All I can conclude is that there apparently is such a thing as being a little pregnant.

Didn’t a similar initiative go down in epic defeat in Colorado last November?  Pretty much the only people in favor were religious wingnuts.

If the concern is for fertilized eggs, then the most wastful of such by far is none other than ... GOD!!!!

Instead of scientifically ignorant legislation, why don’t they all just pray and pray and pray until He stops His holocaust of the fertilized?

It’s been very obvious, for at least twenty years, that if the Christo-Taliban succeed in overturning Roe they would set their sights on Griswold v. Connecticut. Now maybe they figure they can beat Roe by beating Griswold.

They are trying to get the Zygote Rights Amendment on the ballot in Colorado again. It was beat three-to-one last time. They’ll keep putting it on every election until people stop paying attention. That’s how we ended up with TABOR. They just kept running it year after year. It’s way too easy to amend the Colorado Constitution: a few thousand signatures and a simple majority vote. At least Florida requires a Supermajority.

I do have one question: it clear that no PIV sexual activity must occur.

What is PIV sexual activity?  The only definition for that acronym I could find was Particle Image Velocimetry and I don’t think that is what you mean.

Nevermind that the Morning After Pill and oral contraceptives PREVENT sperm from ever meeting egg ... there is NO FERTILIZED EGG BECAUSE THERE IS NO EGG!

Peewee in Vajajay

Thanks Kate.

Kate,

Doesn’t the Morning After Pill, and some oral contraceptives, work by preventing implantation on the uterine walls?

Which is neither here-nor-there since in the majority of cases nature (or God if you are superstitious) prevents implantation due to a variety of conditions.

Oh hell.  Everybody knows that they have always wanted that.  They do not give an emaciated rat’s ass about fetuses or they would insist on the death penalty for doctors performing abortions.  What they want is for all those slutty girls who enjoy sex and do it without being burdened by a hubby to be punished with an untimely and unwanted pregnancy.

Great quotes from the link:

“At a press conference in Tallahassee, speakers blamed abortion for the financial insolvency of Social Security and the bankruptcy of American auto manufacturers, citing the millions of terminated pregnancies since Roe. v. Wade as costing the nation citizens and customers. “
Wow. Forget about forced-birth - apparently these guys would be supportive of some mandatory breeding program, too. Oddly, I bet they also support it making it harder to become a naturalized citizen…

” ‘It is obvious in our ultrasounds that that little baby, even at just eight weeks old, is a person,’ said Brenda MacMenamin, a Personhood Florida organizer. “
Leaving aside the medical/ethical arguments, doesn’t it seem strange that a campaign to ban the *morning after* pill is talking about 8 week old fetii?

BC prevents ovulation.  EC prevents fertilization.

DrDick says: What they want is for all those slutty girls who enjoy sex and do it without being burdened by a hubby to be punished with an untimely and unwanted pregnancy.

Don’t forget this applies to ALL PIV sex, they want to go back to the middle ages when wives were pregnant all the time, men were burdened with endless kids they couldn’t support and everyone pretty much died of overwork by age 40.

Isn’t this the same state that, a few years back, wanted to make it mandatory that a woman looking to give up her child for adoption had to take out a personal ad describing herself and the potential father of the child in case the dad wanted to pursue paternity rights?

This is why there are whole sections of the country I would refuse to live in.

Dr. Dick,

It goes way beyond that. Somehow our society has become so deranged that we believe women are people and might even have souls (if any of us do).

It hasn’t been that long really.

My mother was born in the early 1920s. In the ‘60s and ‘70s she was very disdainful of those libbers. She was, however, proud of the fact that she was the first woman in the family who learned how to drive. This would have been after the war in the late ‘40s early ‘50s. Her father didn’t like it. Her mother didn’t like it. Her brother didn’t like it. My father is the one who taught her how to drive. He was in the military, was often away from home and saw no good reason why his wife shouldn’t drive.

This was only 60 years ago. When it comes to women’s equality we aren’t that far removed from the A-holes in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East.

Of course, we should acknowledge that when we keep the sperm away from the ovum, we are denying it the right to reach its full potential. Abstinence is murder!

/snark.

