I will vote in 2010 and 2012 but I will not vote for ANY Democrat. I’ll vote for good left-wing third party candidates where available, otherwise I’ll write somebody in. It’s time to show this useless turd of a party that we can’t be safely ignored and spat upon. If we don’t do that we have only ourselves to blame.

And to add some more salt to the wound, this:

39 Democrats that voted for the Stupak Amendment still voted against the final bill.  Had all 39 Democrats who were voting against the bill anyway voted against Stupak, the amendment would have been soundly defeated.

The Stupak vote happened because leadership allowed it to happen. That language won’t be in the Senate bill, and as such, likely won’t make it out of conference. Pelosi and co. know that, so they didn’t bother to whip people against the amendment, essentially giving Dems a free vote to show their conservative constituents next year. An effective whip kills the amendment… but why waste the political capital defeating an amendment that won’t be in the final bill anyway?

Which isn’t to say that we should get complacent - rather, I’d save the pressure for when the conference is selected. Putting solid pro-choice members on the conference committee will ensure that Stupak won’t make it to Obama’s desk. Our pressure is needed on Dem leadership to make sure the conference is favorable…

I hope you’re right, Jeff. But it’s still discouraging to see 65 Democrats voting for Stupak. I’ve long been aware that the Democrats aren’t actually liberal, and I know about the Blue Dogs, but sometimes I harbor this fantasy that the Democratic Party is center-left rather than center-right. It’s an oft-shattered fanasy.

Shit.  Shit shit shit.  I’m pretty sure that my representative voted for the damned Stupak Amendment, and I did’t have time to call him yesterday.  Well, to leave an angry message today.  Not what I wanted to wake up to.

Jeff,
No one knows yet what the final version of the Senate bill will be--nor what amendments and poison pills will be swallowed over there to get any version through the various filibusters. So it is not the case, and no one can make that claim, that the stupak amendment will be removed from the conference version because it is unmatched by a similiar amendment on the senate side.

Its true that Pelosi and Hoyer apparently (?) didn’t promise that the amendment would make it out of conference. But so far all we are going on is hope.  And the democratic track record on defending women’s rights to health care is really, really, really poor.  If it wasn’t absolutely necessary to appease these troglodytes it shouldn’t have been done. As usual it puts the reform/progressive side on the back foot--having to remove the amendment and look like they are stabbing their caucus in the back--instead of pressuring the caucus up front to commit to the vote without the amendment.

aimai

So they voted for the amendment but against the bill. Wankers. All of them.

Even if it makes it out of conference, and I agree that it might not - Obama could take are of this with a signing statement.

Bush abused them, but Clinton also made them, and after watching Obama for 9 months I’ve no doubt he will as well.  The only question is; will he use them to advance progressive ideals or to retard them?

I will vote in 2010 and 2012 but I will not vote for ANY Democrat. I’ll vote for good left-wing third party candidates where available, otherwise I’ll write somebody in. It’s time to show this useless turd of a party that we can’t be safely ignored and spat upon. If we don’t do that we have only ourselves to blame.

I share your frustration, but I can’t share your strategy.  My support of Democrats will be limited to voting and volunteering only for those who share truly progressive positions.  I probably won’t donate a dime to any of them.

Progressives are in one hell of a Catch-22 in this regard.  Continue supporting a party that constantly takes us for granted, or withdraw our support, only to put in power a party that is far, far worse in the type of legislation that they will enact?

Nearly 100,000 progressive Floridians took the “screw the Democrats” approach in 2000, and we wound up getting eight years of George W. Bush as a consequence of that decision.  Do we want that again?

It sucks to constantly go back to this refrain, but it remains true… however bad you think things are now, they would be MUCH worse had John McCain and the GOP won big in 2008.  For one, we would be getting NO healthcare reform.  It is also likely that we would now be fully engaged in not two, but three unpopular wars.  And whatever amount of throwing us under the bus the Democrats have doen to us, the Republicans would not only be throwing us under the bus, they would be driving the bus back and forth over us until our corpses were ground to a pulp.

It’s shitty, but the fact is, right now our choices are: a) bad; b) nightmarishly bloody gaddamn awful.

And while the notion of creating a third national party sounds neat in principle, the logistical reality of such a thing makes it barely worth trying.  I found an interesting DKos diary from this past August that outlined just how immensely difficult a task it would be to try to create a grassroots Progressive Party from scratch.  In the last 50 years, the most successful (in terms of measurable electoral success) third national party to emerge has been the Libertarian Party, which was founded in 1971.  In 38 years time, they have yet to win: a) any federal offices, either House or Senate; b) any statewide offices; c) any state senate seats.  They’ve won about a dozen or so state house seats in 38 years time.  They aren’t even remotely close to winning even a U.S. House seat, and the notion of winning a U.S. Senate seat is a laughable proposition on its face.  And they are easily the most successful national third party around.

Prepared to wait 50 years before this new party can win one or two U.S. Senate seats (which will still have to compromise with the very people they broke away from, the Democrats, if they want to get anything meaningful done)?

The analysis is disheartening as hell, but it is extremely sound in its reasoning.  The elephants and the donkeys are just way, way, way too powerful for it to be realistic to try to break away to create a third party with the system we have in place.  Without major, major campaign finance reform, it’s a pipedream.  And unfortunately, neither party seems too keen on weaning themselves off the money pipeline that comes from the lobbying industry.

Triplanetary, the Democratic party isn’t center-left or center-right. In my lifetime it’s gone from being center-left economically and all over the map on social issues to simply being not completely insane.

The problem is that you can be wrong (or downright evil) on this issue or that without being completely insane. Stupak can’t be a Republican, because he’s an environmentalist who doesn’t want to drill for oil and gas under the Great Lakes, and because he’s against predatory lending.

We need to finish taking over the Democratic Party. We’re patyway there--when I was a kid there was no way that only 65 out of 235 Democrats would be anti-choice. (Back then, though, the Republicans weren’t 100% anti-choice, either. With the Republicans moving in lockstep insanity, it’s much more important that we mount whatever primary challenges we need to to get better Democrats.)

Argh. Shouldn’t type in my sleep. We’re PARTWAY there.

Steve LaBonne, the best thing you could do with that energy is to get involved in LOCAL Democratic party issues. DTG is correct in that a third party is a pipe dream and a useful pressure valve for the corporatists who run the Dem party. But the Dem party is, fundamentally, a democracy, and the more progressives who get involved with the party apparatus, the faster and more complete the transition to a truly progressive party will be.

Like the Kos motto of “more and better Dems.” It will take a generation to purge the Dem party of the corporatists, but it’s work that needs to be done.

Agreed with all of this—anyone who thinks the Dem Party is a monolithic institution is unfamiliar with it.  It’s profoundly different from what it was even ten years ago.  That change can be sustained.

DTG--the rightest of the right managed to take over the GOP in less than 50 years.

We have the internets behind us as well.  Plus the Lesson of Lamont, i.e., primarying isn’t enough, we have to be prepared to fight against the national party all the way to the general, since those asswipes are corporate-owned and do not reflect reality.

I live and work in a pretty conservative part of the country where there’s lots of support for the anti-abortion movement. My employer’s health plan covers abortion. As far as I know, not one employee has ever complained about the fact that, by enrolling in the health insurance offered by the company, they are effectively subsidizing abortions. If the Dems who voted for this amendment think the voters will turn against them for allowing the continued existence of insurance plans that cover abortion, how do they account for the fact that their constituents are not currently raising a fuss over current employer-provided health insurance that covers abortion?

The time to work against blue dog Democrats is in the primary season.  Surely the voters in the sixty five districts of the representatives who voted for the Stupak amendment can get someone to run for the Democratic nomination in those districts.  It’s a year until the election. 

I agree with Jeff that the vote was political maneuvering, but that doesn’t make the people who voted for Stupak unaccountable for their actions.  Vote progressive.  We need the true majority.

WAIT!  I thought the Democrats were promising that the bill WOULDN’T CHANGE YOUR CURRENT INSURANCE IF YOU WERE HAPPY WITH IT.  It’s an OPTION, right?

So why the fuck are they voting for an amendment that not only changes current insurance policies, but creates an out so that NO insurance company will EVER cover abortion again?

And I hate how it’s a debate over insurance instead of health care.

Fucking for-profit insurance companies should be heavily regulated and run out of business except for providing elective procedure coverage.

Nearly 100,000 progressive Floridians took the “screw the Democrats” approach in 2000, and we wound up getting eight years of George W. Bush as a consequence of that decision.  Do we want that again? 

I blame Gore for that.  Perhaps if he had been a little less mealy-mouthed and a lot more progressive or even just more Democratic he could have earned those votes.  (Full disclosure: I voted for Nader in a very red state.) Frankly, I don’t really care.  If the Democrat in a race can’t even hold his own base and the base goes elsewhere, then so be it.  Let these chumps spend more time and “political capital” shoring up there base.

The thing that annoys me most about anti-third party arguments is this idea that “a third party can’t win.” This is one of those statements that is true only because enough people believe it.  If enough people rejected that proposition, then both the Democrats and the Republicans would be in real trouble.

On the other hand, the arguments that building an infrastructure for a new party would be prohibitive are (unfortunately to my mind) very sound.  But it is hard for me to see primaries as the answer.  Anyone remember Connecticut in 2006?  We successfully primaried Lieberman and what happened?  The party and senate leadership threw a hissy fit that the proles dared to take down Holy Joe.  Lamont got lukewarm support at best, and even stabbed in the back on at least one occassion (remember how the leadership told him to not worry, that they would get Lieberman to exit quietly?).

As to what the answer is, I am at a loss.  If the entrenched power of the parties and their leadership make a new party resource prohibitive and primaries futile, I’m not sure where we go from here.  But I am open to ideas (well ideas other than more of the typical lame “more and better Democrats” garbage).

DTG--the rightest of the right managed to take over the GOP in less than 50 years.

Correct, but that validates my point… they were successful by taking over an existing party, not by trying to form a new party.

My assertion about 50 years referred specifically to the amount of time it would take to get a brand new progressive party to any position of power.  And even if we did get one or two Progressive Party candidates into the Senate in a few decades, they would still need to caucus and work with the Democrats to be effective legislators… case in point, Bernie Sanders.  he’s an independent, but he understands that he can only be effective if he’s willing to operate within the Democratic Caucus.

If we do it from inside the Democratic Party, we could accomplish such a feat in far less time.  Primaries, primaries, primaries.... that’s how we get there.  And a willingness to gauge each district based on its constituency - we aren’t gonna get staunch liberals like Nancy Pelosi elected to conservative districts in Alabama, but we can place the most electable progressive candidate for that district in play.  The GOP shot themselvs in the foot this past week by pushing out a totally electable candidate - Dede Scozzafava - and replacing her with a raging antichoice wingnut, Doug Hoffman.  The Republicans would have easily won NY-23 had they united behind the candidate that they initially put forward.

We need to go through each Democratically-held Congressional District and ask ourselves, “Is this really the best we can do with the people here?” If not, we put someone more progressive on the ballot.  If the seat is as progressive as it can be for now, we move on to the next district.  Where the seat is held by a Republican, we ask, “Who is the most progressive candidate we can field who would actually have a shot of winning the race here?”

The path to success for progressives is going to be far easier to achieve if it gets done from the inside of the Democratic Party.

Fetuses aren’t what excite people; sowing fear and loathing about female sexuality does.

Really?  I thought the whole idea was to protect the innocent baybeez.  I feel like Stupak (and the precursor, Hyde) are written almost as though women aren’t in the picture at all, making the provision more about Your Tax Money directly leading to Dead Babies.  IMHO these ideas are misogynist for ignoring women, rather than misogynist for shaming and punishing them.

I second the response that Not Voting Democrat is simply not useful, no matter how right it feels.

What you can do, is Supporting Progressive Challengers. So the 65 idiots who were pro-Stupak need primary challengers who are better--they need to get your money, support, etc. As do initiatives for more women in Congress, period.

True breaking of the two-party monopoly would require abolishing the Electoral College, and we’re not there yet.

It’s frustrating, and wrong, all of it; enraging that we should have to fight so hard for such basic rights.  I really think of this moment as like that when women’s suffrage and black men’s suffrage came into conflict, and women lost. It was not the end of women’s suffrage. This is not the end of choice. We need, and have needed for years, something better than Roe v. Wade that will protect us against Stupak and his ilk.  We haven’t gotten it yet.

But as discouraging as this is, we’re not defeated yet either. The momentum of history is with us. however hard the patriarchy fights, so long as we refuse to submit.

Which does not negate the suffering of all the women who will be affected and hurt in the meantime.

#2 emma,

And Pelosi was saying these Blue Dogs would vote for the final bill only if they got an up or down vote on Stupak’s amendment. So they risked nothing except women’s health.

I’m so glad I haven’t donated a dime to Democrats since they amended FISA last year.

Nearly 100,000 progressive Floridians took the “screw the Democrats” approach in 2000, and we wound up getting eight years of George W. Bush as a consequence of that decision.  Do we want that again?

I blame Gore for that.  Perhaps if he had been a little less mealy-mouthed and a lot more progressive or even just more Democratic he could have earned those votes.

And that’s totally valid.  The #1 reason Al Gore wasn’t able to win Florida outright is because he ran a lousy campaign that left too many in the progressive base feeling totally ambivalent towards him.

And while I get the sentiment of those disillusioned progressive Floridian completely, I still find myself asking… was it worth it?  Sure, the message sent was loud and clear… when you run milquetoast candidates, expect milquetoast support.  But still, it was a hugely Pyrrhic victory for progressives… in sending the message to the DNC that milquetoast candidates were thoroughly unacceptable, the Florida Naderites wound up handing the presidency to a person who I have no doubt was a million times worse in his anti-progressivism.  They literally cut off their own noses to spite their faces.

I don’t have an easy answer.  I wish I did.  Do you take the worst hit imagineable in the hope that it drives your own side to acknowledge and address the needs and wants of the base, or do you continue to accept “the lesser of two evils”?  If they had the chance to to go back in time and have a do-over, and they knew that by changing their votes that they could have prevented the Bush Presidency altogether, would those Floridian Naderites do it?

In Virginia this past week, as much as Republicans try to make the argument that McDonnell’s victory was a solid rejection of healthcare reform and other (relatively) progressive initiatives, what really happened was a solid rejection of an anti-progressive Democratic candidate.  With his tail between his legs, Democratic candidate Creigh Deeds went on the campaign trail and denounced both the public option and proposed cap & trade legislation in the final month of the campaign, because he (wrongly) believed he needed to take those positions to win over moderates.  But what he wound up doing was pissing off progressives so much that they didn’t even bother voting, and as a consequence, handed the election to his Republican opponent.

I take no joy in this prognostication… President Obama is anything but assured of a second term.  A year ago, many of his staunchest supporters (myself included) perceived it as a foregone conclusion that he would be a two-term president.  And I really do think it is going to hinge on how much he accomplishes in addressing the wants and needs of the progressive base that put him into office.  I think most have come to accept that we aren’t going to get anywhere near everything we want, but the question remains… just how much will we get?  And the desires aren’t uniform across the base.  Some demanded single-payer healthcare, period, and anything less would be perceived as utter failure.  Not all progressives agreed on this point.  But we definitly need more than what we have gotten so far, or many of us just won’t bother showing up at the polls in November 2012.

The Democrats have precisely 359 days to avert embarrassing losses in the midterm elections next year.  I think they should begin their process by looking at Creigh Deeds’ campaign and doing the exact opposite of what he did.  They need to realize that progressive votes are not a foregone conclusion… while it’s certainly unlikely that any of us would defect to their Republican opponents, that doesn’t mean that our votes will automatically go to them instead.  Many of us may do precisely what many progressive Virginians did this past week… not even bother voting at all.

If this amendment really does end up in the final bill… is it going to be a country-wide thing? Like, will I lose my abortion coverage even in WA state (where birth control coverage is mandatory)?

They said what needs to be said---that the amendment will strip many millions of Americans of their current abortion coverage, and… depriv[e] not just the poor of their abortion coverage, but all women in the U.S.

Not really. The Stupak amendment just restricts the public option or any private insurance purchased with government subsides from providing abortion. As nobody is yet actually on the public plan yet nor has anyone purchased insurance on the exchange with government subsidies no one stands to be stripped of their current abortion coverage.

American women will only loose abortion coverage if they opt for the public plan or apply for subsides.

With this lesson in mind, pro-choice Democrats need to understand this: Contraception coverage is next.  Make no mistake.

I doubt it. After all, the Hyde amendment was passed over 20 years ago and government medical insurance programs like Medicaid routinely cover contraception to this day.

If this amendment really does end up in the final bill… is it going to be a country-wide thing? Like, will I lose my abortion coverage even in WA state (where birth control coverage is mandatory)?

It depends entirely on whether your plan gets absorbed into the health insurance exchange that will be created if this plan becomes law.  If your plan is private or employer-based, and premiums are paid entirely by you and/or your employer, AND it doesn’t go into the exchange, then you will still have whatever abortion coverage you currently have today.

The big wildcard in all of this is what plans will wind up going into the exchange… because I have no idea what the answer to that question is.  It’s all very, very wonkish.  Perhaps someone can answer that better.

Here’s what I gleaned from a Los Angeles Times article on the issue:

The compromise amendment, offered Saturday by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), in effect bans abortion coverage by all plans that are purchased using taxpayer dollars. Abortions could still be obtained by policyholders who pay their entire premiums without government assistance or by individuals receiving federal subsidies in the event of rape, incest or danger to the mother’s life.

Abortion rights advocates say the result would be a “de facto ban” on abortion in insurance plans sold under the new exchanges that would be created in the bill, because so many of the customers using the exchanges would be getting subsidies.

American women will only loose abortion coverage if they opt for the public plan or apply for subsides.

I believe that is incorrect.

Any plan purchased through the exchange will lose abortion coverage.  I don’t know if employers will be allowed to purchase group plans through the exchange or not, but if they are, and they purchase such a plan, then all of their employees covered under the exchange-based group plan would lose abortion coverage.

I haven’t had all my coffee yet this morning but please, can someone read this link and tell me that it is *not* implying that Obama threw women under the financial bus *solely* for a single Republican vote? 

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/11/08/update-lone-gop-vote-came-after-call-from-president-obama/

“Cao said he explained to the president he could not support the health care bill without the amendment, but said he would support the bill if the abortion measure passed.”

Because that’s pretty much how it reads to me.

Lieberman was able to pull the stunt that he did due to the laws of Connecticut that allow you to run as an independent after you lose a primary. In most states, that is illegal. Here in VA Lieberman would have had to STFU and go home.

So, Lieberman does not prove primarieis are ineffective, just that Connecticut’s law needs to be changed.

PP said: American women will only loose abortion coverage if they opt for the public plan or apply for subsides.

That could effect an ENORMOUS number of women, eventually; and insurance companies often don’t like maintaining lots of separate plans, so the pressure on them to just not offer this coverage (esp if they are feeling the pinch financially) is not going to be small.

PP said: After all, the Hyde amendment was passed over 20 years ago and government medical insurance programs like Medicaid routinely cover contraception to this day.

Hey PP; in fact, lots of insurance plans, especially low-cost ones, do NOT cover contraception now. I know because I’ve worked for more than one company where that was the case.

Also I like what someone said above about the Democratic Party--it isn’t center-left or center-right, currently, it’s just the Party of the Sane.

OK, just found a more concise answer to your question, Kat.

Via Double X:

All of this congressional wrangling won’t change the coverage of women who already have employer-based insurance plans. The Stupak-Pitt amendment doesn’t affect corporate plans, so women who have abortion coverage will continue to have it, as long as their employers stick with the same insurance provider.

And most employer-based plans - 87 percent, according to a 2002 Guttmacher survey - do cover abortions. That’s not rape-and-incest-only coverage; it’s for the intentionally broad category of “medically necessary and appropriate” abortions.

So it appears that women who currently have an employer-based health plan may not be adversely affected by this amendment.  The women who will be directly impacted are those who plan to either go on the public option, or to buy insurance independently through the exchange once it is created.

It’s really awful, because abortion is one of the few things that most insurance companies cover quite well (at least in my experience).Why? Because it’s such a low-risk, low-cost procedure that heads off much more expensive medical care. This will take away existing coverage from people who already have it.  But if it’s not allowed to be in plans that are publicly traded using gov’t subsidies, I wonder whether it won’t be scrapped from all plans--it may be that it’s just easier for insurance companies to provide standard packages and not create exceptions for the minority of people who are purchasing a plan without any government assistance?  Or maybe insurance plans can get around it by offering a separate plan of say, 3-4$ /month to opt-in on separate abortion coverage? It may be some kind of accounting trick, but maybe that would work?I hope there’s some way to get around it. Is there any chance it’s unconstitutional?

All I am hoping is that this stuff gets weeded out in the senate. But I’m not optimistic.  The senate needs all the democrats to toe the line, plus douchey Joe Lieberman, plus one Republican.  There’s no way that plan will be better than the house plan.

I believe that is incorrect.

Any plan purchased through the exchange will lose abortion coverage.  I don’t know if employers will be allowed to purchase group plans through the exchange or not, but if they are, and they purchase such a plan, then all of their employees covered under the exchange-based group plan would lose abortion coverage.

I just read the full text of the amendment. It seems to indicate that only private plans purchased on the exchange towards which a affordability credit is applied, will not be permitted to cover abortion.

So as long as you pay your own premiums you can choose whatever private plan you want - including one that covers abortion.

If you get fundraising emails from NARAL or the national Planned Parenthood in the next few days, it might be worth replying to ask whether they dropped the ball on this amendment because their fundraising depends upon selling women down the river.

What appalls me is that much of the care that cancer patients ... Like Stephen the Dino Douche Lynch ... receive isn’t medically necessary at all.  I hope that if he relapses, his nurses remember this and *forget* all the adjuvant therapies like anti-nausea meds and such. 

After all, they reduce suffering and that’s agin god!

I just read the full text of the amendment. It seems to indicate that only private plans purchased on the exchange towards which a affordability credit is applied, will not be permitted to cover abortion.

So as long as you pay your own premiums you can choose whatever private plan you want - including one that covers abortion.

Correct, however the huge concern is that many insurance companies who join the exchange will simply opt to do away with abortion coverage on ALL of their plans offered on the exchange rather than dealing with the bureaucratic mess of having to manage one set of plans that recieve federal subsidies and one set of plans that don’t.

All I am hoping is that this stuff gets weeded out in the senate. But I’m not optimistic.  The senate needs all the democrats to toe the line, plus douchey Joe Lieberman, plus one Republican.  There’s no way that plan will be better than the house plan.

Agreed, though it should be noted that they don’t actually need any Republicans, unless 91 year old Robert Byrd (who will be 92 next week) is too sick to be wheeled in for a vote.  They just need Lieberman and the rest of the Democratic Caucus to get to 60.

I hate this too (and I particularly hate any shit-for-brains who managed to convince himself that refusing to expand medical access was actually a “pro-life” stance) but maybe getting the thing passed and then fixing it piecemeal is the way it’s going to happen.

Here’s what I want, eventually: Single payer, and, oh yeah, abortion on demand. That’s quite a chasm, but how do we cross it?

I’ve seen suggestions that the tit-for-tat would be that ED drugs not be covered either, but that’s not even close. Refusing to pay for Viagra (you know that will be covered) isn’t the same as their screwing with abortion--it’s only about $10 a pill out of pocket and an erection isn’t usually something you need to get done within 8-12 weeks.

Here’s my proposal: An amendment that we don’t pay for prostate cancer. Prostate cancer is sort of analogous to breast cancer in a few ways--hits about the same percentage of men as breast cancer does women and it’s gender-specific. 

I don’t have a prostate--why should I pay if Bart Stupak’s tries to kill him?

Because we’re going to have a shared risk pool? Then how come abortion--a procedure needed by ‘way more people than does prostate cancer treatment--isn’t covered?

Because abortion is only the problem of bad women?

Well, that’s the point, no? You think that it’s just a certain type of woman who needs this sort of help, but honest-to-God, it could be anyone.  Mrs. Stupak. The little Stupakettes.  And when they need it, they really need it, they’re not kidding, it is serious.

As serious as cancer.

Good idea? Lousy idea?

The whole country is being held hostage to the Lunatic Third (the 30% or so who are wingnuts). As long as that’s so, elections will always be a matter of Sane Party vs. Wackos.

The Lunatic Third simply cannot stand, if we ever want things to get better, or even stop them from getting worse. So what to do about them? Honestly, how do we make them go away, short of violence?

