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I got to agree with Atrios here.
While the Villagers seemed to object, and it didn’t go well with the audience, I was quite pleased with Obama’s response that the question of when life begins is above his pay grade. I remember Pastor Tim Russert asking, I think, Claire McCaskill a similar question and she was like, “What are you asking? When does an embryo become ensouled?”
Believe what you want, but the important question for politicians is how such things get translated into… policy. And when McCain says he believes life begins at conception (cheer!) it’s pretty meaningless unless he’s asked to explain how that would be translated into policy. Are blastocysts entitled to child support? Do all late periods need to be reported to the Ministry of Health? And, of course, my favorite: Are those who implant multiple embryos during IVF treatments, knowing full well that most will die, guilty of negligent manslaughter?
I get that the joke was a faux paus because the piety set abhors jokes of this nature, mostly because said jokes draw attention to the fact that they believe horrible things (in this case, that “life begins at conception”, a euphemism for the belief that sperm have more rights than women), and that those horrible things are protected from criticism because they call themselves “people of faith” and are reliably so touchy that most people are scared off the hard questions. I’m not, of course. Touchy religious nuts can completely fuck off. I don’t think I could muster the enthusiasm to be respectful of touchiness if the belief was relatively harmless, such as that fairies fly out of your butt when you fart in your sleep. But this evidence-free belief that they’re touchy about is a belief that I personally am a second class citizen, and so I take special pleasure in mocking it.
On the policy issue---"life begins at conception” has morphed in anti-choice activism from just an attack on abortion and is now an attack on woman-controlled contraception, especially the birth control pill. There’s a convulted woo reason for why the pill is “abortion”, but it’s irrelevant because they made it all up in an attempt to shoehorn a pre-existing faith-based belief into secular law. From the personal belief system of the anti-choice nuts, it’s clear that they consider all forms of contraception to be assaults on the natural male need to dominate women’s bodies through pregnancy, and “abortion” is a code word for anything that women can do or insist on to escape their fate as flowerpots to demonstrate male virility.* In this view, even condoms are “abortion”. They’re just not going to roll out those arguments until the anti-pill arguments are mainstreamed. But it’s on the agenda, which is why international HIV funding has been tied to anti-condom initiatives.
All of which is to say that while Atrios’s thought experiments are fun, the question that reporters need to dog McCain with is whether or not he supports restricting or banning the birth control pill, like his “pro-life” supporters do.
What I wish Obama had said, by the way, was, “I’m not a pregnant woman so it’s not my place to say.” Call out the motherfuckers on their true intentions and shame them about it.
*And this applies even to women who do have children voluntarily. Planning your children is exerting control, and is unladylike. Anything short of laying back and letting the whims of sperm dictate your fate is suspect.
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Posted by
Amanda Marcotte on 07:20 AM •
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The question wasn’t merely when life begins. It was when do human rights accrue. Even anti-lifers should have some idea when that happens. But Obama wanted to weasel out of having to say, “You get no rights till birth” because he knows that most people believe those clumps of cells are a human being at some point before birth.
Pro-lifers know that believing life begins at conception presents some hard choices, but most of the ones you discuss are ridiculous strawmen. You conflate all pro-life supporters with a tiny, radical fringe which disagrees with artificial contraception. You constantly argue that thinking a baby in utero should be afforded some dignity and respect equates with treating women as little more than chattel. These arguments probably work with those who already agree with abortion-till-birth, but Obama’s “above my pay grade” answer doesn’t work on adults, particularly those who take such issues seriously.
But I do agree with you. I’d love for Obama to tell Americans: “I’m not a pregnant woman so it’s not my place to say.” I want to “call out the motherfuckers (how apt!).”
Sharon: FAIL.
Obama’s exact reply was that he supported limits on late-term abortion with exceptions for the mother’s health. That isn’t “you get no rights till birth.” That’s “I respect that there’s a woman involved in all of this, and that she should have rights as well, like the right to not be sentenced to death, blindness, or other long-term suffering because a pregnancy went south.” You obviously disagree with this. So my question to you is when do human rights for women accrue. And I think I know the answer, which is really fucked-up.
Furthermore, how do you square with McCain’s mixed response? On the one hand, he nearly kicked Parsley in the head with his knee-jerk “CONCEPTION” answer to the question of when human rights begin, and not ten minutes later, he was saying that embryonic stem-cell research should continue so long as the embryos were going to be discarded anyway. Where are the human rights in that equation?
When do human rights for women accrue? At the same point as for babies. And the “you get no rights till birth” wasn’t Obama’s position, but the one frequently espoused in the leftosphere to questions of this nature.
Most people know that a baby is a baby at some point before birth. There’s just a lot of disagreement as to when that point is. And you’re right, btw, believing life begins at conception presents lots of hard choices (such as the one about embryonic stem cell research). I can’t square the people who say they think life begins at conception yet support ESCR. If you think innocent life needs protecting, that includes those lives as well.
But Obama’s record is that he supports abortion, period. I think it’s terrific when I see people saying so loudly that he needs to yell, “My body! My choice!” from the rooftops. I think that’s a terrific strategy.
Bah. Nobody believes that rights accrue at conception anyway because if they did we’d have to investigate every miscarriage for possible misconduct. And they don’t call for that. And yes, they often as well call for rape and incest exceptions as well.
Nope. They’re just not that serious about all this stuff.
When do human rights for women accrue? At the same point as for babies.
I thought the Republican view was that women don’t get human rights ‘cause it interferes with Bearded Guy’s ineffable plan to get those heathen sluts pregnant…
So Sharon, what’s the proper penalty for a woman who aborts a fetus? I’m assuming that, since you believe it’s “murder,” we gotta be looking at jail time for a few hundred thousand women, right? Or executions? This is the sort of thing that y’all are going to have to decide…
I think it’s terrific when I see people saying so loudly that he needs to yell, “My body! My choice!” from the rooftops. I think that’s a terrific strategy.
Always telling when the antis giggle at the idea of people having the right to decide what happens to their own bodies.
I thought the Republican view was that women don’t get human rights ‘cause it interferes with Bearded Guy’s ineffable plan to get those heathen sluts pregnant…
Can you point to a particular plank in the Republican platform that says this?
So Sharon, what’s the proper penalty for a woman who aborts a fetus? I’m assuming that, since you believe it’s “murder,” we gotta be looking at jail time for a few hundred thousand women, right? Or executions? This is the sort of thing that y’all are going to have to decide…
Well, no, we don’t. Because legalized abortion isn’t going to go away. It will just be more difficult to get as more people reject the notion that babies are just clumps of cells. And the argument about miscarriages and such are simply red herrings.
Always telling when the antis giggle at the idea of people having the right to decide what happens to their own bodies.
What’s telling is that the “pros” can’t say so bluntly what they believe.
That doesn’t look like a denial to me, Sharon.
Because legalized abortion isn’t going to go away.
Gosh, I thought it was “murder.” Murder shouldn’t be legal, should it?
You conflate all pro-life supporters with a tiny, radical fringe which disagrees with artificial contraception.
Other way around, Sharon—if you don’t believe that the birth control pill causes abortions, you are in the minority among the national “pro-life” groups. Among forced birth advocates, you are part of the tiny, crazy fringe that doesn’t think that taking the birth control pill is equivalent to getting an abortion in your eighth month because you don’t like the baby’s hair color. Ask around with your leadership sometime and be prepared to start trying to secretly get your Pill from overseas once your group comes to power.
