Ouch!

Oh yes, the idea is that you lure people in with cupcakes with slogans implying that babies spring full blown out of men’s penises

Most babies are larger than kidney stones…

This was so disappointing, when I first heard “cupcakes for life” I assumed it was some kind of “-of-the-month” type things. You know, every month, for life, you receive a delicious treat in the mail. Too bad.

Oh, if I remember correctly, impotence is a potential side effect of Type II Diabetes, so maybe the cupcakes are part of the anti-sex plan, by making the sex more difficult?

corwins are little pockets of trollery…

Yeah, I think he’s basically saying, and correct me if I’m wrong, “Being a good foot soldier for wingnuttery, and a person of low moral standards in general, I have no problem taking your jokes out of context in an effort to discredit you. Remember, we are not hemmed in by liberal frippery like ethics in an attempt to silence our enemies.”  Which is a true enough statement, as we all know, but it’s weird to attach it to something like cupcakes.

I’m de-lurking because of that one little smug-ass cupcake that says “Your mom chose life!”  Every time I drive home or drive to visit other family members, I pass this cement company (seriously) that pays to have three anti-choice billboards along 94—one of which is “Smile!  Your mom was pro-life!”  And I want to say, “No, dude, my mom and dad are pro-choice, and that’s why my brothers and I exist.”  My brothers and I are a product of family planning.  Our parents took precautions not to have kids until they were ready, and then after three kids they took precautions not to have anymore because they felt they were done.  And I assume that the fact that they have a happy, functional marriage that’s lasted 35 years doesn’t mean they shut down their sex lives in 1982. 

Also, my parents raised us pro-choice—so my brothers and their wives didn’t have kids until they were ready, and I don’t have kids even though I have had loads of premarital sex.  I’m sure if I ever needed an abortion, my parents would support me emotionally 100%, but because my parents informed me early on of how to take precautions, I haven’t had to do so. 

So that cupcake can kiss my ass.  My mom didn’t “CHOOSE LIFE,” she chose me, my brothers, a career and a happy partnership with my dad.

Just asked this on Facebook: If abortion gives women breast cancer, will Iraq amputees develop colon cancer?

I like the one with the ambiguous slogan, “Let them live”.  What are we allowing to live?  Cupcakes?  Zombies?  Cows being raised for food?  The too-old yogurt and bread in my fridge?

Someone needs to let CakeWrecks know about this, pronto.

“Sex is too risky and evil to even consider doing it, and the only option to…keep yourself safe is to not fuck at all.”

At least until you get married and then sex becomes safe and good (not to mention divine) all on account of cells being able to tell the difference between single and married sex and to adjust their “bonding” hormone release schedules accordingly.

Dammit, now I want a cupcake.

with slogans implying that babies spring full blown out of men’s penises

That sounds PAINFUL!!!  OUCH What’d Robin Williams say about men who think they’re sharing their wife’s child-bearing experience? “Unless you’re passing a bowling ball, I don’t think so.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW7s8TuvZ8U

My partner does the baking in the house, but she pointedly didn’t make cupcakes this weekend.

tigi (7):

I’m sure if I ever needed an abortion, my parents would support me emotionally 100%, but because my parents informed me early on of how to take precautions and I’ve been lucky in that regard, I haven’t had to do so.

Fixed that for ya. But way to call women who have abortions inept.

ema (11):

all on account of cells being able to tell the difference between single and married sex and to adjust their “bonding” hormone release schedules accordingly.

Cells? Hormones? I thought our bodies are made from divinely infused clay breathed on by God.

@Hershele Ostropoler

Oops, that wasn’t my intention.  Sorry.  That’s why I lurk usually, I put my foot in my mouth more often than not.

Hershele Ostropoler,

It goes without saying that “cell/hormone” is a stand-in for divinely infused clay…and cupcakes.

What are we allowing to live?  Cupcakes?  Zombies?

If it were zombies, it would be “Let Them UNlive.”

Pet peeve: you mean “flaunt” - not “flout”, which is sort of the opposite.

The Cupcakes for Life site is down due to bandwidth, but the magic of Google found me the cache, and this is too good not to share:

“Cupcakes were designed with birthdays in mind. However, not everyone has been allowed to be born.”

Despair, cupcake; And let the baker whom thou still hast served Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb Untimely ripp’d.

Act 5, Scene 8

SCENE VIII. Another part of the field.

Enter MACBETH

MACBETH

Why should I play the bakin’ boy, and cut
with my cake knife? whiles I see cakes, the cuts
Do better upon them.

Enter MACDUFF

MACDUFF

Turn, cupcake, turn!

MACBETH

Of all men else I have avoided thee:
But get thee back; my plate is too much charged
With cake of thine already.

MACDUFF

I have no cakes:
My cake is in the oven: thou baker’s reject
That sugar can cover!

They fight

MACBETH

Thou losest frosting:
As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air
With thy cake knife impress as ice my cake:
Let fall thy sugar on softer baked goods;
I bear a charmed cake, which cannot yield,
To one of woman born.

MACDUFF

Despair, cupcake;
And let the baker whom thou still hast served
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb
Untimely ripp’d.

MACBETH

Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,
For it hath cow’d my better part of man!
And be these juggling fiends no more believed,
That palter with us in a double sense;
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope. I’ll not fight with thee.

MACDUFF

Then yield thee, cupcake,
And live to be the show and gaze o’ the time:
We’ll have thee, as our rarer cake wrecks are,
posted on a blog, and underwrit,
‘Here may you see the cupcake.’

MACBETH

I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before young Marcotte’s feet,
And to be baited with the rabble’s curse.
Though Conservapedia be come to Slacktivist,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike cake. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’

Exeunt, frosting. Alarums.

Tigi, great comment. You didn’t put your foot in your mouth. You said that you haven’t had to have an abortion because you knew how to take precautions. That’s true. If you didn’t use contraception, you almost certainly would have gotten pregnant. (Assuming fertility, hetero intercourse, etc.) Sure, there’s an element of good luck. Sometimes unplanned pregnancies happen despite the best protections. But that doesn’t change the fact that good sex ed, conscientiously applied saved you from unplanned pregnancies.

Suppose someone says, “I didn’t have to go to the hospital because I wore my seat belt.” Obviously, they’re lucky the seatbelt didn’t break. They’re lucky the car didn’t explode, which can happen even if you wear your seatbelt. They’re not saying that anyone who has to go to the hospital must be an inept seatbelt scofflaw.

Meanwhile, the pursuit of an all-Texan tradition is causing some health problems as well:

Once a rarity, teenaged mega-players have become a common sight under the Friday night lights. “If you were to weigh the lines of high school football teams, they’re significantly higher in recent years,” said Brian Carr, a physical therapist and trainer at Georgetown High School. “Compared to just 15 years ago, there’s a huge difference.”

