The article doesn’t state on what grounds he was arrested.  I am by no means endorsing the man’s positions, but is this another example of public protest being criminalised too far?

“I will blah blah prison blah injustice blah Obama blah blah mockery of God blah evil.”

Well, isn’t that special. 

Maybe Mr. Keyes can write about his experience in jail and use it to sell his political philosophy.  Call it something like My Struggle or something.  I’m sure a lot of good could come from it… [/snark]

I do have one question:  When he says “I will do it all day and every day from now until the Master comes…”, is he referring to God/Jesus/Spirit-Dude, or someone or something else?...

The article doesn’t state on what grounds he was arrested.  I am by no means endorsing the man’s positions, but is this another example of public protest being criminalised too far?

The grounds were trespassing, as apparently Notre Dame only allows protests by students.  Since Notre Dame is a private university, it’s their property, their rules.  The group was warned before they set foot on campus that they would be arrested, and they came anyway.

“I am by no means endorsing the man’s positions, but is this another example of public protest being criminalised too far? “

I don’t know the circumstances either. 

But you remind me that Keyes is lucky Obama doesn’t handle this kind of situation like a new-style Republican would: Allow protests only in a fenced-off area miles from anywhere, and/or note any political stickers or shirts being displayed that do not support The Party so those people can be detained, harassed, threatened by security, ejected without cause, and then later Party Officials would attempt to fire them from their jobs.

Democrats are sometimes too damn nice…

I’m a bit conflicted… on the one hand it’s good that he’s getting his just desserts. On the other hand, he’ll use it to create an impression that he’s being persecuted (cue that great pie chart of the majority whining “Help! We’re being persecuted!)/

Well, he can whine about being persecuted, but he doesn’t dare carpetbag his way back to Illinois.  He was soundly trumped here, when he ran against Barack in the Black Man vs. Black Man “Race is Neutral” Senatorial Campaign.

It matters.  He knows he’s just making a stink and has no real power, and no chance of attaining real power.

What the hell is so innocent about an embryo? It’s amazing. When a man is inside a woman without her permission, it’s rape. But when an embryo is inside a woman without her permission, it’s innocence.

Keyes = Phelps. One gets arrested to get publicity he couldn’t get by other means, the other goads people into behavior that can be used as the basis for a profitable civil suit.

Frankie:

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

It’s so charming when you act like you’ve made a point. It’s like a little kid pointing to his poop in the potty.

No, BrianX. Little kids grow out of that much faster.

“So, how’s that Roe v Wade working for ya’?”

Quite well, actually. I’ll probably get a couple more abortions this week, if the weather’s nice.

What the hell is so innocent about an embryo? It’s amazing. When a man is inside a woman without her permission, it’s rape. But when an embryo is inside a woman without her permission, it’s innocence.

Generally, Emily, we tend to consider volition as important here.  An embryo, having no volition, cannot be held guilty of anything.

Then again, having no consciousness, it cannot be held to have any rights either.

In answer to your question, pretty good, Frankie

I’m looking forward to the Tuesday Aborted Fetus Fry tomorrow that the Planned Parenthood holds every 2nd Tuesday of every month, it tastes better than the government free cheese that gets handed out every month by the Liberals Against Perceived Racist Enemies organization around here.

“So, how’s that Roe v Wade working for ya’?”

...certainly a lot better than those Make Yourself Smarter in Just 30 Minutes a Day! tapes you wasted your money on…

The big problem for the pro-abortion crowd is that 36 years later, this is not settled. There are still protests and civil disobedience. If this were decided via a democratic process rather than the court looking into the Consitution, slapping their collective foreheads and seeing something that eluded all other justices for almost 200 years, it would be a settled issue.

Courts exist to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.  Off the top of my head, I can think of two other cases - I’m sure there are many, many more - where the courts “found” rights that had eluded all other justices for almost 200 years, cases where the findings directly defied the democratically-expressed will of the populace: Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia.  Were those cases “wrongly decided” too?

Were those cases “wrongly decided” too?

Thing is, that’s not a rhetorical question for these guys.

Keyes isn’t being singled out, NDSP regularly arrests/detains outside groups who protest on University property.  They did the same thing 2 years ago (IIRC; might have been last year) during a GLBT bus tour thing.  I don’t really remember the details, but yeah.

I do have one question:  When he says “I will do it all day and every day from now until the Master comes…”, is he referring to God/Jesus/Spirit-Dude, or someone or something else?…

Pretty sure he means this guy.

Of course, puppit!

I just love the signs that say “I regret my abortion” as if that should mean anything in terms of public policy.  I regret that chipotle burrito I had over the weekend but it never crossed my mind that the government ought to storm every chipotle, arrest the staff and shut the place down in order to prevent other people’s possible future regret.  Lots of people eat there and are glad that they did.  Lots of people have abortions and are glad they did.  One can avoid regret by knowing their own heart and making informed responsible decisions and shouldn’t need the government to regulate their behavior to protect them.  What happened to personal responsibility with these people?

This is how the other side sees the issue. Part of the problem for the liberals is they don’t understand the other side at all.

It’s understandably difficult for liberals who appreciate this country’s founding documents to understand people like you, who consider women (and homosexuals, and often racial and/or religious minorities) to be less than “full people,” and hence not deserving of the full rights of citizenship.

It becomes even more bizarre when you accord non-cognizant clusters of cells with the full rights of citizenship you’d deny others. Although, given the evidence of your own dull intellect and ignorance, it’s understandable that you’d find that concept appealing.

Fortunately, in this case, you haven’t overt-turned Roe v. Wade despite more than three decades of effort, so those you consider chattel still can excercise medical control over their own bodies. I’m not a woman, but it’s working out for me just fine, if only because it serves as a constant reminder that your side is, slowly but surely, losing.

So how’s that working out for you?

“Part of the problem for the liberals is they don’t understand the other side at all.”

...you’re on a roll this week.  A roll of FAIL…

We understand the people who need to have complete social control of all the other humans they share a state/country/continent/world with perfectly well.

All they want is a good old-fashioned theocracy.  After all, the Dark Ages were the best ages, don’t you think?...

Oh, we understand the forced birthers. Apparently we understand you better than you do yourselves.

The grounds were trespassing, as apparently Notre Dame only allows protests by students.  Since Notre Dame is a private university, it’s their property, their rules.

So Keyes, a libertarian, decided to violate his own holy of holies, private property. Classic.

...you’re on a roll this week.  A roll of FAIL…

Oh, I get the sense that his FAIL streak has been going on for a whole lot longer than a week.

“Keyes isn’t being singled out, NDSP regularly arrests/detains outside groups who protest on University property.  They did the same thing 2 years ago (IIRC; might have been last year) during a GLBT bus tour thing.  I don’t really remember the details, but yeah.”

An asshole rule from an asshole university that isn’t even good at football anymore.

Michigan State allowed all sorts of religious kooks to protest this or that on campus while I was there and that seems like the only way for a university to sensibly handle things.

And remember wingers, Alan Keyes had a show on a EmEssEm cable network which was titled with a contradiction in terms. But liberal media !!!111!!!!.

Oh, franklin, I understand you all just fine.  I just think you are wrong and motivated by an out of control sense of self-importance that makes you think that you should get a say in what goes on inside the internal organs of all women.  I think that your views make you a jerk and rather petty.

Having a low opinion of someone does not always indicate a lack of understanding.

<blcokquote>This is how the other side sees the issue. Part of the problem for the liberals is they don’t understand the other side at all.</blockquote>

No, I understand them perfectly.  They think that life begins at conception, but only for humans.  They don’t think that apple seeds are the same as trees or that eating caviar is the same as eating hundreds of fish.  Although there is a lot of hypocrisy, most of this just stems from a lack of understanding of basic biology.

Now, these people have jumped to the conclusion that embryos are humans through a number of different ways.  They are shown pictures of fetuses that sort of look like babies, but 90% of abortions are done long before the fetus looks anything like a human.  Again, they lack knowledge so they have no idea what an embryo actually looks like at the time most abortions are done.  Also, we shouldn’t judge personhood by looking vaguely like a baby, since the fetuses of most mammals look surprisingly similar.

Anyway, since anti-choice people have jumped to the conclusion that an embryo is a human, on top of that, they advocate that women should be forced to lend out their wombs to save these lives.  Of course, they don’t advocate mandatory blood or kidney donations to save lives, even though these things are usually much easier than a pregnancy.  That is why you can’t call them pro-life.  If they care more about embryos than actual humans, then that leads to the conclusion that they don’t really care about life at all, even if they claim to.  There’s also the hypocrisy that somehow an embryo that is the result of rape is just not as valuable as a an embryo that is the result of consensual sex.

So, it’s clear that anti-choice people don’t actually care about life.  They care about women having sex, and also men losing some control over their reproduction.  They don’t admit this, and they probably don’t even realize that they think this way, but it’s exactly how they feel.  The most common argument against legal abortion is “if she didn’t want to have a kid, she just shouldn’t have had sex”.  Pair this up with the conservative fear of all things sexual, and it’s easy to see that it’s all just an excuse to punish women for their sexuality.  I understand conservatives perfectly.  Conservatives don’t understand pro-choice people at all.  They think that we want to force women to have abortions.  We don’t want the government to have any say in it, so a forced abortion is as bad as a forced pregnancy.  Of course conservatives will never realize that even though I’ve stated it clearly, because they won’t even read this far.