Sharon: Please answer yes or no—should a woman die or go blind if her pregnancy goes south and the only way to prevent it is to “kill the baby”?
These arguments probably work with those who already agree with abortion-till-birth, but Obama’s “above my pay grade” answer doesn’t work on adults, particularly those who take such issues seriously.
Sharon,
It seems to me that you’re suggesting that pro-choice people don’t take these issues seriously, to which I can only reply with a resounding “fuck you.” If anything, pro-choice people are the ones taking this issue the most seriously, because we’re not hiding behind bullshit like souls and the unanswerable qquestion of when “life” begins. We’re talking about the real-world consequences of unwanted pregnancies and the way the religious right is using this subject (and apparently, useful idiots like you) to deny women control over when they get pregnant.
Karmakin:
“Bah. Nobody believes that rights accrue at conception anyway because if they did we’d have to investigate every miscarriage for possible misconduct.”
It’s actually worse than that, dear. We’d have to have every woman save every used tampon and Kotex to be turned in to the abortion police. As that student artist (name escapes me????) earlier this year showed, if a sexually active woman is pregnant is ambiguous unless one subjects everybit of menstrual blood to microscopic examination.
And the argument about miscarriages and such are simply red herrings.
We already have women being prosecuted for murder if they have a stillborn child. So, yes, in your perfect pro-life world, every miscarriage will be a murder investigation and the woman will have to prove that she did not deliberately murder the child. Please don’t try to pretend it’s some kind of far-fetched paranoia when these prosecutions are happening every year, because it makes you look completely ignorant of what’s actually happening in the courts.
Can you point to a particular plank in the Republican platform that says this?
Doesn’t look like this year’s platform has been put together yet. The 2004 platform, however, was chock full o’ “Fuckin’ whores, that’s my sperm, you got no right, get back in the kitchen, bitches” crap.
Well, no, we don’t. Because legalized abortion isn’t going to go away. It will just be more difficult to get as more people reject the notion that babies are just clumps of cells. And the argument about miscarriages and such are simply red herrings.
Your candidate wants abortion made illegal. Don’t play dumb here, okay? The Republican Party says it wants abortion to be against the law. And since McCain and his cronies have said they think life begins at conception, then y’all really must work out penalties for abortions, how miscarriages will be addressed and investigated, and all that. Saying it’s all “red herrings” indicates that you either don’t believe your own rhetoric or you know that the miscarriage and imprisonment issues are deal-killers for 90% of the country.
I do, however, suspect that, even if McCain is elected, he won’t ban abortion. Republicans only use that as a campaign issue—they don’t actually believe it should be banned.
Sharon, the real question is, “When do a woman’s human rights end?” You think when she starts ovulating, or perhaps when she’s born, apparently. But female fetuses are right up there with sperm in terms of having rights that outstrip real women.
I think it’s terrific when I see people saying so loudly that he needs to yell, “My body! My choice!” from the rooftops. I think that’s a terrific strategy.
Well, we know that you’ll laugh in the face of anyone who asks you for help because she was raped. How dare she think it’s her body and her choice? It’s someone else’s choice to use it as he sees fit.
That doesn’t look like a denial to me, Sharon.
A denial of what? That the rather bold assertions made here would probably not do well among most Americans who disagree with abortion till birth (or sometime after)? It’s not “giggling” to say that I think this face of abortion rights should be on full display whenever the issue appears. None of the “safe but rare” fluff and stuff. I think arguing that being pro-life means you think women don’t have any rights is the sort of point that those listening to the debate need to hear.
Gosh, I thought it was “murder.” Murder shouldn’t be legal, should it?
Set up any number of strawmen lately? There are lots of killings and only a few of them count as “murder.” To declare the reality that abortion isn’t going to become illegal isn’t to say you think aboriton is a good thing. It’s just stating a fact.
Other way around, Sharon—if you don’t believe that the birth control pill causes abortions, you are in the minority among the national “pro-life” groups.
Well, I don’t speak for pro-life groups. But according to most polls, Americans don’t think of contraception as abortifacients. But they do think abortion is way too easy to get and think we need stricter laws. Now you can go off on the tangent about “Oh ho! So, if you get an abortion ‘X’ should it be illegal???” I’m not gonna play those gotcha games. If you think such techniques make you look smart, go nuts.
Sharon: Please answer yes or no—should a woman die or go blind if her pregnancy goes south and the only way to prevent it is to “kill the baby”?
Obviously, if a women is going to die from a pregnancy, then abortion should be permissible. But the truth is, your side doesn’t think abortion should simply be available to the tiny fraction of a percent of women with these sorts of health issues. Some of the commenters have been honest enough to say they believe in abortion “till birth.” Which is interesting, considering that if a baby is born during an abortion, these same people probably wouldn’t be for keeping the baby alive. Or is it still a fetus that just escaped?
It seems to me that you’re suggesting that pro-choice people don’t take these issues seriously, to which I can only reply with a resounding “fuck you.”
Yes, “fuck you” is the response that pro-choicers think is appropriate, I’m sure, when someone notes the stridency of their positions. But hey, if Amanda can argue that pro-lifers really just want women to have no rights then I don’t think pro-choicers do take it seriously. But again, I really like the bold, nasty way you approach discussing the issue of when babies get human rights. Because that’s the sort of information Americans need to make informed decisions.
Obama’s joke was irreverent to the pious professional Christianists and their enablers in the media, but not to faith itself. He was frankly stating that if there was an answer to that question, no human could know it. Therefore the people closest to the decision itself, i.e. the women whose bodies are all that allows the embryo to live anyway, deserve to make choice themselves without the Daddy State telling them what is and isn’t life.
Obviously, if a women is going to die from a pregnancy, then abortion should be permissible.
That’s not obvious to your fellows, the ones who canonize women who die in childbirth.
In fact, it’s not obvious why you think it. If a woman’s rights end when she becomes sexually active, and her body is available to all passers-by for use as they see fit (as long as they’re men or women who support the patriarchy), then why is her life precious? Because if she’s dead, she’s not eligible to be forced to breed against her will?
But hey, if Amanda can argue that pro-lifers really just want women to have no rights then I don’t think pro-choicers do take it seriously.
If you don’t have a right to control your own body and what sexual purposes it’s put to by other people against your will, you’re in the no-rights zone. You’re advocating a view of women’s rights---your body, but not your control over its sexual functions---that is objectively rape-positive.
What’s telling is that the “pros” can’t say so bluntly what they believe.
Sharon on 08/19 at 09:30 AM
I can tell you very bluntly what I believe. I believe that YOU have no business in my house, my bedroom, my relationship with my body, my relationship with my doctor, my relationship with my pharmacist or my relationship with any higher power in which I might believe. It doesn’t matter what I believe about when “life” begins, what matters is that what I believe is none of your business, just like I really don’t care what you believe. The main difference being that I won’t attempt to force my beliefs on you by making them into laws.
We already have women being prosecuted for murder if they have a stillborn child. So, yes, in your perfect pro-life world, every miscarriage will be a murder investigation and the woman will have to prove that she did not deliberately murder the child. Please don’t try to pretend it’s some kind of far-fetched paranoia when these prosecutions are happening every year, because it makes you look completely ignorant of what’s actually happening in the courts.
So, what you’re saying is that no one should be allowed to question reckless behavior that harms another person (in this case the baby)? When do human rights accrue?
Doesn’t look like this year’s platform has been put together yet. The 2004 platform, however, was chock full o’ “Fuckin’ whores, that’s my sperm, you got no right, get back in the kitchen, bitches” crap.