Doctors and trainers are reporting increases in certain injuries — stress-related muscle and ligament tears, knee strains and foot fractures — that can be directly attributed to the strains placed on developing bodies by extra bulk. Weight-related medical problems are also beginning to crop up among the giant teenagers.

“Last year and this year, for the first time we had a number of kids failing because of high blood pressure — mostly concentrated in football linemen,” said James Bray, a family medicine physician and sports medicine doctor who has performed thousands of preseason sports physicals in Central Texas. “We’re used to seeing that in adults. But not in teenagers.”

The Texas University Interscholastic League, which monitors public school extracurricular activities including sports, doesn’t track the size of players. But an examination of several team rosters over the years and interviews with coaches, trainers, recruiters and health care professionals show a clear trend: Football players — linemen in particular — who were once merely large are becoming huge.

“When I started, you looked for kids 200 pounds and over,” said Wimberley High School coach Weldon Nelms, who has directed Texas football teams for a quarter-century. “Now we’ve got 200-pound quarterbacks. (For linemen) we’re looking for 250, 275 and over.”

Link

Amanda, I’m with you on that last comment, but more importantly, “seatbelt scofflaws” would be an awesome name for a band.  They’d be kind of like a latter-day Mothers of Invention, or maybe a toned-down Devo.

It is times like this that I feel blessed I didn’t inherit my father’s sweet tooth and can pass on many sweets during parties and social gatherings, especially when so many sweet pastries and cakes tend to be way too sweet for my palate. 

Antis can use illogical, bizzaro arguments to suggest that the best way to be a manly man is to minimize the amount of fucking in your life, but I’m afraid the pro-sex brigade is just going to win the popular vote on this one.

Good point. 

However, among most males…including religious ones that I grew up with, being manly meant having as much sex with different women as possible.  As a reaction to this along with hearing stories about the harsh childhoods of my parents and older relatives in 1930s-1950’s China/Taiwan and China till the end of the Cultural Revolution in the mid-late 1970’s, I’ve been more inclined to believe that being able to deny pleasures of live to extremes was more like it for myself.  A factor in why I didn’t date in college and why I still have issues over spending money on “nonessential fun” things for myself even when it is well within my financial means.

And by “Amanda,” I obviously mean “Lindsay.”  Whoops; sorry!

tigi @ 7: Word. I would not exist if my mother wasn’t pro-choice; she had an abortion as a teenager, and had she not had one, she almost certainly wouldn’t have had the opportunity to fall in love with and have sex with my father.

That being said, she wasn’t married when she got pregnant with me, and she was given the opportunity to have an abortion. She said no. Because she *wanted* me. And that’s the other part of being pro-choice. If your mom is pro-choice, you *know* you were wanted before you were born. And since my mother was adopted and has suffered much of her life with feelings of low self-esteem that attach to her feeling that her bio-mom didn’t want her, I think that the root-deep knowledge that your mother wanted you to be born is a very powerful thing… and in itself may help to inoculate you against religion and people seeking to break you down and remake you in their preferred image.

See, if your mother didn’t want you, but was forced to have you, you may feel like you have to seek the image of the accepting parent who actively chose for you to be born elsewhere, and since your mother was weak because she was female and women can be forced into pregnancies they don’t want, logically the parent figure who actively chose your existence has to have been male. But your actual father probably didn’t want you any more than your mother did, and had even less power over your creation, so you have to fixate on some made-up male omnipotent being who can be your all-powerful loving daddy. If your mother wanted you and actively chose you, this isn’t necessary; you don’t need to justify the suffering you caused your mother by claiming that someone who doesn’t exist really did want you to be. You can simply say “My mom had the choice to have me or not, and she chose to have me. Therefore I know I was wanted and desired before I was born.”

That’s a boost to the self-esteem and a powerful knowledge to have about oneself that makes it harder for religious memes to get their hooks in you, especially the kind of religious memes that hate women and say that people in general are worthless and can only be redeemed by the love of God. Just as there is no good atheistic/agnostic argument against abortion, abortion gives more people the right to be atheistic/agnostic. They must resent those of us whose mothers actively chose us *so badly* that we have never had to question our mother’s desire for us to exist. Because how can anyone be truly happy if deep down they suspect that they exist solely by the nonconsensual torment of the person they loved unconditionally when they were a baby? How could you ever feel loved if you feel like, if your mom had had the choice she would have never had had you? I think this has been the root of much of my own mother’s suffering in her life, and at least she was adopted, so she should have been able to feel that *someone* wanted and loved her enough to jump through hoops to be her mother and father… but that feeling that her bio-mother didn’t want her has left her feeling insecure about love for nearly her entire life.

(I also for this reason feel strongly about ending all stigma on unwed pregnancy or teen pregnancy and about promoting open adoption. If a woman has been given the choice to abort or have a baby, the free choice to raise the child herself or give it up for adoption in the knowledge that she will have the opportunity to know the child in the future, and she chooses adoption, and her child has the opportunity to *know* that, I think the outcomes for the child will be a lot happier than if the child thinks her mother had no choices in the matter or if her mother didn’t want her or didn’t want her to be born.)

My mother wasn’t pro-life, either. She was pro-choice, and chose *ME*. And she is a real person I can have conversations with, not some projection of the parent I wish I had living up in the sky, not anything I can touch or have verbal discussions with. And I can’t help but think that makes me much more secure in my place in the universe than people who feel like their mothers had to be forced into having them and have to imagine the parent they wish they had and make up conversations with that being.

Pretty weak argument, I say.  One can be pro-life and enjoy an occasional dessert, even one made of sugar.

@Left Wing Fox: I don’t know much a whole lot about the Quakers, other than their pro-peace stance, but the only religious people I’ve come across so far that are truly “pro-life” are Buddhists.

What offends me about the “Your mother chose life” crap is that it presumes that all pregnancies are unplanned and unwanted.  My parents very much planned for me.  In fact, since my father had fertility issues, they had to go out of their way to conceive.

Hmmm. I find I can agree with all* of those cupcakes.

I’d love it if this country was more about “Protect Life.” Particularly if it was more about protecting the lives of people without health insurance and resources. Also would like it if we protected the lives of people in countries we’ve invaded, bombed, etc.

I’m all about the pro-life, which is why I’m all about the pro-choice. The ability of the anti-abortion folks to co-opt the concept of “life” is one of their greatest marketing victories, and it annoys the hell out of me.

* Except the God Loves Kids one, but only because I can’t imagine ascribing preferences to a deity whose existence remains a question mark in my mind. Also, I only really *heart* babies when they’re cute and someone else’s responsibility. I prefer them to be taken away from my presence before they start with all the noise and bodily functions.

The thing that offends me, keshimeshi, is that these people don’t in point of fact want women to “choose life,” because that implies the possibility of choosing otherwise. They want us to have no choice.