Well, see, Franklin, if the woman in question really believed abortion was murder, she wouldn’t have a sign that says “I regret my abortion”.

You don’t “regret” a murder. If she really, truly, though she was a (misinformed! of course!1!) murderer, she’d be a tortured, conflicted soul incapable of sleeping, eating, or maintaining a basic standard of living for herself. She’d be a wreck.

She’s not. She doesn’t think she’s a murderer. She just regrets her abortion.

And (of course!) she wants the “real” murderers (everyone involved in the process except her, even though it was her C.H.O.I.C.E.) to be punished, burn in hell, etc.

Franky, we understand that forced-gestationists are anti-American terrorists.  We do.  They kill doctors and they bomb clinics (and the Olympics!).

They do not understand freedom and liberty and cry for authoritarianism and theocracy.

Luckily, they are demonstrably a minority in the country, and our freedoms are still in place.  Likely to stay there, too, though it was a getting a little close there.  Still need investigations and prosecutions to do the job right.

Franklin, I don’t know if you’re sincere in your arguments or not - I mean, I know you’re arguing in bad faith, what with ignoring most or all responses to your comments and changing the subject when those responses destroy your comment too thoroughly (I think Brianx’s was particularly poetic), but I still don’t know whether you are A) a genuine wingnut who thinks he’s teaching us stupid liberals a damn good lesson with his magic-bullet, can’t-be-answered arguments or B) a pure troll who doesn’t believe any of the diarrhea he’s spewing on the keyboard, but who just loves annoying people by showing up, posting one outrageous statement, waiting a while, then posting another outrageous statement while ignoring all responses to the first one.

Either way, I think we need to thank you for it.  If you didn’t exist, we’d need to invent you. 

When we’re just in here by ourselves, we’re not really on our A-game.  Everyone more or less agrees, and there’s no reason to bring out our best arguments.  Nothing really new gets said. 

But with an asshole like you in here, spewing the reichwing’s latest talking points and being smug about your already-accomplished victory, we step up.  You are the irritant that creates a pearl in an oyster.

Also, watching you get thoroughly pwned lets any lurkers know which side has the real arguments.  So thanks for that, too.

This is how the other side sees the issue. Part of the problem for the liberals is they don’t understand the other side at all.

We understand them.  We disagree with them on the basis of the argument.

Don’t want to have an abortion, think its evil?  Don’t have one.  Just don’t try to impose your belief system on everyone else. 

If indeed abortion is murder, both the doctor and mother should be tried for premeditated capital murder; i.e., Murder One.  Anything less is logically and morally incosistent.  Since that never is, and never has been, the case; it proves that the “antis” don’t believe in what they are saying.  They are being disingenuos.

For the record, unless anti-choicers consider a first-trimester miscarriage to be the same as a crib death, then they don’t actually believe abortion is the same as murder.  Which is just as well, because the Book that they claim is the source of their anti-choice principles doesn’t consider it to be murder either.

I am unimpressed by the linked article’s inability to get the name of the University of Notre Dame correct.

When Jack Ryan had to drop out of the 2004 race for senator from Illinois due to having it revealed that he’d been trying to force his wife to engage in public sex acts prior to their divorce, Jesus General offered to run in Ryan’s place.  I wrote to the Illinois state representatives who were picking Ryan’s replacement in support of the good General JC Christian (he is, after all, an 11 on the manly scale of absolute gender), but to no avail.  Instead, the Illinois GOP settled on that crazy man Alan Keyes, who promplty lost the election by a vote of 74% to 26% (or maybe it was 76% to 24%...it has been five years, after all, and what’s 2% among close friends like we are…you know you love me…you know you do).  It’s been downhill for that crazy man Alan Keyes every since, and he was already at the bottom of the hill then, so go figure that one out why don’t ya?

I was blogging back then and could never refer to the aforementioned fellow without prepending the words “that crazy man”.  The guy is nuttier than a double nut nut-bar topped with chopped nuts and served with a side order of cashews.

“When and if, this is overturned, there will be laws against it as there was in the past for doctors. Whether it is a murder statute or not is not up to you or to me. There are many homocides that I believe should be murder, but are called something else. The important part is the killings will stop or at least slowed down. 40 million is enough already”

...I can almost hear you salivating in anticipation of such a thing.  You are a sick dude…

And what do you think will happen once the “killings” stop anyway?  Jesus will come and snatch you up to heaven?  The whole world will live in peace and harmony?  We’ll discover a 1000-years worth of oil under South Dakota?  All Democrats will just give up and live in communes?...

When and if, this is overturned, there will be laws against it as there was in the past for doctors. Whether it is a murder statute or not is not up to you or to me.

True, but it’s what you should be agitating for if you’re serious about this.  After all, if you actually consider abortion to be murder, it’s not only premeditated, it’s a contract killing.  Since there’s no statute of limitations for murder, millions of women and thousands of doctors across the country will go to prison for life.  After all, unlike most murders, the criminals kept careful records of their crime every step of the way. 

If you are serious about this, if you actually consider abortion to be murder, then you want those women and those doctors in prison for the rest of their lives.  Period. 

There are many homocides that I believe should be murder, but are called something else.

Perhaps, but I assure you that hiring a hitman to kill your (born) child would be called murder. 

The important part is the killings will stop or at least slowed down. 40 million is enough already

...and the dirty sluts who still get an abortion will be risking death or permanent injury to get it, which is just a bonus.  Teach them to think that they matter as something other than incubators. 

Know what else “slows down the killing”?  Comprehensive sex education and easy availability of birth control, not to mention socialized medicine and other programs that actually help pregnant women if they choose to go through with the pregnancy.  Countries that have those things have lower abortion rates than we do.  But the anti-choice movement fights those things tooth and nail - proof that it’s more important to them that people (especially women) suffer for fucking than the actual abortion rate decrease.

“When and if, this is overturned, there will be laws against it as there was in the past for doctors. Whether it is a murder statute or not is not up to you or to me.”

This being a democracy, last I checked, who else could it possibly be up to?

And that 40 million abortions since Roe OMG!!11! that forced birthers throw around? I’ve always wondered why they don’t count all the abortions in history, as opposed to just those since the early ‘70s. It’s got to be a much more impressive number.

And I don’t know where we got the assumption that without legal abortion there would have been 40 million more healthy live births, rather than just a whole lot more dead or maimed or permanently sterilized women from unsafe procedures.

<blockquote>When and if, this is overturned, there will be laws against it as there was in the past for doctors. Whether it is a murder statute or not is not up to you or to me.</blockquote?

Cop out, Frankie, cop out.

Is or is not the mother equally complicit in the “murder?”  Wouldn’t, in any other criminal matter, all complicit parties be liable to sanction?

Not up to you and me?  Bullshit.  We still live in a democracy, last time I checked.  Simple question, Frankie.  Do you or do you not support making abortion triable as murder.  Yea or nea.  Put up or shut up.

Kay, then….

You’ll take what you can get.  You’ll accept treating the fetus as less than human to get your religious beliefs imposed on others.  Swell.

You mean to sit there on your conservative haunches and tell me that a zygote is the equivalent of a three year old child but the destruction of one makes the perpetrator less culbable in the first instance than in the second instance.  Swell.  What intellectual rigor.  What majesty of logic that is.

Franklin wants forced organ donation to be punishment for sex.  If he has ever had sex, then he should be forced to donate a kidney to save a life.  If that’s too permanent, then he should have to donate a pint of blood every time he has sex.  Unless he’s a hemophiliac, it would still be much easier than a pregnancy, even if he gets dizzy or even faints.  Luckily for him, this punishment only applies to women.  Apparently it’s ok for men to have sex, but not for women to.  There’s really only one way that can work out, and we know his opinion on that.

Do you or do you not support making abortion triable as murder.

*I* would, but not everyone would agree with me and I don’t always get what I want.

Instead, I’ll take what I can get.

Just so we’re clear: that means that you do, in fact, want the millions of women in this country who’ve had an abortion to go to prison for life.

Gotcha.  Good to know what we’re dealing with.

Yeah, that’s what I thought when the courts made the abortion decision in the first place. No democratic process.

I already answered this, and you never had the guts to respond. 

In any case, if Roe v. Wade were ever overturned (which was part of your original statement), <strike>mob rule</strike> democratic process would be back in effect.  Abortion would be murder if you, as a member of the anti-choice (how does that square with libertarianism, btw?) movement, could get it declared such.

Instead, I’ll take what I can get.

The problem in that regard is, your side needs a Constitutionally compelling reason to over-turn Roe v. Wade (which is what you hope to get). Magis is asking because the only realistic way you’d be able to do this is to demonstrate—empirically—that aborting a cluster of non-cognizant cells is equivalent to the homicide of a fully cognizant child or adult. [I know the terms “empirical” and “realistic” are alien to you, but we’re talking about the SCOTUS]

To save you some time, “an invisible supernatural entity says so” doesn’t work as an empirical demonstration, and is ruled out by the Establishment Clause in any case. Have anything else up your sleeves besides an Invisible Bearded Sky Man™ and pseudo-scientific studies that are laughed out of any peer review? Come on, give it a try. Convince us.

I’m interested in a change in this area.

I told you how to bring about real change in this area.  If you’re interested in actually bringing down the abortion rate instead of just punishing the dirty, dirty sluts, you should be here working with us.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought when the courts made the abortion decision in the first place. No democratic process.”

Except for getting to elect the president who picks and the senators who confirm Supreme Court justices for the last 40 years.