I can’t see Pelosi letting this one last for any length of time.  I’ve been deeply impressed by her leadership over the past six months, and I’m willing to be cool while giving ordinary pressure.

But yeah, never give to Democratic Party organs.  Always give to individual caucuses and campaigns.

One of the supposed options is that women would be able to pay for a special rider for exchange-purchased policies that would cover abortion. If that were true, then there’s a very good case that the payment should be negative, because abortion (especially early-term) saves huge amounts over even a regular childbirth and neonatal care. I know, good luck with that.

DTG speaks for me on both the frustration and the strategy.

My best strategy at this point is to support progressive politics on a local level, where it is more likely that I can make more of a difference, and to take the lesser of two evils for the moment on the national level.

I have actually considered running for office.  Somewhat seriously considered running for city council my first year of grad school, because most of the challengers for city council that year were total clowns, but was talked out of it because I wouldn’t have time.  I think more progressives need to actually run.

Rachel II, I don’t see anything in that article that makes Obama responsible for the Stupak amendment passing.  Obama called Cao to ask him to vote for the final bill.  Cao responded by saying that he would vote for the bill if Stupak amendment passed, but not if Stupak did not pass.  If Obama had then called around asking for everyone to vote for the Stupak amendment so that Cao would vote for the bill, then your analysis would be correct.  But there’s nothing at all to imply that Obama did that.

Am I the only one who suspects that this is also part of the plot for insurance companies to refuse to pay for one more thing?

If anybody hasn’t clicked on Amanda’s link to the essay ‘The Only Moral Abortion Is My Abortion - When The Anti-Choice Choose’, I highly recommend a read.

Ah, I see what you’re saying, Snowmentality.  Thanks.

I read the essay Truth, and it is eye-widening.  Some of it is very sad.  I found the description of the young woman having her second abortion who was loudly proclaiming that abortion should be illegal to be particularly sad.  I wonder if she didn’t blame society for allowing her this choice because it wasn’t what she wanted, but someone else pressured her into it.  I have a friend who argues against the morning after pill on the grounds that men already have so many ways of pressuring you into sex.  Now if you are’t on the pill they can tell you, so what, just take the morning after pill?  There is so much that is so tragic about that statement, but she really feels this way.  She in some way, blames feminism for her single status.  Though I often point out to her that so many women we both know are living what can only be described as tragic lives in marriages.

Anyway, I am 100% for and in fact I demand abortion on demand, no excuses, no shame.  But if there is a man pressuring a woman into an abortion, I have a problem with that, and I do think it happens.  I have no doubt that many of the men who do it are actually anti-choice.  I’ve seen that too.

DTG in STL puts his finger on one of the biggest problems for the Dems as a party:
their belief that they can piss on a key part of their own base and still win elections.  It is a deeply, deeply held belief by most established DC Dems, and is immune to empirical evidence to the contrary.  Weirdly enough the belief is shared by the current president who was elected by being the first Dem candidate in a long while to unapologetically appeal to progressive ideals.  Despite this he isn’t progressive and doesn’t believe in progressives, and seems to have turned into a 1600 version of John Kerry since his election. 

Weird.  Just Weird.

Wapsie, not to sound glib but the answer is wait for the 30 percent to die off. I’m serious--look at the average age of Fox News viewers. Look at the average age of people throwing the Town Hall temper tantrums. 65 and over was the only age demographic McCain won.

Well one of the reasons that Dems might believe that is because it’s mostly true.  You should read the commenters on the HUffpo for evidence.  And does anyone believe that the Kos people are actually going to turn against any Democrat over women? 

Then again, the VA Governor race provides evidence that it’s not true for everything - you can’t run as a Democrat on an opt-out of the public option platform.  But can you win as a Democrat on a “it’s mostly used by lazy sluts as birth control” (believe it or not this is some people’s argument at the huff po, they claim to be dems).  I think you can win on that platform.

Also we should use this as a bludgeon to force contraception coverage if they’re not going to cover abortions. If they want to reduce the number of abortions, let’s make them put their money where their mouths are. Contraception is the easiest way to reduce abortion rates.

I think you’re right Ben D. And reading the comments about the Daily Kos and Huffington: they aren’t as progressive as this site.

Don’t concede anything to Progressive Prince out of a misguided sense of fairness.  He’s minimizing, but why, since he’s so “pro-life”?  If he’s as fetus loving as he claims, he should be celebrating this loss of coverage.  But instead, he’s pretending this isn’t a big deal?  Why?

Simple reason: This is not, and has never been, about fetuses.  This is about hating women.  Progressive Prince feels free lying and minimizing, because the main thing is fucking over women, and deceit is part of that.

So it appears that women who currently have an employer-based health plan may not be adversely affected by this amendment.  The women who will be directly impacted are those who plan to either go on the public option, or to buy insurance independently through the exchange once it is created.

Well, i work for a small business who can’t afford health benefits… so I guess this means me. =(

I wish we could ban coverage for people who believe that bronze age death/rebirth fertility cults are a sound basis for governance.

“So as long as you pay your own premiums you can choose whatever private plan you want - including one that covers abortion.”

“Correct, however the huge concern is that many insurance companies who join the exchange will simply opt to do away with abortion coverage on ALL of their plans offered on the exchange rather than . . .”

Well, that, and that any woman who can’t afford the whole premium and needs access to the subsidies will be denied abortion coverage.  Economic coercion to not get an abortion is just as devastating as legal coercion, to those affected by it.  Hopefully no one here is of the “wah, I should have it ‘cause I can afford it, screw anyone who can’t get it on their own” mentality.

Incidentally, the no-subsidy requirement in order to get abortion coverage will disproportionally affect women who have children already, especially single mothers, as they will be paying their children’s premiums as well as their own, thus paying more, thus being more likely to need subsidies.

And even the “solution” of not applying for subsidies has a huge problem with it: if someone eligible for subsidies instead pays the whole premium herself in exchange for getting the abortion coverage, she will be paying more on a monthly basis, and very quickly she’ll end up paying more over the policy’s life than an abortion, or two abortions, or three abortions, would cost.  It’s effectively just another way of paying for abortions herself, except usually more expensive.

I truly wish some enterprising Democrat would have amended the amendment (assuming you can do that?) to mandate contraception coverage under all circumstances that abortion is not covered.  But, that didn’t happen, so it’s back to “hope they reconcile the fuck out of this shit.”

There’s two lessons here.  One is that there is no such thing as “common ground”.  Obama and other conciliatory pro-choice Democrats keep insisting on believing that anti-choicers are in this for the fetuses, and therefore will be wooed by common ground attempts to reduce the abortion rate through contraception use.  But while a few moderate anti-choicers will play along like they were eating their vegetables, their hearts aren’t in this.  Fetuses aren’t what excite people; sowing fear and loathing about female sexuality does.  This amendment will do nothing to reduce the abortion rate, but it will increase the suffering of women seeking abortion.  The real goal is and always will be punishing sexual women, at least scapegoating the ones who have the misfortune to have unintended pregnancies.

Defunding abortions certainly will lower the abortion rate, and it is entirely dishonest for you to say otherwise.

The other lesson is that anti-choicers will always push for more.  There is no such thing as satisfying them, because no matter what they do, women continue fucking.  Or, Other Women continue fucking---anti-choicers make an exception for their own selves or sex partners, whose sexuality is acceptable, and whose abortions are necessary.  We knew when the anti-choice nuts got involved, that they would probably be able to get a ban on the public option covering abortion.  But since that was almost certain, they pushed for more---depriving not just the poor of their abortion coverage, but all women in the U.S.

It’s going to be pretty hard for us to disprove your claim that we don’t actually care about human life, and are just upset by “women f*cking”.  It’s an ad hominem, and completely unfalsifiable.

Couldn’t you make the exact same argument about early Christianity’s opposition to infanticide?  They don’t really care about all those babies being left to die of exposure, they just want to regulate women’s sexuality.  Remember: any argument that justifies abortion justifies infanticide.  The two are not substantially different.

If you want to say that pro-lifers are not motivated by a desire to protect the unborn, you are going to have to show how that would even be relevant were it true.  As I’ve said, it is absolutely impossible to disprove.  At best, you could argue that the effects of their actions only punished female sexuality and did not effectively protect prenatals from being killed.  You would also have to demonstrate that there was a substantial difference between abortion and infanticide. 

I don’t want my tax dollars paying for abortion any more than I want them paying for infanticide.  The only difference I can see between the two is that we did not evolve to feel particularly bad about abortion. Birth marks the spot in our children’s development where we would feel bad about killing them.  I think it’s really creepy that it also marks the spot that our Constitution and human rights laws protect them.  I don’t want my tax dollars funding anything that is not substantially different from infanticide!

With this lesson in mind, pro-choice Democrats need to understand this: Contraception coverage is next.  Make no mistake.  Now they have a precedent of banning insurance companies from covering abortion, but this will not, of course, stop women from fucking.  So contraception is next.  And if you doubt me, remember what happened when the Democrats tried to include contraception access expansion in the stimulus bill.  There was a full-blown sex panic, the fear that those Other Women would be fucking.  They will try to harness that energy, and this precedent, all to force your insurance company to stop covering your pill, your IUD, and possibly any gynecological care associated with them.

The pro-life movement absolutely will be going after any sort of coverage that pays for abortifacient contraception.  You are completely right about that.  It’ll be our next goal, I can promise you that right now.

Austin it’s really not pretty fucking hard to prove that the vast majority of anti-choices don’t give a fuck-all about human life.  It’s easy because a super-majority if you bastards voted for george bush TWICE and supported the Iraq war.

No one ever gave a shit that I have lost sleep, literally, over my tax dollars being used to cause unimaginable pain and terror on little children, some of whom died writhing in the streets from their horrific wounds.

too bad about me.  No hyde amendment for me.  No villagers wagging their fingers at the camera defending my values.

I’m an anti-war activist and I’ve been personaly threatened and accosted by you motherfuckers while you were screaming purple-faced for more brown blood.

So print your post out, roll it up, and then stick it straight up your ass sideways.

Abortion and infanticide are substantially different, just as birth control and abortion are substantially different, you are being intellectually dishonest.  Abortion is not murder because a fetus is not a human being.  An infant is a human being.  Can you really not see the difference?

The argument that a fetus, in whatever stage of development has as many rights as a living woman also shows how little anti-choice people care about women.  It’s not surprising that people who are anti a woman’s right to choose what to do with her own body are also anti-gay, pro-war and pro-death penalty.  They don’t care that much if a woman dies in childbirth or as a result of pregnancy or they wouldn’t be fighting so hard to deny health coverage to poor people.  The idea that someone as anti-human life as the anti-choice movement have any moral superiority over the rest of us is absurd. 

The same people protesting at abortion clinics are the same ones you’ll find holding hate signs at gay men’s funerals and cheering outside prisons whenever a person is put to death.  They cheer when our planes bomb neighborhoods where innocent people are living, and turn out in mass to stop the poor from getting health care.  They are hateful bigots.

That’s right G Porgey.  I have a step-uncle who is given to announcing that “no decent woman” would have an abortion.  He once told me in this real cajoling, whiny, kind of martyrish voice that “his religion told him it was wrong”. 

He’s fucking Catholic.  His religion also tells him the death penality is wrong.  His religion told him the Iraq war was wrong, in no uncertain terms.

Of course, conviently the only thing that his religion teaches that he feels compelled to follow, are anti-woman policies.  Their policies on the death penalty, social justice and war he doesn’t bother himself about.

And goddamn if 80% or more of them aren’t exactly like the pos my aunt married.

*feeds troll*

Remember: any argument that justifies abortion justifies infanticide.  The two are not substantially different.

Except this one: It’s her body. Really, try and educate yourself before you come to a place like this.

If you want to say that pro-lifers are not motivated by a desire to protect the unborn, you are going to have to show how that would even be relevant were it true.  As I’ve said, it is absolutely impossible to disprove.  At best, you could argue that the effects of their actions only punished female sexuality and did not effectively protect prenatals from being killed.

Because if “pro-lifers” cared about protecting the unborn, they would try to reduce abortion, not to make it more painful for everyone involved. Thus, funding contraception and sex ed, not defunding them and spreading lies. Helping kids once they’re born would also improve your image.

I don’t want my tax dollars funding anything that is not substantially different from infanticide!

Neither do I, which is why I am for public funding of abortion and against war.

The pro-life movement absolutely will be going after any sort of coverage that pays for abortifacient contraception.  You are completely right about that.  It’ll be our next goal, I can promise you that right now.

Good luck finding any. The definition of the two words makes them mutually exclusive. While you’re doing that, please stand aside and let the people who are actually trying to make progress do some work.

Austin it’s really not pretty fucking hard to prove that the vast majority of anti-choices don’t give a fuck-all about human life.  It’s easy because a super-majority if you bastards voted for george bush TWICE and supported the Iraq war.

Far, far fewer innocent lives were lost in the war than are lost due to abortion.

Abortion and infanticide are substantially different, just as birth control and abortion are substantially different, you are being intellectually dishonest.  Abortion is not murder because a fetus is not a human being.  An infant is a human being.  Can you really not see the difference?

Abortifacient contraception and abortion are not substantially different.  A prenatal is a human being because it is the child of two other human beings.  What else can the product of the reproduction of two human beings be, if not another human?

The argument that a fetus, in whatever stage of development has as many rights as a living woman also shows how little anti-choice people care about women.  It’s not surprising that people who are anti a woman’s right to choose what to do with her own body are also anti-gay, pro-war and pro-death penalty.  They don’t care that much if a woman dies in childbirth or as a result of pregnancy or they wouldn’t be fighting so hard to deny health coverage to poor people.  The idea that someone as anti-human life as the anti-choice movement have any moral superiority over the rest of us is absurd.

It shows that they care equally about everyone.  Why does that entail not caring about women?  Your conception of “caring about women” obviously entails caring more about women than other people.

I’m not pro-war, I’m ambivalent on the death penalty, but am completely opposed to homosexual behavior.  The gay rights movement is about the equality of desires, while the pro-life movement is about equality of persons. There’s a big difference.

“Far, far fewer innocent lives were lost in the war than are lost due to abortion. “

Living, breathing children died in the streets and you and yours support it.

This sorry fact nullifies any of your “concern” over clumps of cells, and serves as strong evidence of Amanda’s claim that you are only concerned with women fucking.

It’s all about control, it’s always been all about control.

If you cared about the death of innocents, you’d be in the streets protesting wars.  Instead when any of you murderous bastards do take to the streets over war, it’s to support them and call people who are against them names.

The very idea that people like you, the very lowest of the morally low, true moral repugnants, could dare to presume to tell others of your ‘values” is laughable on its face.  You are all jokes, and deep down you know it.

The pro-life movement absolutely will be going after any sort of coverage that pays for abortifacient contraception.

I think that up to NINETY EIGHT percent of American women might have a tiny lil’ quibble with you on that one.

http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/issues/birth_control/
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contr_use.html#2
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/usecontr.htm

Strident anti-contraception campaigns will be the death knell of the anti-choice movement. I for one cannot wait. Should be SO fun to watch.

Almost as fun as watching the woman-hating fetus worshippers foam at the mouth next Saturday, when Chicago makes them move their little prayer-circle-jerks far, far, far away from our fair city’s women’s clinics! Bubble zone, motherfuckers!

A group of you thugs visited the planned parenthood that is next to my bank about two months ago and I went ballistic. You big tough bad asses are good at scaring young women, or desperate women who are at a low point, with your antics but I went right up to you fuckers and started screaming into the streets that George Bush was the real murderer, that was is murder, that the protesters themselves who all supported the war (and none of them disputed it) were murderers.  And they didn’t come back the next week, and I haven’t seen them since, but if I do I will do the same thing, because I am not at a low point, and I am not young, and I am not desperate, and I will face down with any of you woman-hating facists any time, and any place.

And not one of them looked at me.  They all looked away.  I believe it’s because they can’t bear to look the truth in the face.  Dirty war supporters, real child murderers, daring to call young women entering a clinic murderers?  Well, more women need to stand up to them right where they gather and tell them the ugly truth:  You are a dirty war supporter, a true child murderer. 

Just thinking about it fills me with a rage, the same rage that propelled me to cross the parking lot, and I swear to God at that moment I dont’ care if I am killed, but I will stand face to face with you and scream for the world to hear what you really are.

A dirty, war supporting, child murderer. 

So fuck you.

Austin,

Kindly do humanity a favor and kill yourself.

Asswipe.

The definition of the two words makes them mutually exclusive.

If only we could keep them busy going after jumbo shrimp, down escalators and solar-powered flashlights.

It shows that they care equally about everyone.  Why does that entail not caring about women?  Your conception of “caring about women” obviously entails caring more about women than other people.

At the very least, giving women the rights that all other people have, ie. bodily liberty. No “special rights” like you’d like to give to embryos.

am completely opposed to homosexual behavior.  The gay rights movement is about the equality of desires, while the pro-life movement is about equality of persons. There’s a big difference.

Because, as we know, teh gayz are all about the desires. They’re not people who are being refused work or housing, or murdered in the streets, or not being allowed to see their spouse and children on their deathbeds.

Except this one: It’s her body. Really, try and educate yourself before you come to a place like this.

Suppose a baby was born into an environment in which there was no replacement available for her mother’s breastmilk.  If the baby did not breastfeed, she would starve.  That is to say, if the baby did not physically attach herself to her mother’s body and use her body for her own survival, she would starve.  If the mother refused to allow the baby to breastfeed, this would be infanticide, despite the fact that “it’s her body”.

Because if “pro-lifers” cared about protecting the unborn, they would try to reduce abortion, not to make it more painful for everyone involved. Thus, funding contraception and sex ed, not defunding them and spreading lies. Helping kids once they’re born would also improve your image.

We would not want to expand access to abortifacient contraception.  We would not support sex ed classes that promote abortifacient contraception, either.  We support sexual standards, not sexual hedonism.

Good luck finding any. The definition of the two words makes them mutually exclusive. While you’re doing that, please stand aside and let the people who are actually trying to make progress do some work.

Read the abstract that I linked you to: one way in which hormonal contraception works is by preventing implantation. It is therefore not substantially different from abortion, and is not anything a pro-lifer would ever support.

The medical community used to define pregnancy as beginning at conception.  They changed this definition in the early sixties.  Medical terminology is not a basis for morality or ethics; something does not become OK because the medical community decides that it is simpler to define a word a different way.  Talk about morally clueless…

Austin, you can be glad that this is over the internet, because nothing makes me stabby more than a privileged dude who just doesn’t get it, and will never have to suffer the outcomes of unwanted pregnancy and childrearing. You can try to conflate abortion with infanticide to your heart’s damn content, but you cannot then turn around and whine that contraception is “abortifacient”, which, correctly or not, rules out everything female-controlled and almost completely everything bar the barrier methods and the Neverending-Fucking-Pregnancies method (somewhat euphemistically called Natural Family Planning) because of the tiny, unprovable, infinitesimal chance that a fucking microscopic “person” might fail to implant inside the male heir vessel woman.

I’m glad that you’re so fucking privileged you can deny this is about control and removal of the ability of women to control their lives, not babies, because at least you, in your ignorant bliss, will never be affected. We pro-choicers work hard to ensure that all reproductive options are available to women… while you freely admit that those options, alternatives and education are also being attacked and are in danger of being taken away in favor of ignorance, fear, loathing and the intrenchant misogyny that goes with it. Hell, why should you be concerned? Its not your problem if women as a class are viewed as subhuman creatures whose bodies and reproduction functions are simultaneously sacrasanct and disgusting. Nobody will ever deny YOU your right to liberty and happiness based on your fertility.

You, Randall Terry, Jill Stanek, their ilk, and everyone who has the audacity to wave fetus posters outside clinics, and interfere with women’s lives deserves to have each and every single unwanted baby dumped on your doorsteps and you lot forced to be their carers for the next 20+ years. Care about babies? Put your money where your mouth is.

Why yes, I am bitter.

And not one of them looked at me.  They all looked away.  I believe it’s because they can’t bear to look the truth in the face.

More likely they simply thought you were mentally insane. They probably just looked away because they felt bad for you - after all, that’s our society’s way of coping with the mentally ill - we look away out of politeness.

Austin, the day you are legally required to give your kidneys, liver, blood, marrow, corneas or cochleas to any relative who wants them is the day I will be OK with having to give my uterus to a relative who wants it.

And let’s be honest, it’s not a relative at all, it’s human tissue, which doesn’t make it my relative any more than a tumor is my relative, because relatives are CITIZENS. But even playing by your lying, disgusting, woman-hating rules, let’s just say. When your relatives are legally entitled to your kidney then my relatives will be legally entitled to my uterus.

That doesn’t explain why they didn’t come back, troll. 

Nice try, wrong answer.  RedState’s more friendly.

Suppose a baby was born into an environment in which there was no replacement available for her mother’s breastmilk.  If the baby did not breastfeed, she would starve.  That is to say, if the baby did not physically attach herself to her mother’s body and use her body for her own survival, she would starve.  If the mother refused to allow the baby to breastfeed, this would be infanticide, despite the fact that “it’s her body”.

Er, no, actually, it wouldn’t. Infanticide = killing an infant. It’s right there in the word.

We would not want to expand access to abortifacient contraception.  We would not support sex ed classes that promote abortifacient contraception, either.  We support sexual standards, not sexual hedonism.

Translation: “Who cares if it reduces abortion? SLUTS!”

Read the abstract that I linked you to: one way in which hormonal contraception works is by preventing implantation. It is therefore not substantially different from abortion, and is not anything a pro-lifer would ever support.

Abortion = termination of pregnancy. If there is no pregnancy, it is impossible for there to be an abortion.

The medical community used to define pregnancy as beginning at conception.  They changed this definition in the early sixties.  Medical terminology is not a basis for morality or ethics; something does not become OK because the medical community decides that it is simpler to define a word a different way.  Talk about morally clueless…

Talk about generally clueless. If you define life as beginning at conception, the death rate skyrockets because most fertilized eggs don’t implant anyway, and you lot look even stupider for complaining about birth control while there’s this vast!!1!! holocaust!1!!! of fertilized eggs!!!1!eleventy!!!

I don’t really think there’s a point in arguing with Austin NedVed. HE’s using bad faith arguments and you’d have to believe a lot of crazy unscientific stuff to have any common ground to work from.  Also, do people really use the phrase “sexual hedonism” anymore?

Ah, and “progressive prince” allows his slip, already showing, to slide completely down to his ankles with that post.

No there isn’t you’re right, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that he and progressive prince, or, peepee, are the same poster.  Or perhaps, drawn here from the same cesspool.

“Suppose a baby was born into an environment in which there was no replacement available for her mother’s breastmilk.  If the baby did not breastfeed, she would starve.  That is to say, if the baby did not physically attach herself to her mother’s body and use her body for her own survival, she would starve.  If the mother refused to allow the baby to breastfeed, this would be infanticide, despite the fact that “it’s her body”.”

I hate arguments that use far-fetched analogies.  That’s part of the reason I quit law school, no joke.  What if we lived in a parallel universe exactly like this one with the exact same morality and the exact same ethical codes and the exact same legal standards, except in this universe, we don’t have baby formula and it’s biologically impossible for a baby to nurse from any woman but it’s mother.  Oh, and by the way, whichever answer you give for this entirely implausible example must be the same thing you’d say for pregnancy.

Pregnancy cannot ever be argued by analogy.  The only thing that’s barely similar is organ donation, but you idiots never use that example because then it’d be painfully obvious how much you hate women.  If you aren’t going to legally require every single person to sign up for the bone marrow registry, donate blood every 4 months, remove one kidney, and repeatedly have portions of their liver sliced out so that other people can use them, then you can’t force women to grow a baby if they don’t want to.

Geez Austin, thanks for showing up and making Amanda’s point that your movement is all about punishing women for sex so abundantly clear.

Rachel @81 wins the thread.

Austin, fuckhead, how do you know a fertilized egg has implanted or not?

YOU CAN"T, short of cutting a woman open and looking for the egg.  The only way to tell that implantation has happened is to see the hormones caused by the implantation increase.

EC works by preventing ovulation.  If it worked by preventing implantation, then taking it within 72 hours wouldn’t be so important.  You could wait a week or more, since implantation occurs 11 days AFTER fertilization.

Same deal for BC in general.  Are there slight changes to the uterine lining?  Sure.  Do they cause more implantations to fail than would otherwise?  WHO THE FUCK KNOWS?  Because there is no way to know if a fertilized egg even existed unless it implants.  Studies suggest 50-80% of eggs fail to implant.