...They don’t care about your health, or about the dangers of risky behavior.  Because if they did, they sure as hell wouldn’t be handing out cupcakes, which are little pockets of risk in and of themselves.  There’s no such thing as a condom you can wrap over a cupcake to keep the refined sugar from doing its thing to your pancreas.  If you develop Type II diabetes, there’s no quick outpatient surgery like an abortion to fix the problem.  The argument for abstaining from cupcakes is much stronger than the argument for abstaining from sex. If you get herpes, the worst effects are that it’s occasionally uncomfortable and you have to tell your partners, which is embarrassing.  But diabetes could result in amputations, loss of movement, loss of sexual desire/ability to perform, and even death.  If anti-choicers really believe that the risks of sex are too high to bear, and that you should simply abstain, then they shouldn’t be hypocrites about this.  The risks of eating sweets are way too high to bear, and they should also preach abstinence for that…

Now wait just a doggone minute…I thought the idea was to cultivate an ability to withstand moral panic (because it can be more seductive and wilier and harder to resist than either ses or food, and because it’s certainly more potentially damaging), not to replace anti-sex moral panic with anti-food moral panic. 

I bet more Americans get fat because they think of eating as the gateway to corruption (which is also the way a lot of us look at sex) and fall into raptures of self-loathing and remorse at the mere thought, let alone the taste, of sweets, than put on weight because they eat doughnuts for breakfast or finish off lunch with desert.  Fall into raptures over anything, even negative raptures, and you won’t be able to control your relationship to the thing that’s got you knocked for a loop.  Turn down two cupcakes with a sneer tonight, and you’ll be scarfing down at least one bag of Doritos before the week is over.  This is something I’ve had personal experience with, believe me.  I know whereof I speak.

This is also why (IMO) educating kids to be abstinent does not reduce the rate at which they engage in sex, but rather has the opposite effect.  Education for abstinence is education which says: since you can’t be expected to control yourself in the face of temtation, your only alternative is to shun what gives you pleasure, and to shun it all the time, for the rest of your life.  (Good luck with that, incidentally.)  The jury is in by now and has been in for millenia: people absolutely will not stop doing things they like to do, and telling people that doing things they like to do defiles them only puts them in the postion (should they believe it) of being Sinners, which ultimately renders them manipulable and pathetic.  Worse yet, if you’re officially a Sinner, the last thing you’re going to do is stop Sinning, since that would deprive you of the only identity you have left.

What offends me about the “Your mother chose life” crap is that it presumes that all pregnancies are unplanned and unwanted.

That some pregnancies are planned is part of what offends these people. Pregnancies are supposed to be god’s plan, not yours. You’re supposed to fuck your husband whenever he wants you to until he has an orgasm, and let god take care of the rest. Planning a pregnancy implies that you know what you want better than god does and you’re trying to exert blasphemous control over your life.

I simply quoted you.

And that was as far as you could be bothered to go. No mockery, attempt at a clever comment, not even a “shorter” misinterpretation. You just assumed anyone with half a brain would appreciate your point and not find you nonsensical. What a lazy, unworthy opponent you are. You deserve to fall on your own sword as often as you do.

Corwin had a point? I thought he hit Blaspheme too soon or something. WTF was his point?

This post is probably the stupidest argument in support of abortion. Ever.

Lindsey Beyerstein (23):

Suppose someone says, “I didn’t have to go to the hospital because I wore my seat belt.” Obviously, they’re lucky the seatbelt didn’t break. They’re lucky the car didn’t explode, which can happen even if you wear your seatbelt. They’re not saying that anyone who has to go to the hospital must be an inept seatbelt scofflaw

I’m a lot happier about even potentially stigmatizing people who don’t wear seatbelts than people who have abortions.

But I shouldn’t have snapped at tigi. While I stand by the position, I regret and apologize for the attitude.

Progressive_Prince (38):

This post is probably the stupidest argument in support of abortion. Ever.

Corwin, you should be learning from this one.

There’s a picture somewhere of a toddler at an anti-choice rally wearing a shirt that says, “My mom was pro-life.” Every time I see it, I want to buy my toddler a shirt that says, “My mom wanted me.” It does seem a little mean though. It’s not that little kid’s fault that his mother is willing to admit she was forced to have him.

holy crap, is THAT what happened to them?:

“sex outside of marriage makes your genitals rot off”

geez, i thought i just left them in the locker room at the Y or something. the things i learn on this site!

when i was but a young sprout, i was taught to mind my own business, that it was considered bad form to stick my nose in where it didn’t belong. as a consequence, it just has never occured to me to assume that i, or the state in my name, should have any legitimate reason to insert myself into the private matters between a person and their doctor. not my business.

apparently, these people were never taught good manners.

Bekabot, I get why the wingnuts in this thread don’t get that my tongue is firmly planted in my cheek—-being fucking morons gets them every time—-but surely you realize I’m goofing, right? I ate a cookie while writing this. Like sex and alcohol, one can and should indulge safely in eating sweet things.

Ah yes… the standard “I was just joking” defense.

R-i-g-h-t. Sure you were.

Really, I believe you.

Prince, well it probably is bad for you to sublimate your sexual desires into eating do much crap you get sick. I realize that your loathsome personality makes it hard to find willing partners, but masturbation is still better for you than mainlining sugar.

Adolph Hitler tells us, “Humanitarianism is the expression of stupidity and cowardice.”

And what do our trolls say to this?

Progressive Prince wrote, “I believe you.”

corwin: “I…quoted you.”

Prince, well it probably is bad for you to sublimate your sexual desires into eating do much crap you get sick.

Wow. You just managed to write something even dumber than your post. Congrats.

Well, they don’t have arguments, so they have to try to be smug and hope that’s distracting enough. They can’t deny that sweets are bad for you and that blood-pumping hot sex is good for you, or that the anti-sex brigade in general is opposed to good health for people they consider unworthy (sexually active single women, poor people, etc.).  So they just snit and figure that’s enough.

See what I mean?  Prince keeps insisting that what I say is “stupid”, without actually bothering to explain why he thinks eating a lot of sweets is better for you than giving your heart a decent workout.  Because there is no argument there, and he’s hoping a liberal application of assholery will distract us.

Ok Marcott.

You need to be careful here. You don’t want to engage me with arguments - you want to stick to your simple ad hominem - which your post above illustrates you have trouble with as it is.

The reason for this is simple: you will lose. Trust me - don’t pursue this and embarrass yourself further in front of your moronic horde of disciples.

Example: take what you just did. You just claimed in this thread that your original post was “tongue-in-cheek” and now you appear, minutes later, to earnestly want me to explain to you why thinking the right wing is engaged in some type of misogynistic conspiracy to destroy women through the propagation of cupcakes is wrong.