And how, in your perfect world, is abortion going to be banned? This Congress sure won’t be passing that law and Obama ain’t going to sign it. The senate has had 41 pro-choice votes for as long as I can remember. Your only chance of getting a federal ban would be getting enough Scalias on the court to decide that a fetus is a person. I don’t guess we’d be hearing about judicial tyranny then.

Except for getting to elect the president who picks and the senators who confirm Supreme Court justices for the last 40 years.

It’s become clear in this and other threads that our troll doesn’t really grasp the functions of the three branches of government or even the most basic mechanisms of checks and balances—one of the many costs of his teenaged decision that, in ‘Murka, a white Xtian male don’t need no book larnin’ to succeed.

“Just so we’re clear: that means that you do, in fact, want the millions of women in this country who’ve had an abortion to go to prison for life.”

...of course not!  That would horribly cruel!

Because Frankie is a staunch Pro-Life advocate he naturally wants those women executed for capital murder, right after the execution of the doctor who performed them.  That’s what being in love with life is all about…

And I don’t know where we got the assumption that without legal abortion there would have been 40 million more healthy live births, rather than just a whole lot more dead or maimed or permanently sterilized women from unsafe procedures.

Now, that’s just dumb.

This commenter would have us all assume that the legality will not change the numbers of abortion. I would suggest that it would. Not only would it discourage women from seeking to unlawfully kill their growing babies, but certainly providers would be incarcerated discouraging other providers and taking this one off the street.

No law stops all crime, but most laws do, indeed, discourage the crime.

Wow. 

I don’t know if you’re missing the point on an epic scale, or if women literally don’t even exist to you:

1) Outlawing abortion would indeed result in fewer abortions, legal or otherwise.  However, it would also result in greatly increased numbers of women killed, sterilized or otherwise injured by illegal and unsafe abortions, or attempts to bring on miscarriage themselves.  There is both historical precedent and present-day examples of this.  You ignored this to talk about how outlawing abortion would, indeed, bring the abortion numbers down.  That’s the first place you erase women from your scenario completely.

2) You talk of removing the providers from the streets.  As I’ve pointed out again and again, the woman is the instigator in the “crime” of abortion.  The doctor is just the hitman she hires.  Why would the provider be punished, and not her?

Not only would it discourage women from seeking to unlawfully kill their growing babies, but certainly providers would be incarcerated discouraging other providers and taking this one off the street.

It would also prevent doctors from treating women who have life-threatening conditions like an ectopic pregnancy that will only result in the death of both the mother and the embryo if the pregnancy is not ended.  It’s happening right now in Nicaragua, where doctors refuse to treat dying women until it’s too late for fear of being accused of having performed an abortion.

But I’m sure that, for you, having women die unnecessarily is a feature, not a bug.  How else will you be able to keep them terrified of ever becoming pregnant if they don’t know that they will be left to die if anything goes wrong with their pregnancy?  Either that or, like most forced birthers, you assume that all pregnancies are completely normal and will always end in a healthy child unless the woman actively intervenes to do something.  I guess those thousands of women who discover that their fetus has developed without a brain or with another fatal birth defect will have to continue the pregnancy, risk their fertility, and give birth to a stillborn child just so you, a complete stranger who doesn’t know their medical history, can feel they’ve been properly punished for being female.

BTW, Frankie - in this post-Roe world of yours, is it illegal for rich people travel or transport their daughters across international borders for the sake of obtaining an abortion, or is this - as usual - somethng that will only target poor people?

I don’t know if you’re missing the point on an epic scale, or if women literally don’t even exist to you:

Oh, they exist to him, just not as full people with the full rights of citizenship (same goes for homosexuals, and likely non-Christians and non-whites as well). This is the key to understanding his derangement.

Just so we’re clear: that means that you do, in fact, want the millions of women in this country who’ve had an abortion to go to prison for life.

And here I thought libertarians liked to decriminalize stuff because the prisons are full and it costs money. Or do they stop caring after weed?

Really, I can’t understand how a Galtian can be against abortion. Don’t we own the products of our labor?

I’d tell Franklin to look up septic abortion wards, but I doubt it would do any good.  Besides, I don’t want to provide him with any wanking material.

And here I thought libertarians liked to decriminalize stuff because the prisons are full and it costs money. Or do they stop caring after weed?

I don’t think he’s one of them citified hipsters who likes reefer, or even a libertarian. He’s a medieval feudalist.

By the way, Franklin, what are you picturing will be the fate of these millions of unwanted children in your abortion-free paradise?  Do you think that every parent will immediately not only want to keep that unplanned child, but will be able to support it?  How many orphanages are you planning to set up to take care of the children who are abandoned by their parents?  Plus we’ll have to set up a safe-haven law like the one Nebraska had if we don’t want the rates of child murder and abuse to skyrocket.  I’m sure it didn’t damage those kids at all to have their parents abandon them because they couldn’t raise them, right?

Really, I can’t understand how a Galtian can be against abortion. Don’t we own the products of our labor?

This is, by the way, why so few women are libertarians, for those Libs who Just Don’t Get It. It’s not that we’re stupid, really. It’s that the BULK of our labor, for the most part, never has been ours and never will be ours. We don’t clean the toilet because we enjoy it, you know. We do it because it needs to be done for sanitary reasons, and gods know the Manly Man of the house and the Perfect Children will BENEFIT from our labor without ever, you know, reciprocating it. Ever.

Women labor out of love. But we don’t hold illusions that we’re Galty Galts who own the products of our labor. We know we’re just breeders and cleaners in your world.

How many orphanages are you planning to set up to take care of the children who are abandoned by their parents?

Orphanages are against Libertarian philosophy. Those little leeches can stand on their own two feet like the rest of us.

Frankie?
Oh, Frankie?
Come out, come out wherever you are.

*crickets*

And here I thought libertarians liked to decriminalize stuff because the prisons are full and it costs money. Or do they stop caring after weed?

As a general rule, they stop caring after it stops affecting them directly.  Andrew Sullivan is a whole lot more concerned about gay rights than Ron Paul, for example. 

Both of them are anti-choice, though (though Sullivan seems a bit more willing to listen to Saletan’s bullshit “compromises” than Paul).  I guess the even more general rule is that bitches ain’t shit.

How many orphanages are you planning to set up to take care of the children who are abandoned by their parents?

Keep in mind that, in the troll’s cloud-cuckooland, we’ll all (willingly or not) be devotees of The Blonde Jeebus, and tithe 10% of our income to support our local megachurches. The wise and selfless officials of these churches in turn will spend the money on orphanages and ... (ok, you get the idea—more fantasy).

This guy is like our own personal Alan Keyes—no wonder they let him rant.

I guess the even more general rule is that bitches ain’t shit.

And they wonder why the stupid Wimmens keep voting Democrat…

I want one, just one, Galtian to explain to me why a woman shouldn’t have complete control over her body and the organisms therein. Saying “she shouldn’t have had sex” is not an answer.

Riffing off of a Hector idea, it would be interesting to see if we could set up a system where the woman could say, “Ok, I won’t abort, but YOU - the father - has to carry the fetus to term in this artificial womb we’ve invented for you.” I wonder how many Libertarians would opt to be an incubator if it saves the innocent baby life?

“Orphanages are against Libertarian philosophy. Those little leeches can stand on their own two feet like the rest of us.”

...that’s what repealing Child Labor laws is all about.  Giving those precious youngsters a chance to stand on their own two feet…for 12 or 16-hours at a time feeding an endlessly ravenous machine that occasionally takes an arm, a leg, or a whole child as tribute, like some real life version of Metropolis...

...and another thing
(since I’m ranting)

I want one of these morons to look me straight in the eye and tell me that we’d be a better country if we’d have had 40 Million more impovrished unwanted people.  I want them to tell me that there were 80 Million people (assuming two per child) denied the opportunity of adoption.

I don’t think about things I don’t think about.
Matthew Harrison Brady from <u>Inherit the Wind</u>

/rant

This being a democracy, last I checked, who else could it possibly be up to?

Yeah, that’s what I thought when the courts made the abortion decision in the first place. No democratic process.

Dork.

When the law is written, it will be written by wingnutty legislatures elected by people.  It will be signed by the executive branch, also elected by the people. 

When it is struck down by the courts, it’s a check and balance on the legislature and executive.  But those judges are either elected or appointed by the executive branch, which again, elected by the people.

Just because you are on the losing side does not mean the democratic process has been subverted.  It means you’re on the wrong side—both a minority of the people of the United States (always over 60% think abortion should be legal, even if some want restrictions) and on the wrong side of the Constitution by trying to force your theocracy on a free people that have protections against being forced to follow a state religion.

You want to argue within the parameters of legality, fine.  You want to pretend that somehow we’re not a democracy or that abortion laws are not being decided lawfully and democratically?  Go right ahead.  We’ll just laugh harder.

Ignorant is no way to go through life.

Let us not forget that we actually do live in an observable world with over 200 countries and just as many combonations of sexual and reproductive rights policy.  That is a lot of case studies that we can look at to see what sets of policies are effective.  Shall we do that, Frank?

Most Pro-Choice country: The Netherlands.
- comprehensive sex ed
- high degree of equality between the genders
- cultural belief that sex is not shameful, but a normal part of post-pubescent life
- contraception is widely available and free
- strong social safety net including free healthcare
- Abortion is not only legal but FREE under government helth care

Most Anti-Choice country:  Nicaragua
- No sex ed
- partiarchal family structures where women have very little economic power
- catholic culture where sex is considered shameful and dirty
- contraception is scarce (illegal?)
- little government healthcare or welfare
- abortion is illegal to the point were they let women almost die before ending a tubal (non-viable by definition) pregnancy for fear of being accused of abortion.