It’s a possibility, even if remote, so scientists won’t dismiss it definitively.  But it’s not likely, and not provable without slicing women open lefta nd right.

And what if it did?  You are not allowed to force someone to donate organs or even a pint of blood.  We even had a case here in Chicago where a mom refused to allow her children to be TESTED to see if they were a bone marrow match for their half-brother.  That living breathing kid not only didn’t have a right to their marrow, the courts found he didn’t have a right to have his half-siblings TESTED to see if they were possible donors.

But a woman?  Should an egg become fertilized, your crowd believes she must do everything in her power to help it implant and then carry it full term, regardless of any threat to her health. 

Why?  Because she had sex.

This is why we say it is crystal clear that you don’t give a shit about women.  You want to punish them for sex.  If it were simply about preventing aboriton, you would all jump on proper sex ed and contraception.  But it’s much much much more fun for you fuckers to try to force a woman carry an unwanted fetus to term.  And if it’s white, well then she needs to give it to a good Christian home for upbringing while she continues to hide herself away.

You are the fucking Taliban.  You are as unAmerican as it is possible to be.

Not to mention, if the government has the right to force a woman to carry a baby to term, it also has the right to force her to terminate.  She’s just a womb, a tool, and she’s not allowed to choose to control her body independently.  That right belongs to the government.

Nah, the majority of this country thinks some women should be punished some of the time for having sex.  Empathy is not an American value and frankly, I’m pretty proud to be unAmerican in that regard.

With this lesson in mind, pro-choice Democrats need to understand this: Contraception coverage is next.  Make no mistake

Here in ND, it’s already there. Doctors and women have to commit fraud in order to obtain coverage for oral contraceptives. Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Dakota will not cover it for contraceptive reasons, but will for other reasons.

I’m not pro-war, I’m ambivalent on the death penalty, but am completely opposed to homosexual behavior.  The gay rights movement is about the equality of desires, while the pro-life movement is about equality of persons. There’s a big difference.

GAYS AND LESBIANS ARE PEOPLE, you empathically-dysfunctional asshole!  The gay rights movement is about the equality of persons, far far FAR more than the “pro-life” movement, which concerns itself entirely with beings that have neither human consciousness nor the physical brainspace to support it. 

True, they might someday BECOME people (hey, they might even become gay people!), but only if a woman creates them.  But they are not people, and they exist at the point of abortion solely because of feeding off of her.  Unlike your average gay couple, who can have a loving and happy relationship full of joy and mutual companionship without putting an actual burden on anyone, a fetus does not exist except by burdening somebody with breathing for it, metabolizing for it, dealing with its waste, and otherwise providing for its whole existence, up to and including the substances of its body.  And at the times when abortion is legal? Not even vestigial existence of the stuff that makes a person a person.

WE are people.  The lesbians and gay men whose life experience you dismiss as “desire” (with connotations more worthless than “desire” should ever have), the people who love and are loved in the same manner as any heterosexual person, just in different gender combinations, WE have consciousness, we have memory, we experience the world as intelligent, sentient, complex, rational, thinking beings; we are hurt and we are uplifted by our experiences in this world and our connections with others.  Fetuses? None of the above. Nothing to justify co-opting someone else’s body for the use of a mindless biological specimen that might later develop into something of value to itself (and if they do find it of such value prior to that? the person who thinks that can be the one to make the investment. You want to save the fetuses? Figure out how to sustain one after it’s been removed from the uterus).

(Amazing how conservatives suddenly become die-hard communists when there’s a fetus around!)

Pregnancy cannot ever be argued by analogy.

This is not an argument to answer his analogy: you simply stated your conclusion.

An actual response would require some type of reasoning as to why his analogy was actually flawed.

Gee, I wonder why you dropped out of law school.

The only thing that’s barely similar is organ donation, but you idiots never use that example because then it’d be painfully obvious how much you hate women.  If you aren’t going to legally require every single person to sign up for the bone marrow registry, donate blood every 4 months, remove one kidney, and repeatedly have portions of their liver sliced out so that other people can use them, then you can’t force women to grow a baby if they don’t want to.

Well there are a few glaring differences between abortions and organ-snatching.

1. Virtually every woman who is pregnant is in that state because of a choice she made - the consequences of which she was very likely aware. On the other hand, if you need precious life-saving blood from me I am in no way responsible for you being in that situation of need.

2. Prohibitions on abortions don’t involve forcefully tearing anything from the bodies of anyone. Quite the contrary - they stop individuals from tearing things from their bodies. In other words, both bans - on forced organ giving and abortion - simply prohibit operations - not impel them.

3. Additionally, in the case with organ and blood donating a needful recipient has multiple avenues in which to get his/her much needed transfusions/organs. With a fetus - on the other hand - no one else is capable of sustaining it’s life except its mother. On the other hand, except in some extremely unusual cases - people needing organs and blood won’t die simply because some obstinate person refuses them access - they can just find a more altruistic individual as an alternative.

I think the fact that the mother put herself in this situation, the fetus is completely dependent on her for life and the fact that a ban on abortion simply prevents anyone from stopping a natural process separates forced organ snatching from abortion.

1. Virtually every woman who is pregnant is in that state because of a choice she made - the consequences of which she was very likely aware.

So you’re arguing for one of several things here:
1. Embryos inside women who were raped aren’t people, while embryos inside women who were raped are people.
2. Both of them are people and abortion should be prohibited all the time, but you’re making an irrelevant point because you don’t know better.
3. Neither of them are people, but sluts ought to be punished for their sluttery.

On the other hand, if you need precious life-saving blood from me I am in no way responsible for you being in that situation of need.

Relevance? We don’t, say, take organs from parents who transmitted genetic diseases to their children.

2. Prohibitions on abortions don’t involve forcefully tearing anything from the bodies of anyone. Quite the contrary - they stop individuals from tearing things from their bodies. In other words, both bans - on forced organ giving and abortion - simply prohibit operations - not impel them.

And, as we know, if you just ban an operation it’s always okay. That’s why we ban coronary bypass surgery.

3. Additionally, in the case with organ and blood donating a needful recipient has multiple avenues in which to get his/her much needed transfusions/organs. With a fetus - on the other hand - no one else is capable of sustaining it’s life except its mother. On the other hand, except in some extremely unusual cases - people needing organs and blood won’t die simply because some obstinate person refuses them access - they can just find a more altruistic individual as an alternative.

On the other hand, hundreds of actual people die waiting for transplants each year because they can’t find anyone to donate. Saying that they can just find someone else is all very well, but not when there are no donors.

Bwahaha, prenatals. (Sorry, had to get that out of my system.)

It’s going to be pretty hard for us to disprove your claim that we don’t actually care about human life, and are just upset by “women f*cking”.  It’s an ad hominem, and completely unfalsifiable.

First, ad hominem--it does not mean what you think it does. Second, easy-peasy on the disproving front: Show how using the power of the State to increase the morbidity of females of reproductive age means you actually, you know, care about human [as opposed to what, plant?] life.

Remember: any argument that justifies abortion justifies infanticide.  The two are not substantially different.

This is probably an attempt at humor on your part, but still, you do realize you come off as a tad loopy when you claim a pregnancy and a neonate are not substantially different, yes?

You would also have to demonstrate that there was a substantial difference between abortion and infanticide.

Actually, since you’re the one making the extraordinary claim that a pregnancy and a neonate are basically one and the same, you’re the one who has to demonstrate that there’s no substantial difference between pregnancy termination and infanticide. 

Abortifacient contraception and abortion are not substantially different.  A prenatal is a human being because it is the child of two other human beings.  What else can the product of the reproduction of two human beings be, if not another human?

Um, a placenta, a tumor, a pregnancy without a fetus, etc.

Read the abstract that I linked you to: one way in which hormonal contraception works is by preventing implantation.

You do realize that just because you bold something doesn’t make it real, yes? Pregnancy is an anatomical/physiological state; it requires implantation to become established.

Forgot this bit.

a ban on abortion simply prevents anyone from stopping a natural process

Which is why we don’t have medicine in this country. Can’t go about stopping the natural progress of cancer, or strep throat, or erectile dysfunction.

WTF does “the mother put herself in this position” have to do with the Sanctity Of Life^TM? 

Answer:  It doesn’t but it lets you punish the sluts.

Hahaha.  No, no I did not answer his analogy because it’s as useful as bible study is.  (That’s a decent analogy.  His analogy is a waste of time because it’s not rooted in real life just like bible study is a waste of time because it’s not rooted in real life.) When we’re talking about real life implications for real world legislation, I’m not going to go through the effort to validate someone’s shitty analogy that doesn’t make a bit of sense.  I mean really.  Wanna know what would happen if babies could only be nursed by the person who birthed them?  We as a species would evolve to be able to nurse from another woman.

1.  Come on.  You know the retort to that:  not all sex is consensual/if you cut me and put me in the situation where I needed blood, then I would have the right to your blood in return.  No worries, I’m a universal receiver.
2.  I thought your goal was to save lives?  If you want to save lives, then there’s no reason why people should walk around with two kidneys when they only need the one and when someone else doesn’t have any. 
3.  You got it partially right:  no one person is responsible for giving a sick person their kidney.  The sick person doesn’t have a right to any person’s kidneys but their own.  Why does a fetus have a right to compel the use of a person’s entire body if a sick person has to rely on altruism to find a kidney?  Also, I’ll be sure to let my uncle know that he didn’t actually die because he wasn’t ever able to find a match.
4. Abortion is a natural process, unless you plan to outlaw miscarriages as well.

RachelII, I enjoy bible study. :/ (Agnostic, but I find it interesting.)

Bah, I meant to delete that part because you’re right, it’s not at all a waste of time.  The bible is as important as The Awakening or As I Lay Dying or any other modern text of western civilization.

Virtually every woman who is pregnant is in that state because of a choice she made - the consequences of which she was very likely aware.

1) Bullshit.  Women get pregnant because our bodies’ physiology separate the reproductive process from our own will.  Pregnancy isn’t an on-demand thing, and neither is nonpregnancy; we’re screwed over by a biological quirk, which can be a significant hassle or burden to keep on the track one wants it on; the only time pregnancy is truly a matter of choice is in in-vitro fertilization.  Otherwise it’s a side effect, a chance reaction, and uncontrolled.

2) You’re ignoring our argument.  You’re ignoring that pregnancy itself is the invasion we’re comparing forced organ donation to.  You’re comparing an undesired procedure to the FIXING of another undesired process, instead of to the undesired process itself.

3) People die all the time for lack of organs, regardless of how wide the potential donor pool is.  Doesn’t matter if there’s one refusing compatable person or fifty or twenty thousand, the result is the same.  And people die all the time for lack of something that can treat them, they die when there ISN’T a cure for something. Welcome to real life.

And once again you yammer about “natural processes” as though that excuses it.  Cancer is a natural process; that doesn’t excuse anybody who opposes its being treated in someone else.  And what’s so important about the fetus that makes its welfare worth overriding her autonomy?  At the points where abortion is legal it lacks all the defining characteristics of personhood---no consciousness, no ability to experience anything on any level we’d recognize as human, no brain to speak of to SUPPORT personhood---it might become such, but it isn’t yet.  For every priceless Ming vase that gets sold at auction for millions, there’s a lump of kaolin clay that never got dug out of the earth; they aren’t the same.

And lose the “Progressive” in your pseudonym, you misrepresenting fuck.  Unless you sell auto insurance for a living, you’re no progressive.

1. Virtually every woman who is pregnant is in that state because of a choice she made - the consequences of which she was very likely aware.

Quick, of the total number of pregnancies/yr, state the % of unintended pregnancies. Also, what consequences, exactly, is a pregnant woman with a planned pregnancy who has to have a therapeutic termination aware of?

2. Prohibitions on abortions don’t involve forcefully tearing anything from the bodies of anyone. Quite the contrary - they stop individuals from tearing things from their bodies.

From the department of the obvious, have you even the faintest notion of what an actual delivery entails, in terms of tissue trauma, forceful tearing of things from bodies, and assorted surgeries?

On the other hand, except in some extremely unusual cases - people needing organs and blood won’t die simply because some obstinate person refuses them access - they can just find a more altruistic individual as an alternative.

Once again, quick state the number of deaths of people on transplant lists/dialysis.

[T]he fact that a ban on abortion simply prevents anyone from stopping a natural process separates forced organ snatching from abortion.

You do realize that abortion is as much of a natural process as delivering a term pregnancy, yes?

To the above commenters… my post simply pointed out three major differences between banning abortions and forcing people to give up their organs. This was in response to a post that suggested forced organ donation was similar to banning abortion.

I responded because I have heard this awful argument before. It goes something like this:

Prolifer: The bodily integrity of the mother should not be allowed to override the more supreme right to life of the unborn baby.
Prochoicer: Then should I be allowed to tear your kidney out if I need it to survive? After all, if what you just claimed is true your right to bodily integrity is inferior to my right to live.

My response: there are three major differences between the situation just described and a vast majority of pregnancies.

1. Causality - that women create the circumstances which lead to another being dependent on them. In our scenario I did nothing to lead to your kidney failure.
2. Differences in the nature of the activities - with forced organ donation the state is essentially committing a massive battery of the victim’s body - which fundamentally violates his/her bodily integrity. With banning abortion - the state is not actively doing anything to a woman - it’s not a battery - it’s just preventing her from killing her child.
3. Dependence/special relationship - one problem justifying a system wherein individuals who need an organ can enable the state to seize the organ from another is how do you choose the unlucky fellow? Presumably there are thousands of potential donors. In other words, if your kidneys have failed you don’t die as a direct result of my not giving you access to my body, if you die it’s because you couldn’t find a single donor.

The problem with many of the above arguments against my observations is that you seem to think my prongs were somehow arguments justifying banning abortion. They’re not. They’re simply a number of factors, when considered together, which illustrate why it’s not hypocritical to be against abortion and against the state seizing your organs.

If pregnancy was a guaranteed consequence of having sex, the chance of getting knocked up during ovulation would be higher than 20%.  I mean, obviously you can’t get pregnant without having sex, but you’re much more likely to have sex without getting pregnant.  It’s not a 1:1 correlation.

Furthermore, getting pregnant may be a consequence of having sex, but having a baby isn’t necessarily a consequence of being pregnant.  There are two outcomes:  baby or no baby.  Who’s to say that the pregnancy you terminated last week wouldn’t have ended in a miscarriage this week?  Result is the same:  no baby.

In other words you’re angry because we proved you wrong?  I really can’t talk to you if you’re going to be this irrational and emotional about it.

PP, I know you think repeating your points over and over makes them right, but for some reason I’m still going to talk to you as if you’re listening.

1. Causality - that women create the circumstances which lead to another being dependent on them. In our scenario I did nothing to lead to your kidney failure.

Yet if you had, no hospital in the country would take your kidney, and there would be a fully justified outcry if they did.

2. Differences in the nature of the activities - with forced organ donation the state is essentially committing a massive battery of the victim’s body - which fundamentally violates his/her bodily integrity. With banning abortion - the state is not actively doing anything to a woman - it’s not a battery - it’s just preventing her from killing her child.

Which is why it would be okay to stop people in government prisons from receiving food or medicine. After all, the state isn’t actively doing anything to them - it’s just preventing them from feeding themselves.

3. Dependence/special relationship - one problem justifying a system wherein individuals who need an organ can enable the state to seize the organ from another is how do you choose the unlucky fellow? Presumably there are thousands of potential donors. In other words, if your kidneys have failed you don’t die as a direct result of my not giving you access to my body, if you die it’s because you couldn’t find a single donor.

We have a jury duty model that works well enough, don’t you think?

The problem with many of the above arguments against my observations is that you seem to think my prongs were somehow arguments justifying banning abortion. They’re not. They’re simply a number of factors, when considered together, which illustrate why it’s not hypocritical to be against abortion and against the state seizing your organs.

Except we refuted all your arguments, and instead of finding new ones, you just repeat them.

Austin, you can be glad that this is over the internet, because nothing makes me stabby more than a privileged dude who just doesn’t get it, and will never have to suffer the outcomes of unwanted pregnancy and childrearing. You can try to conflate abortion with infanticide to your heart’s damn content, but you cannot then turn around and whine that contraception is “abortifacient”, which, correctly or not, rules out everything female-controlled and almost completely everything bar the barrier methods and the Neverending-Fucking-Pregnancies method (somewhat euphemistically called Natural Family Planning) because of the tiny, unprovable, infinitesimal chance that a fucking microscopic “person” might fail to implant inside the male heir vessel woman.

The modern method of NFP is as effective as hormonal contraception. This is not the barrier method.  It’s also about as female-controlled as you can get.

Austin, the day you are legally required to give your kidneys, liver, blood, marrow, corneas or cochleas to any relative who wants them is the day I will be OK with having to give my uterus to a relative who wants it.

I’ve responded to that here.

Suppose a mother gave birth to her baby in an environment in which there was no replacement available for her breast milk.  If she did not breastfeed the baby, it would starve.  There was no one else who could breastfeed her (this happens all the time in third world countries).  You’re saying she wouldn’t have to let her breastfeed?  Making her breastfeed would be analogous to forced blood donation?  Read my reponse I linked you to above, and you can see exactly why the two situations are disanalogous.

And let’s be honest, it’s not a relative at all, it’s human tissue, which doesn’t make it my relative any more than a tumor is my relative, because relatives are CITIZENS. But even playing by your lying, disgusting, woman-hating rules, let’s just say. When your relatives are legally entitled to your kidney then my relatives will be legally entitled to my uterus.

It is the child of two other human beings.  It is a relative of the two human beings who produced it, by definition. 

Er, no, actually, it wouldn’t. Infanticide = killing an infant. It’s right there in the word.

Leaving babies to die of exposure is not infanticide?

Translation: “Who cares if it reduces abortion? SLUTS!”

We support sexual standards to reduce the abortion rate, among other things.  Sexual standards and comprehensive sex ed are not compatible.

Abortion = termination of pregnancy. If there is no pregnancy, it is impossible for there to be an abortion.

It depends on which definition of the term you’re using.  If you’re discussing abortion in ethical terms, the new medical definition is not relevant or proper.

Talk about generally clueless. If you define life as beginning at conception, the death rate skyrockets because most fertilized eggs don’t implant anyway, and you lot look even stupider for complaining about birth control while there’s this vast!!1!! holocaust!1!!! of fertilized eggs!!!1!eleventy!!!

Usually, when a fertilized egg fails to implant, the death of said egg is natural and ideal, like dying of old age.  It is no more tragic than when an old person dies in their sleep of old age.  Unless you took a pill that brought about the failure to implant as a means to an end, the death is generally natural and ideal.

@Austin

I’m 43 years old. I had my tubes cut and cauterized 10 years ago, because I didn’t want any more children. During the two pregnancies I carried to term, I suffered from severe weight gain, borderline diabetes, and stubborn anemia. When I gave birth to my first child, my midwife remarked that, before the advent of safe C-sections, I would have died in childbirth. I suffered from severe post-partum depression after both births.

I’m 43 years old, and I’m currently pregnant, in spite of having taken every precaution to not become so. And there’s no way that I’m going through with this pregnancy. The cost in physical and mental health is simply too high.

There is simply no way. I will have an abortion soon with a completely clear conscience, and I will mentally curse the members of this society who believe that I simply should give birth—because my body has overriden the serious steps I took to never become pregnant again—despite the steep toll that it would take on me.

Your tubes were cut *and* cauterized and you still got pregnant?!  I’m so, so sorry that your body did this to you.  Take care of yourself and good luck.

Suppose a mother gave birth to her baby in an environment in which there was no replacement available for her breast milk.  If she did not breastfeed the baby, it would starve.  There was no one else who could breastfeed her (this happens all the time in third world countries).  You’re saying she wouldn’t have to let her breastfeed?  Making her breastfeed would be analogous to forced blood donation?  Read my reponse I linked you to above, and you can see exactly why the two situations are disanalogous.

You’re saying it’s necessary for a policeman to stand by this woman’s side with a gun to her head and force her to breastfeed? How do you intend to compel her? What is the penalty if she refuses?

I’m never going to understand the obsession that men have with abortion.  Some people don’t get to be birthed.  Some newborns don’t live past infancy.  Some teenagers don’t survive to adulthood.  In some cases it’s bad and should be studied and educational interventions should target vulnerable populations, but at the end of the day, some babies are going to so thoroughly destroy someone’s life that another person gets to decide whether they live or die.  Women don’t make that decision lightly, lord knows.  But I think you, Austin and PeePee, are just jealous that you don’t get to decide that.  You don’t have the power of a god that women do:  not to kill a person, anyone can do that; but to prevent their entire existence.  Pretty heavy stuff and thank god women are the people who control that because in a patriarchy, men would fuck things up more than we ever thought possible.

And yes, your mothers probably considered aborting you guys.  And if she had, the world wouldn’t have noticed because nothing about you deserves to live.  Your mother decided that for you.  Nothing about anyone is so special that they deserve the place on earth they have.  It’s all luck and timing and recognizing the fundamental altruism of a person who didn’t have to let you live.

“There was no one else who could breastfeed her (this happens all the time in third world countries). “

No it doesn’t.  If a woman can’t nurse her own child, she usually has a support system of other child-bearing women who can nurse the baby for her.  A real problem in developing countries is women with HIV who nurse their babies knowing they are putting them at risk but knowing also that people would know she had HIV if she *didn’t* nurse and shun her from their society.  But, as I said, that’s a real problem rooted in real life, not a made up story about parallel universe where humans can’t nurse from other women.

I hate arguments that use far-fetched analogies.  That’s part of the reason I quit law school, no joke.  What if we lived in a parallel universe exactly like this one with the exact same morality and the exact same ethical codes and the exact same legal standards, except in this universe, we don’t have baby formula and it’s biologically impossible for a baby to nurse from any woman but it’s mother.  Oh, and by the way, whichever answer you give for this entirely implausible example must be the same thing you’d say for pregnancy.

It’s not implausible.  It happens in third world countries all the time.

I know that the answer to this hypothetical is the answer to “the pregnancy question”.  That’s the point.

Pregnancy cannot ever be argued by analogy.  The only thing that’s barely similar is organ donation, but you idiots never use that example because then it’d be painfully obvious how much you hate women.  If you aren’t going to legally require every single person to sign up for the bone marrow registry, donate blood every 4 months, remove one kidney, and repeatedly have portions of their liver sliced out so that other people can use them, then you can’t force women to grow a baby if they don’t want to.

The first two sentences in the above paragraph contradict each other.  Pregnancy is analogous to breastfeeding and disanalogous to compulsory blood or organ donation, as I’ve argued here.

Austin, fuckhead, how do you know a fertilized egg has implanted or not?

YOU CAN"T, short of cutting a woman open and looking for the egg.  The only way to tell that implantation has happened is to see the hormones caused by the implantation increase.

You can tell that it prevents implantation because it thins the uterine wall.

EC works by preventing ovulation.  If it worked by preventing implantation, then taking it within 72 hours wouldn’t be so important.  You could wait a week or more, since implantation occurs 11 days AFTER fertilization.

Same deal for BC in general.  Are there slight changes to the uterine lining?  Sure.  Do they cause more implantations to fail than would otherwise?  WHO THE FUCK KNOWS?  Because there is no way to know if a fertilized egg even existed unless it implants.  Studies suggest 50-80% of eggs fail to implant.

EC most likely does not prevent implantation, but this has not been conclusively proven.

And what if it did?  You are not allowed to force someone to donate organs or even a pint of blood.  We even had a case here in Chicago where a mom refused to allow her children to be TESTED to see if they were a bone marrow match for their half-brother.  That living breathing kid not only didn’t have a right to their marrow, the courts found he didn’t have a right to have his half-siblings TESTED to see if they were possible donors.

Suppose a baby was given birth to in an environment in which there was no replacement available for her mother’s breast milk.  If her mother did not breastfeed her, she would starve; there was no available replacement for her mother’s breast milk.  Would requiring the mother to breastfeed in that situation be analogous to forced blood donations?

This is why we say it is crystal clear that you don’t give a shit about women.  You want to punish them for sex.  If it were simply about preventing aboriton, you would all jump on proper sex ed and contraception.  But it’s much much much more fun for you fuckers to try to force a woman carry an unwanted fetus to term.  And if it’s white, well then she needs to give it to a good Christian home for upbringing while she continues to hide herself away.

First of all, we aren’t going to promote abortifacient contraception.  We would support sexual standards to lower the abortion rate, as well as the divorce and out of wedlock birth rates.

Not to mention, if the government has the right to force a woman to carry a baby to term, it also has the right to force her to terminate.  She’s just a womb, a tool, and she’s not allowed to choose to control her body independently.  That right belongs to the government.