You can’t have it both ways - either you were just “goofing” when you wrote:

“sweets are bad for you and that blood-pumping hot sex is good for you, or that the anti-sex brigade in general is opposed to good health for people they consider unworthy (sexually active single women, poor people, etc.).

Or you weren’t.

Get your damned story straight - or is this asking to much of you?

Whoop, we’ve got a live one here!  “Ad hominem!” 

Okay, only a real idiot would think that I actually argued that there’s a misogynist conspiracy.  I mean, how stupid do you have to be?

I did, however, suggest it was a funny counterpoint for pro-choicers to take the pro-health side, and it was fitting, as we are in fact the side of this debate that is pro-health.  We’re pro-sexual health, sure, but that tends to fit into a larger pro-health agenda.  This was a tongue-in-cheek, fanciful way of pointing that out.  I never said that there was a “conspiracy” to give people diabetes.  However, there is an aggressive indifference to the actual health of real human being displayed by anti-choicers, and an active movement to increase the STD and unintended pregnancy rate, which are euphemistically called the “consequences” of sex that antis routinely suggest should come back, in that they teach you not to be a naughty, naughty girl.  Because they can’t spank you personally, I guess.

But no, no one is suggesting that they want you get diabetes.  In part, because overeating is the one vice that the wingnutteria seems not to give a shit about, except when suggesting that people who do develop diabetes and aren’t approved Americans should just die from lack of health care.

But you keep threatening to marshal all this evidence for the argument that shoveling sweets is good for you and regular cardio isn’t, but you can’t seem to cough it up.  Stop threatening!  Start showing the goods.  I’m really curious to see why you think that a country that’s undersexed, sedentary, and overeating really is better than one that’s sparkling with the health borne from a good diet, regular exercise, and a healthy approach to human sexuality focused on safety and pleasure.

“Trust me - don’t pursue this and embarrass yourself further in front of your moronic horde of disciples.”

Huh?  As one of Amanda’s “moronic horde of disciples”, Prince Asshole, fuck right off…
(...and I need to have a stern conversation with the horse you rode in on too…)

(Basic blog etiquette for noobs:  Get to know the blog before you start spouting off about things you obviously don’t understand, and thereby letting everyone know you’re just a troll who should be ignored… unless that was your goal all along…)

Yeah, reread the post, and all I said was the the argument for not eating cupcakes is stronger than the argument for not having sex.  But that doesn’t actually mean that I think you shouldn’t eat cupcakes.  What it means is I think that the argument for abstaining from sex is that weak.  I realize that’s a rhetorical device that requires a very small amount of cleverness to understand, and that’s why it won’t work on 5-year-olds or wingnuts.  But the intended audience gets it.  It’s a lot like saying, “Hanging out with conservatives is less fun than getting your foot run over by a car.”  That doesn’t mean you think getting your foot run over by a car is fun.

You need to be careful here. You don’t want to engage me with arguments - you want to stick to your simple ad hominem - which your post above illustrates you have trouble with as it is.

The reason for this is simple: you will lose. Trust me - don’t pursue this and embarrass yourself further in front of your moronic horde of disciples.

Wow, this one is scary. I’m glad I’m not the one pissing him off; I bet he could totally kick my ass with the massive power of the arguments he would totally make if provoked enough.

Seriously, just quit teasing and put out. Make your argument and show us how smart you are. Posing does you no favors.

I never said that there was a “conspiracy” to give people diabetes… However, there is an aggressive indifference to the actual health of real human being displayed by anti-choicers, and an active movement to increase the STD and unintended pregnancy rate, which are euphemistically called the “consequences” of sex

I see. So you’re not crazy enough to think there is some type of conspiracy afoot - you just think “anti-choicers” are engaged in an active movement to give people AIDS camouflaged by sinister web of euphemisms.

conspiracy [kənˈspɪrəsɪ]
n pl -cies
1. a secret plan or agreement to carry out an illegal or harmful act, esp with political motivation; plot
2. the act of making such plans in secret

Yes. You have demontrated that you seriously believe that one right wing organization giving out cupkakes is further evidence of an active movement/conspiracy to harm women for a political purpose.

Yes, you are nuts.

But you know, don’t shy away from it. Live it. Love it. It’s you- it’s just how you roll.

So explain to me why it is less arbitrary to pick the point of birth as the moment of inclusion with humanity vice conception.  A baby 10 minutes after birth doesn’t have any meaningfully different qualities than the fetus 10 minutes before birth.  But the killing of one is abortion, the other practically universally decried as murder.  Even at three months of age a baby doesn’t have any characteristics that meaningfully differentiate it from other mammals.  Why shouldn’t we delay the inclusion into humanity until the baby can pass tests for sentience, sapience, et cetera.  Or we could go further with a political basis that they aren’t human until they reach the age of majority.

It seems the ‘wingnuts’ are at least consistent in their preferred version of reality (as it relates to abortion), however irrational creationism and other such nonsense may be, on the whole.  You can’t really argue that conception is a completely different arrangement than sperm and ova.  There’s not much difference in arrangement between a late term abortion and a newborn baby.

ahem “... that conception isn’t a completely…”

Oh, silly me: I thought the cupcakes were made FROM babies, not FOR them. Yeah, that argument is lame.

>in support of abortion
>Progressive_Prince
>Progressive
lolol

So explain to me why it is less arbitrary to pick the point of birth as the moment of inclusion with humanity vice conception.

How many reasons do you want?

1. No one knows when conception happens. Birth is obvious.
2. Much higher chance of survival after birth than after conception.
3. After a baby’s birth, it is not attached to a person with rights.
4. Irrelevant; entities that are definitely people do not have the rights anti-choicers would like to award to embryos.

I’ve got more.

There’s not much difference in arrangement between a late term abortion and a newborn baby.

Besides that, in all reality-based situations, one is dead or will die within hours of birth, and the other is alive?

I’m so glad Hephaeston could come here and enlighten us Dirty Hippie, Left-of-Lefty, SocioFascist libruls with the same old anti-woman bullshit the Anti-Choicers have been using for decades. 

Without that impeccably-reasoned argument, none of us would ever know that allowing a grown, adult woman to have any degree of control over her reproductive capability is more evil than torturing real, living human beings, or morally worse than killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in some other country just because we want their oil.

Hey, thanks for the sharing the stark white light of moral clarity!...

I really like number 3, Rebecca.  That is an important distinction.  But it leads to other interesting considerations.  Like, is a 3 year old not financially, emotionally, and in every way but physically, still attached to the parent?  The parent is then compelled to comply with societies assessment of what proper provisions are for the care of a child.  Responsibilities that are not there prior to birth.

As for numero uno, there’s a big hormonal, testable, change shortly (within 24 hrs iirc) after conception.  All the stuff telling the uterus not to start menstruation as usual.  Obviously not as apparent to everyone involved as a baby popping out.  So yes, lends to the less arbitrary part somewhat.