Which of these do you think has less abortion (legal and otherwise) performed within its borders? 

The Netherlands has the lowest abortion rate in the world, and while it is hard to know exact numbers for Nicaragua, since it mostly happens underground, the numbers of women dying in septic abortion wards indicates that is is obviously a hell of a lot more than is taking place in scandanavia where abortion is safe, legal, destigmatized and FREE.

So if you really care about reducing abortion (like you claim) which of these sets of laws do you choose?  Netherlands.  If you care most about reducing human suffering and increasing personal freedom and self-determination (like I and most pro-choicers do) which do you choose?  Netherlands.  If what you are really about is maintaining a social order in which women are to be a permanent underclass and where women who get out of line pay a terrible price, THAT is when you pick Nicaragua.  What you want in this country is to move toward Nicaragua and way for The Netherlands. 

This is why we don’t believe you when you talk about “Life.”

I want one of these morons to look me straight in the eye and tell me that we’d be a better country if we’d have had 40 Million more impovrished unwanted people.

That just means more serfs for Baron Troll’s estate/company town/corporate campus. Seriously, this mope and his ilk secretly think they’re “natural aristocrats” by dint of their race and gender and religion—brave noblemen who are also somehow afraid to share their true ambitions in a blog comments section.

“Don’t want to have an abortion, think its evil?  Don’t have one.  Just don’t try to impose your belief system on everyone else. “

Sure. Don’t like slavery? Then don’t own one!

I do believe that was the Confederacy’s position on the matter.

“Don’t want to have an abortion, think its evil?  Don’t have one.  Just don’t try to impose your belief system on everyone else. “

Sure. Don’t like slavery? Then don’t own one!

I do believe that was the Confederacy’s position on the matter.

Because women wanting to control their own bodies is exactly the same as southern slaveowners wanting to control the bodies of their slaves.

Moron.

Sure. Don’t like slavery? Then don’t own one!
I do believe that was the Confederacy’s position on the matter.

Actually, no, it wasn’t.  The South wanted to force new territories into allowing slavery.  They wanted their “peculiar institution” to expand.  That, in the end, was what was intolerable.

But, let me get this straight, you’re using an argument against slavery to argue for enslaving women; i.e., making their wombs thralls to the state?  Am I missing something here?

Ah, more stupid from EricJG. Welcome back.

“Having an abortion” (i.e. excercising control over one’s personal medical options regarding a non-cognizant cell cluster) isn’t quite the same as “Having a slave” (i.e. excercising control over a separate, fully-formed, cognizant human being). One situation is morally neutral in the modern, reality-based world, and one is morally unacceptable.

Nice try, though.

If slaves LIVED INSIDE THE BODIES of their owners then it would have been a different question entirely.  And if all those Jews had TAKEN UP RESIDENCE IN HITLER’S OWN TORSO then the holocaust would have been a totally different moral issue as well.

When considering how much of a say I should have over someone else’s life, I think that whether they are someone who LIVES IN MY BODY or someone who HAS THEIR VERY OWN BODY INDEPENDENT OF MY OWN is a pretty major consideration.

Why does this not matter to you?  Unless the lives, interests, goals, passions, thoughts and beliefs of women don’t matter to you.  If our bodies are naturally community property in your worldview.  Then it makes perfect sense.

Monty Python:

Doctor: “Well, are they paying you any rent?”

Mr. Notlob: “No!”

Hippy living in Mr. Notlob’s stomach: “We’re squatters!”

Just as a reminder, EricJG is another one of those self-professed freedom-loving, reality-based libertarians who voted for Prince Bush not once but twice because (and I quote):

Bush came across as a genuine idealist. He really did believe that the world would be a better place without Saddam Hussein in it. After all, one serious charge thrown against his father was that he failed to Finish The Job after Desert Storm; that he won the battle and lost the war by refusing to march into Bagdad. Indeed, arguably the worst thing he did was to let Saddam crush the Kurds in the north and the Shi’ites in the South while he sat around like a potted plant, making a mockery of our supposed ideals of standing up to tyranny and promoting freedom and democracy in the Arab world.

He’s not as crazy as the other troll, but not someone to be taken seriously, folks.

“Because women wanting to control their own bodies is exactly the same as southern slaveowners wanting to control the bodies of their slaves.”

No, it’s not “exactly the same”. But in both cases, you have to deny the humanity of the victims in order to justify it.

No, it’s not “exactly the same”. But in both cases, you have to deny the humanity of the victims in order to justify it.

So does a woman lose her humanity as soon as she becomes pregnant, or was she never human at all?

No, it’s not “exactly the same”. But in both cases, you have to deny the humanity of the victims in order to justify it.

Not at all.  No one, be they fetus or born, breathing person, has the right to use another person’s organs against their will.

But in both cases, you have to deny the humanity of the victims in order to justify it.

So you’re claiming that non-cognizant cell clusters inside a grown woman’s body are “human victims”? Just clarifying, Mr. Clear-Eyed Libertarian.

No, it’s not “exactly the same”. But in both cases, you have to deny the humanity of the victims in order to justify it.

Ummm….urrrr

When Seraph said “exactly the same” that’s sort of a literary device called irony.  See?  Like, when I say, “Oh, that’s gonna happen.”  Meaning there ain’t a snowball’s chance in hell of it happening, see?  Or when I say (about the blockquote), “Well, now that makes sense, when I really mean that is about the most illogical thing I’ve heard today.  See?

In the case of slavery I don’t have to deny the slave’s humanity, just not care about it.  They wouldn’t be much fucking good as cotton-pickers if they weren’t human, now would they?

In the case of a glob of undifferentiated cells if I don’t think it’ possesses humanity, I ipso facto can’t call it a victim, now can I?

Let’s think about EricJG’s position a little more:

As far as he’s concerned, a pregnant woman is the moral equivalent of a slaveholder.  She is holding another human being hostage and forcing it to do what she wants under pain of death.

Does this extend to motherhood once the child is born?  Is a mother the moral equivalent of a slaveholder when she gives her child a time-out or insists that the child eat its vegetables before dessert?  Is the very act of parenting a child keeping that child in slavery, at least until it turns 18?

Ah, the anti-choice Libertarian.  Was there ever a more intellectually confused individual?

“Don’t want to have an abortion, think its evil?  Don’t have one.  Just don’t try to impose your belief system on everyone else. “

I do believe that was the Confederacy’s position on the matter.

I don’t have any problem with that - as long as the slaves are not actually sentient beings.  It’s the teeny tiny little problem that Negros tend to be capable of, well, thought and consciousness and feeling just like every other race of human that makes slavery less moral than farming.

When a fetus can object to abortion, then I’ll reconsider my position on it.

And even if it were not an undifferentiated glob of cells.  Even if it were in there writing treatises and playing the violin.  Anything that lives inside my body does so with my permission or not at all, be they animal, vegetable, wineral or Mahatma Ghandi.  That which is is contained within my skin is my soverign domain PERIOD.  There is no popular vote and no appeals process.

I don’t have any problem with that - as long as the slaves are not actually sentient beings.

A new life awaits you in the Off-World colonies! The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure! New climate, recreational facilities…absolutely free! Use your new friend as a personal body servant or a tireless field hand—the custom tailored genetically engineered humanoid replicant designed especially for your needs. So come on America, let’s put our team up there…

Sounds like EricJG’s libertarian paradise—talk about going Galt. No need to till the soil (or anything else) with a tireless field hand or “standard pleasure model.”

I think a better analogy is “Don’t like slavery?  Then don’t be one!”  Of course, that means the government must protect the right of people to not be slaves.

Mnemosyne:

All the things that a mother forces a kid to do are just payback for the use of her organs. Infants start their lives indebted to the tune of several years of fulltime adult labor. It’s the libertarian version of original sin…

Hrumpf

Not even good trolls.  More like….clay pigeons.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought when the courts made the abortion decision in the first place. No democratic process.”

I’m afraid you misunderstand our form of government if you think that a judicial system interpreting the law is not a legitimate part of it.

I am amused that you don’t cite any disagreement with the logic of the decision, passed by a solid majority of the court, in Roe v Wade.  It’s a good idea that you don’t.  While not a lawyer myself, I’ve read the decision and looked into the supporting logic for it.  The decision is often attacked by anti-abortion advocates, but it has not been challenged in any serious way by the court itself.  This is because the logic is good and there is little ground on which to attack it.  Even now, with a Supreme Court that has a larger conservative contingent than in 1972 and with all the protest and pulic outcry and all the legal challenges that have been attempted, the court not only upholds Roe, but uses Roe to strike down oppressive laws passed by state legislatures.

By the way, we don’t actually have a democracy.  The government of the United States is a republic.  As such, we are dependent on representatives.

What you would need to overturn Roe is a constitutional amendment, since the basis of Roe is the Bill of Rights.  I’d give you a more detailed history of the law that led up to Roe, but either you know it or I’ll leave it to you as a homework assignment.  Besides, I’d love to hear your version of it.  While I’ve seen people scoff at the idea of a right to privacy emanating from the penumbra of rights that are not specified by the Constitution, they scoff at it without actually attacking the logic of a right to privacy.  Yet the right to privacy is deeply embedded in many of the rights enumerated, and specifically in the First Amendment.