The rights to privacy and autonomy are not the only basis for a right not to be forced to abort.  The difference between “forcing” a woman to give birth and forced abortions is the difference between being allowed to refuse your children medical treatment, and being allowed to starve them to death.

GAYS AND LESBIANS ARE PEOPLE, you empathically-dysfunctional asshole!  The gay rights movement is about the equality of persons, far far FAR more than the “pro-life” movement, which concerns itself entirely with beings that have neither human consciousness nor the physical brainspace to support it.

It’s about the equality of the unequal sexual desires of heterosexuals and homosexuals.  The purpose that gay marriage will serve is to establish the view that sexual relationships and marriage are, to put it bluntly, “all about me.”

WE are people.  The lesbians and gay men whose life experience you dismiss as “desire” (with connotations more worthless than “desire” should ever have), the people who love and are loved in the same manner as any heterosexual person, just in different gender combinations, WE have consciousness, we have memory, we experience the world as intelligent, sentient, complex, rational, thinking beings; we are hurt and we are uplifted by our experiences in this world and our connections with others.  Fetuses? None of the above. Nothing to justify co-opting someone else’s body for the use of a mindless biological specimen that might later develop into something of value to itself (and if they do find it of such value prior to that? the person who thinks that can be the one to make the investment. You want to save the fetuses? Figure out how to sustain one after it’s been removed from the uterus).

Babies born very prematurely are unconscious, do not have memory, and do not experience the world as intelligent, sentient, complex, rational, thinking beings.  Can we kill them?  If not, on what basis are you treating them differently from unborn persons?

First, ad hominem--it does not mean what you think it does. Second, easy-peasy on the disproving front: Show how using the power of the State to increase the morbidity of females of reproductive age means you actually, you know, care about human [as opposed to what, plant?] life.

Protecting innocent human beings from being killed suggests, at the very least, that we care about human life.  Since the state is not increasing the morbidity of females of reproductive age either as a means or an end, it is inaccurate to say that we are using the power of the state to increase the maternal death rate.

This is probably an attempt at humor on your part, but still, you do realize you come off as a tad loopy when you claim a pregnancy and a neonate are not substantially different, yes?

You would also have to demonstrate that there was a substantial difference between abortion and infanticide.

Actually, since you’re the one making the extraordinary claim that a pregnancy and a neonate are basically one and the same, you’re the one who has to demonstrate that there’s no substantial difference between pregnancy termination and infanticide.

They’re both human beings.  In both cases, we are stronger, and we share a parent-child relationship with them. 

Which is why we don’t have medicine in this country. Can’t go about stopping the natural progress of cancer, or strep throat, or erectile dysfunction.

Stopping the natural progress of cancer, strep throat, and erectile dysfunction doesn’t kill anyone.

Hahaha.  No, no I did not answer his analogy because it’s as useful as bible study is.  (That’s a decent analogy.  His analogy is a waste of time because it’s not rooted in real life just like bible study is a waste of time because it’s not rooted in real life.) When we’re talking about real life implications for real world legislation, I’m not going to go through the effort to validate someone’s shitty analogy that doesn’t make a bit of sense.  I mean really.  Wanna know what would happen if babies could only be nursed by the person who birthed them?  We as a species would evolve to be able to nurse from another woman.

It happens all the time in third world countries.  It is rooted in real life, even though it doesn’t need to be.

Yet if you had, no hospital in the country would take your kidney, and there would be a fully justified outcry if they did.

What does this have to do with anything? You obviously think you are making some type of point here but let me assure you, you aren’t.

Which is why it would be okay to stop people in government prisons from receiving food or medicine. After all, the state isn’t actively doing anything to them - it’s just preventing them from feeding themselves. 

I feel perplexed. Even after restating what I said because you clearly didn’t get it the first time you seem once again confused. Once again, I am not arguing that an abortion ban is just simply because the government does not actually invade the body of a woman.

Rather. I am contending that the non-physically intrusive nature of an abortion ban is simply fundamentally different than the government ripping organs out of people which is one of the things that makes analogizing them inappropriate.

In any case, this argument inadvertently provides a segway into my third point. The government is held to a legal obligation to feed prisoners and provide them with medical care. The government is clearly not - as the current health care debate rages - obligated, as of yet, to provide food or medical care to every citizen. The reason for this is because the prisoners are held, by courts, to have a legal duty to provide for its prisoners what they can not provide for themselves - by reason of their captivity.

My third point was applying this to the abortion context. Why am I arguing that mothers should be held to a special duty to provide the use of their bodies to their children? - because only their mothers can provide them their care by the nature of their special relationship and the child’s dependency.

Contrariwise, if you need a kidney to stave off renal failure, I don’t have any special relationship to you that would render others unable to provide assistance for you, therefore it would be unjust to force me to do so.

We have a jury duty model that works well enough, don’t you think? 

Yeah.... I was not actually suggesting that we institute a system to begin forced organ donations. Good luck with that though - apparently you’re on board.

Except we refuted all your arguments, and instead of finding new ones, you just repeat them.

You don’t seem to actually be grasping what my arguments are much less be refuting them.

Usually, when a fertilized egg fails to implant, the death of said egg is natural and ideal, like dying of old age.  It is no more tragic than when an old person dies in their sleep of old age.  Unless you took a pill that brought about the failure to implant as a means to an end, the death is generally natural and ideal.

How is it natural or ideal? Isn’t there a degree of randomness to failed implantation?

I guess, Austin, I just disagree with your definition of human life. As far as I am concerned, a fertilized egg, an embryo, and a fetus are all potential human beings. Any given egg or sperm cell is half of a potential person, and as cloning has demonstrated, an egg by itself injected with a complete chromosome can develop into a living creature. Your choice of fertilization strikes me as a strong moment to choose to say that human existence begins, but perhaps weaker than birth, perhaps weaker than the beginning of an embryo’s heartbeat, or an embro’s first neural activity.

I believe Saint Augustine believed that abortion before “quickening” (when a mother can feel her fetus kick) was moral. These standards are subject to debate, and you are within your rights to believe that conception is the moment at which a human being is invested with all her rights. Thus you may believe that abortion is tantamount to murder. However, your particular definition seems rather arbitrary to me, and considering that others may choose to define the terms of the debate differently, as Monty Python did with “Every Sperm is Sacred,” you may find that much as you protest about doctors defining pregnancy differently than you wish, you are engaged in the same tenuous logic.

No it doesn’t.  If a woman can’t nurse her own child, she usually has a support system of other child-bearing women who can nurse the baby for her.  A real problem in developing countries is women with HIV who nurse their babies knowing they are putting them at risk but knowing also that people would know she had HIV if she *didn’t* nurse and shun her from their society.  But, as I said, that’s a real problem rooted in real life, not a made up story about parallel universe where humans can’t nurse from other women.

It does happen.  If this never happened, babies would never starve to death in third world countries because no one can or is willing to provide them with breast milk.

Austin, nice try. But you’re not getting out of this one.

How do you compel the woman to breastfeed? What if she refuses to do so? I’ll be here all night.

Unless you took a pill that brought about the failure to implant as a means to an end, the death is generally natural and ideal.

Or if the death is of an Iraqi child, “collateral damage” in a necessary and righteous battle <del>for our oil those bastards are sitting on</del> against Terror. 

Or if the death is that of a cancer stricken person in the U.S. who is uninsured.  Who are we to deny the insurance companies their God Given Right to deny preexisting conditions, fight a public option, and pay executives exorbitant salaries to deny care to cancer victims?

Of if the death is of a little boy in Washington, DC, who succumbed to an infection caused by a rotten tooth, because his mother couldn’t afford a dentist and their health care assistance didn’t cover dental. 

Natural and ideal deaths. 

The highly unlikely possibility that oral birth control may cause interruption of a fertilized egg to implantation?  An atrocity!  One that MUST BE STOPPED!!1! 

Oh yeah, this is all about punishing women for sex.

How is it natural or ideal? Isn’t there a degree of randomness to failed implantation?

It’s one way that human beings are designed to die.  It is very similar to how human beings are designed to die of old age.

I guess, Austin, I just disagree with your definition of human life. As far as I am concerned, a fertilized egg, an embryo, and a fetus are all potential human beings. Any given egg or sperm cell is half of a potential person, and as cloning has demonstrated, an egg by itself injected with a complete chromosome can develop into a living creature. Your choice of fertilization strikes me as a strong moment to choose to say that human existence begins, but perhaps weaker than birth, perhaps weaker than the beginning of an embryo’s heartbeat, or an embro’s first neural activity.

The burden of proof is on the person who would like to target a certain group of human beings and declare open season on them.

Birth is the weakest of them all.  It is the point in our children’s development at which we begin to care about them, and feel bad about killing them. The other ones are arbitrary, and exclude a certain group of human beings.  Like I said, the burden of proof is on you if you would like to exclude them.

I believe Saint Augustine believed that abortion before “quickening” (when a mother can feel her fetus kick) was moral. These standards are subject to debate, and you are within your rights to believe that conception is the moment at which a human being is invested with all her rights. Thus you may believe that abortion is tantamount to murder. However, your particular definition seems rather arbitrary to me, and considering that others may choose to define the terms of the debate differently, as Monty Python did with “Every Sperm is Sacred,” you may find that much as you protest about doctors defining pregnancy differently than you wish, you are engaged in the same tenuous logic.

This would mean that “ability to reason” is just as good as any of the other ones.  That would justify infanticide.

Once again, I am not arguing that an abortion ban is just simply because the government does not actually invade the body of a woman.

I’m not sure how you prove a miscarriage was actually a miscarriage and not an illegal abortion unless you arrest the woman and force her to undergo a gynecological examination. What method did you have in mind to determine the cause of the pregnancy’s termination?

Once again, Austin Nedved replies, which proves he’s still here, but he does not answer the question about his hypothetical:

If the woman refuses to breastfeed the child… what happens then? How do we force her to do it, Austin?

The burden of proof is on the person who would like to target a certain group of human beings and declare open season on them.

Birth is the weakest of them all.  It is the point in our children’s development at which we begin to care about them, and feel bad about killing them. The other ones are arbitrary, and exclude a certain group of human beings.  Like I said, the burden of proof is on you if you would like to exclude them.

This would mean that “ability to reason” is just as good as any of the other ones.  That would justify infanticide.

No, the others are medical events. Ability to reason is not.

How is birth the weakest? You think it is the weakest. Why? You are making a lot of statements that require a lot of assumptions you are not willing to back up.

“The burden of proof is on the person who would like to target a certain group of human beings and declare open season on them.”

You assume that I accept that a fertilized ovum is a human being. I do not. I exclude no human beings. You confer humanity to a group that is not yet human. The burden of proof is on you. Augustine chose a different moment, but you may rest assured that he knew that a baby had already developed considerably by the time it could kick, yet he found abortion before then moral.

Your point of conception is arbitrary.

As far as I am concerned a being that has no neural activity has no separate humanity from a lump of tissue.

It is a potential human life.

Personally I think elective abortion should be legal under all circumstances as a matter of public policy, whether or not I choose an arbitrary time of my own to believe that human life begins. I won’t impose my own assumptions on others, certainly a lesson you could stand to learn.

Once again, I am not arguing that an abortion ban is just simply because the government does not actually invade the body of a woman.

Rather. I am contending that the non-physically intrusive nature of an abortion ban is simply fundamentally different than the government ripping organs out of people which is one of the things that makes analogizing them inappropriate.

Your contention is foolish and wrong.  You seem to think it’s a huge deal that in an abortion ban the government is forbidding you to stop non-consensual use of your organs (and indeed your whole body), rather than actually initiating the use. It is not a huge deal, or indeed any kind of a deal. The practical effect is the same either way: your body is treated as a thing the government can use to prop up another life.

If the government forbids you the right to defend your life, that in practice is the same as the government killing you. Similarly, if the government forbids you the right to take your body back from an embryo/fetus because it’s a “child,” that in practice is the same as the government seizing your body to give to someone else.

The burden of proof is on the person who would like to target a certain group of human beings and declare open season on them.

No, the burden of proof is on the person who would strip away reproductive rights and impose the burden of pregnancy on half of the population of actual human beings.

Birth is the weakest of them all.  It is the point in our children’s development at which we begin to care about them, and feel bad about killing them. The other ones are arbitrary, and exclude a certain group of human beings.  Like I said, the burden of proof is on you if you would like to exclude them.

Birth is the strongest line. It is the clearest, most obvious, and has the most immediate practical consequences. The newborn is no longer an appendage to the mother and no longer must have her as its permanent 24/7 caretaker. It can be directly cared for by others, without going literally through the mother; it starts requiring accommodations from the family and society as a whole and not only the mother. The difference between a fetus and a baby is far more obvious and practically significant than most other important lines we draw (like the line between a

Conception is not obvious. You can talk to a woman without even knowing she’s conceived. Neither does conception have anywhere near the practical consequences of suddenly having a newborn baby in the house, eating and breathing and shitting outside in the wider world and not just cozily existing in a uterus.  A woman can maintain her previous schedule and work habits and sex habits after conception; she does not undergo post-conception depression or physical trauma, unlike birth. About the only consequence is that she may eschew alcohol and coffee--but that’s it.

<blockquote>The difference between a fetus and a baby is far more obvious and practically significant than most other important lines we draw (like the line between a</blockquote

Apologies, I left this sentence unfinished. I was going to say, “like the line between a non-voter and a voter.” Nothing of immediate practical significance happens when you turn eighteen, yet suddenly you acquire a large number of important rights that people have fought revolutions to safeguard.

Birth is the strongest line. It is the clearest, most obvious, and has the most immediate practical consequences. The newborn is no longer an appendage to the mother and no longer must have her as its permanent 24/7 caretaker. It can be directly cared for by others, without going literally through the mother; it starts requiring accommodations from the family and society as a whole and not only the mother. The difference between a fetus and a baby is far more obvious and practically significant than most other important lines we draw

Absolutely, birth is the only line that everyone can agree on because it is the medical event that definitively separates the newborn from the mother. There is no other commensurate medical event after that. Therefore, slippery slope arguments into infanticide have little merit.

I’m always astounded by the people who want to calmly and reasonably discuss the ways in which they are going to fuck you over.

Austin, women are going to have abortions regardless of whether you like it or not and regardless of whether it’s legal or not.  What do you think the appropriate punishment should be for women who have abortions?

Austin, women are going to have abortions regardless of whether you like it or not and regardless of whether it’s legal or not.  What do you think the appropriate punishment should be for women who have abortions?

Austin doesn’t like this question and he’s been avoiding it for over an hour.

Austin, one of our children is starving right now. We’re waiting for the solution.

“Far, far fewer innocent lives were lost in the war than are lost due to abortion.”

So much for moral absolutes

Austin, Progressive_Prince:

I’m beginning to doubt your steadfastness to your cause. You’re taking an awfully long time to answer simple questions. I thought you cared about babies.

I’ve responded to that here.

Suppose a mother gave birth to her baby in an environment in which there was no replacement available for her breast milk.  If she did not breastfeed the baby, it would starve.  There was no one else who could breastfeed her (this happens all the time in third world countries).  You’re saying she wouldn’t have to let her breastfeed?  Making her breastfeed would be analogous to forced blood donation?  Read my reponse I linked you to above, and you can see exactly why the two situations are disanalogous.

Your argument is utterly unconvincing, and your distinction between natural and artificial means is meaningless given the vast amount of artificial technology that goes into childbirth. You might also want to rethink the refusing-treatments vs. starving oneself part, as any argument that depends on the basic premise that you cannot starve yourself to death has no foundation.

It is the child of two other human beings.  It is a relative of the two human beings who produced it, by definition.

Which is still not entitled to the use of anyone’s organs but its own.

Suppose a baby was given birth to in an environment in which there was no replacement available for her mother’s breast milk.  If her mother did not breastfeed her, she would starve; there was no available replacement for her mother’s breast milk.  Would requiring the mother to breastfeed in that situation be analogous to forced blood donations?

I’m actually going to second Seebach and ask you how you’d force her to breastfeed. Gun to her head? Or just a lethal injection if she fails to do so? Never mind situations where she can’t breastfeed. Real-life situations don’t matter in your worldview.

We support sexual standards to reduce the abortion rate, among other things.  Sexual standards and comprehensive sex ed are not compatible.

Once again. Translation: “Who cares if it reduces the abortion rate? SLUTS!”

Repeating the same things over and over does not an argument make. You can go on about sexual standards, but as long as they’re more important to you than reducing abortion, you’re utterly failing to defend yourself from the charges we’re making against you.

It depends on which definition of the term you’re using.  If you’re discussing abortion in ethical terms, the new medical definition is not relevant or proper.

Since the “ethical definition” seems to be “whatever the hell I want it to mean,” I’ll just have to counter with: no, according to the ethical definition abortion is just fine.

Usually, when a fertilized egg fails to implant, the death of said egg is natural and ideal, like dying of old age.  It is no more tragic than when an old person dies in their sleep of old age.  Unless you took a pill that brought about the failure to implant as a means to an end, the death is generally natural and ideal.

Oh, but it’s not an old person who’s lived a full life. It’s a baby!!11!!! with all this potential being destroyed!!1!!!

This is one of the things that make it easy to tell that you don’t really believe that you’re talking about a child. If four in every five children died of, say, SIDS, I’d think you’d want to do something about it, not say “well, it’s okay that all these babies are dying as long as they’re not being smothered in their cribs.”

You can tell that it prevents implantation because it thins the uterine wall.

EC most likely does not prevent implantation, but this has not been conclusively proven.

Firstly, you did not address the question, which was about how to tell that an egg has been fertilized, which is impossible until it implants. Secondly, it hasn’t been conclusively proven that birth control usage by women improves the weather over the entire country, but you can never be too sure, so we should base policy on this, am I right?

The rights to privacy and autonomy are not the only basis for a right not to be forced to abort.  The difference between “forcing” a woman to give birth and forced abortions is the difference between being allowed to refuse your children medical treatment, and being allowed to starve them to death.

Because refusing your children medical treatment is all happy fun times!

Y’know, that statement is accurate for us, too. Because we believe that denying children food or medicine are both bad, just like denying a woman choice is bad whichever choice it is.

It’s about the equality of the unequal sexual desires of heterosexuals and homosexuals.  The purpose that gay marriage will serve is to establish the view that sexual relationships and marriage are, to put it bluntly, “all about me.”

Unlike heterosexual relationships, which are never entered into for the sake of love or selfishness.

Babies born very prematurely are unconscious, do not have memory, and do not experience the world as intelligent, sentient, complex, rational, thinking beings.  Can we kill them?  If not, on what basis are you treating them differently from unborn persons?

Simply put: there’s no reason to. They are not invading anyone else’s body. (Also, false analogy: by the time a fetus is anywhere near equivalent to a born child, no one’s having an abortion unless the fetus is dead or won’t survive long past birth. Facts of life, people.)

Stopping the natural progress of cancer, strep throat, and erectile dysfunction doesn’t kill anyone.

However, it does prove that the “natural progress” argument is as rubbish as all your others.

What does this have to do with anything? You obviously think you are making some type of point here but let me assure you, you aren’t.

You are arguing that, because you did not cause anyone’s kidney failure, you’re not on the hook to give anyone a kidney, unlike those dirty dirty women with their sex. I’m telling you that you wouldn’t be on the hook even if you had caused their kidney failure, because for some reason people don’t think your rights are expendable.

I feel perplexed. Even after restating what I said because you clearly didn’t get it the first time you seem once again confused. Once again, I am not arguing that an abortion ban is just simply because the government does not actually invade the body of a woman.

Rather. I am contending that the non-physically intrusive nature of an abortion ban is simply fundamentally different than the government ripping organs out of people which is one of the things that makes analogizing them inappropriate.

Thus speaks a person who will never actually have the government invading his body. I assure you, to be prevented from doing with one’s body what one wishes is quite as invasive in the passive as in the active.

In any case, this argument inadvertently provides a segway into my third point. The government is held to a legal obligation to feed prisoners and provide them with medical care. The government is clearly not - as the current health care debate rages - obligated, as of yet, to provide food or medical care to every citizen. The reason for this is because the prisoners are held, by courts, to have a legal duty to provide for its prisoners what they can not provide for themselves - by reason of their captivity.

Relevance?

My third point was applying this to the abortion context. Why am I arguing that mothers should be held to a special duty to provide the use of their bodies to their children? - because only their mothers can provide them their care by the nature of their special relationship and the child’s dependency.

Contrariwise, if you need a kidney to stave off renal failure, I don’t have any special relationship to you that would render others unable to provide assistance for you, therefore it would be unjust to force me to do so.

Yeah.... I was not actually suggesting that we institute a system to begin forced organ donations. Good luck with that though - apparently you’re on board.

But why not? People die every year that could be saved by organ donation. Why not create that “special relationship”? It would save lives, PP. Do tell why you’re only for forced donation when the donors are women, PP.

Alternately, if you actually care about saving embryos and not just about hurting women, you might do some of the research into artificial wombs that pro-choicers have been suggesting for years.

You don’t seem to actually be grasping what my arguments are much less be refuting them.

Your arguments appear to have been 1) women lose all agency over their bodies when they have sex, so who cares anyway, 2) taking away bodily liberty is different from taking away bodily liberty, and 3) since only the woman can provide for the embryo, she has to, while a pool of thousands of potential donors means that sick people can go hang. Have I grasped them well enough?

Oh goody, another anti-choice standard.

The burden of proof is on the person who would like to target a certain group of human beings and declare open season on them.

Dude, we’re not out for anyone’s embryos. We’re quite content to let people who want to give birth give birth.

My blaspheming got eated earlier, but I made the point that the Stupak Amendment curiously left out coverage for abortions in the case of fetal deformity.  You can have your abortion covered if the pregnancy threatens your life our health, or if it is the result of rape or incest, but not if the fetus is anencephalic or otherwise severely deformed.  If that’s the case, you must carry the pregnancy or pay out of your pocket for the abortion.  Which will probably be considerably more expensive, considering that those conditions aren’t usually detected until late in the pregnancy.

Hey Asswipe Austin, what should the penalty be for a woman that chooses to have an abortion in your dreamworld? Life in prison? Death? Do tell!

And please don’t give me “IT’S TEH ‘ABORTIONISTS THAT WILL PAY!!11!11!!Eleven11!” In every trial it’s always the plotter that gets the harsher sentence, not the triggerman. So if abortion is murder, do you support life in prison for women? The death penalty? What?

You are so right, Commissar Claw.

“Why can’t we all just go sit in the drawing room and wax philosophical about the underpinnings of your subjugation?  I say, why are you being so uncouth all of the sudden?  I just wanted to muse about the many ways in which I can prevent you from realizing your full potential!  Wait, come back!”

And how would we enforce laws against abortion? The government already imprisons tens of millions of people on drug charges (another victimless ‘crime’) and this has hardly stopped the drug use. Having abortion outlawed will not only mean that fetuses continued to get killed, but women will as well in back alley, coat hanger abortions. That means more innocent lives, even using your standard, will be lost when abortion is illegal and unsafe than when it is legal and safe.

There you have it folks, the Republican health care plan for women: coat hangers.

1. Causality - that women create the circumstances which lead to another being dependent on them. In our scenario I did nothing to lead to your kidney failure.

So what if I had?  You like far-fetched analogies.  Let’s pretend I’m a psychopath, and I’ve held it in my entire life.  Then one day I am told I have one week to live.  So then I decide I’m going to kill someone!  Hooray!  And luckily for me, there’s a person who shares my rare blood type!  So I go and get that person, and lets pretend she’s some cute little 15 year old blonde cheerleader virgin who is going to grow up to cure cancer or something.  I kidnap her and cut out her kidneys!  Ha!  Now she needs a new kidney, and I’m the only one who can give it to her, and I caused her problem, and she’s super important and adorable and I’m going to die soon!

You still can’t have my kidney. 

Let’s say I decide to fuck with you more, and I’m like “Hey, sure, I regret what I did.  Doctor, prep us for surgery!” And then we’re on the operating table, everyone is ready, they bring in the anesthesiologist and I’m like “PSYCH!  Close us up!  I’m keeping my goddamn kidney!”

You still can’t have it!

Let’s pretend I die!  I’m dead.  I am a psycho who mutilated an adorable Christian teenager.  I have some great, perfectly functional organs that could save her life.  But oops, I’m not an organ donor.  Sorry, you still can’t have my kidney.

