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Frank Szabo wants the people of Hillsborough County, N.H., to know that if they elect him as sheriff this year, he will do whatever it takes to stop doctors from performing abortions — even if that means using deadly force.

In an interview on Wednesday with local television station WMUR, Szabo said he believed sheriffs were granted special powers under the Constitution. That means, he said, he would be empowered to arrest or even use deadly force against doctors for providing legal abortions for women.

“I would hope that it wouldn’t come to that, as with any situation where someone was in danger,” Szabo said. “But again, specifically talking about elective abortions and late term abortions, that is an act that needs to be stopped.”


Conks representing all of America!

Killing people to save lives. I'm sure that THEIR God approves! Conks is so smart!

Guy should be removed from office and never be allowed to be in law enforcement for saying that.

mainejeff wrote:Killing people to save lives. I'm sure that THEIR God approves! Conks is so smart!

Donks ain't much smarter

Gil Dobie wrote:

mainejeff wrote:Killing people to save lives. I'm sure that THEIR God approves! Conks is so smart!

Donks ain't much smarter

But you admit we're smarter, at least. Most conks won't do that.

Tod wrote:

Gil Dobie wrote:
Donks ain't much smarter

But you admit we're smarter, at least. Most conks won't do that.

Who's we, I said Donks, not Tod

Tod wrote:

Gil Dobie wrote:
Donks ain't much smarter

But you admit we're smarter, at least. Most conks won't do that.

"Hey, look at me...I'm Tod...a Donk...and we're smarter than Conks...not much, but we're smarter. Now, we're both dumber than a box of rocks, especially compared to independent thinkers, but at least I, Tod, a mouth breathing Donk, am smarter than those dumber mouth breathing Conks. It feels so good to be an uneducated, Donk, white trash dope!"

Gil Dobie wrote:

mainejeff wrote:Killing people to save lives. I'm sure that THEIR God approves! Conks is so smart!

Donks ain't much smarter

Not much.......but they ARE smarter.

mainejeff wrote:

Gil Dobie wrote:
Donks ain't much smarter

Not much.......but they ARE smarter.

So are turnips.

Killing people to save lives. I'm sure that THEIR God approves! Conks is so smart!

The theology of it can serve as an interesting basis for discussion. But the general idea of killing one person in order to save another person's life when the second person is at risk of being attacked by the first person is a broadly accepted principle.

For instance: Someone has a conceal-carry permit and has their gun on them. They see a guy burst into the area and start shooting. One person goes down. The bad guy turns and points his weapon at a child. The guy with the conceal-carry permit has his weapon out at that time and shoots the bad guy. Drops him stone dead.

Not only would that be considered acceptable on a nearly if not totally universal level; the guy with the conceal-carry permit would be considered a hero.

What it all comes down to, as it usually does with the abortion issue, is the nature of the unborn. If your premise is that the unborn are just tissue and not living members of our species that have the right to life, then of course you think it's wrong to kill an abortionist in order to save the lives of the unborn. But if your premise is that the unborn are innocent human individuals with just as much a right to live as any other human individual then, regardless of the laws of the socieity of the time and place, killing an abortionist is perfectly acceptable from a moral standpoint. Every bit as acceptable as it would have been, say, to kill a NAZI about to pour Zyklon B crystals into the gas chamber in 1943 Germany. Such an action was, of course, legal according to the government in power in that place at that time. But just about everyone in our time and place would say that killing the NAZI to save the people about to be gassed would have been acceptable.

And, yes, regardless of how vehemently someone might protest, that is indeed a valid illustration of the principle. If you start off with the premise that the unborn are human individuals with just as much a right to live as any other human individual, the laws of this time and place with respect to abortion are very, very wrong. We have sanctioned the unfettered murder of millions of the most innocent individuals mostly, though we try to paint a less disgusting picture, to allow women the convenience of escaping the consequences of their own actions.

Not much.......but they ARE smarter

Probably not if what you're talking about is "on average." That's what I think based on the demographics of who votes Republican and who votes Democrat in national elections according to exit poll results.

Basically what you see is that the overwhelming majority of the least educated and least successful in terms of income vote for Democrats. Proportion voting Republican then rises as education and income levels rise; with the one exception to that being that the majority of those in the top education level usually defined (at least some post grad education) typically votes Democrat.

However, both education and income are correlated with IQ. So it's hard to say for sure that the majority of those at...say...140 and above IQ vote Democrat. I suspect that is the case. But I also suspect that it's not that large of a majority and not nearly enough to overcome the overwhelming advantage Democrats have among those at the lower end of the income and education level scales.

For many years I have seen what appears to be this perception on the left that those who favor liberal political positions are smarter and that if only others "understood" things like they do more people would agree with them. Though "Republican" and "Democrat" are not quite the same as "Conservative" and "Liberal," I still look at what we see in terms of exit polling results each time we have a national election as suggesting that they are deluding themselves.

JohnStOnge wrote:

Not much.......but they ARE smarter

Probably not if what you're talking about is "on average." That's what I think based on the demographics of who votes Republican and who votes Democrat in national elections according to exit poll results.

Basically what you see is that the overwhelming majority of the least educated and least successful in terms of income vote for Democrats. Proportion voting Republican then rises as education and income levels rise; with the one exception to that being that the majority of those in the top education level usually defined (at least some post grad education) typically votes Democrat.

However, both education and income are correlated with IQ. So it's hard to say for sure that the majority of those at...say...140 and above IQ vote Democrat. I suspect that is the case. But I also suspect that it's not that large of a majority and not nearly enough to overcome the overwhelming advantage Democrats have among those at the lower end of the income and education level scales.