Anyway, before you discuss the courts, please have an idea what you are discussing.  I suggest you start with Griswold v Connecticut, though that’s hardly the very first place in which privacy is upheld by the court.  Check the cites in that decision for the basis of it, then move forward from there.

On a personal note, I can’t believe I’m in a discussion of abortion.  I used to get into this bullshit back on talk.abortion in the USENET days around 25 years ago.  The arguments provided by the anti-abortion crowd have not changed one iota since then and they have never been able to come up with adequate logic for why a fetus’s rights are greater than that of a grown woman.  Curiously, whenever you hear a new person offer the anti-abortion arguments, they offer them like they just invented them and it’s all fresh and new.  This is why I stopped discussing it in the first place.  It’s all a rehash of the same thing.

Oh, and Alan Keyes is a crazy man.

“Sounds like EricJG’s libertarian paradise—talk about going Galt. No need to till the soil (or anything else) with a tireless field hand or “standard pleasure model.””

...somewhere there’s a real life Tyrell Corporation designing that future…unfortunately…

“Chew, if only you could see what I’ve seen with your eyes!”...

No, it’s not “exactly the same”. But in both cases, you have to deny the humanity of the victims in order to justify it.

You are arguing that the fetus is human person, and that we are denying that fact. We’re not—or, at least, I’m not. I just think it’s irrelevant.

No person has the right to use my (or anyone else’s) flesh, blood, or organs for their own benefit or survival without my express consent. Nobody has the right to demand that I donate blood, even if someone will die of blood loss if I don’t. Another person can’t use my organs unless I agree, even if I’m dead. No donor card? No transplant. This is true even if a transplant candidate will die without my help.

An unborn human does not have any more right to my physical resources than a born human does. When people say that they want to outlaw abortion, what they’re telling me is that I should have more say what happens to my body when I’m a corpse than when I’m pregnant.

When a state outlaws abortion, it is telling women that their bodies do not belong to themselves, but to the state. Bodily autonomy is a human right. Making abortion illegal denies that right, thereby denying the humanity of me and every other woman.

“So does a woman lose her humanity as soon as she becomes pregnant, or was she never human at all?”

Huh? Being pregnant makes you non-human? That doesn’t make much sense!

“Not at all.  No one, be they fetus or born, breathing person, has the right to use another person’s organs against their will.”

Except that would only apply in the case of rape. In that case, the unborn baby could be considered an intruder. In the case of consensual sex, he/she is more like an invited guest.

Huh? Being pregnant makes you non-human? That doesn’t make much sense!

By denying women the right to control their own bodies, you make them slaves.  If you must deny the slave’s humanity in order to enslave them, then you are denying women’s humanity.  The only question is if their humanity ends when they become pregnant, or if they are never human at all.

“An unborn human does not have any more right to my physical resources than a born human does. “

That would be fine if there was a way to remove the baby without killing it first. It’s the killing that makes it morally problematic.

Oh, and PS: Try being a parent and NOT giving your child physical resources (food, for instance) and see how long it takes for child protective services to show up!

“When a fetus can object to abortion, then I’ll reconsider my position on it.”

I don’t think a newborn can “object” to being killed, either.

Except that would only apply in the case of rape. In that case, the unborn baby could be considered an intruder. In the case of consensual sex, he/she is more like an invited guest.

1) Having consensual sex is not the same as volunteering to be somebody’s life-support system.  Sorry, but women retain the right to bodily self-determination even after a man comes inside them.

2) “Invited guest” implies living in your house and eating at your table.  Pregnancy is living in your body and feeding on it.  It’s a touch more invasive.

“By denying women the right to control their own bodies, you make them slaves.  If you must deny the slave’s humanity in order to enslave them, then you are denying women’s humanity.”

That assumes that pregnancy is the same as slavery, which is just ridiculous.

“An unborn human does not have any more right to my physical resources than a born human does. “

That would be fine if there was a way to remove the baby without killing it first. It’s the killing that makes it morally problematic.

Actually, that’s what makes the “killing” morally unproblematic.  Embryo or adult, no one has the right to be attached to my body and making use of my organs. 

Oh, and PS: Try being a parent and NOT giving your child physical resources (food, for instance) and see how long it takes for child protective services to show up!

Attention, stupid person: in this context - i.e. pregnancy - “physical resources” means oxygen, nutrients and hormones taken from the pregnant woman’s body.  I know you don’t actually give a shit about women, but do please try to remember that there’s one involved. 

Also, no one here disputes that a born, living person has a right to food, shelter and care.  It’s only you who equates that to gestating an embryo.

That assumes that pregnancy is the same as slavery, which is just ridiculous.

It’s 40 weeks of hard labor.  If it’s not voluntary (and no, having consensual sex is not “volunteering”), it’s slavery.

Hard, dangerous labor that will, in many cases, have lifelong health effects, I should say.

That assumes that pregnancy is the same as slavery, which is just ridiculous.

Is it, really?  The difference between a free person and a slave is nothing more than that they are able to act of their own volition.  If women are free to choose whether they will be pregnant they are–by definition–free persons (agents, technically).  If their volition is removed by the State they are then–by definition–slaves (chattle, technically) of the State for that period of time.  Is this too difficult for you?

“Is it, really?  The difference between a free person and a slave is nothing more than that they are able to act of their own volition.  If women are free to choose whether they will be pregnant they are–by definition–free persons (agents, technically).  If their volition is removed by the State they are then–by definition–slaves (chattle, technically) of the State for that period of time.  Is this too difficult for you?”

Except pregnant women aren’t deprived of any basic rights by simply being pregnant. They can still vote, speak freely, travel, etc. Slaves are deprived of all their basic rights. Huge difference.

PS: Try being a parent and NOT giving your child physical resources (food, for instance) and see how long it takes for child protective services to show up!

So if a pregnant woman doesn’t want to care for her embryo, she can call EPS and have it transferred into a foster uterus. Oh, wait.

Except pregnant women aren’t deprived of any basic rights by simply being pregnant. They can still vote, speak freely, travel, etc.

1. Right to medical care
2. Right to travel
3. Right to freedom from involuntary servitude
Take your pick. I’ve got more.

Huh? Being pregnant makes you non-human? That doesn’t make much sense!

You’re the one arguing that the only human being in the equation is the embryo, so only its needs should be taken into account. 

Again, if we stick with your metaphor, it’s not the pregnant woman who’s the slave:  it’s the fetus.  So are all children slaves to their parents who need to be freed from that bondage?  Isn’t making your child do its homework the moral equivalent of slavery?  What if you have a farm—isn’t making your child help with farm chores exactly like slavery?  You’re forcing that child to provide free labor in exchange for meals and shelter.  That sounds like an exact description of American slavery circa 1850.

If your argument is that the fetus is a slave to the pregnant woman and its needs must be paramount over hers, then all children are enslaved by their parents and need to be freed from that oppression.  It would be just as morally wrong to send your child to its room for a time-out as it would be to get an abortion because, in both instances, you’re exerting force over the child to do what you want.

So when are you going to call for all children to be freed from the enslavement of their parents, not just unborn ones?

My friends and family who have actual kids (as opposed to blastocysts) uniformly joke that parenthood is a state of voluntary servitude. The term “voluntary” implies choice, and Roe v. Wade allows for that choice.

BTW, I note EricJG still hasn’t answered my question @4:02—always a dilemma for pseudo-libertarians, admitting they actually believe in an invisible sky daddy.

I never said that! You’re a fuckin’ LIAR.

You used the term “homicide”—generally understood in legal terms as the killing of a human being (from the Latin homicidium—homo “human being” and caedere “to kill”). Your use of that term implies that a zygote or blastocyst is the equivalent of a fully cognizant human being.

So I’m afraid you’re the liar, or (always an option with you) ignorant.

Also, calm down with the profanity—it makes the baby Jeebus cry.

What I said was because it is a human in the making, it deserves SOME considedation. You give it zero. There is lots of room between all and nothing.

And yet that’s not what you said.  This is what you said:

here are many homocides that I believe should be murder, but are called something else. The important part is the killings will stop or at least slowed down. 40 million is enough already

Either you really believe that abortion is murder—in which case aborting a 6-week embryo is exactly the same as murdering a three-year-old child and should carry the same penalties—or you believe that it’s not murder but a lesser offense of some kind, which undercuts your moral rhetoric about killing babies.

What I said was because it is a human in the making, it deserves SOME considedation.

So, Franklin, is a sperm.

I don’t think a newborn can “object” to being killed, either.

Eric, throughout history, newborns have not been considered human.  Infanticide has been the number one way of controlling the population

Nowadays, of course, we have contraception.  And insititutional adoption.  And taxes which can stretch to looking after babies who are not wanted by their parents.

And so we’ve allowed ourselves to indulge in our sentiments.  Everybody likes the itty bitty babies, and no-one wants to see them killed.  I don’t mind pretending a baby is a human being - it doesn’t hurt anyone.

There’s a difference between a baby and a fetus.  It has something to do with the very real human being wrapped around the latter.

“There’s a difference between a baby and a fetus.  It has something to do with the very real human being wrapped around the latter.”

Come on Phoenician!  You know when you buy something and bring it home, the package it came in is the first thing tossed.  In EricJG and Franklin’s world, when it comes to that spanking new proto-human, the same thing applies…

Oh, Frankie, tsk, tsk you horrible potty mouth.