Austin’s blog says this:

I’m not really at all interested in prosecuting women who have illegal abortions. When someone has an illegal abortion, it’s usually an act of desperation, like a suicide attempt, or self-mutilation. For an illegal abortion, I’d say you need psychiatric help; treat it like self-mutilation. For a self-induced abortion, we’d treat this like a suicide attempt – you need to be hospitalized for a period of time. In America and other industrialized nations, self-induced abortions could not be classified as normal human behavior.

aka, he’s pro-choice.

Seebach, institutionalizing women for trying to control their reproductive health is anything but pro-choice.

Seebach, institutionalizing women for trying to control their reproductive health is anything but pro-choice.

Yeah, I kind of got ahead of myself there. At the very least, it means he thinks infanticide is not a crime.

Protecting innocent human beings from being killed suggests, at the very least, that we care about human life.

If you are forcing women (innocent, guilty, or amoral) to do something that increases their mortality you are not, in fact, protecting them from being killed, which suggests you do not care about (not-plant) life. Clear, yes?

Since the state is not increasing the morbidity of females of reproductive age either as a means or an end, it is inaccurate to say that we are using the power of the state to increase the maternal death rate.

So the State is increasing their morbidity just for the thrill of it then? Your position is that the government should prevent women form accessing safe and effective medical care (something which increases their morbidity and mortality). There’s nothing inaccurate about this rather trivial statement of fact. 

They’re both human beings.  In both cases, we are stronger, and we share a parent-child relationship with them.

This is what you present in support of your extraordinary claim that a pregnancy and a neonate are basically one and the same--your unsupported assertions that [t]hey’re both human beings and we share a parent-child relationship with them, and your incorrect assumption that in both cases, we are stronger (have you ever seen a young, strong, healthy woman reduced to a quivering mass of oblivion and organ failure in a few seconds by an itty-bitty pregnancy-induced eclamptic seizure? How about a young, strong, healthy woman dead as a doorknob on the OR table because of an even smaller placenta, etc?)? You must do better.

Stopping the natural progress of cancer, strep throat, and erectile dysfunction doesn’t kill anyone.

You’ve heard of death from radiation disease, anaphylactic shock, and MI, yes?

One more thing, about the theoretical example--are unicorns roaming about, or do the laws of nature still apply in your scenario? Because if they do, in an environment in which there was no replacement available, the baby 1) gets no food because the mother is either not producing milk or she’s dead, and 2) dies because, apparently, there are no other people around.

He’s saying that women who try to perform surgery on themselves have been punished enough.

Because his stance on abortion is truly rooted in a desire to punish women and not in an attempt to save babies.

If Trolly McAsswipe here thinks that women who choose to have an abortion are killing another human being, if he thinks fetuses are human beings, he should be very interested in prosecuting said women to the fullest extent of the law.

In a suicide attempt, you’re only hurting yourself. If fetuses are equivalent to an infant, then you’re also hurting another real, human being, and should be prosecuted as such. Right, Austin? Right?

It’s past Austin’s bedtime. A quick Google search shows he’s just a college freshman, fresh out of a private rural Catholic school. He’s also registered on every single feminist blog, attempting a one man jihad against sluttitude. This won’t be the last we hear from him.

It’s past Austin’s bedtime. A quick Google search shows he’s just a college freshman, fresh out of a private rural Catholic school. He’s also registered on every single feminist blog, attempting a one man jihad against sluttitude. This won’t be the last we hear from him.

Wow. Austin, get a girlfriend, get laid, move on.

And I’m saying the above out of genuine concern, for real.

Your arguments appear to have been 1) women lose all agency over their bodies when they have sex, so who cares anyway,

What? When did I say women lose all agency after they have sex?

2) taking away bodily liberty is different from taking away bodily liberty,

Oh come on - I think we both know that’s not what I argued.

3) since only the woman can provide for the embryo, she has to, while a pool of thousands of potential donors means that sick people can go hang. 

Actually, that’s sort of in the ballpark of what I argued. Congratulations on getting that far. Now you have to refute it.

So far your attempts to refute it amount to: people die waiting for donors and something about the jury system.

Needless to say I find myself somewhat awed by your rhetorical awesomeness.

Have I grasped them well enough?

Nope. Apparently not.

I’m not holding my breath.

Progressive_Prince also enjoys dodging questions:

Once again, I am not arguing that an abortion ban is just simply because the government does not actually invade the body of a woman.

I’m not sure how you prove a miscarriage was actually a miscarriage and not an illegal abortion unless you arrest the woman and force her to undergo a gynecological examination. What method did you have in mind to determine the cause of the pregnancy’s termination?

What? When did I say women lose all agency after they have sex?

This is the nature of the causality argument. It’s hardly new to us. It sums up to “women consent to sex, so they also consent to give up control of their bodies for nine months if they get pregnant.” Obviously, pregnancy is one of the possible consequences of PIV sex between two fertile people - that’s just a biological fact. But the only way one can say that it must result in birth is to say that women lose their rights over their bodies by consenting to sex.

Oh come on - I think we both know that’s not what I argued.

It’s exactly what you argued. Alternately, I could put it another way and say that you argued that the government taking away women’s bodily liberty is not the same as the government taking away people’s bodily liberty, but that’s hardly a flattering summary of your point either.

Actually, that’s sort of in the ballpark of what I argued. Congratulations on getting that far. Now you have to refute it.

So far your attempts to refute it amount to: people die waiting for donors and something about the jury system.

I didn’t think it was that hard to understand: people - actual people - die from preventable causes. These deaths could be prevented by requiring some sacrifice of bodily liberty from the general public. Since you’re already arguing that the general public should have to sacrifice its bodily liberty for entities that are not actual people, why not extend that, to save lives?

I think government infringement on bodily liberty is inexcusable either way. You’ve yet to resolve the contradiction.

This is the nature of the causality argument. It’s hardly new to us. It sums up to “women consent to sex, so they also consent to give up control of their bodies for nine months if they get pregnant.” Obviously, pregnancy is one of the possible consequences of PIV sex between two fertile people - that’s just a biological fact. But the only way one can say that it must result in birth is to say that women lose their rights over their bodies by consenting to sex.

Once again, I never framed this causality factor to be a justification for abortion - its simply one of the ways in which abortion is different than government organ snatching. With abortions the woman is in the situation of having another depend solely on her for life due to the natural and known consequences of something she did. With forced organ donation the donor has done absolutely nothing to put herself in the situation or cause the need to arise in the other.

With regard to the second factor, I see a big difference between the government tearing up some individual for doing nothing other than having the wrong blood type and the government simply refusing to let a woman tear something away from herself in a desire to end her pregnancy. I know that ultimately she will have to undergo a strenuous ordeal - but that is something her body is doing naturally - not the government.

If you don’t see the difference than I guess we will just have to agree to disagree.

Since you’re already arguing that the general public should have to sacrifice its bodily liberty for entities that are not actual people, why not extend that, to save lives?

I never argued that the general public was obligated to do anything. Mothers, on the other hand, because of a special dependency that their children have on them, should be obligated to not kill their unborn.

The reason this obligation does not extend to the general public to save other members of the general public - is because the special relationship of absolute dependency that characterizes a mother and her unborn child does not exist between members of the general public.

I think government infringement on bodily liberty is inexcusable either way. You’ve yet to resolve the contradiction.

I think I have. I have distinguished where it is acceptable to infringe the bodily integrity of an individual - pregnancy - from when it is not acceptable i.e. forced government sponsored organ snatching - by virtue of the three factors.

Suppose a baby was born into an environment in which there was no replacement available for her mother’s breastmilk.  If the baby did not breastfeed, she would starve.

Suppose a baby was born on the moon.  It would asphyxiate.  Therefore, we must destroy the moon in order to protect the Moon Babies.

“Once again, I never framed this causality factor to be a justification for abortion - its simply one of the ways in which abortion is different than government organ snatching. With abortions the woman is in the situation of having another depend solely on her for life due to the natural and known consequences of something she did.”

Something she did....

It takes two to tango right?  I think that this rhetoric here is a big part of the problem.

The modern method of NFP is as effective as hormonal contraception. This is not the barrier method.  It’s also about as female-controlled as you can get.

Since I am childfree, NFP has an unacceptably high failure rate. It will also do nothing to control my endometriosis. In short, it’s fucking useless for me and only good for people who wish to space their pregnancies - which is morally different from any other contraception how? You’re still preventing the precious baybeez and your quiver isn’t full. I won’t be happy till I’m sterilized, so I’m not about to play Russian Roulette with my health and sanity because some pro-liar fucktard thinks zygotes are better than women.

I’m not really at all interested in prosecuting women who have illegal abortions. When someone has an illegal abortion, it’s usually an act of desperation, like a suicide attempt, or self-mutilation. For an illegal abortion, I’d say you need psychiatric help; treat it like self-mutilation. For a self-induced abortion, we’d treat this like a suicide attempt – you need to be hospitalized for a period of time. In America and other industrialized nations, self-induced abortions could not be classified as normal human behavior.

Funnily enough, that sounds like the course of action taken by FLDS fundies when “their” women aren’t co-operating in being submissive in every way - they throw them in their private psychiatric facilities until they “realise” their true purpose as the family patriarchs’ servile property. I do not see how Austin’s view is different. If you do not want teh precious baybeez at any given point, you cannot be trusted to know what is best for you and your life because you’re a feeble female, so he’d just lock you up until you recognise your position as men’s property, servant, and communal incubator. Fuck you if you’re miserable because a totalitarian regime thinks you’re all of the above, fuck what you want, woman. Stop pretending you’re a human being with a separate personality, wants, desires and needs! Shut up and give me my baby!

My pro-life sister in law has had 3 miscarriages as well as 3 living kids.  She was heartbroken by each one.  I think it would have destroyed her to be subject to police interrogation about whether she did it “on purpose” on what was, each time, the worst day of her life up to that point. 

And I think that’s the prospect that’ll torpedo the pro-life dream America where we morph into Romania under Ceaucescu.  The prospect of jack-booted government thugs yelling in your face “Why did you kill your baby?” when you are still leaking tissue and cramping and just want to go home and mourn.

To paraphrase another poster: The very fact that a woman elects to have a termination means that she’s mentally incapacitated. [A whopper of a loopy assertion.]

Mothers, on the other hand, because of a special dependency that their children have on them, should be obligated to not kill their unborn.

To paraphrase you, Progressive_Prince: The very special tumor-like nature of a pregnancy obligates women to risk their life and not terminate the pregnancy. [Again, a baseless assertion.]

I wish someone would present some data to Congress about how much money it will cost us to pay for treatment of complications from unsafe, back-alley abortions that women will end up having when they can’t afford to get a safe one.  Sometimes money speaks louder than anything else, but it’s a 50/50 chance that it will speak louder than the horror of sexual women.  It’s certainly worth a try.

I’m actually a big fan of the fertility awareness method (NFP in non-fundyspeak).  But Princess Rot is exactly right - it’s only really useful for women trying to space their pregnancies.  That’s what I used it for, and now that I’m done having kids, you can have my IUD when you pry it from my cold, dead uterus.

But even just used to space pregnancies, FAM is only suitable for a very small subset of the population.  Don’t have a specific, unchanging morning routine (shift work, transient labor, etc.)?  Not a good method.  Don’t have the time or energy to learn about the biology behind your fertility signs* and investigate and chart/graph your own signs every single day (multiple jobs, multiple dependents, etc.)?  Not a good method.  There’s even the slightest possibility that your refusal of PIV sex or requirement that your partner wear a condom won’t be respected?  Not a good method.

The high failure rate is very simple.  On top of being the most complicated contraception method, making a mistake is far more likely to result in a pregnancy.  If you miss a pill or the condom breaks, there’s about a 1 in 7 chance it happened on a peak fertility day.  Screwing up FAM specifically means you’re having unprotected PIV sex on a peak fertility day.

So it takes a lot of privilege to use FAM, including knowing that having a baby or an abortion if something goes wrong isn’t a huge deal.  And insisting that it’s the right method for all women in all circumstances is entitled douchebaggery.

*Personally, I think this should be part of comprehensive sex ed.  I’m appalled at the number of young women I’ve met who haven’t the first clue how their bodies work.

Let me just add to your excellent post, Leely.  If your fertility signs are ambiguous or non-existent, like if your cervical fluid doesn’t look right, FAM/NFP is also not for you.  My 4-month-old baby and I thought we should mention that.

Suppose a baby was born into an environment in which there was no replacement available for her mother’s breastmilk.  If the baby did not breastfeed, she would starve.
[blahblahblahblah and so forth]

Suppose women gave birth to litters of 50 or 100 microscopic homunculi, who grew to regular infant size by committing mutual cannibalism. Then any surviving baby would be a fratricide and have to be locked up for life.

Suppose women gave birth to infants whose only immunologically permissible sustenance was the blood of their biological father. Then any man who didn’t stay home and let himself be drained would be committing infanticide.

Suppose the moon was made of green cheese and Mars of mimolette…

I know, I shouldn’t be feeding the troll, but I’ve got the flu and have to do something…

I guess, Austin, I just disagree with your definition of human life. As far as I am concerned, a fertilized egg, an embryo, and a fetus are all potential human beings. Any given egg or sperm cell is half of a potential person, and as cloning has demonstrated, an egg by itself injected with a complete chromosome can develop into a living creature. Your choice of fertilization strikes me as a strong moment to choose to say that human existence begins, but perhaps weaker than birth, perhaps weaker than the beginning of an embryo’s heartbeat, or an embro’s first neural activity.

The offspring of two human beings is, by definition, a human being.

I believe Saint Augustine believed that abortion before “quickening” (when a mother can feel her fetus kick) was moral. These standards are subject to debate, and you are within your rights to believe that conception is the moment at which a human being is invested with all her rights. Thus you may believe that abortion is tantamount to murder. However, your particular definition seems rather arbitrary to me, and considering that others may choose to define the terms of the debate differently, as Monty Python did with “Every Sperm is Sacred,” you may find that much as you protest about doctors defining pregnancy differently than you wish, you are engaged in the same tenuous logic.

He based this claim on his “ensoulment” theory.  Clearly, that would violate the seperation of church and state.  If conception is arbitrary, than so is birth; but unlike birth, conception does not.. er.. “coincide” with the point in our children’s development at which we evolved to begin caring about them.

If conception is arbitrary, so is birth.  Since we cannot arbitrarily exclude any group of human beings from having the same rights that we have, we must include all groups of human beings - since there is no non-arbitrary way of excluding any of them!

I’m not sure how you prove a miscarriage was actually a miscarriage and not an illegal abortion unless you arrest the woman and force her to undergo a gynecological examination. What method did you have in mind to determine the cause of the pregnancy’s termination?

I don’t know you prove that when an old person dies, they were not euthanized, unless you do a full autopsy on every single old person who dies.  Miscarriages, like deaths due to old age, are too frequent to be worth investigating without any additional evidence that it was an abortion.

Once again, Austin Nedved replies, which proves he’s still here, but he does not answer the question about his hypothetical:

If the woman refuses to breastfeed the child… what happens then? How do we force her to do it, Austin?

She would be charged with infanticide.  This would not happen with abortion, for reasons I’ve explained here.

No, the others are medical events.  Ability to reason is not.

Why are “medical events” superior to philosophical events?

How is birth the weakest? You think it is the weakest. Why? You are making a lot of statements that require a lot of assumptions you are not willing to back up.

It marks the point in our children’s development at which we evolved to feel bad about killing them.

You assume that I accept that a fertilized ovum is a human being. I do not. I exclude no human beings. You confer humanity to a group that is not yet human. The burden of proof is on you. Augustine chose a different moment, but you may rest assured that he knew that a baby had already developed considerably by the time it could kick, yet he found abortion before then moral.

As I said above, this is because of his ensoulment theory, which would clearly violate the seperation of church and state were it implemented into our laws.

Personally I think elective abortion should be legal under all circumstances as a matter of public policy, whether or not I choose an arbitrary time of my own to believe that human life begins. I won’t impose my own assumptions on others, certainly a lesson you could stand to learn.

You do impose your own assumptions on others when you prohibit infanticide, especially in third world countries.

No, the burden of proof is on the person who would strip away reproductive rights and impose the burden of pregnancy on half of the population of actual human beings.

It’s really easy to meet that burden.  All I need to do is show that there are no non-arbitrary criteria with which we can exclude the group of human beings that would be excluded under any given criteria.

Birth is the strongest line. It is the clearest, most obvious, and has the most immediate practical consequences. The newborn is no longer an appendage to the mother and no longer must have her as its permanent 24/7 caretaker. It can be directly cared for by others, without going literally through the mother; it starts requiring accommodations from the family and society as a whole and not only the mother. The difference between a fetus and a baby is far more obvious and practically significant than most other important lines we draw (like the line between a [non-voter and a voter.” Nothing of immediate practical significance happens when you turn eighteen, yet suddenly you acquire a large number of important rights that people have fought revolutions to safeguard.]

Hey, at least you didn’t actually say “convenient"…

Absolutely, birth is the only line that everyone can agree on because it is the medical event that definitively separates the newborn from the mother. There is no other commensurate medical event after that. Therefore, slippery slope arguments into infanticide have little merit.

I don’t think that everyone agrees on it.  Interestingly, it represents the point in our children’s development at which we feel bad about killing them.

Austin, women are going to have abortions regardless of whether you like it or not and regardless of whether it’s legal or not.  What do you think the appropriate punishment should be for women who have abortions?

We should treat it like self-mutilation, or a suicide attempt.

Your argument is utterly unconvincing, and your distinction between natural and artificial means is meaningless given the vast amount of artificial technology that goes into childbirth. You might also want to rethink the refusing-treatments vs. starving oneself part, as any argument that depends on the basic premise that you cannot starve yourself to death has no foundation.

You don’t generally need artifical technology to give birth.  Artifical technology often substitutes or enables breastfeeding, but this does not mean that it is not a normal and natural means of preservation.

The distinction is not meaningless.  I’m assuming that elective suicide is not something we have to allow.

Which is still not entitled to the use of anyone’s organs but its own.

A baby is born into an environment in which there is no replacement available for her mother’s breast milk.  If she does not breastfeed, she will starve; there is no replacement available.  That is to say, if the baby does not use her mother’s organs, she will starve.  Natural-artifical distinction… I’m telling you.

I’m actually going to second Seebach and ask you how you’d force her to breastfeed. Gun to her head? Or just a lethal injection if she fails to do so? Never mind situations where she can’t breastfeed. Real-life situations don’t matter in your worldview.

If she had the means to breastfeed, and selfishly chose not to do so?  Lethal injection.

Repeating the same things over and over does not an argument make. You can go on about sexual standards, but as long as they’re more important to you than reducing abortion, you’re utterly failing to defend yourself from the charges we’re making against you.

You can’t promote abortifacient contraception and say that you’ve reduced the abortion rate.  Since sexual standards would doubtlessly reduce the abortion rate, how can you say that they are more important to me than reducing the abortion rate?

Since the “ethical definition” seems to be “whatever the hell I want it to mean,” I’ll just have to counter with: no, according to the ethical definition abortion is just fine.

It really bothers you that hormonal contraception is abortifacient, doesn’t it?

This is one of the things that make it easy to tell that you don’t really believe that you’re talking about a child. If four in every five children died of, say, SIDS, I’d think you’d want to do something about it, not say “well, it’s okay that all these babies are dying as long as they’re not being smothered in their cribs.”

SIDS is not a natural and ideal manner of death.  It is natural and unideal, like dying of a seizure or an infectious disease.

Firstly, you did not address the question, which was about how to tell that an egg has been fertilized, which is impossible until it implants. Secondly, it hasn’t been conclusively proven that birth control usage by women improves the weather over the entire country, but you can never be too sure, so we should base policy on this, am I right?

You can’t tell whether or not any given egg has been fertilized until it implants. I don’t see the relevance.

There is no evidence that birth control usage by women improves the weather.  There is evidence that it prevents implantation.  If there wasn’t, the medical community would not say that it did.

Because refusing your children medical treatment is all happy fun times!

I don’t think that parents should be allowed to do it, but it’s still not the equivalent of starving them to death.

Simply put: there’s no reason to. They are not invading anyone else’s body. (Also, false analogy: by the time a fetus is anywhere near equivalent to a born child, no one’s having an abortion unless the fetus is dead or won’t survive long past birth. Facts of life, people.)

You didn’t answer my question.

My blaspheming got eated earlier, but I made the point that the Stupak Amendment curiously left out coverage for abortions in the case of fetal deformity.  You can have your abortion covered if the pregnancy threatens your life our health, or if it is the result of rape or incest, but not if the fetus is anencephalic or otherwise severely deformed.  If that’s the case, you must carry the pregnancy or pay out of your pocket for the abortion.  Which will probably be considerably more expensive, considering that those conditions aren’t usually detected until late in the pregnancy.

Thank God.  I don’t want my tax dollars funding the most vile sort of “ableism”.

Hey Asswipe Austin, what should the penalty be for a woman that chooses to have an abortion in your dreamworld? Life in prison? Death? Do tell!

We should treat it the same way we treat self-mutilation or suicide attempts.

And how would we enforce laws against abortion? The government already imprisons tens of millions of people on drug charges (another victimless ‘crime’) and this has hardly stopped the drug use. Having abortion outlawed will not only mean that fetuses continued to get killed, but women will as well in back alley, coat hanger abortions. That means more innocent lives, even using your standard, will be lost when abortion is illegal and unsafe than when it is legal and safe.

There you have it folks, the Republican health care plan for women: coat hangers.

Back in 1965, when abortion was largely illegal in the US, fewer than 1000 women per year killed themselves trying to obtain illegal abortions.  If we made abortion illegal today, the number of women who killed themselves trying to get them would be similar to the number of American killed in lawn mowing accidents every year.

If you are forcing women (innocent, guilty, or amoral) to do something that increases their mortality you are not, in fact, protecting them from being killed, which suggests you do not care about (not-plant) life. Clear, yes?

Am I not pro-life because I oppose forced organ donation?  “Forcing” people to carry failing organs is not pro-life?

One more thing, about the theoretical example--are unicorns roaming about, or do the laws of nature still apply in your scenario? Because if they do, in an environment in which there was no replacement available, the baby 1) gets no food because the mother is either not producing milk or she’s dead, and 2) dies because, apparently, there are no other people around.

In third world countries, mothers are often only able to breastfeed one of their babies; they do not have enough milk to feed both.  This happens in the real world all the time, even though it doesn’t need to for my real-world hypothetical to stand.

If Trolly McAsswipe here thinks that women who choose to have an abortion are killing another human being, if he thinks fetuses are human beings, he should be very interested in prosecuting said women to the fullest extent of the law.

In a suicide attempt, you’re only hurting yourself. If fetuses are equivalent to an infant, then you’re also hurting another real, human being, and should be prosecuted as such. Right, Austin? Right?

We can only punish people as far as they are culpable for what they have done.  You can read more about it here.

Funnily enough, that sounds like the course of action taken by FLDS fundies when “their” women aren’t co-operating in being submissive in every way - they throw them in their private psychiatric facilities until they “realise” their true purpose as the family patriarchs’ servile property. I do not see how Austin’s view is different. If you do not want teh precious baybeez at any given point, you cannot be trusted to know what is best for you and your life because you’re a feeble female, so he’d just lock you up until you recognise your position as men’s property, servant, and communal incubator. Fuck you if you’re miserable because a totalitarian regime thinks you’re all of the above, fuck what you want, woman. Stop pretending you’re a human being with a separate personality, wants, desires and needs! Shut up and give me my baby!

Would you ever say that about child abandonment or infanticide, in countries in which adoption is not available? Why or why not?

My pro-life sister in law has had 3 miscarriages as well as 3 living kids.  She was heartbroken by each one.  I think it would have destroyed her to be subject to police interrogation about whether she did it “on purpose” on what was, each time, the worst day of her life up to that point. 

And I think that’s the prospect that’ll torpedo the pro-life dream America where we morph into Romania under Ceaucescu.  The prospect of jack-booted government thugs yelling in your face “Why did you kill your baby?” when you are still leaking tissue and cramping and just want to go home and mourn.

Miscarriages are so frequent that we wouldn’t investigate them unless there was additional evidence to suggest that it was really an abortion.

I never argued that the general public was obligated to do anything. Mothers, on the other hand, because of a special dependency that their children have on them, should be obligated to not kill their unborn.

The reason this obligation does not extend to the general public to save other members of the general public - is because the special relationship of absolute dependency that characterizes a mother and her unborn child does not exist between members of the general public.

Translation: “I don’t need to give a shit about anybody else because I’m a dude! La la la! I fucking love this male privilege where I don’t need to care about anybody else ever! Yaaay! Don’t you wish you were a dude like me?