For many years I have seen what appears to be this perception on the left that those who favor liberal political positions are smarter and that if only others "understood" things like they do more people would agree with them. Though "Republican" and "Democrat" are not quite the same as "Conservative" and "Liberal," I still look at what we see in terms of exit polling results each time we have a national election as suggesting that they are deluding themselves.

Belabor the obvious much?

houndawg wrote:

mainejeff wrote:
Not much.......but they ARE smarter.

So are turnips.

That's a better term for blind partisianship than sheeple

There are lots of contradictions and both sides exhibit hypocrisy and inconsistent belief structures when it comes to the topic of abortion.

I do agree with JSO that killing to protect life is in fact acceptable to us as a society. Pretty much only the Quakers would disagree I think. I am not in agreement that whacking abortionists is somehow cricket. However, it is no wonder that we seem to have a national disconnect over this when you consider that someone who murders a pregnant woman in most states is also charged with the death of her fetus.

At the end of the day, the argument comes down to what we place more importance on: the right of a woman to decide if she wants an abortion, or the personhood of a fetus.

I think I have made it pretty clear that I am an agnostic. I am opposed to abortion from an ethical standpoint rather than a religious one. I have no issue with abortion in the case of threats to the health of the mother, disabilities that will profoundly affect the well being of the child, and of course, in the case of rape. However, in these cases, with the exception of rape, abortion is not really a choice, it is an imperative.

I disagree with the notion that someone should be able to simply decide that having a kid is inconvenient and uses abortion as just another method of birth control. Even more onerous to me is those who select for gender. In other words, those who want a boy and abort when they learn that the baby is a girl. Should this be a right? I am sure there are some who think so, but I am certainly not declaring "war on wimmin" by being opposed to it.

One thing I am certain of: being anti abortion has always been a platform of the GOP. It is not somehow a new concept. Abortion has remained legal under Presidents like Reagan and two Bushes, all of whom professed opposition to abortion. Roe v Wade is pretty strong case law and it is VERY unlikely that it will ever be overturned, so all this chicken little stuff over the stance of Romney on abortion is nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

By the way- if you read Roe v Wade, its finding is pretty much in concurrence with belief system of most moderates, in that it does allow the prohibition of abortion when the fetus is viable. I am usually a strict constructionist, but in that the decision at least on the margins protects the right to life of a fetus that is 7 months along (and younger in some cases) I don't really have a problem with Roe v Wade.

Definitely a contentious subject, but very irritating when it becomes an election issue, because for the most part the point is moot.

houndawg wrote:

mainejeff wrote:
Not much.......but they ARE smarter.

So are turnips.

Save a fetus today?

Just remember this:

The objective definition for the beginning of life for a member of our species in the overwhelming number of cases is conception. At that point a new animal; an animal that has never existed before, comes into existence. In some cases we get the weird situation in which two individuals were once one. I'm talking about monozygotic multiple pregnancies such as identical twins. In those cases the identification of when life began for an individual gets weird.

But, still, objectively there is a new living member of our species upon the completion of genetic recombination. It's an animal. It's a member of our species. It is alive. And it is not part of its mother's body. It is a foreign entity.

All other definitions of the beginning of life for a human being are subjective. And they are normally crafted in order to maintain the convenience of elective abortion. They represent the greatest imposition of belief. One individual imposes a subjective belief with respect to when a member of our species becomes a "person" in order to justify terminating that other member's life.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, it is simply a matter of convenience. A matter of avoiding responsibility for the consequences of enjoying one's self.

It's absolutely disgusting.

Fetus lover!!!

Baby killer!!!

According to the Bible, life doesn't begin until a breath is drawn, because that is when God gives the body a soul.


So until that point, they are just a lump of soulless cells.

dbackjon wrote:According to the Bible, life doesn't begin until a breath is drawn, because that is when God gives the body a soul.


So until that point, they are just a lump of soulless cells.

I never really cared much what the bible says about it. By that calculus, it would be perfectly ok to abort a child that was 9 months along but mom has not gone into labor yet.

It is much easier to oppose abortion (not to mention less hypocritical) along moral lines rather than religious ones.

CID1990 wrote:

dbackjon wrote:According to the Bible, life doesn't begin until a breath is drawn, because that is when God gives the body a soul.


So until that point, they are just a lump of soulless cells.

I never really cared much what the bible says about it. By that calculus, it would be perfectly ok to abort a child that was 9 months along but mom has not gone into labor yet.

It is much easier to oppose abortion (not to mention less hypocritical) along moral lines rather than religious ones.

Could even happen after labor since the baby doesn't take their first breath until they're out.

dbackjon wrote:According to the Bible, life doesn't begin until a breath is drawn, because that is when God gives the body a soul.


So until that point, they are just a lump of soulless cells.

Doesn't science say that life begins at conception?

Gil Dobie wrote:

dbackjon wrote:According to the Bible, life doesn't begin until a breath is drawn, because that is when God gives the body a soul.


So until that point, they are just a lump of soulless cells.

Doesn't science say that life begins at conception?

Snap.

Gil Dobie wrote:

dbackjon wrote:According to the Bible, life doesn't begin until a breath is drawn, because that is when God gives the body a soul.


So until that point, they are just a lump of soulless cells.

Doesn't science say that life begins at conception?

Yes, no and maybe. What is life? Ability to survive? Potential to become a life?

dbackjon wrote:

Gil Dobie wrote:
Doesn't science say that life begins at conception?

Yes, no and maybe. What is life? Ability to survive? Potential to become a life?

Living cells is life, dead cells is not according to science.