#2:  Why does mortality have anything to do with justice?  I mean unless there are more babies needing delivered/sonograms given than ob/gyns are available in some sort of weird bumper baby crop triage scenario.

#4 ... I don’t think it’s irrelevant.  What is the philosophical justification for birth being the start of human…hood?  That’s more what I was trying to get at by implying comparisons between platypuses and infants.

Yeah, so the majority (vast, I presume) of people that want a late-term abortion aren’t getting it 2/3 of the way through their third trimester.  Law, though, is made on the exceptions, to be orderly and just, it needs to deal with them.

So yeah, hone in on the distinction with more reasons, unless you can see the crux of the issue already.

You’ve got me all wrong MikeEss, completely wrong category.  Think Atlas Shrugged and refocus your condescension.

“Think Atlas Shrugged and refocus your condescension.”

If I misread you, my bad.  But bringing Atlas Shrugged into it doesn’t help your argument look any better…

A baby 10 minutes after birth doesn’t have any meaningfully different qualities than the fetus 10 minutes before birth.

Sure, if you consider breathing, digestion, excretion, etc. insignificant there’s practically no way to tell them apart. If, on the other hand, you use reality as a point of reference, delivery is essential in order for a neonate to acquire the listed functions.

...all I said was the the argument for not eating cupcakes is stronger than the argument for not having sex.  But that doesn’t actually mean that I think you shouldn’t eat cupcakes.  What it means is I think that the argument for abstaining from sex is that weak.  I realize that’s a rhetorical device that requires a very small amount of cleverness to understand, and that’s why it won’t work on 5-year-olds or wingnuts.  But the intended audience gets it.  It’s a lot like saying, “Hanging out with conservatives is less fun than getting your foot run over by a car.” That doesn’t mean you think getting your foot run over by a car is fun.

Well, I’m not arguing.  I’m just saying that while the concept of purity (of any kind) has definitely got its attractions and that while it can prove a huge draw not only in religion but in politics, it’s not always a sure-fire winner when it comes to practical results.  The pagans who understood right up front that nothing was going to intervene and allow them to live forever had a better shot at achieving actual virtue than the Christians who thought they had a shot at being perfect even as their father in heaven was perfect.

As for the rest. people have been faking me out since the day I was born or soon afterwards (though not prenatally, AFAIK).  It’s not hard to do; I’m used to it and don’t find it too discouraging of an experience.

Right, but if you didn’t vaccuum the brain out or pierce the medulla oblongata and just delivered it instead it would being doing all of those things….

I really like number 3, Rebecca.  That is an important distinction.  But it leads to other interesting considerations.  Like, is a 3 year old not financially, emotionally, and in every way but physically, still attached to the parent?  The parent is then compelled to comply with societies assessment of what proper provisions are for the care of a child.  Responsibilities that are not there prior to birth.

The parent is not the only person capable of taking care of a 3-year-old. If a safe, inexpensive process for transferring an embryo alive from one person’s uterus into another’s is ever developed, then I will be satisfied with an abortion ban. (Also, if you think that financial attachment is equal to physical attachment, I’d love to see you act on that.)

As for numero uno, there’s a big hormonal, testable, change shortly (within 24 hrs iirc) after conception.  All the stuff telling the uterus not to start menstruation as usual.  Obviously not as apparent to everyone involved as a baby popping out.  So yes, lends to the less arbitrary part somewhat.

Note that “shortly after” conception. That’s because the blastocyst has implanted. Only after implantation is there any change in the woman’s body. But anti-choicers are not arguing for pregnancy beginning at implantation (indeed, they try to ban birth control because they - mostly wrongly, I might add - believe that it prevents a blastocyst from implanting) but rather at conception.

#2:  Why does mortality have anything to do with justice?  I mean unless there are more babies needing delivered/sonograms given than ob/gyns are available in some sort of weird bumper baby crop triage scenario.

You asked why it was more or less arbitrary than conception. Since we’re picking an arbitrary beginning to personhood, we might as well pick one that doesn’t result in a skyrocketing mortality rate due to blastocysts that fail to implant.

#4 ... I don’t think it’s irrelevant.  What is the philosophical justification for birth being the start of human…hood?  That’s more what I was trying to get at by implying comparisons between platypuses and infants.

If we’re talking philosophy, sure. If we’re talking the law and its applications, no, it’s still quite irrelevant. Born people are not permitted the use of others’ bodies against their will. Period. Thus a conceptus being a person should result in no change.

Yeah, so the majority (vast, I presume) of people that want a late-term abortion aren’t getting it 2/3 of the way through their third trimester.  Law, though, is made on the exceptions, to be orderly and just, it needs to deal with them.

I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. Are you denying that abortions are procured post-what-would-be-viability in cases where the fetus isn’t actually viable?

More coming up.

...and after that comment, it seems I pegged you right the first time, Hephaeston…

but surely you realize I’m goofing, right? I ate a cookie while writing this

Too many of us have had to listen to MeMe Roth deliver the same rant on the evils of cupcakes.  Irony sort of loses something in text when there are people out there who honestly and truly hold those views, people whom the media consults as “experts” on the subject.

So no, I didn’t know you weren’t serious until I got into the comments.

To forestall all the (rest of the) kneejerk response, I do not and have never harbored, a desire to tell other people what to do with their bodies.  What I’m looking for is a philosophical justification for people being people at birth, vice conception, attainment of language, bipedal locomotion, or age of majority, or anything else for that matter.

Or is there a (intellectually speaking) tribe out there that actually does hold out for some proof of actual humanity prior to inclusion?  Would they ever admit it?

Right, but if you didn’t vaccuum the brain out or pierce the medulla oblongata and just delivered it instead it would being doing all of those things….

*sigh* You have two scenarios. One in which a fetus shortly before birth is similar to a baby 10 minutes after, in which abortion doesn’t happen. And one in which a fetus shortly before birth is similar to a stillborn 10 minutes after or to a corpse 3 hours or 3 days after, in which abortion does happen so that the latter doesn’t have to. Pls. stop conflating them.

Yeah, so the majority (vast, I presume) of people that want a late-term abortion aren’t getting it 2/3 of the way through their third trimester.  Law, though, is made on the exceptions, to be orderly and just, it needs to deal with them.

Define late-term abortion. Give an estimate for the number of late-term abortions/yr by indication (therapeutic vs. elective). And maybe elaborate a bit on the statement about the law.

So yeah, hone in on the distinction with more reasons, unless you can see the crux of the issue already.

I think the basic idea is that personhood is when one is a separate being. To all intents and purposes, this is birth. Before birth, only the woman in whose body the fetus resides can take care of it, and for this reason it is a part of her body. Afterwards, anyone can.

Talking about biological potential to function on one’s own (in the sense of not needing nutrients IVed in through the umbilical cord), technically it’s probably a little time before birth in general, but this varies for every pregnancy and so is impossible to legislate.