However, you’re just a little lady, so you ARE obligated to care about people. Since I am a dude and have never, and can never, being constitutionally incapable of being obligated to care about people (hereby defined as “any bit of organic matter, regardless of its resemblance to an actual person"), I have no fucking idea what it’d be like to be obligated to care about anyone other than myself, so I’ve decided it can’t possibly be that difficult, under Privileged D00d R00lz Bylaw 467-B, “Anything I’ve never experienced isn’t that hard, because if it hasn’t happened to me than it only exists as a bunch of words, in accordance with Bylaw 467-A, ‘I have an “objective” perspective."‘“

Also, moms aren’t normal people!”

If your mother hasn’t disowned you yet, she should. If I were your mother and I caught you writing that, I would pick you up, throw you bodily out the window, and if you tried to come back in, I’d call the police and tell them that a stranger was stalking me, which was very upsetting as my son had just died and the last thing I need was some fuckwit stalker pretending to be him. And since I have no fucking idea what would actually happen in a situation like that, since I’ve never been in it and I don’t actually have children so I don’t know how attached to them I would be, I will assume that following that, the police would cart you away and I would never see you again and I’d be totally fine and completely forget about you once I’d sold all your stuff. ‘Cos I can conceptualize that happening in the abstract, you see, so obviously actually going through it would be just as easy.

Fuck off trolls who want to give fetuses extra special rights to control their mothers bodies b/c their mothers are dirty sluts.

That’s your argument.  These women had sex, therefore they have to continue a pregnancy, regardless of how it will harm their health (and it does fuck your body up even if everything goes well).

Back to the real topic

From Diana DeGette’s website:

“Placing onerous new restrictions on a woman’s right to choose sets a terrible precedent and marks a significant step backwards. This effort will effectively ban abortion coverage in all plans, both private and public – marking a significant scaling back of the options offered under existing laws. Such a terrible, last minute amendment to a critical, historic piece of legislation is a shame. This kind of outrageous interference in health care by the government marks a sad day in this struggle and will result in women across America losing the right to health care.”

They’ve got a caucaus of 40 pro-choice representatives, which is enough to kill this bill.

Fuck off misogynists, and rock on DeGette & co.  Abortion is a legal medical procedure.  The only people who have any business discussing whether it is an appropriate medical procedure are the patient and her doctor.  Any one else is barging in on private and personal business and needs to fuck off.

Don’t like abortion?  Then don’t have one.  Want it to be illegal?  Good luck with that, but stop it with the terrorism and lies.

Thecynicalromantic: If you’re going to make the bodily integrity argument for abortion rights, or compare a prohibition of abortion to forced organ donation, you really ought to read this.

Suppose a baby was born into an environment in which there was no replacement available for her mother’s breastmilk.  If the baby did not breastfeed, she would starve.

As my dad would respond to this: “What if your legs were ten feet long?”.  FWIW, if it were true that there were no replacement for breast milk, then I would say it’s acceptable for a mother to refuse to breastfeed an infant, because this would only happen in a poverty-stricken society, and breastfeeding would rob nutrients and energy from the mother.  Her other children might not fare so well if she starves to death.

If she had the means to breastfeed, and selfishly chose not to do so?  Lethal injection.

People who have the means to donate blood, kidneys, even lungs and selfishly chose not to do so?  Lethal injection.  Oh wait, then you might actually be affected so we can’t have that.  You’re a flaming hypocrite.  Go donate your own body, and advocate that it be legally mandatory for others to do so, and then maybe you’ll have a point worth listening to.  In other words, practice what you preach, you selfish jerk.  You can use all the rationalizations you want, but when it comes down to it, people have died because you chose not to donate blood, and those people weren’t lucky enough to be genetically related to you.  Monsters like you have no right to talk about morals.  Letting actual people die and saying that it’s fine because it’s not your problem and you don’t know those people is almost as bad as murder.  And yet, you call yourself “pro-life”.

Suppose a baby was born on the moon.  It would asphyxiate.  Therefore, we must destroy the moon in order to protect the Moon Babies.

That’s nothing.  If a baby were born on Jupiter, not only would it asphyxiate, it would be crushed by the gas giant’s massive gravity.  And that’s why Jupiter should be considered an enemy planet.

You want to take in culpability based on reasons for abortion because you’re seeing it from a criminal perspective. Crimes are classified based on the intent of the suspect, such as premeditating or committing the act in the heat of anger. If people saw it as a medical procedure, this wouldn’t be an issue. We don’t go off on people who end up needing a heart transplant because they got an upper respitory infection that was linked to their smoking and it caused heart complications.

Miscarriages are so frequent that we wouldn’t investigate them unless there was additional evidence to suggest that it was really an abortion.

Pah. You say that, but with the general fear and loathing of females inculcant in pro-life - an certainly most right-wing and religious - idealogy, sometimes the mere perception that you may be transgressing legal or social norms, or you cannot extensively prove that you are “good” enough by someone else’s perception of what constitutes a “real” woman, or you’re too brown, too poor, too foreign, not virginal enough, etc., is enough to hang you. Much like being opinionated or not crying when accused was enough justification for the authors of Malleus Maleficarum to consider you a witch and unlease sadistic tortures on you. True, this isn’t the Middle Ages anymore, but with the pro-life, right-wing tendency for unabashed woman hating, and examples from other countries of the affects of such policies, I’ve never been convinced that you lot care about any life unless that life can be used as an allegorical or literal weapon to oppress or harm. Personally, I don’t want to live under a pall of hate and suspicion for a good part of my life just because of perceived fertility, orientation, born sex and cisgender expression. I will not be considered a potential criminal beholden to my uterus. You aren’t allowed to take the organs of a corpse if that person did not consent to harvesting before death, even if you will die without their donation, and even if that person was a complete shit in life. Frankly, I’m sick of being told that I have less legal rights than a fucking fetus or a corpse.

Austin,
You’ve set an arbitrary point at which people are obligated to donate their body to someone else, and that arbitrary point conveniently excludes you from having to actually do anything.  Where I come from, saying that you can just tell people to fuck off and die because helping them is artificial rather than “natural” does NOT count as “pro-life”.  What it comes down to is that you want to force women to risks their lives and donate their body to save a potential human as a punishment for having sex.  But you don’t want to actually save people’s lives by going through something that is far safer and easier than a pregnancy.  And you want to find some way to justify your hypocrisy so that people won’t notice that you just want to punish women for being sexual while being a woman.  The whole definition of “natural” so vague that any definition is completely arbitrary, and that’s really convenient for you.  I’m not buying your weak justification.  You’re a terrible person who allows people to fucking die because you can’t be bothered to donate blood or even money.  Get back to me when you actually start caring about human lives, and then I might take you more seriously.  Or, why don’t you get started on building an artificial womb, or figure out a way to transfer pregnancies into men’s bodies, including your own?  Don’t give some silly excuse like “nature doesn’t want me to be pregnant”.  It’s amazing how much “pro-lifers” hate actual lives.  It’s no coincidence that the people who claim to care about life are also the ones who want American citizens to die for the crime of being too poor to afford health care.

I avoided the Internet this weekend so I’m very sorry for being late to this discussion. Is there a thread somewhere where abortion providers explain why they offer their services to anti-choice terrorists who call them murderers to their face? My guess is they are afraid that these women will avail themselves of the same horrible methods that women used prior to 1973 but I’d like to hear from them.

As my dad would respond to this: “What if your legs were ten feet long?”.  FWIW, if it were true that there were no replacement for breast milk, then I would say it’s acceptable for a mother to refuse to breastfeed an infant, because this would only happen in a poverty-stricken society, and breastfeeding would rob nutrients and energy from the mother.  Her other children might not fare so well if she starves to death.

She wouldn’t starve to death.  Hypotheticals don’t have to take place in the real world in order to prove a point, but this one does.  Babies are born into such environments in third world countries all the time.  And their mothers do have the ability to breastfeed them.

People who have the means to donate blood, kidneys, even lungs and selfishly chose not to do so?  Lethal injection.  Oh wait, then you might actually be affected so we can’t have that.  You’re a flaming hypocrite.  Go donate your own body, and advocate that it be legally mandatory for others to do so, and then maybe you’ll have a point worth listening to.  In other words, practice what you preach, you selfish jerk.  You can use all the rationalizations you want, but when it comes down to it, people have died because you chose not to donate blood, and those people weren’t lucky enough to be genetically related to you.  Monsters like you have no right to talk about morals.  Letting actual people die and saying that it’s fine because it’s not your problem and you don’t know those people is almost as bad as murder.  And yet, you call yourself “pro-life”.

The difference between abortion and refusing to donate kidneys is the difference between refusing to breastfeed in my hypothetical, and refusing to donate blood.

Pah. You say that, but with the general fear and loathing of females inculcant in pro-life - an certainly most right-wing and religious - idealogy, sometimes the mere perception that you may be transgressing legal or social norms, or you cannot extensively prove that you are “good” enough by someone else’s perception of what constitutes a “real” woman, or you’re too brown, too poor, too foreign, not virginal enough, etc., is enough to hang you. Much like being opinionated or not crying when accused was enough justification for the authors of Malleus Maleficarum to consider you a witch and unlease sadistic tortures on you. True, this isn’t the Middle Ages anymore, but with the pro-life, right-wing tendency for unabashed woman hating, and examples from other countries of the affects of such policies, I’ve never been convinced that you lot care about any life unless that life can be used as an allegorical or literal weapon to oppress or harm. Personally, I don’t want to live under a pall of hate and suspicion for a good part of my life just because of perceived fertility, orientation, born sex and cisgender expression. I will not be considered a potential criminal beholden to my uterus. You aren’t allowed to take the organs of a corpse if that person did not consent to harvesting before death, even if you will die without their donation, and even if that person was a complete shit in life. Frankly, I’m sick of being told that I have less legal rights than a fucking fetus or a corpse.

I’m stunned at how often I see this argument.  READ THIS.

Austin,
You’ve set an arbitrary point at which people are obligated to donate their body to someone else, and that arbitrary point conveniently excludes you from having to actually do anything.  Where I come from, saying that you can just tell people to fuck off and die because helping them is artificial rather than “natural” does NOT count as “pro-life”.  What it comes down to is that you want to force women to risks their lives and donate their body to save a potential human as a punishment for having sex.  But you don’t want to actually save people’s lives by going through something that is far safer and easier than a pregnancy.  And you want to find some way to justify your hypocrisy so that people won’t notice that you just want to punish women for being sexual while being a woman.  The whole definition of “natural” so vague that any definition is completely arbitrary, and that’s really convenient for you.  I’m not buying your weak justification.  You’re a terrible person who allows people to fucking die because you can’t be bothered to donate blood or even money.  Get back to me when you actually start caring about human lives, and then I might take you more seriously.  Or, why don’t you get started on building an artificial womb, or figure out a way to transfer pregnancies into men’s bodies, including your own?  Don’t give some silly excuse like “nature doesn’t want me to be pregnant”.  It’s amazing how much “pro-lifers” hate actual lives.  It’s no coincidence that the people who claim to care about life are also the ones who want American citizens to die for the crime of being too poor to afford health care.

I don’t think it’s arbitrary.  And if you are opposed to forced blood transfusions, but think that women in third world countries should have to breastfeed, neither do you.

I avoided the Internet this weekend so I’m very sorry for being late to this discussion. Is there a thread somewhere where abortion providers explain why they offer their services to anti-choice terrorists who call them murderers to their face? My guess is they are afraid that these women will avail themselves of the same horrible methods that women used prior to 1973 but I’d like to hear from them.

I’m repeaing myself, but fewer than 1,000 women killed themselves trying to obtain illegal abortions in 1965.  With today’s technology, making abortion illegal would be as much of threat to public health as lawnmowers.  See comment #162.

Austin: Learn to fucking read. I know you wanted to pretend you were having a fresh round of your pet arguments by noticing that there was a fresh username in the comment thread, but, although I do actually agree with those points, I neither made the bodily integrity argument, NOR said a goddamn fucking THING about organ donation.

My argument, for the sarcasm-impaired, was that it’s really fucking easy to sit around on one’s ass coming up with abstract conceptualizations of shit you have no chance in hell of ever going through, and that concluding, from the ease with which it can be conceptualized, that it must be equally easy to go through because you think “your own privileged-ass brain’s limited imaginative capacity” is the “objective” standard by which the entire universe should measure shit happening, makes you an unempathetic douchebag who does not understand basic facts of the structure of the universe, ie, that the rest of the universe ACTUALLY EXISTS INDEPENDENTLY OF YOU.

You and pee pee want to dither about the experiences of motherhood? GO BECOME MOTHERS. OTHERWISE SHUT THE FUCK UP. You are playing foofy abstract philosophical & semantic parlor games with OTHER PEOPLE’S REAL FUCKING LIVES. These questions are not prompts for your high school debate team. We are discussing ACTUAL politics here--the systems that STRUCTURE OUR LIVES. YES, WE KNOW THAT WE’RE NOT YOU, BUT WE ARE STILL ALIVE.

However, I do have a question. If you think that a two-day-old clump of cells is JUST LIEK A REAL LIVE PERSON OMG, but yet if a woman tries to “kill” that tiny clump of cells it should be treated like a suicide attempt, presumably because SHE thinks she’s only killing off part of herself (because she is an insane woman and doesn’t understand stuff like you do, she only being the one capable of going through it)… what if a pregnant woman kills OTHER people-who-are-totes-separate-people who are not physically located inside her bodily space? Like, what if she goes to the doctor and holds a gun to their head and says “give me a fucking abortion or I’ll blow your brains out”? Assuming the doctor performs the abortion, has the woman committed suicide and threat of murder, or suicide and threat of a second suicide? After all, she is using both the doctor and the gun as tools to accomplish something, and tools and technology work by functioning as “extensions of the self,” plus she is a Le Crazy Silly Woman, so she might *consider* the doctor an extension of herself for as long as she is using him/her as a tool. Isn’t this a fun semantic parlor game? Don’t you think that if I ever actually threatened a doctor with a gun, that doctor might NOT think it’s a fun semantic parlor game?

I’m stunned at how often I see this argument.  READ THIS.

Honey, I’ve already read this.  It’s incredibly stupid and that would be obvious to anyone except those who really want to hear some justification for being a hypocritical jerk.  The definition of “natural” is vague that any distinction is just arbitrary.  It works out really well for those who would love to force women to give birth, but don’t want to feel guilty about letting other people die because they’re too fucking selfish to donate blood.  It’s basically the same argument we’ve heard over and over: that women deserve to be punished with childbirth for the sin of having sex.  Try something new next time.  Or try something that’s not hypocritical.  Or, you could do something that’s actually useful and go create an artificial womb.

The difference between abortion and refusing to donate kidneys is the difference between refusing to breastfeed in my hypothetical, and refusing to donate blood.

The only difference is that only women have to continue pregnancies and breastfeed, whereas men could also donate kidneys and blood.  You can come up with some arbitrary excuse about natural and artificial, but it’s not enough to cover your glaring hypocrisy.  I care more about life than you do.  Hell, I’ve even saved actual lives.  You’re anti-sex and pro-punishment for naughty women, but everything you’ve said proves that you don’t care about life, especially if it might inconvenience to save it.  If you have managed to convince yourself that you’re really not a hypocrite, then I feel sorry for you.

Hey, misogynist troll, the argument in your link is useless.  It relies on a fuzzy definition of “natural” and “artificial” and doesn’t explain why things that are natural must be enforced while things that are extraordinary may not.  It just assumes that, as a premise, based on...well, nothing.

But suppose a woman gave birth to a baby in an environment in which there was no replacement available for her breast milk; the baby either breastfed, or starved to death. After all, people do not have the right to artificially obtain bodily fluids from others for their own survival. Would the baby have a right to breastfeed?

No, it wouldn’t.  There’s nothing in that link that proves that the distinction between “natural” and “artificial” should also be the distinction between “compulsory” and “optional.”

If the mother were to refuse to allow the baby to breastfeed, she would be committing infanticide – maternal infanticide.

No, she wouldn’t. 

The situation of pregnancy is similar to this.

No, it’s not, except inasmuch as refusing to be a life support system for someone else is not murder.

Another example of the distinction between natural versus extraordinary means of preservation would involve the differences between refusing medical treatment for a fatal illness and starving yourself to death. You could refuse medical treatment for a fatal illness, because medical treatments generally involve extraordinary and artificial means of preservation, which you are not obligated to provide yourself with. However, you could not refuse to feed yourself, because eating is a natural means of preservation, which you are obviously required to do.

No, people have no legal obligation to eat.  Force-feeding is assault. 

Try again, troll.

The difference between abortion and refusing to donate kidneys is the difference between refusing to breastfeed in my hypothetical, and refusing to donate blood.

Which is: donating kidneys and blood can be done by anybody, but abortions and breastfeeding can only be done by sexually developed women.

THIS IS WHY WE THINK YOU’RE A RAVING MISOGYNIST.

Austin,

Get up off your ass and donate blood today.  Put your money where your mouth is and prove that you actually care about life, or else STFU and stop pretending that you care about life.  Personally, I’d prefer that you do the former.

Austin, the “argument” on your blog is exactly the same as the ones you’ve been posting here - some rambling B.S. about how it’s so unfortunate that women have titties and wombs and should be enslaved to zygotes because, because… because nothing! Shut up and bear a baby, slut!  And seriously? Citing yourself to back up your own abstract arguments is really, really arrogant. People here keep telling you that you’re not listening to them, to their actual lived experiences as women and advocates, you, like all male forced birthers, assume you know what’s best for an entire class of people even though it will never affect you. It’s easy to discuss the principles underpinning subjugation that will happen to others like its some sort of Objective and Moral Truth that the Little Ladies must Bear the Children of Righteous Men, isn’t it, you conceited fuck? Now do you grasp why I’m never convinced you care for “life” more than you care for own status?

Austin is all 18 and straight out of Catholic school, which explains both his naivete and bizarre pseudo-natural law arguments.

You guys are saying that she wouldn’t have to breastfeed?  And that abortion is not necessarily different from refusing to breastfeed?

Seebach,
He’s probably a virgin too.  I’ve met others like him, and they change their minds pretty fast when they realize just how easily their “good girl” sex partner could get pregnant.  All it takes is one night where he can’t maintain an erection with a condom on, and the girl agrees to do it without one out of politeness, naivete, and a desire to just get it over with and go to sleep.  Even if she doesn’t end up pregnant, he’ll see that it’s not just the terrible Other women who face unwanted pregnancies; sometimes it’s the nice woman who was just trying to spare him the embarrassment of going soft.  Plus, I’m sure he wouldn’t want to be father this young anyway.

Ausin, why are you still typing when you should be out donating blood?  You may comment after you’ve saved a life.  Until then, STFU.

You guys are saying that she wouldn’t have to breastfeed?  And that abortion is not necessarily different from refusing to breastfeed?

Define “have”. This isn’t an abstract universe of natural law and smug Catholic doctrine. This is the real world. This is public policy. You are talking about use of the government when you talk about making something illegal.

So how are you going to use the government to make her? Gunpoint? Chain her up and take her milk from her with a machine? Knock her unconscious? Drain all of her milk and give her a lethal injection?

It’s your stupid hypothetical. You invented it. Tell me how it works.

Austin is all 18 and straight out of Catholic school, which explains both his naivete and bizarre pseudo-natural law arguments.

Which he’s probably been told were magic bullets that no pro-abort could resist.  I imagine it’s coming as quite a shock to him that people are actually arguing with him, rather than collapsing and converting, as he’d been told they would.

I hope he got into a decent (ie, nondenominational and populated predominantly by atheistic “cultural Jews") college; with any luck he’ll be an atheist within the year… Catholics are the leading producers of atheists in the country, so there’s slightly more hope there than if he was anything else…

Ctulhla Grant me the power to make all male Fetus Huggers endure a unwanted pregnancy.

Austin thinks pregnancy is different. Presumably because he thinks it will never apply to him. So tell me, Austin, let’s assume that you and your wife have a much-wanted and much-loved daughter. She’s clever, lively, happy and generally healthy. She isn’t particularly strong or big, but with modern medicine this isn’t really a problem.

Your beloved daughter, aged thirteen, is gang-raped by ten men. Please give the rapists the identity of the race, religion, and socio-economic class you – and because you have raised her and she’s very young, your daughter - most despise. Your daughter is infected with herpes and gonorrhoea. She has PTSD as a result of the attack. She also becomes pregnant as a result. She will probably survive a pregnancy, but given her youth and size it will irreparably damage her health – even if she doesn’t end up incontinent and with tissue damage, her bones and teeth will suffer.

Your daughter wants to terminate the pregnancy. Do you think this is OK or not?

If OK, why do you suddenly think that _this_ abortion is not murder? The foetus is just as “innocent” and “human” as your daughter was when she was in your wife’s womb.

If No, what kind of sick creep are you?

Bonus question: in the world you want, your daughter is forced to carry the pregnancy to term. Perhaps she’s incarcerated as you suggest after she attempts to induce an abortion and fails. So now there’s a baby. It looks just like one of the rapists. Due to a genetic quirk, the baby can get nourishment only from your daughter’s breastmilk – it is allergic to all formula, to the artificial nourishment that is given to children and adults who can’t eat, and to all other women’s milk (even if other women were willing to donate their milk to this baby – of course, even in your ideal world it seems they don’t have to, because they are general people and not the slut you conceived). Moreover the baby won’t take even your daughter’s breastmilk from a bottle, but only from her breast. It’s eyes look just like its father and it gazes at her as it sucks. But! There is one other source of nourishment. So, do you tie your daughter down and put the baby to her bleeding breast whilst she screams for hours and hours as it feeds – or, do you have your kidney and half your liver extracted, which incredibly once pureed this small relation of yours can obtain sufficient nutrients from. Which is the moral choice? You decide!

Ah! I see you have decided. So now another choice. So now do you watch as your daughter is executed by lethal injection, do you inject her yourself, or do you not turn up because she’s a slut and so you don’t care.

He based this claim on his “ensoulment” theory.  Clearly, that would violate the seperation of church and state.</blckquote>
So you’re saying that you don’t object to abortion in countries where there is an established church. Hurrah for the CofE and the NHS!
<blockquote>Miscarriages are so frequent that we wouldn’t investigate them unless there was additional evidence to suggest that it was really an abortion.

Haven’t some states already tried to pass laws whereby all miscarriages must be reported and the products of conception turned over to the police to prove that it wasn’t an induced abortion? I’m sure I read something about this on Pandagon (Colorado?) But Austin just asserts that what has already happened would never happen. Yes, that’s real respect for the woman suffering a miscarriage.

In an environment where a child cannot breastfeed from anyone other than the mother, we would have to assume the following to also be true:

- there are no other lactating women around (would be the case if the mother is a prisoner, for example, or lives in a very isolated area, or some sort of environmental disaster has made most people infertile, or the mother has been separated from other people by an accident or disaster, for example, she and her baby are on a life raft)
- or, no other lactating women are willing to take her baby (would be the case if she is a member of a despised social group, or the poverty and starvation of the area is so dire that no one else has the physical resources to support two babies, or the baby is a child of a systematic campaign of wartime rape as in Bosnia, and the other women have also been raped by the same group the biological father came from)

In either case, letting the baby die may be a requirement of the mother’s survival, so yes, it would be entirely acceptable.

If the mother is letting the baby die because she just feels like it… most likely, there are people available who could take the baby; humans live communally for a reason. A woman who cannot find anyone else to breastfeed her infant is a woman who is extremely isolated from humanity, or surrounded by humans who are suffering and in dire straits as much as she is. We are humans, not sheep. (Sheep will not nurse an infant who is not theirs unless the infant is presented within the first hour after the ewe gave birth. Humans don’t do this.)

So there is no reasonable circumstance I can imagine where a woman is refusing to breastfeed an infant *and* no one is available to breastfeed her infant instead *and* she has the resources and privilege to safely breastfeed that infant but she’s choosing not to because she doesn’t feel like it. Women choose not to breastfeed infants, in environments where formula is not available, for fairly important reasons, such as “I am starving and if I breastfeed I will die”, “my other children need me to work in the fields and if I breastfeed, the older children will die”, “the enemy of my people raped me, and this child represents their attack on me, and I will be stigmatized and despised as long as I am known to be the mother of this child”, and so on. Under such circumstances, yes, the mother has every right to refuse to breastfeed, because if it comes down to her survival versus the baby’s, she has the right to choose her own. If it is the baby’s survival versus her other children’s survival, she has the right to choose the older children that she’s invested more in, who will suffer more as they die because they have more cognition and awareness.