Hmm. I didn’t see the “fuckin’ whores” part of the platform. Can you be more specific?
Your candidate wants abortion made illegal. Don’t play dumb here, okay? The Republican Party says it wants abortion to be against the law.
Most people want very limited abortion available, dude. Don’t play dumb here, okay? Your side thinks abortion till birth is not only acceptable but should be lauded. Now, if you think that’s a good position, I’m all for you shouting that from the rooftops.
Sharon, the real question is, “When do a woman’s human rights end?” You think when she starts ovulating, or perhaps when she’s born, apparently. But female fetuses are right up there with sperm in terms of having rights that outstrip real women.
Ah, Amanda. Can’t answer a question without putting words in someone else’s mouth. I don’t think a woman’s human rights end at ovulation. In fact, there’s nothing anywhere that supports your insane position that all pro-lifers think monthly cycles are killing babies. Common sense tells people that non-implantation isn’t, nor should it be, viewed as murder. But hey, I like it when you have to go to ridiculous lengths not to answer the question. When does a baby get human rights?
Well, we know that you’ll laugh in the face of anyone who asks you for help because she was raped. How dare she think it’s her body and her choice? It’s someone else’s choice to use it as he sees fit.
Shorter Amanda: how dare you think my position is strident!
Ok, kiddies. Got RL stuff to take care of. Have fun telling yourselves how smart you are. And remember: be sure to let all Americans know that you really do think women have no rights if you think babies in utero deserve some rights!
Seriously, I fail to see how, if a 4-celled zygote has the right to own and control a woman’s ladyparts against her will, then how we can argue that an actual man with a brain and feelings doesn’t have a greater right to demand sex from whoever he wants whenever he wants. His claim to to control ladyparts is stronger, since he’s more of a person. It doesn’t make sense to believe that fertilized eggs have a right to your body, but men don’t have a right to rape.
Five’ll getcha ten that “Sharon” is actually a guy. I think the overwhelming number of internet trolls are men (or at least man-children) and not women…
Ok, kiddies. Got RL stuff to take care of.
Translation: “Shit, these guys are pwning my ass! Better declare absolute victory while I can and get the fuck outta here...”
“Sharon, the real question is, “When do a woman’s human rights end?””
We remove the rights to control one’s own body when it comes to illegal drugs, drinking before you are 21, age of consent, and a myriad other areas where the state decides what one can and can’t do with their bodies. It doesn’t mean that people have no rights. It means that under these circumstances the right to make that “choice” is removed for the good of society (in the minds of the government). Whether that really does make things better is of course open to argument.
So the idea that a woman has no rights if, when pregnant, she is limited in what her cjoices can be in response to the fetus is a sensationalist argument but not a true argument. It is made that way precisely because there is already a precedent across the population of the government making limiting laws on personal physical rights in an attempt to choose the least harmful outcome for society as a whole.
“there is already a precedent across the population of the government making limiting laws on personal physical rights in an attempt to choose the least harmful outcome for society as a whole. “
Of course, a blastocyst or embryo or fetus isn’t “society as a whole.” So there is no reason to society to impose limits.
It is made that way precisely because there is already a precedent across the population of the government making limiting laws on personal physical rights in an attempt to choose the least harmful outcome for society as a whole.
That’d be much more believable if the common treatment of and rules for pregnant women had stayed constant across at least the last 50 years (how long have we, as humans, understood that drinking to excess is bad for the person as well as the society? more than 50!). My grandmother was encouraged to diet to make the baby smaller and easier to deliver (as well as keeping her womanly shape...), so it’s likely that she was not supplying proper vitamins and minerals to the fetus, a huge no-no today. My mother was encouraged to do vigorous excercise since the fetus was “in a big waterbed that’s hard to break” (actual quote from her doctor) which, had she been less athletic all around could have caused a miscarriage… it’s a big no-no today.
So how will government legislate what a pregnant woman can and cannot do? Will that freeze today’s standards in place? What if there’s still room to improve mother and fetus health? That’s just one part of the slippery slope you step on the second you say that you want to regulate pregnancies. They aren’t a moment-in-time situation, it’s a nine month process with all kinds of tweaks and adjustments to be made along the way for a healthy birth.
Pro-lifers know that believing life begins at conception presents some hard choices, but most of the ones you discuss are ridiculous strawmen. You conflate all pro-life supporters with a tiny, radical fringe which disagrees with artificial contraception. You constantly argue that thinking a baby in utero should be afforded some dignity and respect equates with treating women as little more than chattel
No, we are saying if you sincerely believe “life begins at conception” and you want to enshrine that into law, you are required to treat women like chattel. Here’s why:
1) “Human beings” or “persons” all have equal rights under the law, so legally, that statement means “a fertilized egg is a full legal person with full human rights”.
2) Different rights overshadow others. So one person’s right to live trumps another person’s right to do pretty much anything else: I am not “allowed” to kill someone for tresspassing on my land or for punching me in the face. Also, one person’s right to health and well-being trumps another person’s right to enjoyment (this is the thinking behind second-hand smoke bans, noise limits, etc.) or work (I do not have a right to hold a job that endangers other people).
3) We know very little about pre-natal development and are constantly discovering things that might harm a fetus. And in the first trimester, pregnancies are considered especially vulnerable.
4) There is no medical way to detect when an egg is fertilized. Medically, there is no “pregnancy” until the zygote implants, which can be up to 8 days after fertilization. (And of, course, the first signs of prenancy don’t usually appear for another week or more.) So even if the woman takes a pregnancy test every morning, she will still be infringing on the fertilized egg’s right for at least several days.
So, there is logically and legally no other way to enforce that belief than by stripping fertile women of all their rights. Abortion, obviously, must be outlawed. So must all hormonal contraception, since it’s impossible to “prove” that it does not harm a fertilized egg.
And if you have ever been pregnant, you should remember all the things you were told not to do; women would have to live by that regimen from menarche to menopause. They must be restricted from using alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, and certain prescription medications; they must be prevented from participating in high-impact activities, being in temperatures over 98 degress, cleaning the cat’s litter box--even holding excessively stressful jobs--just on the off chance that an egg might have fertilized.
If you do not agree with these restrictions, then you do not sincerely believe that “life begins at conception” as a guiding legal principle.
“Of course, a blastocyst or embryo or fetus isn’t “society as a whole.” So there is no reason to society to impose limits.”
What does that mean?
If anything, pro-choice people are the ones taking this issue the most seriously, because we’re not hiding behind bullshit like souls and the unanswerable question of when “life” begins.
No, the pro-choice people are simply employing the soul argument in reverse. They’re claiming that because the (alleged) pro-life position that a fetus has a soul is false, it’s alright to kill it. This presents a couple of problems. First, for the pro-choicers who completely reject the existence of souls, the argument requires them to concede that it’s alright to kill anybody, because everybody lacks a soul. Second, for those pro-choicers who believe in souls, the argument requires them to “hide behind bullshit” and answer the “unanswerable” question regarding the stage at which a human is protected by ensoulment.
Five’ll getcha ten that “Sharon” is actually a guy.
No, she’s not. She’s that sad creature called the sister punisher/colluder---a woman who hopes that if she hates women even more than the men in her life, she gets to be “better” than other women. A fool, in other words, unaware that the sexist men she loves so much think she’s a joke.
Actually, RA,my argument to you is always what it has been: Because you can’t get laid doesn’t mean you should punish those who can.