What I said was because it is a human in the making, it deserves SOME considedation. You give it zero. There is lots of room between all and nothing.

YOU, sir, are the one that said that if it were up to you, you’d make abortion triable as murder.  Didn’t you.  YOU, sir are the liar.  If you would try it as murder that makes the zygote the equivalent of a three year old (or thirty year old).  No?

QED

“So if a pregnant woman doesn’t want to care for her embryo, she can call EPS and have it transferred into a foster uterus. Oh, wait.”

So, she should kill it instead?

I guess one of my problems is I see a distinct lack of sympathy or compassion for the unborn baby being killed. It’s basically “It’s MY baby, it’s inside MY body, it’s MY property, and I can do whatever I want with it because it’s all about ME, ME, ME!” Lotta selfishness going on there.

I mean, seriously, even if you don’t want to concede it’s a human being, can’t you at least admit it’s a living creature with at least some rights? Drown a kitten, and you might go to jail for animal cruelty. But stick a knife in the back of a baby’s skull and suck out its brains, and it’s a “Sacred Constitutional Right”.

“Eric, throughout history, newborns have not been considered human.  Infanticide has been the number one way of controlling the population”

And that was the “history” that condoned gladiator fights and crucifixion. Fortunately, we have advanced somewhat since then. However, if you want to return to the days of Caligula to support killing unborn babies, then have at it.

PS If you want to support killing newborns as a way of defending abortion, then I suspect you “friends” here will not support you, assuming you have any in the first place.

“I don’t mind pretending a baby is a human being”

And that’s a very revealing statement. It suggests a sociopath, a predator who doesn’t care about babies or women, but who is perfectly happy to use “abortion rights” as an excuse for f*cking any random girl who comes your way, and not having to face the consequences. In an earlier debate, Jesurgislac accused you of being a “rape apologist troll”. At the time, I was inclined to defend you, on the grounds that it was an unwarranted slander. Now, I’m more inclined to think she had you pegged exactly right.

“I don’t mind pretending a baby is a human being”

And that’s a very revealing statement. It suggests a sociopath, a predator who doesn’t care about babies or women,

Or, on the other hand, it suggests someone who has considered precisely what makes an entity a “human being”.

EricJG

I you will look back you will find that the laws recognized that the fetus had a different status before it “quickened.”  Do some study.  Read Roe.

“It’s basically “It’s MY baby, it’s inside MY body, it’s MY property, and I can do whatever I want with it because it’s all about ME, ME, ME!” Lotta selfishness going on there.”

This statement says a lot a about that you think women’s role should be (mainly submissive and constantly self-sacrificing).  If we are vocal in defending our most basic of rights you call it selfishness when all it is is a simple refusal to give our bodies over to state control.  Call it selfishness if you want, but women are whole people with the right to decide for ourselves, whether you like it or not.

Of course EricJG can only see sex from the perspective of a man raping a woman, as I’m sure he sees women as mindless vessels to receive His sperm and provide His pleasure.  So abortion can’t be about women at all, since they don’t count.  It can only be about men raping women and then not being forced to raised a child, because we all know that the only thing women want is to have a baby to tie down a man that she can leech off of for the rest of his life.  It never occurred to him that some women might not want to have a baby right now, because it would effect their own life in a negative way.

If you can consider a one-week embryo to be a person, why not sperm and eggs?  Those are both potential people if everything goes right.  And why don’t you consider apple seed to be trees?  Also, if you care about life so much, what about those people who are dieing because you have not donated your blood and extra kidney to them?  Why don’t you care about those lives?  I have asked both of these questions many times and I have never heard even an attempt at an answer from any anti-abortion person.

But stick a knife in the back of a baby’s skull and suck out its brains, and it’s a “Sacred Constitutional Right”.

Eric, what you’re describing is an intact dilation and extraction, one of the safer methods of late-term abortion that is now illegal.

I know that you don’t even like to think about the woman involved here, but try.  What is your image of her?  Is she some stupid slut who just spent the last eight months pregnant, but suddenly decided that she wanted to abort a perfectly healthy, viable fetus so she could fit into an evening gown tonight?

If so, I’d like to welcome you to real life.  Late-term abortions are extremely rare, and they only happen when the pregnancy is doomed, or the woman’s health or life is at risk.  Please replace the callous slut in your mind with a woman who wanted a baby very much, but has been told that the fetus’s spinal column never closed, and would, if born, be doomed to an extremely short life of hopeless agony.  Or that the fetus’s vastly oversized skull has nothing but fluid in it, carrying to term will probably kill her and there’s no hope of an actual, living baby in any case.

Once, the procedure you described would have been the safest way to deal with these tragedies.  Now, thanks to the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, other, more dangerous methods - c-section, cutting the fetus to pieces - must be used, further risking the woman’s health and fertility. 

So congratulations.  The anti-choice movement has failed to save a single baby, but has successfully guaranteed that more women will suffer and die.

I guess one of my problems is I see a distinct lack of sympathy or compassion for the unborn baby being killed. It’s basically “It’s MY baby, it’s inside MY body, it’s MY property, and I can do whatever I want with it because it’s all about ME, ME, ME!” Lotta selfishness going on there.

It’s true, we have a lot less sympathy for the shapeless blob of cells without even a nervous system to call its own than we do for a full-grown woman.  We’re just quirky like that. 

Know what else is quirky?  The fact that you think women wanting control over their own bodies is selfish.

I mean, seriously, even if you don’t want to concede it’s a human being, can’t you at least admit it’s a living creature with at least some rights? Drown a kitten, and you might go to jail for animal cruelty.

Once again, note that your kitten isn’t living inside somebody’s body.  There are a lot of creatures that do, or at least can.  Oddly enough, we generally purge them as quickly as possible when they try.  I don’t see you arguing that ticks and tapeworms have a right to feed on our bodies, and they at least have fully-developed (albeit primitive) nervous systems.

PS If you want to support killing newborns as a way of defending abortion, then I suspect you “friends” here will not support you, assuming you have any in the first place.

Oh, PIATOR is about thirty-one different flavors of asshole, and there are times when he definitely tries our patience.  In the end, though, he’s OUR asshole, and his assholery can be a thing of beauty when it’s pointed in the right direction.  Like at you.

“I don’t mind pretending a baby is a human being”

And that’s a very revealing statement. It suggests a sociopath, a predator

Or that he’s mocking the shit out of you, which you thoroughly deserve.

I don’t see why killing newborns is anything like abortion.  Once the baby is born, it is no longer living off my body, and I have the option of allowing someone else to care for it if I can’t do it myself or don’t want to.  If you could take an embryo out of my body and put it in external incubator, or even into another person who is willing to have it, then it would be a better, but still bad, analogy.  A fertilized egg is not a newborn.  That’s why women don’t have funerals over all of their menstrual products.

but who is perfectly happy to use “abortion rights” as an excuse for f*cking any random girl who comes your way, and not having to face the consequences.

Women just do not exist as active agents in your world, do they?  No possibility that a woman might actually want to have sex, or might not want to have a baby.  Just men who fuck them and then - what, force them to have an abortion? - to avoid the consequences (btw, thanks for once again illustrating that so-called “pro-lifers” really just want to punish people for fucking). 

Incidentally, where does this idea come from among you anti-choicers - I’ve seen it in arguments about Plan B, as well - that the surest way to prevent men from sexually preying on women is to make sure that the women get pregnant?  It’s more than a little disturbing, because once again, you’re completely ignoring what the woman in the situation might feel.

Also, when it comes to actual abortion practices, you won’t find very many that involve any type of sharp implement.  You are obviously trying to be as graphic and crude as possible for rhetorical purposes, but it is terribly dishonest.  What equipment is actually involved in 97% of all actual abortions?  I’m glad you asked! 

There is a series of narrow metal rods used to open up the cervix to maybe the width of a bic pen, a plastic tube of roughly the same size, and a hand-held thing that is a lot like a large syringe and is used to produce suction manually.  If a machine is used, it is similar to the suction machine used by your dentist to drain spit out of your mouth.  It all takes 5-10 minutes.  Not the stabbing and scraping and super-suction that dishonest anti-choicers like to pretend it is.

And as far as “stabbing the baby in the head,” I would liket to point out that the vast majority of aborted embryos don’t have anything like a head.  It is not uncommon for women to be told, after their pre-abortion untrasound, that they have to come back in a week or two because the embryo is so small that it is barely visible to the human eye, and it is not safe to do a surgical abortion unless you can see the embryo to confirm that it was successfully removed.

No scary exotic instruments, no body parts, none of that stuff that people like Frank and Eric like to talk about for some sort of sick shock value.

“That’s why women don’t have funerals over all of their menstrual products.”

No, that’s because you’re all SELFISH!!!11111!!!! You clearly need some liberRepublicantarian troll instruction on the matter. Given their powers of persuasion as evidenced here, I expect these to become usual events.

I think I’d wear my gray suit to a tampon funeral, but I have no idea what tie would be appropriate.

Mi cuerpo es mio - My body is mine - is one of the most fundamental human rights.  That should end the debate right there.

But there are always assholes who just can’t abide the idea that some person might do something they don’t like.  We call those people Conservatives.

Thanks EricJG and Franky “I want to” Reigns for continuing to demonstrate that fact…

but who is perfectly happy to use “abortion rights” as an excuse for f*cking any random girl who comes your way, and not having to face the consequences.