Now, in an environment where someone else can take the baby, it would be a criminal act to kill the baby instead of giving it up to someone else. So, when we invent artificial wombs and a way to transport fetuses into them with less harm to the mother than an abortion causes, I would agree that at that time, abortion will be akin to murder, because there would be a non-fatal means of accomplishing the same effect, ie, the fetus is no longer a parasite on the mother’s resources. Until such time, if the only way to keep the fetus from draining the mother’s body against her will is to kill it, then unfortunately that’s what has to be done, because no human being has the right to another human being’s body. You cannot be compelled to give your child a kidney. Even if you threw your child down the stairs and necessitated the kidney donation, you *still* couldn’t be forced to do it. If, after you threw your child down the stairs, unethical vigilante doctors anesthetized you and when you woke up, you had been surgically attached to your child as their life support system against your will, and detaching the child would kill them, you would have the right to detach because you cannot be compelled to donate your body against your will. It’s not about whether you committed an act that makes them dependent on you, it’s not about whether you have to be active or passive in preventing the violation… it’s about the sovereignty of your own body.

BTW, there is no such thing as abortifacient contraception. Contraception: against conception. Meaning it prevents conception. Abortifacient: makes a stop. Meaning it stops something that has already occurred. The Pill works by preventing ovulation. So does the morning-after pill. RU486, which causes abortions, is not considered a contraceptive. I conceived a baby on the Pill because I wasn’t taking it at the right time each day, and today she is a healthy three year old; if the Pill were an abortifacient I wouldn’t even have known I was pregnant, because I would have miscarried as soon as my Pill-taking routine normalized—I was not having regular periods, as the result of taking the Pill, so I didn’t know I was pregnant for a few months and kept taking the Pill during that time. A few *months* of taking the Pill did not abort my baby, so why the fuck would you think a single megadose could possibly do so?

Oy, these two are nitwits with the bizarre analogies.  Like analogies? Try this:

Let’s say you’re driving a car. A common activity that adults participate in which carries associated risks to both themselves and others, but you wear your seatbelt and you took drivers lessons, and you’re a good driver, all that, so you drive to work every day and go pick up groceries and continue to freely live your life as you please.

Now, one day when driving home from work, you get into an accident. A nasty one. Could be that you skipped on black ice, or maybe even that you weren’t paying close enough attention: either way, doesn’t matter. You hit another car, and both you and the other driver are rushed to the hospital.

You turn out to be generally alright. The other driver needs a kidney to survive. Through the magic of allegorical circumstance, both you and this driver are a perfect match for you to be a living donor.

If you go through with the procedure, you will suffer constant bodily discomfort and pains for the better part of a year; your body will also be susceptible to a wide variety of medical conditions that range from mere inconvenience to severe and life-threatening. [Also, to make the allegory even more accurate, let’s say you also may be fired from your job, or face professional and social judgment from those around you; your family may reject you, and you are more likely to be a victim of violence.] On top of all those assorted risks, when all is said and done, you yourself are 11 times more likely to die if you donate this organ than if you do not.

You may choose to donate the organ anyway; you may think it’s the right thing to do. But would you honestly feel comfortable with the state taking that decision away from you? To criminalize your refusal to become a living donor, no matter what your personal circumstances are, no matter what risks you will then have to take on in your life? Would you legislate a choice that ultimately leads to someone being 11 times more likely to die?

I don’t know: maybe you would.

There are hundreds of thousands of people on organ-donor waiting lists. They will die if organs do not come to them on time. But we don’t force people to become organ donors, not in life, and not in death. Many people of faith, for example, believe that doing so would be an act of desecration on the body; so even though someone may die, we respect the person’s decision to control what happens to their body, even when they are dead. If we can afford this respect to the dead, I think we ought to afford it to living, breathing women with lives, friends, and family.

Haven’t some states already tried to pass laws whereby all miscarriages must be reported and the products of conception turned over to the police to prove that it wasn’t an induced abortion?

Virginia, IIRC: some politician named Cosgrove.  There are probably others.

Austin is all 18 and straight out of Catholic school, which explains both his naivete and bizarre pseudo-natural law arguments.

Theocratic Catholics remind me of Randroids.  Same inability to understand that real life doesn’t always work the way your authority figure says it does, same presumptuous bullshit masquerading as bulletproof logic, same hyper-inflated sense of their own intelligence and value.

Can I invoke stick rule? I’m usually the one who loves engaging the trolls, but there’s nothing to be done really when they keep copying and pasting arguments that have already been refuted by a dozen different people.

Alara, is it creepy of me to say that I am such an internet groupie of yours?  You say exactly what I’m thinking, much more eloquently then I could ever say it.

Unfortunately, that’s all I have time to comment right now because I’m giving blood today so that I can save real people’s lives.  Really!

The reason this obligation does not extend to the general public to save other members of the general public - is because the special relationship of absolute dependency that characterizes a mother and her unborn child does not exist between members of the general public.

A member of the general public who needs a kidney is just as “dependent” on getting a kidney as a fetus is on its mother.

Of course, the member of the general public isn’t living inside your body, 100% dependent on you for absolutely everything, the way a fetus is on its mother. That is quite true. Because the member of the general public is a separate person, and the fetus isn’t.

The “special relationship of absolute dependency” is just another way of saying that the fetus is not a separate person. You can’t have it both ways. If the fetus is a separate person, then it has actually be separate. If it’s “absolutely” dependent on its mother, it’s not separate. It’s a part of its mother, for all practical purposes. Calling it a “separate person” with “separate” rights is simply sophistry.

Alara, btw, I agree with almost everything you said except your artificial womb scenario. I don’t think the fetus is a person, even without its relation to the woman’s body, so a mother should be allowed to kill it rather than have it be transplanted.  And it should be the mother’s right, not the father’s, because it is currently existing in the mother’s body and she is the only one sustaining it. Also, transplanting is similar to adoption--you have a genetic child but are giving it to a stranger to take care of (though you don’t go through the full 9-month bonding process of pregnancy)--and women shouldn’t be cornered into giving children up for adoption.

It always amazes me how one ignorant troll can hijack an entire thread.

Women choose not to breastfeed infants, in environments where formula is not available, for fairly important reasons, such as “I am starving and if I breastfeed I will die”, “my other children need me to work in the fields and if I breastfeed, the older children will die”, “the enemy of my people raped me, and this child represents their attack on me, and I will be stigmatized and despised as long as I am known to be the mother of this child”, and so on.

Crazy talk! Crazy talk! Women are capricious, heartless, and essentially untrustworthy and inhumane creatures. We have to be husbanded 24/7 in all the most personal and private aspects of our lives by Godly and upright male guardians, lest we crush civilization by the sheer weight of our basic indecency.

It’s for our own good you know.

I came here trying to have an intelligent conversation.  Every single person who disagreed with me, without exception, has resorted to name-calling and hair-splitting.

The funny thing is, everyone on here who acted like that is much more like a religious fundamentalist than they think.  They are every bit as indoctrinated, irrational, and close-minded, and what they believe makes just as little sense.  Replace fundamentalist Christian beliefs with modern liberal beliefs and you’ve got the commenters at Pandagon.  There is no other difference between the two.

My health plan doesn’t cover well-baby care after a kid turns 2.  It didn’t cover my son’s speech therapy.  It didn’t cover the tummy tuck my wife needed because she had really terrible scarring after her pregnancies.

Every plan makes determinations of what it will and won’t cover, usually in an effort to keep the premiums within a range that the plan sponsor can afford.  I’d hope this public option plan reaches these decisions in the same manner every other plan does.  But a plan that doesn’t cover elective adoptions doesn’t seem that unreasonable to me.  It doesn’t seem inconsistent with other things insurance tends to exclude coverage for.  Although, I expect covering abortion would actually make the plan cheaper, since an abortion has to be cheaper than a pregnancy and delivery.

The funny thing is, everyone on here who acted like that is much more like a religious fundamentalist than they think.  They are every bit as indoctrinated, irrational, and close-minded, and what they believe makes just as little sense.  Replace fundamentalist Christian beliefs with modern liberal beliefs and you’ve got the commenters at Pandagon.  There is no other difference between the two.

Come back in four years with your college degree, and try debating with logic instead of oh-so-clever talking points you’ve cribbed from 30 year old anti-choice literature.

You still also haven’t answered the question about what you would do to the woman who won’t breastfeed her child. I assume you would have forced her against her will but were too chicken to say it.

Austin, in a binary decision between the basic human right of body autonomy of a woman and her fetus, why would you always decide in favor of the fetus?

No, Seebach, he said he would lethally inject her.  So women in developing countries who have existences far more trying than anything we’ve ever experienced will be killed by a Catholic altar boy fresh out of prep school because they had to make a tough decision.  That their society/cultural/mores don’t remotely reflect anything we experience in this country doesn’t matter.  They don’t relate to their babies like Americans do?  Kill them off until they do.

Also, Austin:

Everything on your blog has been argued before, by much better debaters that you. You have contributed nothing to the dialog. It’s all old hat. I’ve heard it all before, and so has everyone else here.

You have changed no minds, you have added nothing constructive, and you have wasted your time.

Congratulations.

I came here trying to have an intelligent conversation.

LOL. Oh, honey, what did they teach you in that school? Please let your parents know they might want to see about getting a refund, sweetie, because what you have been doing is about as far from “intelligent conversation” as I can imagine. Your school let you down, and I honestly feel sorry for you being turned loose on the great big world with a complete lack of critical thinking or debating skills. You’re in for a rough time.

I’m just tossing this out there to see how pro/antis relate to it:

Abortion laws will never effect me.  I’m educated, privileged, and I have a good support system.  When I started having sex, I put 300 dollars into an emergency abortion fund and as my income increased, I added more money.  I am now able to fly anywhere I need to in the world to have an abortion and have enough money left over for a celebratory vacation.  This suggests that any laws against abortion are only selectively enforced, that you don’t mind if privileged women take off for a week’s to England or Norway or whatnot.  Pretty much the only way to actually enforce abortion laws for all women is a pee test before all women get on a plane and a pee test after they land.  Do you support that?

My problem with your point of view, Austin, is treating the fetus like it’s a human.

I’m a fetus hugging male pro-lifer.  Kind of.  I don’t give a shit about it until about 8 weeks, when the heart starts beating.  But, even once the heart starts beating, I don’t think it’s like murder.  I think it’s more like shooting a wolf that’s killing your cattle.  It’s worth more to me than a spotted owl or a baby seal, but it’s not a human.

Shooting a wolf is pretty bad, but sometimes when you’re choosing between the wolf and your livelihood, the wolf has to go.  That’s the analogy I’d use for abortion.  Would you shoot the wolf if your future was at stake?

A woman can maintain her previous schedule and work habits and sex habits after conception; she does not undergo post-conception depression or physical trauma, unlike birth. About the only consequence is that she may eschew alcohol and coffee--but that’s it.

Wrong.  Pregnancy is a huge, HUGE change.  There is no way you can maintain your same sex habits throughout an entire pregnancy.  Many pregnant women DO get depressed.  Gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, placenta previa - all possible consequences of pregnancy, to name a few life-threatening conditions.  Not to mention hyperemesis gravidarum (constant puking), which generally lands you in the hospital on an IV at least once or twice during pregnancy.

All the more reason abortion is solely the purview of women.  There is no other morality to attach to it.

You still also haven’t answered the question about what you would do to the woman who won’t breastfeed her child. I assume you would have forced her against her will but were too chicken to say it.

What would I do if I encountered a woman who had the means to breastfeed her child, but refused to for selfish reasons.  I’d force her to do it, just like any other morally sane person who saw a parent selfishly starving their child to death.

No, Seebach, he said he would lethally inject her.  So women in developing countries who have existences far more trying than anything we’ve ever experienced will be killed by a Catholic altar boy fresh out of prep school because they had to make a tough decision.  That their society/cultural/mores don’t remotely reflect anything we experience in this country doesn’t matter.  They don’t relate to their babies like Americans do?  Kill them off until they do.

We’d really only be justified in executing them if they had the means to breastfeed, and breastfeeding would be about as inconvenient and unsafe as your average pregnancy in the US, but refused to do so for selfish reasons.

Everything on your blog has been argued before, by much better debaters that you. You have contributed nothing to the dialog. It’s all old hat. I’ve heard it all before, and so has everyone else here.

Weird, I could swear that I’m the first to combine the breastfeeding analogy with the natural-artificial distinction.

Abortion laws will never effect me.  I’m educated, privileged, and I have a good support system.  When I started having sex, I put 300 dollars into an emergency abortion fund and as my income increased, I added more money.  I am now able to fly anywhere I need to in the world to have an abortion and have enough money left over for a celebratory vacation.  This suggests that any laws against abortion are only selectively enforced, that you don’t mind if privileged women take off for a week’s to England or Norway or whatnot.  Pretty much the only way to actually enforce abortion laws for all women is a pee test before all women get on a plane and a pee test after they land.  Do you support that?

Or, tell other countries not to perform abortions on American citizens.  Ban travel to countries that allow abortion and are willing to perform them on Americans.  That should fix that problem pretty quickly.  I can’t imagine any country refusing to comply.

Or, we could just make it illegal for women to leave the country and obtain abortions.  I’d have no problem prosecuting abortion tourists, since it’s not as much of an act of desperation as obtaining one in a country where it is illegal.  That would probably be much simpler.

@hattie: I’m pretty sure LR meant changes in the woman’s life after conception, as opposed to after the start of pregnancy.

How would you know if I left the country for an abortion unless you’re testing my pee before and after a trip?  Do you support that?  Let men board automatically, but have the women’s line going through the bathroom and offer cups of pee to get tested before boarding?  And if that’s the case, how are you going to make sure these women aren’t buying non-pregnant pee?  And how are you going to make sure they didn’t miscarry when they were overseas for a legitimate vacation?

On behalf of all Missourians, I would like to pre-emptively apologize for the likely pending actions of my state’s junior senator, who appears prepared to support inclusion of something equivalent to the Stupak Amendment in the forthcoming Senate Healthcare Bill:

Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) was asked whether an amendment added by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) to the House’s legislation would be too bitter a pill to pass the Senate.

“I am not sure that it is,” replied the Missouri Democrat. “Obviously, I have been a pro-choice candidate for my entire political career, and obviously there is controversy always surrounding this issue. But we are talking about whether or not people that get public money can buy an insurance policy that has a coverage for abortion. And that is not the majority of America. The majority of America is not going to be getting subsidies from the government....”

Gah.  And I did a lot of campaigning for her back in 2006 when she first got elected.

I came here trying to have an intelligent conversation.  Every single person who disagreed with me, without exception, has resorted to name-calling and hair-splitting.

Austin, relax - this is good.

It means you won. People, unless they are simply total douches, don’t resort to this type of extreme name-calling and hair-splitting because they have strong arguments that stand up on their own. They do so precisely because they don’t have the arguments - they don’t have the logic - if they did they wouldn’t need to split hairs and blather on about your alleged virginity. 

Instead they hark on and on about how since you are male, went to catholic school and don’t have a college degree yet - you can’t possibly be right. After all, Austin - we people say is not actually important to their arguments: it’s really just about having a degree from the right school and a vagina.

And they wonder why this country is increasingly polling away from support for abortion.

What would I do if I encountered a woman who had the means to breastfeed her child, but refused to for selfish reasons.  I’d force her to do it, just like any other morally sane person who saw a parent selfishly starving their child to death.

How exactly would you force her?

Breastfeeding requires both bodily and mental cooperation of the mother. A mother who is stressed, who is reluctant, whose body or mind is telling her that breastfeeding may not be in her best, bodily-health interest has a pretty good chance of never letting down adequately, never developing a full supply of breastmilk.

Forcing a baby to a breast is no guarantee that the mother’s body will produce.

Austin did not win.  Austin is too overly emotional and acting highly irrational to form a decent argument.  You can’t talk to someone like that about important issues like abortion because they’re too biased about it.

Dork.

And not every mother produces enough milk, or quality milk, even if it’s what she wants most in the world.  A friend of mine was devastated by her inability to breastfeed.

Also, Austin:

Everything on your blog has been argued before, by much better debaters that you. You have contributed nothing to the dialog. It’s all old hat. I’ve heard it all before, and so has everyone else here.

You have changed no minds, you have added nothing constructive, and you have wasted your time.

Congratulations.

Seebach, if this is all true then why did you, and the others on this blog, just spend 150 posts attempting to refute him?

Either:

A. You just wasted your time arguing with an empty hat - indicative of a lack of life on your part OR
B. You are lying about it being such a waste of time and saw something in what he said to merit a response.

He’s 18, PP.  Folks are planting the seeds so that when life bites him in the rear in a decade or so, he’ll have a context in which to start thinking differently.  It’s happened to a lot of us in our own pasts.

Or you’re a bad student who enjoys a good debate more than studying.
Or you have a slow day at work
Or you’re having a bad day and making yourself feel better by destroying a neophyte’s disgusting version of morality
Or you’re part of a quasi-community and part of forming group cohesiveness is fighting a common enemy together and working through pro-choice arguments together.

Austin at 171:

She wouldn’t starve to death.  Hypotheticals don’t have to take place in the real world in order to prove a point, but this one does.  Babies are born into such environments in third world countries all the time.  And their mothers do have the ability to breastfeed them.

Funny, because at 162 you commented that

In third world countries, mothers are often only able to breastfeed one of their babies; they do not have enough milk to feed both.  This happens in the real world all the time, even though it doesn’t need to for my real-world hypothetical to stand.

Do try to keep your ridiculous hypotheticals consistent, child. Can your magical living-in-a-vacuum ladies breastfeed their offspring or can’t they?

(For the record, I think your magical woman has every right not to breastfeed if doing so would make her too weak to feed herself, hamper her ability to care for other children, etc.; indeed, in such scenarios I rather suspect that the ‘natural’ thing for her to do would be to abandon the newborn to save her own life and those of her older children. For that matter, it’s entirely natural for many creatures to *eat* their own young if they can’t feed them or even because they decide that bringing them up will be too big an investment of time.)

Better yet, Austin, give up (and grow up). You’ve repeated the same two or three arguments, in more or less the same language, something like 10 times in this one thread. If the other commenters weren’t convinced the first time, what make you think any of us are going to See The Light at the eleventh attempt? If you can’t find a way to rephrase or engage - and let’s face it, you can’t, or else you wouldn’t be parroting the same sentences over and over again (take them from a Church pamphlet, did you?) - then why waste the energy?

You think a foetus (or an embryo, or a zygote) is a person, with a right to sustain itself using a person’s body regardless or their consent and regardless of the cost. We don’t agree. You think 1000 dead women per year is a small price to pay for punishing sluts, sorry, saving ‘human lives’. We don’t. The end.

Why are medical events more important than philosophical ones, in this context? Because medical events are measurable and testable, and philosophical events are in the mind of the beholder. And if you think birth doesn’t frequently require ‘artificial’ intervention if it is to result in living woman and child, you really are naive.

RKMK: nicely put.

Or you’re part of a quasi-community and part of forming group cohesiveness is fighting a common enemy together and working through pro-choice arguments together.

Hah. Me, being probably one of the bigger breastfeeding activists on this board, would just really like to see how he’s going to “force” a woman to breastfeed. Pregnancy, that is generally going to continue no matter what the emotions of the mother are. Breastfeeding, no.

First force feed her happy pills, then force the baby on the breast? Oh no, now the breastmilk is going to contain the happy pills medication.

Weird, I could swear that I’m the first to combine the breastfeeding analogy with the natural-artificial distinction.

Sweetie.  There is just no way you’ve read everything, or even most things, on the subject of reproduction.  Even reading all the Roman Catholic literature on the subject would probably take years.  You are MUCH too young for this kind of arrogance.

Or, we could just make it illegal for women to leave the country and obtain abortions. 

Which means you would have to ban pregnant woman from international travel, and you would indeed have to force everyone who looked female and older than, say, 10, to take a urine or blood test before she would be allowed to cross an international border. 

Either that or you’d have to find some way of catching “abortion tourists”, which would be pretty difficult given that abortions can be performed pretty much anywhere and in fact many have been performed at sea (I forget the name of that ship off the coast of Ireland). 

Or you’d have to accept that a law of that nature was pretty much unenforceable and enjoy the symbolism of it divorced from any reality, which might satisfy someone like you for whom sex, pregnancy, and abortion are all pretty much abstract concepts anyway.

fter all, Austin - we people say is not actually important to their arguments: it’s really just about having a degree from the right school and a vagina.

Yes, because having a vagina couldn’t POSSIBLY give a person insight into what it’s like to have a vagina.  What will these crazy bitches think of next?

has resorted to name-calling and hair-splitting.

Yes, because saying that women should be forced to have birth because it’s natural but you can’t be bothered to donate blood to save a life because it’s artificial isn’t hairsplitting at all.  (That’s sarcasm for those who aren’t smart enough to notice it).  It’s like you have some weird disease that makes you say something hypocritical every time you get near a keyboard.

How would you know if I left the country for an abortion unless you’re testing my pee before and after a trip?  Do you support that?  Let men board automatically, but have the women’s line going through the bathroom and offer cups of pee to get tested before boarding?  And if that’s the case, how are you going to make sure these women aren’t buying non-pregnant pee?  And how are you going to make sure they didn’t miscarry when they were overseas for a legitimate vacation?

We wouldn’t.  Like any other crime, you would need probable cause in order to obtain a urine test.  In the case of a vaginal examination, you would need an absolutely massive amount.

He’s 18, PP.  Folks are planting the seeds so that when life bites him in the rear in a decade or so, he’ll have a context in which to start thinking differently.  It’s happened to a lot of us in our own pasts.

Stop projecting your own hypocrisy and moral weakness onto everyone else.  It’s really insulting… a lot more so than anything else you could possibly say.

Yup, I was thinking about you when I wrote that, HP.  I actually didn’t know that it wasn’t possible to force someone to breastfeed like that:  I actually kind of figured that if you hold a baby to a nipple long enough and as long as the woman had the nutrients available, she would lactate.  Now I know better.  Thank you for enhancing my knowledge in this area!  If only Austin wasn’t such an emotional whiner, he could also appreciate this new knowledge, even if he *is so* a grown up now!  He can even buy cigarettes!

Austin,
Since your religion is clearly very important to you, please tell me where in the Bible it says that life begins at conception.  The whole Bible is pretty vague on it, but this is what I’ve found:

Exodus 21:22-21:25:

22 When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. 23If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, 24eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

If someone kills a woman, even unintentionally, s/he must pay with their life.  If s/he kills a fetus, s/he doesn’t have to pay with his life.  Clearly God doesn’t think that ending a pregnancy is the same thing as ending a life.  I’m sorry that the Pope lied to you, but you really should try thinking for yourself anyway.

Rachel - there is a reason that Fauxgressive Prince told Austin he “won”. Because “winning” is all that matters to psychotic, heartless misogynists like these two.  They dont care at all about women, their health, rights or safety.  They dont care about babies, their health, rights or safety. They care about controlling women, abusing “sluts” and upsetting people with their useless, cowardly, bigotted bullshit.

There’s a reason logic, reality and actual data doesn’t make a dent in their thick woman-hating skulls - reality is not the point.  hating women is the point.  Robbing them of basic autonomy in ways that they - as men- are totally safe from is the point. Arguing about treating women like disposable incubators and then pretending not to understand why that is offensive is the point.

Austin’s heartlessness and Fauxgressive Prince’s misogyny are perfect illustrations of the problems inherent in anti-choice politics.  They’ve made Amanda’s case for her.

“Folks are planting the seeds so that when life bites him in the rear in a decade or so, he’ll have a context in which to start thinking differently.  It’s happened to a lot of us in our own pasts. “

Oh that will totally be the case.  I volunteered in multiple clinics.  Heartless assholes like Austin and Fauxgressive Prince ALWAYS sneak in the back door after they’ve knocked up their girlfriends.  It will happen. If it hasn’t already.

Like any other crime, you would need probable cause in order to obtain a urine test. 

But in the US, people are routinely urine-tested to qualify even for a job at Wal-Mart...and that’s just to detect marijuana.  You’re saying you wouldn’t want to compel a urine test to detect and prevent potential MURDERS?  Something is wrong with your logic here.

In the case of a vaginal examination, you would need an absolutely massive amount.

What would qualify as “an absolutely massive amount” of probable cause, may I ask, that would make it okay to force a person to submit to a vaginal exam?  Or perhaps I should ask this of YOU, Austin, since you can’t have a vaginal exam: how much probable cause would you want the police to have before they forced a rectal exam on you?  Would you be comfortable vastly increasing the number of circumstances under which someone could legally force you to take things up the ass?