When I heard the question for the first time (which I believe was, “At what point do a baby’s human rights begin?"), my immediate response, out loud, was “Babies always have human rights.” I wish Obama hadn’t played his game and responded with something like this because for many of us, the questions is really when do cells with human DNA become a baby. There is a gray area and because more liberal-minded people are intelligent and understand nuance, we often lose out in arguments that have a simple alternative because the average joe finds the black & white views more appealing.
I’m not understanding all the Sharon-bashing here. (I’m guessing there is some spillover from another thread(s)). For most Americans, viability is where people start getting squicky about abortion. Now, never mind that there is a vanishingly small number of post-viability abortions, and usually at that point, mom/viable fetus or both are pretty screwed up--but I don’t think we can ignore the fact that the dynamic exists. If we focus more advocacy about explaining to people what fetuses are like in the various developmental stages, and why women get late-term abortions, I think the mushy middle might become a bit more pro-choice. Because they would realize that the procedures that make them uncomfortable rarely happen.
And Amanda, I’m not aware of a single Catholic saint who died in childbirth (not that the whole “Martyr for Purity"/St. Maria Gorietti thing isn’t a little screwed up--I respect that she fought off her would be rapist, but I don’t like the “die before being raped” message). Most of the female Catholic saints I read about were theologians or queens or just all-around badasses. (Yes, some class issues there). Donohue Catholics are a very small minority, and I know they’ve given you grief, but the rest of us are pretty embarrassed by them and wish that they would go away. (Of course, the rest of us use contraception and are pro-choice.)
Well, no, we don’t. Because legalized abortion isn’t going to go away.
To declare the reality that abortion isn’t going to become illegal isn’t to say you think aboriton is a good thing. It’s just stating a fact.
Sharon, quit dodging the question. What should the punishment be for having an abortion? It is premeditated murder, isn’t it? It should be a serious crime for the woman, doctor, and any other accessories, right? Also, we’re closer than you are acting, because in the next 8 years we’re probably going to have to replace at least 2 pro-choice justices. If McCain is president, abortion certainly could be illegal in the next decade.
Secondly, if you believe life begins at conception don’t you have to be against the pill? It can work to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg. That would be post-conception, even though it is pre-pregnancy. It seems like that “radical fringe” is a lot more consistent than you are.
Finally, if life begins at conception, how do we deal with parasitic twins? You know, like that little girl born in India about a year ago now? She had the extra limbs of a twin that had fused with her in-utero. Do her extra limbs have the full rights of a human being? Or are you reasonable and only recognize conjoined twins where both have heads and brains? It’s crazy to think a fully formed limb has rights of it’s own right?
The Raving Atheist, disbelief in souls just means you have to come up with a logical and rational basis for when a being accrues rights. We all admit on some level that mental function is important. No one is arguing that the brain dead deserve full rights. Also, no one is arguing that a conjoined twin without a head deserve rights. It is clear that there is no rational reason to give a blastocyst more rights than a brain dead person or headless conjoined twin. They are actually less developed.
Also, no one here is arguing that abortion to moment of birth is necessarily a moral act. We are arguing that late term abortions are almost exclusively performed because something has gone wrong. Women don’t carry pregnancies until the 7th month just to terminate. They are rarely performed, and there are legal restrictions, but the pregnant woman and her doctors should be allowed to make that decision if they deem it is necessary.
What I really want to know is what the penalty for infants whose gestation and/or birth cost their mother her life will be. I mean, if they were people from the moment of conception and deliberately and willfully pursued a course of action that cost someone her life, that’s at least reckless endangerment, yeah?
At the bottom, it’s not about medical hypotheticals regarding viability--it can’t be, because every pregnancy is different, and also because our medical knowledge is not quite sophisticated enough to know with certainty that Fetus X can survive at say, 20 weeks, or not, or whether Woman Y will survive the pregnancy and birth if her health is threatened by complications or disease. It is not a mechanical process, but a highly variable one, with the woman bearing all the risk, quite literally. Which is why we can’t legislate on viability--there is no one measurement that takes all risks into account for all women (and fetuses for that matter). It is always, always, a judgement call.
And she who bears the risks, gets to make the call. Government, her husband, her doctor--none of these entities bears the risk of pregnancy and childbirth, and none of them can with any certainty promise her that there will be no negative repercussions, up to and including her death, from pregnancy and childbirth. Even very normal, healthy, pregnancies can go bad, and yes, can kill her. Yes, it does happen, every day. Birth is not a trivial bodily process.
So long as the woman’s body is the site of birth, she is the only party who has the right to decide to continue a pregnancy, because she has more at stake than anyone else by doing so. To do otherwise is to take away her right to decide about her own continued existence, as well as her health and her personal individual rights over her body. Otherwise, it’s like drawing a gun and forcing someone to climb Mount Everest (and not to stop even if they think they won’t make it). The person making the rules is not the one who will be taking the risks.
Those who want there to be restrictions worry about this hypothetical: some woman, somewhere, will have an abortion very late in pregnancy and end the existence of a late-term fetus that could have survived otherwise. This is a possibility, though a highly unlikely one; how many doctors would participate in it? How many women would go through a pregnancy for that long only to abort on a whim? It’s a vanishingly small chance.
The real question is, is this a power and a decision we allow women to have...this life and death responsibility? And the only answer is, we *must.* Because they are the only ones entitled to make those decisions. No one else stands in their position and bears their burdens. Because if we don’t, then women remain forever second-class citizens in our society, and that’s intolerable.
For those still troubled by abortion, I would say, the only morally profitable course to take is this: fight for contraception and sensible sex ed. Lots of it, as early as possible, up to and including Plan B: morally, you are going do far, far more to prevent the bogeymen you fear, and not have to also commit the sin of imprisoning women and stripping them of their rights. While you’re at it, fight for daycare help, paid maternal leave, and flexible work-life solutions for parents, healthcare for everyone, and educational opportunities for all Americans. If you want less abortion, make having children less of a traumatic and catastrophic event in the lives of American women. Support those children once they’re born. Unwanted pregnancy rates among teenagers and women go down when opportunity goes up.
Unless you don’t really care about anything but punishing women. If so, keep supporting strict antichoice laws that don’t work and lead to widespread suffering where they’re implemented. You won’t reduce the number of abortions by much, but the number of women’s death will skyrocket.
And you’re right, btw, believing life begins at conception presents lots of hard choices
Like the “hard” choice of making women second class citizens. Enjoy, Sharon. En-fucking-joy.
But female fetuses are right up there with sperm in terms of having rights that outstrip real women.
Yes, anti-choicers don’t mind those sweet, little, innocent females. It’s when they grow up and turn into filthy sluts that there’s a problem.
Shorter Dr. T: Women are children who need to have their choices limited for their own protection and the good of society.
I have only one thing to say here:
What is the point of continuing to argue in favor of anti-choice positions if one realizes that abortion will always be legal, and that most of one’s compatriots are pro-choice? At that point, why bother? Or, more to the point, why use that as a position in an argument? What Sharon is saying amounts to, “well I shouldn’t have to take any responsibility for the ramifications of my political positions, because everyone knows they are too fringey to ever be taken seriously on a national level.” Even if it’s true, that begs the question of why you continue to work towards a goal you see as ultimately futile, and further, if you can’t back up these apparently futile political positions of yours, why do you even hold them?
It amounts to “I dunno, this is obviously a completely stupid position to hold! Why talk about the wider implications?!” as a defense of one’s political views. That one continues to attempt to further.
