart couldn't have counseled "both/and" here, nor is there any shortage of exemplary Christians who have served Christ in the person of the afflicted to whom he could have pointed as examples worthy of imitation. That he has instead chosen disregard for the vulnerable unborn child and rejection of the ancient Christian teaching on this subject is not at all a credit to him as a clergyman.
 
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What does a real campaign to lower abortion rates look like?

1. Scientifically sound sex education early and often - no more abstinence only programs
2. Better maternity and paternity leave policies that give more time for parent/baby bonding without fear of loss of income
3. Increased WIC payments for new parents under a certain percentage of the poverty line
4. Increased access to affordable prenatal and postnatal medical care, especially for the un and underinsured.
5. Daycare subsidies to help new parents be able to afford to go back to work
6. Streamline the adoption process to make it easier and less costly to adopt a child, and work to remove the stigma around putting a child up for adoption.
 
I’m being a bit facetious. Of course you couldn’t insure a fetus at 6 weeks gestation, the incidence of miscarriage is way too high. I’m pointing to an impracticality.

For instance another example is if you consider a fetus at 6 weeks a citizen for all intents and purposes, then if the mother is an illegal immigrant she couldn’t be deported because she’s carrying a US citizen.

Also, the child support should start at 6 weeks, if that’s the road we’re going down… again, impractical.

With regard to your first example, is a centenarian able to be insured by a new life insurance policy? If not, is he "not a life"?

As to your second example, by what mechanism would an unborn child (who by definition has not yet been born on American soil) have become an American citizen?

As for your third example, why should a man not be responsible for the prenatal support required both by the child he has fathered and the child's mother? While it may be unlikely for the case to be heard and judged prior to the child's birth, why should the father not be held liable retroactively for this support?
 

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