They do not give an emaciated rat’s ass about fetuses or they would insist on the death penalty for doctors performing abortions.

Why aren’t they demanding the death penalty for women who put out a contract on their fetuses? I think they use a myth of manipulation to deny women’s moral agency.

Dave, there’s some speculation that the pill might make it harder for a fertilized egg to implant (not true of the morning after pill, though).  That said, what is true is this: If you care about the lives of fertilized eggs, then you should want all women to be sterilized or on the pill.  Because a woman on the pill loses exponentially fewer fertilized eggs than a woman not on it.  Most fertilized eggs die on their own.  If they don’t get fertilized in the first place, they can’t die.

To make the math simple: A woman who is on the pill for 10 years may lose maybe 2 fertilized eggs?  And that’s a stretch.

A woman using nothing will lose at least 1-2 fertilized eggs for every birth, and will also have her fair share of miscarriages.  So if she has a baby every year, as anti-choicers want, she’s “killed” 10-20 “babies”. 

Clearly, not being on the pill is murder.

Uhh these guys know that amending the Florida constitution won’t help them get around U.S. Supreme Court decisions about the federal constitution, right?  Right?

What is PIV sexual activity?

Either sexual activity where you’ve verified the personal identity of the other partner, or net.pr0n viewed using a Pentium 4.

EC prevents fertilization.

By preventing ovulation.  Both pills work the same way, by mimicking the hormone levels post-ovulation, so your body won’t release an egg.

cyril, they’re hoping to elevate the case to the Supreme Court and overturn both Roe and Griswold.  Court cases can be overturned.

“ ‘It is obvious in our ultrasounds that that little baby, even at just eight weeks old, is a person,’ said Brenda MacMenamin, a Personhood Florida organizer. “

No, it most definitely is not obvious that it’s a person. I just saw a relatives ultrasound at 11 weeks and it looked like a Sea Monkey.

I subscribe to the homunculus theory of reproduction. I think men who masturbate should be put in prison. What do I have to do to get that on the ballot?

Seriously, when I did one of my student days at Ye Olde Abortion Clinic the 6-10 week ultrasounds look like blobby blobs.
http://www.champuru.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/2008-02-15_ultrasound.jpg
It always kind of makes me laugh when I hear the “women should be made to look at ultrasounds before KILLING THEIR PRECIOUS BABIES!” because uh, the clinic I was at showed nearly all the women the ultrasounds and the response was generally “huh” or “what am I supposed to be looking at?” Not “Oh shit, now I realize its a baby!!” revelation the pro-lifers think will happen.
They look like blobs being vacuum aspirated, too, not little babies or people.

But seriously, I really hope they don’t get the signatures OR anywhere near the voting booth, it is just an embarrassment.

So, basically, you can have my BC when you pry it out of my cold dead child-free hands.

(or out of my cold, dead uterus. Whichever you prefer)

Colorado Dave -

I grew up in Oklahoma in the 50s and 60s (and teach gender issues now).  Believe me, I know exactly how close we are to all that and these ass hats really, really want to institute it here right now.

On the bright side, at least the Orlando Sentinel, not the most liberal newspaper in the universe, characterizes the proposal as “radical.”

Nevermind that the Morning After Pill and oral contraceptives PREVENT sperm from ever meeting egg ... there is NO FERTILIZED EGG BECAUSE THERE IS NO EGG!

This is exactly right.  Why can’t we who are pro-choice at least all try to become more educated on this subject?  Following I have listed some sources which some may find helpful:

Having A Baby Kills More Unborn Babies Than Are Ever Born
http://wingnutwatch.typepad.com/wingnutwatch/2009/06/having-a-baby-kills-more-unborn-babies-than-are-ever-born.html
Plan B Does NOT Cause Abortion
http://wingnutwatch.typepad.com/wingnutwatch/2009/05/plan-b-does-not-cause-abortion.html
Plan B Not Abortifacient: Sources
http://wingnutwatch.typepad.com/wingnutwatch/2009/05/plan-b-not-abortifacient-sources.html

Colorado Dave, if you’re interested in the science of Plan B, PZ Myers covered it really well a few years ago, with charts and cool stuff like that.  As others have said, the basic takeaway is that Plan B suppresses ovulation, so if the egg and sperm have already done their little tango, Plan B won’t have any effect on it.