Though I do realize that Sharon is simply arguing in bad faith. It’s just an impossibly stupid way to do so…
I was going to say pretty much what emjaybee said, but not nearly as eloquently, as I tend to get angry at these sorts of discussions and start sputtering. So, what she said.
I would add, though, for the benefit of Sharon and any other anti-choicers out there who are going on about all the stridency in the pro-choice community--I do support abortion on demand, right up until birth. With no restrictions and fully funded by government. And I’m militant and strident in my support. Because while it may not be the choice I would make in a given situation, but I do trust individual women to make that decision for themselves and it really isn’t any of my business what they do with their own bodies.
Here you go, Iso. Now we can get past pretending that the anti-contraception Catholic church wants women to “kick ass”. I mean, really? How many martyrs died rather than be raped and lose their virginity, which is worth more than their lives? Sheesh.
Sharon is a regular commenter, and reliably hostile to women that offend her sensibilities---women who have sex, women who have self-respect, etc. If her husband started agitating against women’s right to vote, Sharon would show up and call us all uppity for going to the polls.
Who cares about viability? No one get a voluntary abortion even close to the viability range. It’s a fucking red herring.
Unless of course you’re a full-blown moron and think an 8-week old fetus can live outside the womb. Which, considering the intellectual chops of our anti-choice trolls, is entirely possible.
And the argument about miscarriages and such are simply red herrings.
What? Do El Salvador and Nicaragua exist in Sharon’s world?
Opoponax, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said Sharon is arguing in bad faith. She won’t answer the question of what should happen to women who have abortions because she knows it’ll either be inconsistent with her view that aborting a fertilized egg is murder, or it would sound crazy to say they should be charged with 1st degree murder. There really is no middle ground, and she knows it, so she dodges the question by saying abortion will never be illegal. Even though it is illegal in many countries, and we are only a vote or two away on the Supreme Court for it to be illegal here too.
Do El Salvador and Nicaragua exist in Sharon’s world?
If a two-celled zygote is a person, then surely we can believe those countries don’t exist.
But Amanda, this whole humana vitae thing is very much this century. And Mroz isn’t a saint (yet). The reason I say badass women is because I’m thinking of Joan of Arc, St. Catherine (who was “accused” of preaching and said she did not “preach” she instead “spoke in holy ways"), Hildegard, St. Margaret of Hungary, etc. etc. The whole virgin martyr thing came about when the church was going on about how it “was better to marry than to burn” and the men were virgins too.
Lots of people care about viability. Probably b/c it is when a fetus becomes more “baby-like” and less “ball of cells” like. http://www.slate.com/id/1060/ But the slate article raises a good point that 22 week-old delivered babies are v. unlikely to survive and have a normal life.
I just don’t think we can ignore the fact that although we are a minority, we are a slim one, and lots of people are in favor of MORE restrictions on abortion. Those are the people we should work on if we want to keep our majority.
I wish Obama’s answer had been:
“I have to say that the anti-abortion activitists are entirely correct to point out that abortion is a deep issue that touches society at all levels, from abstract public policy debates to gut-wrenching personal life decisions. However, they are totally wrong to think that this deep issue can be trivially answered with a simple yes or no to legalized abortion. Reducing it to that calls the millions of American women who have faced the choice to have an abortion, no matter what they chose for their particular circumstances, calling it yes-or-no is to call all of them idiots.
The real tragedy in the abortion issue is the fact that millions of American women are pregnant and—for whatever reasion—they know they should not be. My position is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies by supporting comprehensive sex education, availability of easy birth control to women AND men, and a strong social safety net.
Finally, regardless of what we may make the law, the one true thing I can say about abortion is that it will never go away until every child born is truly welcomed to this world.”
Ack, even though we (meaning the pro-choice) are a MAJORITY.
Following on with what Penn said, I have maintained that anyone who believes that women who carry pregnancies into their 3rd trimesters so that they can abort on a whim, because they want to fit into a swimsuit, whatever--has such a fucked-up and misogynisitic view of women that they shouldn’t be allowed to stroll down the feminine hygene aisle at a Rite Aid, much less make any sort of policy governing women’s health.
To say that we should have legal restrictions on late-term abortions with exceptions of the health of the mother is to say that they happen for other reasons, and they don’t. Fetal abnormalities are usually detected in the early part of the second trimester… abortions in the third trimester involve a baby that’s either dead or cancerous.
Furthermore, if the mythological strawwoman ever did waltz into her OB/GYN’s office at 8 months and declare that she was tired of being pregnant, no OB/GYN in the world would consent to perform the procedure. Fear of malpractice suit means that they will not implant an IUD in a childless woman, and it’s a rare one indeed who will sterilize a childless woman. It took me forever to find a gynecologist who would take my needs seriously because “what if you changed your mind, you could sue me” even when I was putting forth very rational, well-reasoned arguments about my personal needs. To think that they would perform a procedure on a woman who had endured 8 months of pregnancy and then just changed her mind on a whim shows such a lack of awareness of what it’s like to be a woman trying to receive good reproductive healthcare I wonder if the arguer knows what a stirrup is.
Saying we need to ban late term abortion because “some women” are so fickle and unnatural that they would stroll in and abort for non-emergent reasons is a misogynistic viewpoint, full stop. And frankly, it’s about as realistic as saying that we need to outlaw people having kids because some of them might sacrifice their babies in a black mass.
Sharon:’
“Common sense tells people that non-implantation isn’t, nor should it be, viewed as murder.”
Wow! You haven’t read much of your sides ridiculous, extreme nonsensical rhetoric, have you? Their view that indeed, negating implantation is akin to not feeding and housing a living child if said conceptus has rights from the minute sperm penetrates egg. Thus, their anti-IUD, anti Pill stance.
The only question then becomes what other methods could a woman be prosecuted for?
Too much caffeine? Evidence: Starbucks receipts
Too much exercise? Bally’s membership
The whole virgin martyr thing came about when the church was going on about how it “was better to marry than to burn” and the men were virgins too.
I’d also say that most of the really big “I will die a virgin!” female martyrs’ stories imply that they were resisting being married off to a non-Christian. With the assumption that, as the wife of a pagan Roman during the time that Christians were routinely persecuted, they would be forced to participate in pagan religious life, which would have been anathema to them. An unmarried woman in that later empire could probably shrug off the religious duties of her birth family, but once she became the property of her husband there’d be no escape.
And, yes, that the early Christians were against marriage of any stripe would also have been part of it.
I think the female chastity aspect probably didn’t come into it until later.
But still, I’d agree generally with Amanda that the Catholic church as it is nowadays valorizes the sacrifice of a woman’s life in compliance with current doctrine on Abortion. Which is pretty cheap, overall, in the sense of a woman’s worth as a human being vs. a relatively recent and somewhat tangential political ideal.
It should also be noted that a lot of the saints you mention are hardly the “classics” of Sunday school and religious iconography, especially in the case of Joan of Arc who died at the hands of the church and wasn’t canonized until the 20th century. Except maybe for Saint Catherine (either of the two prominent Sts. Catherine, actually, both of whom pretty much rocked). Though I remember learning a hell of a lot more about the female saints who had proper feminine roles than Sts. Catherine. And the St. Margaret you learn about in Catholic school is not St. Margaret of Hungary.
Interesting tidbit from the Wikipedia entry on “virgin” as it pertains to sainthood:
“Males are generally classified by the type of ecclesial office they held, but since women cannot hold most eccelsial offices within the Roman Catholic Church, they have been classified as virgins or women who were not virgins, for example married women or widows.”