Umm, I don’t think you understand the meaning of choice.  Forced abortions are just as bad as forced pregnancies.  If a woman gets pregnant, the man she got pregnant with has no right to force an abortion onto her, and I don’t think any abortion clinics would comply with something like that anyway.  They point of being pro-choice is that a woman can choose to have an abortion, or she can choose to continue her pregnancy. 

Even if it were the case that all women want babies to tie a man down and all men just want to essentially rape women and get away with it, condoms would still be much more effective and easy for them than forced abortions.

“So, in your mind aborting 23 minutes before birth while the child is inside the womb is OK with you and should not be illegal?
But killing the same child 2 minutes later just after birth is a murder?”

If there was a ticking (nuclear) time bomb and a nun and some orphans were the only people who knew the secret disarming code, would you waterboard them to death to get that secret and save millions of American lives?

(I mean, if you’re going to make up ridiculous scenarios, don’t hold back.  Much more entertaining that way…)

So, in your mind aborting 23 minutes before birth while the child is inside the womb is OK with you and should not be illegal?

But killing the same child 2 minutes later just after birth is a murder?

Yes, this is a perfect description for actual abortions (sarcasm for those who can’t tell, like Franklin).  On the other hand, why is it ok to kill sperm and eggs, but not that same sperm and egg 1 second after they have united?  Sorry honey, but there’s just no clear-cut black-and-white answer here.  So rather than create an artificial line like conservatives are so prone to do, you should accept that life isn’t all absolutes.  When there is a gray area, we have to value the rights of humans to control over their own bodies.  We couldn’t have the state mandate use of body parts, even if it were to save the life of an actual person.  Actually, I would absolutely support an abortion 23 minutes before birth if the birth risked the mother’s health.  In fact, it is not unheard of to perform somewhat destructive procedures on a fetus that has no chance of long-term survival, so that the birth can go more easily.  An example is draining fluid from the skull of a fetus that has holoprosencephaly, which is a condition where the brain does not develop past the brain stem, and the baby has no chance of survival beyond a few days.

So, in your mind aborting 23 minutes before birth while the child is inside the womb is OK with you and should not be illegal?

But killing the same child 2 minutes later just after birth is a murder?

Few people would agree with you.

You know, Frankie, it’s funny - we keep presenting you with real-world facts: historical and modern examples of the death and misery it brings when abortion is outlawed; examples of all the ways a pregnancy can go wrong and make a late-term abortion necessary; the ways women’s lives are restricted when they have no control over their own bodies.  You answer this with increasingly bizarre hypothetical scenarios.  I’ve noticed that as part of the larger patter of the pro-choice movement vs. the anti-choice movement. 

And like the larger anti-choice movement, your hypotheticals always remove the pregnant woman from the equation, instead reducing the whole situation to a baby who is inside a womb that is apparently floating in midair all by itself. 

I know that this is a long-ingrained habit for you, but - as I did for Eric - I’m asking you to think about the woman in your scenario for a moment, and then answer me this question:

If she’s 23 minutes from giving birth, this woman has carried the pregnancy to term (the full 40 weeks?), and is actually in labor.  Why does she suddenly need an abortion?

How often do you think that scenario comes up, Frank?  Almost every single abortion is performed WAY before fetal viability, most of those in the first 12 weeks.  And when one is done past the date that would be considered viable in a normal pregnancy, it is because this particular pregnancy is actually non-viable or has in some other way gone terrible wrong.  It is already illegal to do an abortion that late except for in terrible tragic situations almost always involving a very wanted pregnancy.  Roe only protects the right to abort pre-viability so I din’t know what you have your panties in a twist about.

And besides, what does Imaginary Devil Woman Who Aborts 23 Minutes Before Birth Just For Giggles have to do with your average abortion patient who sees the little plus sign on the pregnancy test (at 4 weeks), takes a week to think about it, then makes an appointment for an abortion in her 6th week? Fine, you have found a situation in which most people would object to a specific imaginary abortion but what does that have to do with the real world?

“Apparently, plenty of Devil Women….enough that a federal ban was enacted. Those women though it was jes’ fine.”

Apparently there were plenty of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq…enough that we invaded the country and removed their government.  Those Iraqis thought it was jes’ fine.

Find any?  Well no, but we knowed they was there.  We had guys in GTMO tellin’ us all about ‘em…

Apparently, plenty of Devil Women….enough that a federal ban was enacted. Those women though it was jes’ fine.

Which had nothing to do with the fact that congress, the executive branch, and the Supreme Court were, at that time, dominated by older men who - like yourself - think it’s okay if a few women die as long as they get to make their symbolic gesture against women’s bodily autonomy. 

Now answer my question, you pathetic, snivelling, evasive coward.  Why does the woman that you’ve so desperately tried to write out of your scenario want an abortion when she’s full-term and actually in labor?

Apparently, plenty of Devil Women….enough that a federal ban was enacted. Those women though it was jes’ fine.

Or maybe a bunch of conservatives were oblivious to reality and believed that it was common when it wasn’t.  It kind of reminds me of when people outlawed witchcraft because they thought it was just too common.

Seraph, don’t expect a response from Franklin.  It hurts his little head to actually think about things instead of parroting what someone else has told him.  He still hasn’t answered my question about why it’s ok for the state to mandate that a woman give her body to support something that might become a life eventually, but it’s not ok for the state to mandate that other people donate their kidneys and blood to save actual human lives.

And if your answer is “I don’t know, plenty of devil women seem to do it in the real world, but I can’t fathom their reason - they’re just devil women”, I would like to point out two things:

1) No, in fact, no one gets an abortion when they’re actually in labor.

2) Women who get late-term abortions (at some point before they go into fucking labor, of course) get them because the pregnancy itself is doomed, or their health or life is at risk. 

But we’re not talking about the real world.  We’re talking about whatever scenario you’ve cooked up in your twisted, overheated little mind.  And I want you to expand that scenario beyond the perfectly healthy baby coming out of a disembodied vagina directly onto a waiting death-doctor’s baby-bayonet.  I want to know just what the image is that you have in your head about this woman who’s made it through pregnancy and labor, and suddenly demands that the (surprisingly compliant) doctors abort the baby that she’s actually in the process of delivering.

Do you know anything about the conditions under which late term abortions are done?  Let me explain it in small words so maybe it will get into your tiny brain:

ABORTIONS PAST VIABILITY ARE DONE ONLY FOR A FETUS INCOMPATIBLE WITH LIFE OR IF IT IS THE ONLY WAY TO PREVENT MATERNAL DEATH.  IT ONLY HAPPENS TO WOMEN WHO WANT THE BABY AND IS NEVER EVER EVER ELECTIVE.

Why do you wish extra pain and suffering upon a woman who is already as agonized as can possibly be by the LOSS OF HER WANTED BABY?  The fact that you have so little compassion for these women just makes me so disgusted I could spit.

And in the end, every pregnancy that would have been ended by the banned method is still ended, just by a different method that carries greater risk to the woman.  Not one abortion prevented, more suffering caused to already distressed women who never intended to have an abortion but decided that this course of action was the least painful of a narrow range of unthinkably terrible options.

Keep patting yourself on the back about what a great human being you are for sticking it to distressed mothers of dead babies, you a**hole.

“ABORTIONS PAST VIABILITY ARE DONE ONLY FOR A FETUS INCOMPATIBLE WITH LIFE OR IF IT IS THE ONLY WAY TO PREVENT MATERNAL DEATH.  IT ONLY HAPPENS TO WOMEN WHO WANT THE BABY AND IS NEVER EVER EVER ELECTIVE. “

Not according to the NY Times. There was a piece several years ago, in their Sunday Magazine, where the reporter, who was himself pro-abortion, described witnessing an actual PBA, and he made it quite clear the woman involved was perfectly healthy, as was the baby. And it really was as gruesome as it has been described, and not something the pro-life side just pulled out of one of Stephen King’s nightmares. And he seemed to indicate that this was the norm, not the exception. Since the point of his piece was to support abortion, then it shouldn’t have been to hard to find an instance where it really was medically necessary (since it obviously would have put the “procedure” in a much more sympathetic light, yet for some reason he did not.

I’m very pro-alien, but when I saw an alien autopsy a few years ago it really made me think.  Maybe being pro-alien isn’t such a good idea after all…

***

Last night I had this dream. 

A really creeping looking spidery thing crept up and laid some kind of egg in EricJG and then died.  The egg started growing inside Eric, consuming his organs for nutrients.  As it got bigger and more painful, Eric begged for a doctor to take it out of him.  But none would respond because they believed in the sanctity of life.  Eric shouted and screamed, but no one would listen to his cries.  He tried to take it out himself, but only succeeded in cutting himself and bleeding, but he still couldn’t get the thing out.

Eventually the thing that grew from the egg burst out of Eric, killing him in the process, and then went on to eat a whole bunch of Baptist ministers and Catholic priests who happened to be nearby.  The End…

If the mocking hasn’t given you a clue, Eric: link, or you’re lying.

also, question for all you Forced-Birthers out there.
if you are so GODDAMNED set on making sure EVERY FETUS EVER is born, why the *FUCK* are you not funding research into artificial uteruses?! seriously, this would be THE BEST FUCKING WAY EVER to prevent abortions - and still allows women to enjoy the same rights and protections as men.

I think you answered your own question.  It’s not about saving precious embryos, it’s about punishing and suppressing women.