I’m really hoping this turns out to be the Wilson Moment of the abortion debate.

That said:

1) UGH!
2) Thank gods for bisexuality (not that Florida is LGBT friendly, either)
3) This goes anywhere, I get a tube job and a uterine ablation. I might well wish to have kids someday, but not at this risk—-somehow I get the idea that my health or my life is not enough reason for these people to let me get an abortion, and I won’t risk that.  So there, that’d be a nice triumph for the antichoice movement: two or three or four babies not born, one woman sacrificing childbearing to protect the rest of her life, and one woman with the only solidly foolproof method of birth control, so that she can have all the PIV sex she wants without the risk of pregnancy.

How much you want to bet that these same people are the sorts who regularly decry gay sex as not procreative and therefore unacceptable?

Also, how long before they try to outlaw sterilizations?

Sterilizations for white women, sure, Kyra. Those are bad.

Sterilizations for women of color? Mmmyeah, those are good, whether or not the woman in question agrees to it.

Long history there.

<i>Isn’t the sperm sacred too?<i>

If they really gave a flying fuck about saving or protecting life they would also be going after doctors, hospitals and clinics that do vasectomies. Sperm is just as “alive” as an egg is since they’re both living cells. More proof they are just misogynists that cherry pick their definitions of life to force pregnancy and oppress women and men for that matter. Where is the male birth control pill, already?

Oh and of course men that have vasectomies but that will never happen.

Kyra—“Wilson moment.” Excellent expression!

Also, how long before they try to outlaw sterilizations?

Ironically, anti-choicers tend to be fans of forced sterilization, so they could go either way.

(Also, they seem to have remarkably fuzzy ideas about obstetrics. After Dr. Tiller was murdered, [and for that matter, in last year’s debate, when McCain made that comment about abortion done for air-quotes “health reasons.”], I couldn’t believe the number of grown people who didn’t know—and refused to be told—that things could go seriously wrong in a pregnancy.)

Oooh, I like “Wilson moment.” It’s like jumping the shark, but for politics.

Molly NYC - Exactly. You always, always get people who go “I’m pro-choice, but…” and it takes forever to explain to them that the scenarios they oppose (woman just up and decides to have an abortion at eight months) don’t actually happen.

I couldn’t believe the number of grown people who didn’t know—and refused to be told—that things could go seriously wrong in a pregnancy.

It’s because of a serious lack of mandatory reality based health, reproductive and sex education. Since most anti-choicers and even the mushy middle think all you have to do is sprinkle some sperm on something and at that exact moment it magically becomes alive. They’re ignorant (some willfully so) that reproduction is a process.

You would think devout Catholics would know that conception occurs 1-5 days after intercourse, this knowledge being essential to proper practice of Natural Family Planning.  But they don’t, because only .01% of them use it.  My experience with “devout Catholics” suggests that they have their 4-6 kids right in a row and then Daddy or Mommy gets the snip.  Morally the same as using the Pill.  I don’t know how they justify it.

kristin—eugenic sterilization is not necessarily something done along race lines, and can be more broadly applied to class. While the term “mississippi appendectomy” does have particular racial eugenic connotations, the fact was Lilly-White Vermont aggressively sterilized its lower-class [white] residents. If you were a farm girl, and you got knocked up, you were “sent away,” and when you came back, it was not only sans baby, it was usually sans fallopian tubes.

/nitpick

“Wilson Moment”

Woodrow? Volleyball? Guy behind the fence?

The day they take away my oral contraceptives is the day I become violence incarnate.

@Egnu Cledge- Talking about this guy:

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/blast_from_the_past_joe_you_lie_wilson_apologized_for_attacking_strom_thurm/

My experience with “devout Catholics” suggests that they have their 4-6 kids right in a row and then Daddy or Mommy gets the snip.  Morally the same as using the Pill.  I don’t know how they justify it.

Well, it’s all kosher because a) they still probably have more kids than they can comfortably support, and b) the dirty nasty ladyparts have been punished with labor and birth several times.

If they really gave a flying fuck about saving or protecting life they would also be going after doctors, hospitals and clinics that do vasectomies.