Ismone, that’s great, but I can’t actually see that it matters to me, I’m so non-religious. If you interpret it that way, have at it. I see religion as primarily misogynist for historical reasons, and definitely the Catholic Church is now, and now is what counts. Anti-choice=misogynist, at a fundamental level. Especially if you’re anti-contraception, a position that is chosen strictly out of a hostility towards female control over their own futures and bodies.
Furthermore, if the mythological strawwoman ever did waltz into her OB/GYN’s office at 8 months and declare that she was tired of being pregnant, no OB/GYN in the world would consent to perform the procedure. Fear of malpractice suit means that they will not implant an IUD in a childless woman, and it’s a rare one indeed who will sterilize a childless woman.
It’s more than that. They’d go to prison for breaking the law. Full stop. Malpractice suit is nothing. There aren’t legal 3rd trimester abortions for non-medically necessary reasons, full stop. They are a fiction created by anti-choicers to distract from the fact that they are willing to elevate the rights of sperm over women because they hate women that much.
I support legal abortion until birth because I trust that woman and her doctor know what they are doing. Which is not to say that no abuse is ever going to occur, but I’d prefer the law to err on the side of trusting people to make the right decision for themselves.
Babies get their own rights when they take their first breath, until then, their existence and all right derived from them depend on the mother.
phylosopher , you are absolutely right. If life begins at conception then actively trying to prevent implantation sure as hell should be murder. Sharon understands that is unreasonable, so she trades being consistent for being reasonable. It’s the same with mother’s health exceptions. If life begins at conception then natural moral law indicates that you should let it play out. It is certainly immoral to actively kill a real person to save another.
The trade-off between being reasonable and being consistent is also why Sharon won’t say what an appropriate punishment is for women who have abortions. Saying they should be charged with 1st degree murder is crazy, but consistent, and saying anything else would be more reasonable, but completely inconsistent with the idea that life begins at conception.
“You conflate all pro-life supporters with a tiny, radical fringe which disagrees with artificial contraception”
We don’t, Sharon. Most people I know who oppose abortion do not oppose contraception. But that tiny radical fringe who do seem to be greatly overrepresented in the leadership of the anti-choice movement. It’s probably because people who are very zealous about something naturally gravitate to activism, but it’s true nonetheless. And those fringe zealots are doing their level best to persuade everyone that the Pill = abortion. Unfortunately, they are getting traction in public discourse with that fairy tale.
No, the pro-choice people are simply employing the soul argument in reverse. They’re claiming that because the (alleged) pro-life position that a fetus has a soul is false, it’s alright to kill it. This presents a couple of problems. First, for the pro-choicers who completely reject the existence of souls, the argument requires them to concede that it’s alright to kill anybody, because everybody lacks a soul. Second, for those pro-choicers who believe in souls, the argument requires them to “hide behind bullshit” and answer the “unanswerable” question regarding the stage at which a human is protected by ensoulment.
The Raving Atheist on 08/19 at 10:47 AM
You’re also a raving irrational lunatic. It certainly doesn’t follow that it’s alright to kill “anybody” if there’s no such thing as a soul. It means that there are other criteria on which that prohibition rests. Viability and sentience are two of those.
“I support legal abortion until birth because I trust that woman and her doctor know what they are doing. Which is not to say that no abuse is ever going to occur, but I’d prefer the law to err on the side of trusting people to make the right decision for themselves. “
Same here. Despite what the nutjobs think, women don’t whimsically decide to abort healthy 8 month fetuses on a regular basis, and even if they did the likelihood of finding doctors willing to perform those abortions is not very high.
ack!
It’s so trolly in here! it’s gotten like, 50% more trolly since 2007. I think Obama was stating the drop-jaw obvious: don’t you people believe teh god decides when life begins? Wouldn’t it be, like, **presumptuous** for The One to proclaim when life begins on his own schedule?
McCheat, of course, can begin and end our lives at will.
Have any of the anti-choicers actually ever been pregnant? Its really kind of wretched. Some ways I might describe it are ‘invasion of a body snatcher’ ‘the hangover that never ends’ ‘mononucleosis x10’.
But really, the only reason I could see a woman waiting until late in her pregnancy to abort would be if she had been denied access to a clinic earlier, was suffering horribly, or knew that she could not have a birth and remain healthy.
Why on earth do they think women will just prance along through 7 or 8 months of pregnancy and then go ‘oh, I think I’ll abort!, yay!’.
I support abortion on demand, until birth. I trust myself and other women to make that choice for ourselves. The end.
Part of me wonders if late-term abortion laws will cause a disproportionate increase in the number of first trimester abortions: if I were to find out I was pregnant tomorrow, and I was on the fence about whether or not to keep it, the knowledge that if something went wrong later on in the pregnancy I could actually be seriously hurt or die because anti-choicers had to make a point about how fickle and evil women were would probably push me over the fence to not take the chance and have the abortion right away.
I know, Amanda, the contraception/abortion positions of the church are really problematic. Women are dying, and that is something I’ve been telling my devout relatives. My dad actually didn’t convert to Catholicism over the whole contraception thing. I just don’t want the doctrine of the church getting all mixed up with what most Catholics believe, because in the past we’ve been really slammed by protestants for things we don’t believe.
I think that the contraception/abortion teachings are caused by the fact that we have a male, celibate priesthood. Most of them aren’t bad people. But just as it was when most laws were written by propertied men, and women couldn’t even vote, people tend to make rules based on their own experiences.
Cockney,
That’s depressing. If she really wanted to have the child, fine, but if this was in any way shaped by a belief that she would be “less” for saving her life, that is just wrong.
Opoponax,
We learned about St. Clare, and Joan of Arc, many of the others I read about on my own. We did have an equal number of male and female stained-glass windows, but I don’t think Joan was on any of them.
But all this aside, like I said, we need to fight for the mushy middle and point out to them that the abortions they disapprove of aren’t happening. I know that feels like a bit of a cop out, but it also lets them know what we already assume, which is that women DO NOT make these decisions lightly.
As a father, I’m grateful for the safe, hassle-free abortion Spouse had. There is a damm good chance I would have neither Spouse nor these two beautiful, healthy kids without it.
“Part of me wonders if late-term abortion laws will cause a disproportionate increase in the number of first trimester abortions”
Well, the interference with the right to obtain first-trimester abortions is upping the number of second-trimester abortions, so it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that the reverse might be true. You stick a prominent ticking clock in the middle of the decision-making process, it tends to push people toward the less optimistic answer, increase stress, and magnify all the potential problems. You make a big show of decreasing the time a woman has to make sure they’ve got the money for this, her health is okay to handle this, etc. etc., and she’s more likely to err on the side of caution with regard to her current responsibilities and future plans. And of course, you can always get pregnant again if/when you’re in a better position to have a child, but you’re pretty much fucked if you can’t handle it and thought you could.
my argument to you is always what it has been: Because you can’t get laid doesn’t mean you should punish those who can.
But Amanda, getting laid has never been my fantasy—my fantasy would be to watch you being forced to bear John Edwards’ second love child in a bamboo cage surrounded by angry, spear-wielding WOC savages chanting passges from The Thrill of the Chaste.
Who cares about viability? No one gets a voluntary abortion even close to the viability range.
Doesn’t the Haven Coalition specialize in facilitating those? I seem to recall a New York Magazine article about all those 24-week-along women with “disturbingly large bellies” flocking to New York because no other state wanted to induce the necessary fetal heart attacks. So it’s not really “no one.”