Too many of us have had to listen to MeMe Roth deliver the same rant on the evils of cupcakes.  Irony sort of loses something in text when there are people out there who honestly and truly hold those views, people whom the media consults as “experts” on the subject.

Ooooh, Godless Heathen, amen.

(But can you say that the heathens were truly godless?  Can you be considered godless when you’ve got, I don’t know, twelve gods instead of just one?  OK, I’m just making trouble, I know, I know…)

You beat me to it Rebecca, upon further reflection and the rest of the discussion, I found what I’m looking for:  it is the separate being distinction that holds up philosophically (as far as I’m a fit judge of it).

That was also the deal with the mishmash of scenarios.  Seeking the philosophical point, thus constructing situations to find it.

Which of course leads to a completely off topic discussion of progressive doctrine and why it allows, even demands, the use of others bodies against their will.

Satisfied yet, Mike, of my social freedoms credentials?  Really man, bring *something* to the table in discussion.

I see. So you’re not crazy enough to think there is some type of conspiracy afoot - you just think “anti-choicers” are engaged in an active movement to give people AIDS camouflaged by sinister web of euphemisms.

In an active movement to keep people from preventing HIV, sure, but I don’t think that’s their main goal.  Their main goal is to make sure that women who have sex face the consequence of unintended pregnancy, and they don’t mind if the AIDS rate goes up as a consequence.  But no, I don’t think they actively want to kill people.

Want to talk about logical fallacies?  The strawman seems to be your favorite.

A baby 10 minutes after birth doesn’t have any meaningfully different qualities than the fetus 10 minutes before birth.

1) Obviously, you think the presence of a human woman is not meaningful.

2) Strawman.  The vast majority of abortions are performed before 16 weeks, and most after are done for medical reasons.  All in the 3rd trimester are, and none are performed 10 minutes before crowning.

Which of course leads to a completely off topic discussion of progressive doctrine and why it allows, even demands, the use of others bodies against their will.

And when would this be?

To forestall all the (rest of the) kneejerk response, I do not and have never harbored, a desire to tell other people what to do with their bodies.  What I’m looking for is a philosophical justification for people being people at birth, vice conception, attainment of language, bipedal locomotion, or age of majority, or anything else for that matter.

Hephaeston, the question of when personhood occurs or when ensoulment takes place or when human rights apply are profound and interesting philosophical questions. You could find hundreds of different answers based on different on people’s perspectives and belief systems.

This is why abortion rights are religious rights. Different religious beliefs may lead some people to conclude that life begins when sperm meets egg and others to believe it begins at birth and still others to believe it begins as one of many points in between (beginning of circulation, beginning of brain activity, viability outside the womb, etc.). Different beliefs make the question of whether abortion is moral or immoral profoundly personal, which is why it absolutely positively should not be in the hand of the state.

What I’m looking for is a philosophical justification

Yes, yes. It’s a thread mocking a particular group of idiot anti-abortion folks, therefore somebody’s got to come in and demand we have the When Does Life Begin debate from scratch.

Seriously, take it elsewhere. You don’t have to believe personhood begins at birth to think these cupcakes are fucking idiotic.

Too many of us have had to listen to MeMe Roth deliver the same rant on the evils of cupcakes.  Irony sort of loses something in text when there are people out there who honestly and truly hold those views, people whom the media consults as “experts” on the subject.

Dude, I’ve made fun of MeMe Roth, and have written before about the weird purity obsession of anorexics.  I have never given any indication that I share it.  In general, I find purity obsessions to be weird. People should eat healthy, sure, but that includes an occasional cupcake.  Though probably not an everyday cupcake.

Heph, no one is interested in your half-baked “philosophical” arguments that are based on the ludicrous and easily disproven assumption that pregnant women don’t have a corporeal form.

“Really man, bring *something* to the table in discussion.”

Great idea!  How’s this:

While you seem to enjoy the sterile mental masturbation of trying to find a “philosophical justification for people being people at birth, vice conception, attainment of language, bipedal locomotion, or age of majority, or anything else for that matter”, some of us are concerned that the rights of the one, real, undeniably-human woman are protected…

“Satisfied yet, Mike, of my social freedoms credentials?”

No, for whatever it matters…

Right, but if you didn’t vaccuum the brain out or pierce the medulla oblongata and just delivered it instead it would being doing all of those things….

If you didn’t collapse the fetal skull the maternal cervix would tear and the woman could go into hemorrhagic shock/die. How does a safe surgery technique support your assertion that there’s basically no difference between a fetus in utero before delivery and a neonate?

Agreed, I don’t give damn about cupcakes either way!  Suppose I deserved to be called out on my hijacking, thanks mythago.  But more thanks to Rebecca for explaining it to me.

Phoebe, you have no idea how much I agree that this decision, indeed any decision whatsoever wherever possible, should be kept out of the hands of the state.  What I was looking for was the philosophical, and indeed religious reason why it should be so.

As for our host:  I think it has everything to do with the woman present, and furthermore why I had to know what the philosophical (read: rational, read: derived from truth) basis for it is.  This has been my emotive perspective as long as I can remember, and I had to find an actual basis in reason for it.  It has been given to me.  Thanks, really.

And Rebecca, concerning the progressive doctrine, whenever you want, just was looking for some sanction to *COMPLETELY* hijack the thread before I really get going.  Or in any other forum you please.

Thanks all .

Somebody at Shapely Prose had an EXCELLENT idea: Make your own batch of birthday cupcakes and when someone asks who they’re for, say “they’re celebrating all the birthdays of all the women whose lives were saved by late-term abortion.”

Amanda, isn’t an ‘abortion’ performed minutes before birth called an emergency cesarian section, not an abortion?

Do we prosecute doctors who perform emergency births when the resulting infant does not live?

Ugh.  Right to lifers would rather we do, apparently.

I can’t find a cite for this but I’m not going to let that stop me from spreading rumors on the internet.  Somewhere, some time, it wasn’t uncommon to not treat a baby part of the village until a few months after birth because of disease or malnutrition.  They would wait a few months to see if the baby thrives, then have a celebration where it is named and welcomed into the clan.  For those few intervening months, the baby isn’t treated like a “person”.

For that matter, what is a person?  What is personhood?  What’s wrong with accepting that infancy is just as risky of a state of existence as fetalhood is and making it prove its usefulness to the village by not up and dying after investing so many resources in it?

I can’t stand philosophical arguments about personhood.  It depends on the society you live in and the available resources for your family.  We are very lucky to have a low infant mortality rate and it makes us *expect* that babies will live after they are born.  But I don’t see anything remotely wrong with a society that has a high infant mortality rate due to scarce resources and that decides it’s more useful to define “person” as “someone who can run fast enough to avoid being eaten by wolves”. 