Fertility clinics should be first.

IVF clinics have to create more embryos than they need to implant, just in case (hence the “snowflake babies”), and then they have to implant many more embryos than they expect to “take”. If more embryos implant, they perform a “reduction” and remove (i.e., abort) the “extra” fetuses (hence “octomom”: she wasn’t trying for eight babies, but the “extra” ones took and she refused the reduction).

On top of that, I don’t know if anyone has counted the number of “lost” embryos from the hormone treatments that make women ovulate more eggs to increase the chances of pregnancy.

Dorothy:

The part about creating more mature eggs than you think you’ll need is true (because you don’t know how many will fertilize, and of those you don’t know how many will develop), but the excess-transfer thing really isn’t the case any more, at least not at reputable clinics. The rates of completed pregnancy for transferring 2 embryos is not substantially higher than for 1, and of course the rate of multiples and complications is way higher.

Octomom, with previous kids, was pretty much a poster child for the only-transfer-one rule, and the doc’s motivations in transferring more have yet to be satisfactorily explained (although they will probably be explained in front of a licensiing board if they haven’t been already).

Conception occurs 1-5 days after PIV. This is funny because if one were to follow the menstrual taboos of Leviticus, you’d miss a couple of peak fertility days. It also undermines the old “I’m ovulating” sitcom trope of the 90s. Should have done it yesterday.

I think the forced-birthers are mostly a bunch of people who want to oppress women and might be stuck in some chldlike fantasy that their parents could never have had “Teh Sex” for fun. I didn’t exactly grow up in the most sexually enlightened home, but I damn well knew something important was going on Sunday afternoons after my parents mowed the lawn and tended the garden. We were told that after all their hard work they needed their “rest” and were not to be disturbed. We were allowed to bring whatever toys into the living room (far from their betroom) and make a mess of it as long as we didn’t fight. Afterwards my brother and I would clean up our mess while my parents cooked a nice meal while we caught the end of the football games. I had no “eew” factor going on once I figured things out. I reasoned that was just another mysterious thing adults wanted to do.

Maybe that’s part of the reason I’m not a forced birther.

Oh, Bacopa, I’m glad I’m not the only one. Once I got old enough, I realized the afternoon “naps” with giggling was really my parents having a healthy sex life, and am glad for their happiness.

My experience with “devout Catholics” suggests that they have their 4-6 kids right in a row and then Daddy or Mommy gets the snip.  Morally the same as using the Pill.  I don’t know how they justify it.
As the niece of a couple of these Catholics, I can tell you—after a certain number of kids the economic necessity to provide an adequate quality of life for their existing offspring makes them realize they don’t need to multiply like Noah. They may have some qualms, but reality supersedes theology.

Anyhow, net result, they’d make it a state most sane women wouldn’t want to be in, even to visit. Economic suicide: not that it makes it better, but surely even some pretty extreme people would realize that outlawing The Pill would not give them the results they want.

Even if we legally established personhood when sperm meets egg, and even if we lived in some alternate universe where hormonal contraceptives actually prevent already-fertilized eggs from becoming a pregnancy (that’s not how it actually works), someone still needs to show me how I would be legally obligated to donate part of my body to save this legal person.

But catgirl, you’re a woman. Doesn’t that make it outrageously clear?

Oh. Nevermind.

someone still needs to show me how I would be legally obligated to donate part of my body to save this legal person.

You had sex, you slut.  What an unnatural creature you are!

@ Comment #11: veggiegirl2:

As has been pointed out to you by numerous posters, you are absolutely wrong. EC, which is merely high-dose oral contraceptive and is a protocol that has been available for decades, works by preventing ovulation. It is speculated that hormonal contraceptives might also work by creating a hostile uterine environment, thus preventing implantation, but that has never been proven.

It is non-hormonal IUDs that work by preventing fertilization. I was despondent for an entire day when I discovered this, because I used to derive such perverse joy from the thought that my beloved Paragard was each month chopping up what the forced-gestation loons claim is a baby. And they’ll have to pry that out of my cold, dead, childfree uterus.

Doesn’t the Morning After Pill, and some oral contraceptives, work by preventing implantation on the uterine walls?

No. It works by preventing ovulation.