Just as you can’t say “no one” flushes their newborn down the toilet or drowns their toddlers in the tub. And even if those instances are rare, plenty of people care. I’m presuming you care about executions, even if the total number carried out over the past three decades is less than the number of late term abortions performed in an average year.
No, I don’t think an 8-week old fetus can live outside the womb, but left to their own devices newborns don’t survive very long either.
It is clear that there is no rational reason to give a blastocyst more rights than a brain dead person or headless conjoined twin. They are actually less developed.
After nine months, the blastocyst will develop a functioning brain capable of thinking up rational reasons why it should have had more rights than a brain dead person or headless conjoined twin, which is something that the brain-dead person and headless twin won’t do. As an ex-blastocyst, I can assure you of this.
Even if it’s true, that begs the question of why you continue to work towards a goal you see as ultimately futile, and further, if you can’t back up these apparently futile political positions of yours, why do you even hold them?
Because at the Pearly Gates, Gawd will pet them on the head and tell them what a great job they did fighting against all those meany lieberals.
Yes, and that blastocyst was formed from a zygote which was formed from the union of a sperm and an ovum. Since, all sperm and ovums have the potential to become full fledge adult human beings I guess they all deserve rights. Am I right?
Raving Atheist: It’s also possible that within the 9 months, the blastocyst will go molar.
Reality precedes potentiality.
The reality of the blastocyst’s condition does not trump the potentiality of a live, healthy baby.
Doesn’t the Haven Coalition specialize in facilitating those? I seem to recall a New York Magazine article about all those 24-week-along women with “disturbingly large bellies” flocking to New York because no other state wanted to induce the necessary fetal heart attacks. So it’s not really “no one.”
conveniently ignoring the copiously described BARRIERS TO FIRST AND SECOND TRIMESTER ABORTIONS that made 99% of the story’s subjects get a late-term procedure.
It would be “no one” or very near it, if psychotic douchenozzles like yourself weren’t working ohsoveryhard to make sure the misogynists get their pwecious widdle (white) babies.
(and yes, the psychotic douchenozzle tag is one you earned even before your slavering sex-slave fantasy about Amanda.)
And despite IVF being in the OP, none of the anti-choice folks on thread want to talk about it at all. Even though it kills what, 20 times the fertilized eggs that abortion does? Stalin was right, one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.
I had to smirk at the first comment (by Sharon), who used the term anti-lifers. How ridiculous is that? Explain how the following by emjaybee is anti-life (it summarizes nicely what pro-choicers fight for):
For those still troubled by abortion, I would say, the only morally profitable course to take is this: fight for contraception and sensible sex ed. Lots of it, as early as possible, up to and including Plan B: morally, you are going do far, far more to prevent the bogeymen you fear, and not have to also commit the sin of imprisoning women and stripping them of their rights. While you’re at it, fight for daycare help, paid maternal leave, and flexible work-life solutions for parents, healthcare for everyone, and educational opportunities for all Americans. If you want less abortion, make having children less of a traumatic and catastrophic event in the lives of American women. Support those children once they’re born. Unwanted pregnancy rates among teenagers and women go down when opportunity goes up.
conveniently ignoring the copiously described BARRIERS TO FIRST AND SECOND TRIMESTER ABORTIONS that made 99% of the story’s subjects get a late-term procedure
Well What, go back and actually read the article, and then come back and (1) copiously list each identified subject and (2) copiously describe the “barrier” that caused each one to delay the abortion, and we’ll see if your 99% stat holds. I think it’ll be closer to 0%.
It would be “no one” or very near it, if psychotic douchenozzles like yourself weren’t working ohsoveryhard to make sure the misogynists get their pwecious widdle (white) babies.
So the late term abortions described in the article came about because of delays in adoption proceedings initiated to force black and hispanic women to give birth to white children? One of us is psychotic, that’s for sure.
RA:
Well What, go back and actually read the article, and then come back and (1) copiously list each identified subject and (2) copiously describe the “barrier” that caused each one to delay the abortion, and we’ll see if your 99% stat holds. I think it’ll be closer to 0%.
99% of all people who think they’re unassailably brilliant don’t know the first fucking thing about statistics.
Also, the word “copiously” does not mean what you think it means, and the plural of “anecdote” is not “data.”
Man, there must be something about seeing a picture of a fertilized egg---and seeing how it really doesn’t justify repealing women’s basic rights from the look of it---that makes the anti-sex nutters go crazy. RA is a particularly sad case, so embittered at women that he’s willing to hang up his atheism and start believing in magic if that’s what it takes to punish the bitches. We can only speculate about what makes him bitter, but I suspect most of us would figure out very quickly.
“Shorter Dr. T: Women are children who need to have their choices limited for their own protection and the good of society.”
I’ve expressed no such sentiment. I’ve merely pointed out that all citizens have their body regulated by the state and to do so does not remove all women’s rights.
Dan,
I didn’t use “copiously” to mean what I think it means, I used it to mean Well What thought it meant.
The plural of anecdote is data, particularly if, as Well What did, you compile your statistics out of a collection of anecdotes. The stats may be bad if the anecdotes are inaccurate (i.e., a patient falsely claiming that “I have a headache” after taking the drug under consideration) but each individual anecdote is still a datum.
Now, go back to the article and tell me what percentage of the women mentioned in it faced misogynistic legal barriers to have first and second trimester abortions. Support your answer with copious detail.
Dr. T,
So the idea that a woman has no rights if, when pregnant, she is limited in what her cjoices can be in response to the fetus is a sensationalist argument but not a true argument.
First, the discussion is about a woman being limited in what her choices can be in response to a pregnancy. Second, I don’t think anybody here is arguing that a ban on abortion would strip a pregnant woman of all her rights like, for example, her right to apply for a passport. The argument is that she might be mostly dead, or quite dead, while filling out the forms since she won’t have the right to decide if she should risk her life and health by carrying a pregnancy to term.
It is made that way precisely because there is already a precedent across the population of the government making limiting laws on personal physical rights in an attempt to choose the least harmful outcome for society as a whole.
I don’t think the existing instances of the government making limiting laws, like forced abortion or sterilization, in an attempt to choose the least harmful outcome for a society as whole, are a good argument in favor of allowing the State to force women to carry to term.
The Raving Atheist,
No, the pro-choice people are simply employing the soul argument in reverse. They’re claiming that because the (alleged) pro-life position that a fetus has a soul is false, it’s alright to kill it.
That’s incorrect. The pro-choice people are claiming that a stranger’s position on the absence/presence of a fetal soul should not be used as the basis to deny a woman access to proper medical care and to prohibit her making from making her own medical decisions.
He should’ve said, “Life begins at 40; next question.”
Sharon,
It was when do human rights accrue.
Human rights as opposed to what, unicorn rights? I guess abandoning propaganda and asking when do personal/legal rights accrue would run the risk of highlighting that a pregnancy is not a person.
Even anti-lifers should have some idea when [rights accrue].
I don’t think anti-lifers even consider this idea since their position is that pregnant women don’t have a right to life and should have the State force them to carry to term.
You constantly argue that thinking a baby in utero should be afforded some dignity and respect equates with treating women as little more than chattel.
This blog’s archives are public so attempts at misdirection are a waste of time. The argument is that not allowing repro age women access to proper medical care and to make their own medical decisions because of strangers’ thinking, whatever that might be, about pregnancy equates with treating women as little more than chattel.
Most people know that a baby is a baby at some point before birth.