Which is why it’s better, in this country, to have a brightline litmus test that says “if you are in another person’s body, they can remove you at any time”.  And the main reason I support *that* test, is because in this country, we don’t let anyone use any person’s body for their own sustenance.  Maybe another society that, by law, makes everyone give up one kidney, parts of their livers, donate blood every three months, could justify outlawing abortion.  We’re not that society.

if you didn’t vaccuum the brain out or pierce the medulla oblongata and just delivered it instead it would being doing all of those things….

Wow, you really are an astonishingly stupid motherfucker, aren’t you? NO IT WOULDN’T. THAT IS THE GODDAMN POINT. Or, it would so some of them, maybe, weakly, for a very short time.

What sick fucking world do you live in that you think women actually abort perfectly healthy extremely late-term fetuses? I’m glad I live in the real world instead, with all its flaws.

Somewhere, some time, it wasn’t uncommon to not treat a baby part of the village until a few months after birth because of disease or malnutrition.  They would wait a few months to see if the baby thrives, then have a celebration where it is named and welcomed into the clan.  For those few intervening months, the baby isn’t treated like a “person”.

This is true of numerous cultures throughout history. These cultures were also often the ones that practiced newborn exposure, ie death by the elements or wild animals, for babies that were socially unacceptable or impossible to care for.

Wingnuts would apparently prefer that we return to a tradition of death by newborn exposure, rather than having a safely available medical procedure that would prevent the need for it. I don’t understand why they hate babies so much.

My mother was pro-choice too.  I love this post because it presents yet another way to make the anti-sex, “pro-life” argument look as anti-sex and anti-woman as it really is. 

A friend of mine is, this week, trying to convince his now ex-girlfriend to end their unwanted pregnancy.  She’s finishing school and he decided, just before she dropped the bomb on him, that he was cooling on the relationship.  Even if the relationship was continuing, this is a bad time for both of them to have a kid.  Had they used proper contraception, there would be no pregnancy to speak of.  The exact same result is possible with abortion.  Problem is that this woman doesn’t “believe” in abortion and my friend is beside himself.

I’m interested in the recipe for those cupcakes
If I don’t have any eggs handy I can substitute chicken right?

Sneaky, Jeff, very sneaky. I like it!

I’ll bet the inbox of Cake Wrecks is groaning under the weight of the submissions of anti-choice cupcakes.

Ursula; A friend of mine is, this week, trying to convince his now ex-girlfriend to end their unwanted pregnancy.

I hope you’re warning your friend that he needs to respect his ex-girlfriend’s decision, whatever that is. If he’s now ex-boyfriend, his ethical options to influence her choice are close to non-existant: they don’t have a current relationship, so whether she decides to terminate or continue her pregnancy is entirely and rightly up to her: only if she decides to give the baby up for adoption does he have any further choices to make.

.  Problem is that this woman doesn’t “believe” in abortion and my friend is beside himself.

Well, yeah: and hopefully for future reference, he’ll become a lifetime user of condoms unless he and his partner have made the decision to conceive.

Yes, I’m an astonishingly stupid motherfucker that likes to find rational reasons for the things I believe.  You might have noticed that when people look for philosophical basis it often involves construction of scenarios that are not necessarily, specifically, reality.

The funniest part of all of it is if you had actually read all of my comments you would have seen that I found the justification, that works for me, for your worldview.  I guess we’re both just astonishingly stupid motherfuckers.  Oh, or if you’re hetero, I guess you’d be a fuckee, if you have been with child, Kristin.

I would never wish upon anyone, especially a child, the suffering that a friend of mine went through because her mother didn’t want her, and in fact actually hated her for existing.

Amusingly my partner went to the high school with the highest birth rate in North America. It’s a Catholic School, go figure. I guess those “Good little Catholic Schoolgirls” aren’t so pure and innocent after all! But hey, at least they didn’t murder their unborn babies.

I donated blood last week, just like I do every 8 weeks as long as I’m healthy.  Only 5% of eligible donors give blood in a given year.  So while these people are making cupcakes in an attempt to save some embryos, real people are dying because they need blood.  I’m pro-choice, but I’m more “pro-life” than any of these anti-choicers.  I actually saved multiple real, human lives this year.  But I guess “We stop caring about life as soon as it begins” was just too long to fit onto a cupcake, so they choose to be dishonest and hypocritical instead.

“The funniest part of all of it is if you had actually read all of my comments you would have seen that I found the justification, that works for me, for your worldview.”

No, what’s funny, as in disturbing, is how you can’t quickly acknowledge the obvious fact that the woman is fully, undeniably, human, and therefore automatically, unquestionably, deserving of the same rights as any other human being.

One of the most basic rights is body autonomy, certainly not a new and startling idea.  Mi Cuerpo es Mio, My Body is Mine.

You seem to have been saying “I don’t know if I can allow women to decide what happens to their bodies if there is a sacred sperm involved, so you need to convince me it’s really okay.”

Sorry, but human beings don’t need your approval before they exercise their civil rights.  And to presume that you even have the right to refuse to accept this until a “convincing” philosophical argument can be made to you is extreme arrogance…

“Cupcakes were designed with birthdays in mind. However, not everyone has been allowed to be born.”

But wait, if life begins at conception, then why do we count our age from the day we are born?  Anyone who celebrates a birthday instead of a conceptionday is an evil life-hater!

“Anyone who celebrates a birthday instead of a conceptionday is an evil life-hater!”

...they probably say “Happy Holidays!” too, instead of the Official Christian, King James Approved, “Merry Christmas”.  Evil, liberal, Democratic, Socialist, Fascist, America haters!...

So explain to me why it is less arbitrary to pick the point of birth as the moment of inclusion with humanity vice conception.  A baby 10 minutes after birth doesn’t have any meaningfully different qualities than the fetus 10 minutes before birth.  But the killing of one is abortion, the other practically universally decried as murder.

Do you know that the vast majority (>90%) of abortions are done before viability?  Of course you know, and you just don’t care.  It’s easier to punish sexual women if you can be disengenous and complain about something that rarely even happens and pretend it’s common.  Abortions rarely involve a fetus.  It’s more honest to use the correct term of embryo.  But why would you care about honesty or life?  In reality, if a woman is having an abortion when there’s actually a fetus, it’s because of health reasons.  It’s not legal in any state to have an elective late-term abortion.

Then, even you accept that an embryo or fetus is morally equivalent to an infant, that infant is not living inside your body.  If it is too much for you to support and care for that infant, others can help you, or even take over that responsibility completely (adoption).  When it’s actually inside you, the only choice is to let it keep living inside you, or remove it.  It would be great if it could be transferred to a willing person, or even to an artificial womb, but anti-choicers have been spending all their time, money, and energy on slut-shaming rather than coming up with these new technologies.