Dear Frankie the Illiterate Coward:

You should be aware that we take your keyboard-droolings far less seriously until you actually answer our questions.  For example, if it isn’t necessary to protect health or life, why is the devil-woman asking for an abortion when she’s actually in labor?

But, since I consider each thread an opportunity to educate the lurkers:

1) We don’t particularly trust a Republican congress as experts on women’s reproductive health.  For one thing, the health risks they described were inherent in any late-term abortion. 

2) Given that those risks are inherent in any late-term abortion, do you really think that women get them lightly?  There’s a reason that only 1.4% of the abortions performed per year in this country take place after the 20-week mark.  Seriously now - I know you have trouble thinking of women as people, but try. 

3) With 36 states placing legal restrictions on late-term abortion (usually legal only “for the life of the mother”, with that one caveat in place only because of Roe), the AMA recommending that late-term abortions only be performed “in cases of serious fetal anomalies incompatible with life” and people like yourself out there willing to kill doctors who perform abortions, do you really think that devil-woman is going to find a doctor willing to perform the 40-week abortion that she just kinda felt like having?

4) The AMA has been consistently pro-choice, and advocates that the procedure be left up to the discretion of the individual physician. 

5) Life- and health-threatening conditions can develop at any point in pregnancy.  Fact.  Some fetal abnormalities are undetectable until week 24 or so.  Fact.  Late-term abortions are, and will always be necessary.  Whether they’re legal or not is what determines whether or not women die. 

5) I notice that you only mention “preserving the life of the mother”.  Not one shit is given about her health or future fertility.  Duly noted. 

6) Dr. Anne Davis.  While she acknowledges that the total number of late-term abortions performed per year in this country is far too small to perform a study on any particular one, she notes that Intact Dilation and Extraction is the least invasive method, leaves the fewest bone fragments floating around the uterus, etc.

Trying to “engage” Frankie is utterly pointless.

He writes a comment here, shows it to his buddy Beavis, they giggle like children and then he looks for another thread to pollute.  He never discusses in good faith, just drops a turd and ignores people’s responses.  He cares not in least about facts, evidence, logic, reason, etc.

Honestly, he’s one of the lousiest trolls we’ve had in a long time.  But he is persistent.  Kinda like eczema or herpes…

Franklin will never answer any of our questions.  Doing so would require him to think about the issues, which he is clearly averse to doing, if he is even capable of it.  He prefers to parrot talking points that other people have taught him.  Anytime he is faced with a question he has never considered, he simply ignores it and repeats stuff that he has already said.  I am also waiting for answers to answers for several questions I asked, but I expect to be waiting a long time.  I have never even heard an attempt to answer the questions I brought up.

Again, no actual answers, just something that he seems to think in an insult, and one that he has used before.  Seraph, he will never answer your questions or mine.

I’m pretty sure that’s he’s still mad about that time I pointed out that he only trolls here because he is so desperate for attention which he does not get in real life.  I’m sure he’s even more mad because I’m completely right, but still, psychiatrist isn’t an insult unless you’re a Scientologist.

Franklin will never answer any of our questions.

Of course he’ll never answer the questions.  That’s why he’s Frankie the Illiterate Coward.  I just don’t want him to be able to bury it in an endless comment thread.  Like I said, I think of every comment thread as an opportunity to educate the lurkers. 

See, Frankie, you’re illiterate because you didn’t see the name Dr. Anne Davis in my comment.  You’re a coward because you refuse to even answer the fact that late-term abortion is, has been, and will be necessary (that is, if you want to preserve the life and health of pregnant women), and that this “grisly” procedure - actually less grisly than the alternatives, though all surgery is grisly by its very nature - is (or rather, was) one of the safer methods.

Frankie, you realize that ignoring me doesn’t actually make me go away, right?  Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but reality isn’t like your mommy: it doesn’t change its mind when you throw a tantrum and threaten to hold your breath until you turn blue. 

I have named a name.  Dr. Anne Davis, Ob-Gyn, and Assistant Professor of that field at Columbia University.  I’d say that qualifies her as an expert in the field.

Answer this.  We and the lurkers already know that you’re an illiterate coward, but if you keep demanding names when I’ve give you one, we’ll all know you’re a liar.

“Oh, yeah. I remember that one. Surely, everyone remembers that article from the NYT Sunday magazine a few years ago. What year? “

Back in the mid/late 90’s. Sorry, I couldn’t find a link.

“You know- that one guy, the one who really really loves abortion. He loves it so much, he wrote that awesome article detailing all the “gruesome” details of late term abortion. That “gruesome” stuff is soooo cool.”

No. It was written in a dispassionate style, objective and non-judgmental. This was about the time the whole PBA issue was really hot politically, so he went and found a doctor who did the procedure, and asked if he could observe, and he did.

Anyway, the only reason I mentioned it was because, despite all the heat being thrown out at the time, this was the only instance I can remember where someone actually saw a PBA being performed, and then reported on it.

I went to the link you provided. What was there was a promoter of a political agenda and nowhere did it state on the webpage that partial-birth abortion was a necessary procedure.

And once again, Frankie providing his credentials as an illiterate, cowardly liar.  As has been pointed out to you again and again, late-term abortion is, was, and will be necessary (unless you have some magical way guarantee that both women and fetuses can make it safely through pregnancy ever after).  What you refer to as “partial-birth abortion” - an Intact Dilation and Extraction - is simply one method.  One that is generally considered safer than this.  Women can still get late-term abortions, they just need to face greater risks to do so.

BTW, the alternatives to ID&E;all seem pretty grisly, don’t they? 

In any case, if you want to hear what Dr. Davis has to say about ID & E, read this. 

BTW, note that, even as she advocates for ID&E;, she’s saying that physicians “shouldn’t do abortions past the point of viability”.  Does that tell you anything about the circumstances under which even she would be willing to perform a late-term abortion?

That’s ONE, even if you are correct.

I’ve got an ob-gyn.  You’ve got congressmen.  Emphasis on the men.

??

No matter how much Franklin wants it be, calling me a psychiatrist just isn’t an insult.  It’s like getting into a fist fight with someone, and giving them a massage instead of punching them.  I’ve heard better insults from toddlers.  I just don’t know whether to chuckle or feel sorry for him.

I’ve heard better insults from toddlers.

I know.  At least “poopyhead” would be…y’know…a bad thing to be.

I would never give you the name of a specific person because people like you have been known to try to murder pro-choice doctors.  I am not interested in putting anyone’s life in danger at the hands of “pro-life” people.

I would never give you the name of a specific person because people like you have been known to try to murder pro-choice doctors.  I am not interested in putting anyone’s life in danger at the hands of “pro-life” people.

There’s that.  I felt it safe to go with Dr. Davis because she’s already a public figure on this issue.

BTW, note that, even as she advocates for ID&E;, she’s saying that physicians “shouldn’t do abortions past the point of viability”.  Does that tell you anything about the circumstances under which even she would be willing to perform a late-term abortion?

Which, before I forget (you’d like that, wouldn’t you?), brings us back to my original question:

Just why does devil-woman decide that she wants devil-doctor to stick his Baby Bayonet(tm) into her perfectly healthy, viable baby’s skull when she’s already in labor?  I want to know if you can even think of a reason, or if you really do think that women are stupid, irrational sluts and need to be controlled by men lest they hurt themselves on sharp objects and hot surfaces.

So to recap Eric’s view of the situation:

1.  Late term abortions (D&X;) are really common

AND

2.  There are no doctors who support the use of the D&X;abortion method

Who does he imagine is doing this plethotra of abortions, exactly?

Actually, it’s Frankie who’s pushing those two particular lies.

I know.  At least “poopyhead” would be…y’know…a bad thing to be.

Exactly!  I’m wondering if Franklin got so far entrenched into the code words that conservatives love so much, he thinks everything means something else.  So I guess psychiatrist is actually supposed to mean something else.  I don’t know what he means by it and he probably doesn’t either.  Heck, I’d be surprised if he even the actual meaning of the word.

Also, Franklin doesn’t seem to know what analogy is.  Analogies have nothing to do with psychiatry.  From this new information, my guess is that Franklin uses “psychiatrist” to mean “she’s smarter than I am and I don’t like it when I can’t understand simple things that she says, whether they are related to psychiatry or not”.  Someone should give this kid a dictionary (Or he could just find one online before he makes such silly mistakes).

Maybe he’s a scientologist?

Maybe he’s a scientologist?

He must be.  There’s no other explanation.  I guess Franklin is a Scientologist.  That explains a lot.  It could be that he just doesn’t know the meaning of the word he’s using, but nobody is that dumb.

I’m in my 7th decade, and, I like the whole thing.  This type of behavior is what it’s all about, People!  I disagree totally with the anti-Obama crowd, but, it is cool, in my view, and they should do what’s best for them.  Why all the hubbub?  Let it flow.  Peace. Some of you young folks seem to be a bit “uptight” as we used to say.  It’s all good.  Relax.  Aren’t Universities supposed to be place where the free exchange of ideas is rampant?  Burn one and think it over.  Freedom is for everyone in this great Nation.  Even those we disagree with.

Religious devotees claim they alone know what is right and what is wrong. They are supported by the written word of God. But there are those that dispute the validity of Gods word and rely on their own moral compass. Many have had an abortion. They are called heathens. But the right to have an abortion is protected by the constitution. The presidents support of abortion rights is under attack. He will be speaking at Notre Dame despite the anger of those that are devoted to the word of God.