Most people know that a pregnancy is not a neonate.
Because legalized abortion isn’t going to go away. It will just be more difficult to get as more people reject the notion that babies are just clumps of cells.
This is incoherent. What is the legal/policy basis for making it more difficult for some, but not all, patients to have access to a safe and effective medical procedure?
That the rather bold assertions made here would probably not do well among most Americans who disagree with abortion till birth (or sometime after)?
When discussing medical issues, policy matters, and legal issue it’s best to stick to reality and ease up on the propaganda, least you run the risk of being dismissed by, you know, all the adults, particularly those who take such issues seriously.
I think arguing that being pro-life means you think women don’t have any rights is the sort of point that those listening to the debate need to hear.
If that’s your position, fine, argue away.
Obviously, if a women is going to die from a pregnancy, then abortion should be permissible.
There’s nothing obvious about your position. Why should pregnant women be allowed access to proper medical care if, and only if, they’re at death’s door?
Most people want very limited abortion available, dude.
Magical thinking isn’t data. What evidence do you have that most people want limits on their ability to access proper medical care and to make their own medical decisions?
Your side thinks abortion till birth is not only acceptable but should be lauded. Now, if you think that’s a good position, I’m all for you shouting that from the rooftops.
I, too, thinks it’s a good idea to stress one’s support for the position that pregnant women, even those in their 3rd trim, are still capable of making their own medical decisions, and one’s strong opposition to having the State force women in labor to, for example, undergo C/Ss against their will.
Common sense tells people that non-implantation isn’t, nor should it be, viewed as murder.
Would this be the same common sense that tells people that pregnancies aren’t neonates and that a stranger’s ideas, feelings, thinking, and personal beliefs shouldn’t dictate their ability to make their own medical decisions?
Some of the commenters have been honest enough to say they believe in abortion “till birth.” Which is interesting, considering that if a baby is born during an abortion, these same people probably wouldn’t be for keeping the baby alive. Or is it still a fetus that just escaped?
babies aren’t ‘born’ during abortions. they cannot just slip out. in the best scenarios, you can just push them with minimal tearing. in others they bring out the salad tongs, vacuums, and scalpels.
Intact dilations are not only better at preserving a woman’s health and fertility, they give parents A body to hold or bury if they so choose. why should a woman have to risk health and fertility to remove a dead fetus? because the best procedure has been outlawed b/c of strawbaby fears that the baby would slip out and then have to be murdered to ‘finish’ the abortion.
abortion is terminating a pregnancy. no one has the right to use another’s body for life support without her consent. should we test everyone and automatically harvest bone marrow and livers and kidneys for anyone who needs them, whether or not the donors are willing? why not? it’s just a temporary inconvenience, it shouldn’t kill you, and it’ll save the life of the donee. what’s the problem?
Oh, is it men could be harvested as well? Is it just that a fetus is inside a woman and therefore all magic and special?
seriously, my friends, believe what you want about when life, consciousness, ensoulment occur. but when you get around to making laws, religion can play no part of it, and you need to decide on the punishments for crimes and how to enforce them. too complicated? then maybe the decision is best left to the woman involved and her doctor.
Yep, I’m proud to be an ‘abortion on demand at any time” person, b/c I believe that women will make the best choices. and if sex ed and birth control were free and copious, there would be less ‘abortion for birth control’.
(sorry for the capitalization nightmare. sticky shift key makes me look stupid.)
That’s incorrect. The pro-choice people are claiming that a stranger’s position on the absence/presence of a fetal soul should not be used as the basis to deny a woman access to proper medical care and to prohibit her making from making her own medical decisions.
But the pro-choice people generally do allow that “stranger” (the state) to step in at some point prior to birth and impose its soul-equivalent construct (viability, consciousness etc.) on her right to abort. The difference between pro-choice and pro-life is simply where on the conception-to-birth continuum the line should be drawn.
RA is a particularly sad case, so embittered at women that he’s willing to hang up his atheism and start believing in magic if that’s what it takes to punish the bitches.
To be contrasted with Amanda, who hangs up her atheism at viability rather than conception.
</i>But the pro-choice people generally do allow that “stranger” (the state) to step in at some point prior to birth....</i>
It’s not that the pro-choice people allow a role for the State; it’s that the leadership is ineffective.
RA:
The difference between pro-choice and pro-life is simply where on the conception-to-birth continuum the line should be drawn.
If you’re trying to defend your argument as valid, admitting up front that your position is arbitrary and irrational doesn’t really do you any good. At that point, all you’ve got left is “I know you are, but what am I” and “because I said so, that’s why!”
Anyone who believes that a distinct line can be drawn on the conception-to-birth continuum clearly doesn’t really understand the underlying biological concepts. This is especially true for an atheist who can’t make magical claims about when the soul enters the body.
Life is a continuum. It began about 3.5 billion years ago. Modern human life began about 200,000 years ago. Conception just means the sperm and ovum have fused created a full DNA set. It’s an arbitrary distinction.
The question is when does an individual gain rights. If a fertilized egg is considered a full human under the law then we should investigate every time a woman’s period is late. Every miscarriage should be investigated for possible parental neglect. It also means you have to be against the pill and IVF and IUDs because all of these can and lead to the death of fertilized eggs. There is no consistent way to say life begins at conception and support any of those technologies.
A little late to the party, but some actual data is desperately needed here. According to Polling Report, about 63% of Americans support Roe v. Wade. That, contrary to Sharon’s opinion, is what we call a “majority,” and a pretty sound one, at that. In fact, aside from George W. Bush’s disapproval ratings, there may be no other issue on which Americans are so united.
On the other hand, someone else upthread accused Sharon of sacrificing consistency in order to make her position more reasonable. That’s probably true, but personally I don’t see anything wrong with that in itself. Pragmatism often requires inconsistency.
8-month pregnancies being aborted just “because”? Pfft. A woman doesn’t need a doctor if she wants to terminate a pregnancy that close to term. (Warning: Anecdotal evidence ahead). My brother-in-law’s ex-wife decided she was tired of being pregnant about 3 weeks shy of her due date with their second kid. So she did sit-ups until she went into labor. Guess what? The kid was *BORN* and survived.
I met this woman, and I honestly believe she is crazy enough to do such a thing. (There’s a reason why she’s an ex.)
Don’t these anti-choicers do any research? A country like Holland, which has abortion on demand without question and easy access to contraception has an extremely LOW abortion rate. A country like Nicaraugua, where abortion is completely illegal and so is contraception, has a HIGH rate of abortion with an equally high rate of maternal death. HELLLLOOOOOOOOOO? Is anybody out there?
What is so hard to understand about that?
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The question wasn’t merely when life begins. It was when do human rights accrue. Even anti-lifers should have some idea when that happens. But Obama wanted to weasel out of having to say, “You get no rights till birth” because he knows that most people believe those clumps of cells are a human being at some point before birth.
Pro-lifers know that believing life begins at conception presents some hard choices, but most of the ones you discuss are ridiculous strawmen. You conflate all pro-life supporters with a tiny, radical fringe which disagrees with artificial contraception. You constantly argue that thinking a baby in utero should be afforded some dignity and respect equates with treating women as little more than chattel. These arguments probably work with those who already agree with abortion-till-birth, but Obama’s “above my pay grade” answer doesn’t work on adults, particularly those who take such issues seriously.
But I do agree with you. I’d love for Obama to tell Americans: “I’m not a pregnant woman so it’s not my place to say.” I want to “call out the motherfuckers (how apt!).”