I really like number 3, Rebecca.  That is an important distinction.  But it leads to other interesting considerations.  Like, is a 3 year old not financially, emotionally, and in every way but physically, still attached to the parent?

No.  There is the option of adoption, support from family (even single parents rarely take on 100% of the responsibility), or support from society (the government).  It’s telling that you assume a mother’s role is to assume complete responsibility for the child.  I guess it never occurred to you that the father, the grandparents, or the community might be able to care for the child.

Yes, I’m an astonishingly stupid motherfucker that likes to find rational reasons for the things I believe.

Well, we’ve already heard every single one of your anti-choice rationalizations a hundred times before.  We’ve already thought through all of these arguments, and found most of them to be disingenuous covers for slut-shaming or just outright dishonest.  We have found the rest to be not completely thought-out, or to complete ignore the fact that women, even pregnant ones, are real people with rights.  You apparently haven’t spent enough time reading this blog to realize that we’ve already addressed all your concerns.

Yes, I’m an astonishingly stupid motherfucker that likes to find rational reasons for the things I believe.

Fair enough; I see I made a judgement without having all the evidence in hand.

Given this further information I can confidently say that you are in fact an astonishingly stupid, evil, misogynist, borderline sociopathic motherfucker. Because that’s the only kind of “person” who needs a reason other than saving the life of an entirely nontheoretical, living woman in order to “rationalize” a medical procedure.

Shitnugget.

@ catgirl: go one further: http://www.onematch.com/ (dot.ca if you’re in Canada).

I definitely agree that our resident troll likes to find reasons for the things he believes.

Personally, I tend to find reasons first, and then believe things, but, well, I’m not a conservative.

I have nothing against *regular* cupcakes. Ones without the hate filling.

I exercise. I have my vegetables and my cupcakes too…but ones I made! Recently I took a vanilla cake mix and added 2 big spoonfuls of instant coffee dissolved in boiling water as flavoring. *coffee* cake! (goes well with Pam’s house blend, yes?) Then icing flavored with creme bouquet.

Proudly baked by bisexual, pro-choice me. XD

I suddenly have the urge to make my own batch of “pro-choice” cupcakes with insta-slogans spun off from the ones in the photo. Replace all instances of “life” with “choice,” “freedom,” or “health.” “Let Them Live” becomes “Let Them Be Wanted.” “God Loves Kids” becomes “God Loves Women.” “Protect Life” becomes “Protect Rights.” “Your Mom Chose Life” becomes “Your Mom Had a Choice.” “I <3 Birthday” becomes “I <3 Planning.”

Who wants some?

“Who wants some?”

Im not in the habit of turning down cupcakes

Oh, or if you’re hetero, I guess you’d be a fuckee, if you have been with child, Kristin.

Straight women can’t fuck, they can only be fucked?

I hope you’re single.

Hephaestion (55):

It seems the ‘wingnuts’ are at least consistent in their preferred version of reality

Except reality doesn’t care what you prefer.

Hephaestion (66):

Right, but if you didn’t vaccuum the brain out or pierce the medulla oblongata and just delivered it instead it would being doing all of those things….

That’s not how most abortions are performed, though. For example, I don’t believe mifepristone works that way at all.

Jesurgislac (95):

if he’s now ex-boyfriend, his ethical options to influence her choice are close to non-existant: they don’t have a current relationship, so whether she decides to terminate or continue her pregnancy is entirely and rightly up to her:

Well, it’s up to her either way, really. But I would urge him to point out that he won’t really be there for her/the baby, to make it clear (if this is the case) that the choice is among abortion, adoption, and single motherhood. All of these are valid choices in most cases, though, and the pregnant woman is in the best position to decide.

Straight women can’t fuck, they can only be fucked?

That’s how I read that at first, but the reference to having kids makes me think he was actually trying to make a play on “motherfucker”—in a straight couple with kids, the woman is the mother and therefore only the man is the “mother fucker.”

It’s still laughably inept and offensive as hell, of course.

#22: Marry me?

And if one humps enough one can work off those cupcakes.  I think we all ought to shoot for about six cupcakes a day worth.

Slightly off topic, but in re: mothers having choices about their children:

My mother works in an elementary school.  Two years ago, she had “Lily” (no idea what her real name is) in her music class.  Lily was a sweet girl, usually cooperative.  At the end of the school year, Lily’s mother and her three kids were in the principal’s office, as the mother was moving with two of the kids.  The principal inquired after Lily.  Lily’s mom replied that she didn’t want “it,” that she had never loved “it,” and that she was leaving “it” behind.  The mother left Lily in the principal’s office and took off with her other children.  You can imagine the changes in Lily’s personality and behavior since then. 

(Note:  the only reason I know anything about it is because I happened to call Mom shortly after she and five other people had to hold down Lily so the child wouldn’t hurt herself or other people, and Mom was still very upset and in shock over everything.)

It’s an outrageous example of maternal cruelty, but this is the end result of what anti-choicers want for everyone—for no one to have a choice about childbirth.  Of course, they don’t want to claim the consequences of that:  more mothers (and fathers) will resent the children they never wanted;  more children will suffer abuse or neglect or just lack of affection, and then the problems caused when those children lash out or act up because their parents had no choice about when and how many children to have.

While I don’t for a minute have much sympathy for the craziness of these cupcakes people and their messages, and I normally try to avoid derailing, I have to call you on this:

If you get herpes, the worst effects are that it’s occasionally uncomfortable and you have to tell your partners, which is embarrassing.

Uh, that turns out not to be the case. I understand the psychologically adaptive benefits in thinking this, but HSV can be pretty serious. It can blind you, damage your brain, and it can kill. It means C-sections for childbirth. It significantly increases your chance of being infected by every other STD. Anyone immuno-compromised is at risk of many serious complications from that cold sore someone doesn’t even think twice about. People without symptoms can still be contagious. People can be contagious without ever having had a symptom post-infancy.

I join you in mocking the batshit crazy anti-sex “pro-life” cupcakes, but in suggesting cupcakes are worse than herpes you’re kinda encroaching on batshit crazy there yourself.

this is the end result of what anti-choicers want for everyone—for no one to have a choice about childbirth.  Of course, they don’t want to claim the consequences of that:  more mothers (and fathers) will resent the children they never wanted

I think in general they consider unwanted chidren as hypotheticals (about whom they are thus free to wildly speculate), overlooking that there are plenty of pregnant women who can’t have abortions even though they are ostensibly legal.

I think in general they consider unwanted chidren as hypotheticals (about whom they are thus free to wildly speculate),

Nah, it’s just that actual born children, having touched the Nasty Ladyparts on their way out, deserve all the misery that’s coming to them. Only the sacred fetus is entitled to health and security, because it does not yet have Vagina Taint.

If god really loves babies what’s with all those horrible childhood diseases then?
And the birth defects?