Stop projecting your own hypocrisy and moral weakness onto everyone else.  It’s really insulting… a lot more so than anything else you could possibly say.

You’ve been insulting me and everyone else with a uterus throughout this entire thread.  So let me say again: It’s phenomenally easy to be self-righteous about other people’s life choices when you’ve barely had time to make any of your own.

Oh, also, the dictionary is your friend.  If I do something I condemn, that’s hypocrisy.  If I do something that YOU condemn, that’s a difference of opinion.

So, Austin, I would take a pee test at home, see that I was pregnant, book a flight to Norway, get on the plane, get an abortion, travel around the country, come home.  Where does probable cause come in to get the warrant?  Will pee tests require a doctor’s prescription?  Will we no longer allow over the counter pee tests and instead make women give their urine to pharmacists who then register the results with the local police who then alert airline companies?  And then what?  Can I say I’m just excited to go to Norway before I give birth?  Then I come home and what?  Do I take another test to prove I’m still pregnant?  If I’m not still pregnant and I say I miscarried, then what?  Do you try to get Norway to extradite my medical records?  Even though I’d probably book the appointment under a fake name?  And even though it’s extremely unlikely that Norway would be willing to negotiate like that with a theocracy for a procedure that’s legal in their country?

Furthermore, if the police do manage to get wind of my plans, then what?  They can’t just order me to pee on command without a court order, and the court (I’m fairly certain, but I did quit law school so I can’t promise this is right) isn’t going to care what state my pee is in without a crime being committed/attempted, and all I really have to say is “sure, I thought I would abort, but now I’m pregnant and can’t kill my baby, I just want to visit Norway”.  Then I come back and there’s no basis to compel me to pee for the justice system.  Unless the police suspect I aborted, then we’re back to square one:  Norway isn’t going to help the US.

All of which is to say:  unless you actually want to suspend the fourth amendment for all women traveling between countries, you do not care about protecting fetal life as much as you want to make life difficult for unprivileged women.  And if you do want to suspend the fourth amendment, that’s fine, I guess you’ll prove that you really do love fetuses, but I dunno, good luck getting a girlfriend.  Hell, good luck making friends at all.  I wouldn’t want to be near a crazy hater like you.

Yup, I was thinking about you when I wrote that, HP.  I actually didn’t know that it wasn’t possible to force someone to breastfeed like that:  I actually kind of figured that if you hold a baby to a nipple long enough and as long as the woman had the nutrients available, she would lactate.  Now I know better.

Personally, I think the emotional aspects/needs are among the most underconsidered.

By all measurements, I was wildly successful at breastfeeding the kid--on a normal day, I could have probably breastfed triplets--and I know how just an extreme day of work stress I couldn’t relax from could just shut me down. Or the 24 hours after the kid bit me hard while teething, and I felt a deep, primitive, dark FEAR of ever putting him to the breast again.  Even as I let him nurse, I couldn’t get a damned letdown until I managed to control that fear. 12 hours into that, I had the husband give him one of the few bottles of pumped breastmilk the kid ever received at home.

You could force a baby to a breast once, maybe twice, and maybe that kid would get some nutrition off that. But who’s going to force that baby to the breast every 3 hours for 6 months? And once the mom is past the initial hormonally-driven production period (this ends at between 6-12 weeks), the chances that you’re going to be able to continue to “force” it decrease significantly.

“So let me say again: It’s phenomenally easy to be self-righteous about other people’s life choices when you’ve barely had time to make any of your own.”

Not to mention remarkable and disgusting cowardice in academically debating the punishments for people in situations that he, himself, will never face. 

I tend to think being religious goes hand-in-hand with this sort of cowardice.  instead of walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, they work up near pornographic complex punishment fantasies a la hell.

Austin’s heartlessness and Fauxgressive Prince’s misogyny are perfect illustrations of the problems inherent in anti-choice politics.  They’ve made Amanda’s case for her.

You’re not kidding. Never has the casual, unthinking misogyny of anti-choicers been more obvious than in this thread.

(Amanda, are you sure PP and Austin aren’t secretly you, channelling the anti-choice mindset? They seem almost *too* perfect an illustration of your point )

Stop projecting your own hypocrisy and moral weakness onto everyone else.  It’s really insulting… a lot more so than anything else you could possibly say.

I was a Catholic, too, when I was four years younger than you. I’m sure you’ll grow out of it as well. You’re just four years behind the curve.

“And if you do want to suspend the fourth amendment, that’s fine, I guess you’ll prove that you really do love fetuses, but I dunno, good luck getting a girlfriend.  Hell, good luck making friends at all.  I wouldn’t want to be near a crazy hater like you.”

Somehow, I really don’t think this is an issue.  There’s only two reasons a boy would hate women as much as Austin clearly does: he’s terrified of them (and needs to control them to a degree that would make a fascist object) or he’s brainwashed (and doesn’t have the first fucking clue what he’s talking about).

I’m thinking a little from column A, a little from column B.

A. You just wasted your time arguing with an empty hat - indicative of a lack of life on your part

I do feel kind of bad about wasting my time, but every minute Austin remains here masturbating over his cleverless, the less time he has to go out and do anything worthwhile.

Gypsy Lee,
He’s probably a virgin or extremely inexperienced, and he’s simultaneously made at women for not fucking him, self-righteous that he has maintained his “purity” for longer than they have, and extremely naive about the realities of sex.  I’ve seen plenty like him before, and most of them get over it pretty fast when they become sexually active.  Suddenly all their philosophical stuff gives way to reality.  I’m usually pro-youth rights to an extent that goes beyond feminism or any progressive group, and even I can see that his feelings are due mostly to naivete and an isolated youth in Catholic school.  I see hope for him, unlike most other trolls.

Like any other crime, you would need probable cause

Um probable cause for an abortion is BEING PREGNANT. And that takes you right back to the questions you conveniently refuse to answer.

The one common trait of all women who have abortions is that they are PREGNANT. Monogamous women have them, sexually promiscuous women have them. Very young women have them, older women have them. Poor women have them and wealthy women have them, happy women and women whose lives are crumbling have them, married women and single women, women who consented to sex and women who were raped, devout religious women and atheist women, pro-choice women and women who espouse an anti-choice stance, liberal women and conservative women, white women and women of color, women with supportive family and women who are alone in the world, women in happy relationships and in conflicted or abusive relationships, women who have kids already and women who never want kids, women who never wanted to be pregnant and women who mourn not being able to continue their pregnancies.

I know this is hard for you to wrap your head around, because you’re a child. But it’s the facts.

And here’s the tricky thing about women: as far as you or I know, any given woman we encounter throughout the day could be pregnant.

Now, how are you going to tell which women boarding an international flight are pregnant? Because any of them could be, and any of them could be wanting an abortion, because as we have established, there is no class or category of women that does not get abortions. If you do not prevent pregnant women from leaving the country you will not prevent or deter abortions. So how are you going to identify pregnant women and prevent them from leaving the country?

If you cannot provide an answer to those questions, then all you’re doing is mentally masturbating; you have proposed absolutely zero way in which you’re going to prevent abortions, you’ve only just sat around playing pretend in a world that’s not our real one.

By the way, Austin.  When you can’t come up with a decent response to an argument that defends your beliefs, this is known as “being wrong”.  It’s tremendously scary, I grant you that.  But either you admit that abortion should be legal or you live in a fantasy world where you test all women’s pee all the time and forbid them from boarding international flights.

And why am I spending time on Austin? because there are, and will be, people reading this thread that aren’t participating in it. People who nod their head along with what Austin says because like him, they simply haven’t thought it through any further.

Those people—not all of them, maybe not most, but some of them—will read well-worded arguments that do think the matter through further and they’ll realize their assumptions were deeply flawed and that engaging with the real world in a non-sociopathic context requires being pro-reproductive-choice.

I know because I was one of them.

Kristin - I have never nodded my head along with anybody like Austin, & I still appreciate the time you’ve spent.  Thank you all for this thread, however jacked.

If someone kills a woman, even unintentionally, s/he must pay with their life.  If s/he kills a fetus, s/he doesn’t have to pay with his life.  Clearly God doesn’t think that ending a pregnancy is the same thing as ending a life.  I’m sorry that the Pope lied to you, but you really should try thinking for yourself anyway.

That’s the Old Testament…

There’s a reason logic, reality and actual data doesn’t make a dent in their thick woman-hating skulls - reality is not the point.  hating women is the point.  Robbing them of basic autonomy in ways that they - as men- are totally safe from is the point. Arguing about treating women like disposable incubators and then pretending not to understand why that is offensive is the point.

Do child abandonment laws in third world countries rob women of basic autonomy?

But in the US, people are routinely urine-tested to qualify even for a job at Wal-Mart...and that’s just to detect marijuana.  You’re saying you wouldn’t want to compel a urine test to detect and prevent potential MURDERS?  Something is wrong with your logic here.

That’s not the government doing it, it’s a private company.

What would qualify as “an absolutely massive amount” of probable cause, may I ask, that would make it okay to force a person to submit to a vaginal exam?  Or perhaps I should ask this of YOU, Austin, since you can’t have a vaginal exam: how much probable cause would you want the police to have before they forced a rectal exam on you?  Would you be comfortable vastly increasing the number of circumstances under which someone could legally force you to take things up the ass?

How much probable cause would we need now in order to perform a vaginal exam?

So, Austin, I would take a pee test at home, see that I was pregnant, book a flight to Norway, get on the plane, get an abortion, travel around the country, come home.  Where does probable cause come in to get the warrant?  Will pee tests require a doctor’s prescription?  Will we no longer allow over the counter pee tests and instead make women give their urine to pharmacists who then register the results with the local police who then alert airline companies?  And then what?  Can I say I’m just excited to go to Norway before I give birth?  Then I come home and what?  Do I take another test to prove I’m still pregnant?  If I’m not still pregnant and I say I miscarried, then what?  Do you try to get Norway to extradite my medical records?  Even though I’d probably book the appointment under a fake name?  And even though it’s extremely unlikely that Norway would be willing to negotiate like that with a theocracy for a procedure that’s legal in their country?

Since when can you detect an illegal abortion through a urine test?  We wouldn’t have to extradite your medical records.  One of two things would happen:

1) Our government tells Norway to refuse to perform abortions on women who cannot prove that they are not Americans, or we will cut off all trade and travel between ourselves and Norway.

2) We make abortion tourism illegal, and prosecute it the way we would prosecute any other crime.  The same amount of evidence is needed in order to perform a search, etc.

Not to mention remarkable and disgusting cowardice in academically debating the punishments for people in situations that he, himself, will never face.

That’s probably true of almost any crime.  If I’m not ever going to have a motive to commit a certain crime, I can’t suggest how we should treat people who commit that crime?  That’s an absolutely terrible argument!

Our government tells Norway to refuse to perform abortions on women who cannot prove that they are not Americans, or we will cut off all trade and travel between ourselves and Norway.

You have no idea how the world works or how other countries think, do you?

That’s the Old Testament…

That IS true. Remind me what Jesus had to say about abortion or homosexuality, again.

ABORTION. IS NOT. A FUCKING CRIME. IT IS A LEGAL MEDICAL PROCEDURE.

Nicaragua told a Florida doctor not to perform an abortion on an 11 year old girl who was raped.  The Florida doctor did anyway.  Guess what happened?  Nothing.  I’m pretty sure Norway would do the same.  Additionally, banning travel/trade to all of the developed world including France, England, Canada, Japan, Germany, Australia, and most other countries will never happen.

How are you going to prosecute abortion tourism unless you know which women are pregnant when they leave and which are not pregnant when they return?

I’m really interested in engaging this with you, Austin.  It’s extremely easy to prevent unprivileged women from aborting.  How are you going to prevent *me* from doing so?  Are you willing to say that protecting life maybe isn’t worth the drain on the system it would cost to track me down?

haha this kid seriously thinks norway (or any other civilized country) gives a flying fuck what the american taliban thinks of its medical practices?  yeah, let’s cut off all international travel for 1/2 of the population. we may be moving toward gilead in some respects, but that would not go over so well.

That’s the Old Testament…

OK, so show me where in the New Testament God decides to raise to zygotes and embryos to a higher level than he had previously considered them.  Also, I assume that you approve of homosexuality, because that’s all in the Old Testament and I know how much consistency matters to you.

Austin, you have to face the fact that actually preventing women from having abortions—or at least making sure they would be punished at a high enough rate to deter *other* women from trying to have abortions—would involve monthly monitoring of every single fertile woman in the country and a total block on women traveling while pregnant. How do you get around that?

I am asking you sincerely and honestly: you believe a fetus is equivalent to a newborn and abortion is murdering a baby, so how do you propose to effectively prevent or punish those murders?

That’s not the government doing it, it’s a private company.

Fine. Would you then give airlines, bus companies, airports, etc., total immunity from civil suit or criminal prosecution in the event they took “abortion tourists” across international borders, even if they made absolutely no effort to stop it?  Right now, luggage is scanned at airports to detect bombs, sometimes it’s opened and searched, drug-sniffing dogs are used in some contexts.  Will there be no precautions taken to reduce the likelihood of abortion tourism, or are you content just to punish abortion tourism after the fact in the unlikely event it’s even detectable?

And how on earth would this work for international relations?  Most affluent nations have liberal abortion laws.  Do you think any American government would seriously consider cutting off American trade with Canada, most of Europe, Japan, Israel, India, China?  Seriously?

Austin, I’m hurt.  I’m not a hypocrite or morally weak.  I’m Catholic like you.  I was knocked up by accident in my Catholic marriage through an NFP failure, and we kept the baby.  She’s even been baptized.  I’m everything you want women to be!  And yet I don’t agree with your stance in this thread!  Mindblowing!

Did I miss the part where someone pointed out to Austin the real world flaw in the “parallel” he was drawing to the Third World where women supposedly choose not to breastfeed a baby and let it starve to death because they’re into infanticide?

If he believes in his hypothetical that women should be lethally injected if they refuse to feed their babies, his reasoning would stand that he believes that these women in the third world who are choosing not to feed their babies (his words, not mine) should ALSO be lethally injected.

So.  Austin.  Are you actually for the killing of real people, or just hypothetical people who have done hypothetical bad things?

And if you ARE for the killing of real people who are choosing (again, your words, not mine) to starve their babies, how is that any different from how you’ve defined abortion?

Inquiring minds want to know.

or we will cut off all trade and travel between ourselves and Norway

Must confess I’m curious as to who you’d have left to trade with, if this were the case. Ireland, Nicaragua, El Salvador...? Want to bet how many corporations of any size would bother to stick around in the US with that sort of moral mercantilism going on? Suddenly your hypothetical third-world mothers would be right on your doorstep. They might even turn out to be human beings with complicated lives that aren’t reducible to facile points-scoring high school debating tricks, either.

But really, this is an even sillier hypothetical than the woman whose newborn is allergic to all nourishment except her extra special milk. I note you’ve dropped this point since several people pointed out that forcing a woman to lactate may be harder than your pie-in-the-sky scenario allowed. Goodness, could it possibly be that there are more complexities in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy?

One thing I really don’t understand, however: if a ball of cells is a person and abortion is murder, how is inducing an abortion only akin to a suicide attempt? How can it only be “self-harm” if there’s another ‘person’ being harmed? Why am I not stunned that you can’t even be consistently bigoted?

This is what I don’t understand…

Why is it only American women who shouldn’t get abortions? Abortion is morally equivalent to infanticide! Is it only murder within our borders? No way!

We will have to make abortion illegal around the entire world. I think we need to declare war on every single country that refuses to make abortion illegal.

I’m sure Austin would agree.

Do child abandonment laws in third world countries rob women of basic autonomy?

The answer is, of course, it depends on the country and its laws.  “The Third World” isn’t some monolithic entity with the same laws, much less the same cultures and attitudes.  Seriously, what is your obsession with women in “Third World” countries?

“That’s probably true of almost any crime.  If I’m not ever going to have a motive to commit a certain crime, I can’t suggest how we should treat people who commit that crime?  That’s an absolutely terrible argument! “

Oy, your lack of reading comprehension is amusing.  Terrible argument, huh.  Is it ... hmm.  Well, I’m an atheist.  I think raising children to be Catholic is child abuse.  Child abuse is bad; it must be stopped.  There’s a few other people who agree with me and we go out making impassioned speeches about saving! the! babies!, child abuse is bad!, we must stop the catholics from teaching children this horrible abusive theology and sending them off to child raping priests!  We get laws passed preventing people from raising their children as catholics.

I’m not a catholic, this doesn’t affect me.  So cool! i totally have the right to impinge upon other’s rights because I don’t agree with what they do. Whoohoo!

Nicaragua told a Florida doctor not to perform an abortion on an 11 year old girl who was raped.  The Florida doctor did anyway.  Guess what happened?  Nothing.  I’m pretty sure Norway would do the same.  Additionally, banning travel/trade to all of the developed world including France, England, Canada, Japan, Germany, Australia, and most other countries will never happen.

Exactly.  The other countries would give in and not perform abortions on American women far sooner than they would be cut off from all trade and travel with us.

Unfortunately, for the time being, I don’t think that this is realistic.  Prosecuting abortion tourism would be far more realistic.

I’m really interested in engaging this with you, Austin.  It’s extremely easy to prevent unprivileged women from aborting.  How are you going to prevent *me* from doing so?  Are you willing to say that protecting life maybe isn’t worth the drain on the system it would cost to track me down?

You would tell someone that you had an abortion in a foreign country.  Word would get out, and someone would rat you out eventually.

haha this kid seriously thinks norway (or any other civilized country) gives a flying fuck what the american taliban thinks of its medical practices?  yeah, let’s cut off all international travel for 1/2 of the population. we may be moving toward gilead in some respects, but that would not go over so well.

We wouldn’t cut off international travel only for women.  If those countries continued to provide abortions to American women, we would cut off international travel for everyone, men and women, on both sides.

Austin, you have to face the fact that actually preventing women from having abortions—or at least making sure they would be punished at a high enough rate to deter *other* women from trying to have abortions—would involve monthly monitoring of every single fertile woman in the country and a total block on women traveling while pregnant. How do you get around that?

We would prosecute the doctors who perform the abortions.  We couldn’t monitor women without probable cause, and being pregnant in itself would obviously not constitute probable cause.

I am asking you sincerely and honestly: you believe a fetus is equivalent to a newborn and abortion is murdering a baby, so how do you propose to effectively prevent or punish those murders?

I’ve answered that here.

Fine. Would you then give airlines, bus companies, airports, etc., total immunity from civil suit or criminal prosecution in the event they took “abortion tourists” across international borders, even if they made absolutely no effort to stop it?  Right now, luggage is scanned at airports to detect bombs, sometimes it’s opened and searched, drug-sniffing dogs are used in some contexts.  Will there be no precautions taken to reduce the likelihood of abortion tourism, or are you content just to punish abortion tourism after the fact in the unlikely event it’s even detectable?

I don’t think it would be possible to prove that those companies knew that women were using their services to obtain abortion illegally in other countries.  Abortion tourism would be detectable.  If a woman told any of her friends that she was leaving the country to have an illegal abortion, word would get out and the abortion would be reported to the police.  It’s not like she wouldn’t tell any of her friends what she was doing, or that secrets like that always stay hidden.

If I’m not ever going to have a motive to commit a certain crime

Not just motive, honey. Means. By the terms you set out, you lack the equipment (uterus) to commit the crime. Since a ball of cells can never be utterly dependent/parasitical upon you, you being a manly man and all, you don’t have a dog in this fight. Which I’m sure makes it all the easier to hypothesise about policing peoples’ bodies.

Gypsy Lee, I’ve been making that argument for years!  Teaching farcical religion to young children who don’t have the opportunity to know better is *horrible* child abuse!  Look what happened to Austin, after all:  most 18 year olds are enjoying their young adulthood, exploring their bodies, learning other people’s bodies, learning what amazing things they’re capable of doing, and yet teaching Austin about catholicism has turned him into someone who wants to kill women in the developing world because their sense of morality has been formed under decades of pressure that we can’t even imagine and they occasionally make the decision not to breastfeed their baby. 

Let’s you and I find his parents and have them arrested for his abuse.

The other countries would give in and not perform abortions on American women far sooner than they would be cut off from all trade and travel with us.

And every American corporation would relocate abroad since there’s no way they can make money without international trade.

No, sweetie, you haven’t answered it. You know how you can tell? Because people are still asking it.

If a woman told any of her friends that she was leaving the country to have an illegal abortion, word would get out and the abortion would be reported to the police.

So a later report of the crime from a third party would launch an investigation? At what point would they determine whether the woman was ever actually pregnant? Could anyone make this accusation against a woman? Would there be a statute of limitations?

[P]reventing women from having abortions—or at least making sure they would be punished at a high enough rate to deter *other* women from trying to have abortions—would involve monthly monitoring of every single fertile woman in the country and a total block on women traveling while pregnant. How do you get around that?

This is ridiculous. Banning abortion does not necessitate the “monthly monitoring” of “every fertile woman” or traveling blocks on pregnant women. Remember, abortion was once illegal throughout the land without any of that nonsense.

“You would tell someone that you had an abortion in a foreign country.  Word would get out, and someone would rat you out eventually. “

Of course I’d tell someone.  Then what?  Someone calls the police and what?  They show up on my doorstep and arrest me.  What proof do they have that I wasn’t lying or that someone wasn’t making it up?

We wouldn’t cut off international travel only for women.  If those countries continued to provide abortions to American women, we would cut off international travel for everyone, men and women, on both sides.

Hah.

And then we’ll see the US economy go into something actually worse than the Great Depression.

haha ok, as long as it’s everyone who’s prevented from international travel, that makes it totes ok!

and yeah, once again your age and cluelessness is showing--do you think that right NOW, even with abortion legal in THIS country that women don’t literally not tell a single soul that they are having an abortion?  so you can imagine if abortion was illegal how even more tight-lipped we’d have to be.  but then, i guess if you think we’re just hormonal womb-machines who are too stupid to keep our mouths shut, much less make rational health decisions on our own, this would fit.

Remember, abortion was once illegal throughout the land without any of that nonsense.

Yeah, but abortions still happened all of the time. I thought you REALLY wanted to save babies. Not just compromise with the greatest Holocaust ever.

Women had no difficulty getting abortions when they were illegal until the 50s.  20 years later, abortion was legal.  Not a coincidence.

If a woman told any of her friends that she was leaving the country to have an illegal abortion, word would get out and the abortion would be reported to the police.  It’s not like she wouldn’t tell any of her friends what she was doing, or that secrets like that always stay hidden.

*snorts* Yeah, because if we were living in the dystopian future you seem so (hypothetically!) keen on, it’s not like anyone would have a motive to keep quiet. It’s not like any women keep their abortions secret even now.

You’re an excellent parody of an anti-choicer, but your hypotheticals have just got too surreal in these later comments. You can’t possibly be a real person and hold all this contradictory, inconsistent nonsense in your head at once, not without seriously compromising our ability to breathe and think at the same time. Who is this?

OK, that settles it.  This kid CAN’T be for real; it’s too ridiculous.  He has suggested, not once but twice, that people would just go bragging to their friends that they’re committing Federal crimes.  This has to be for practice or something!

And because I know you’re finding it difficult and confusing to actually participate in a reasoned discussion, Austin, let me explain extra clearly:

I was not asking what you think the punishment should be for women who have abortions. I was asking how you suggest women be prevented from getting those abortions, or alternatively, how you suggest illegal abortions be investigated and prosecuted after the fact in a way that’s both practical and effective enough to deter other women from seeking abortions.

No, you have not answered those questions, and any time someone raises them you say “look over there! cutoff of trade with Norway!” instead of answering them. I know your teachers presented this as a triumphant way of handling a debate, but they were lying, sweetie. Out here in the real world people don’t fall for it.

Our government tells Norway to refuse to perform abortions on women who cannot prove that they are not Americans, or we will cut off all trade and travel between ourselves and Norway.

How did that work for regular tourism to Cuba? I have many American friends who have traveled there, despite the absolute ban on visiting… how would the US Govt prevent travel to Norway (which is FAR more accessible via many states in Europe) when it cannot prevent travel to Cuba?

Also, the land border with Canada is the longest “undefended” (bar some customs agents) border in the world. How would America prevent transit to Canada, its largest trading partner? (can’t cut off trade because it’ll damage the US just as much as Canada) Additionally, there’s no way Canada would stand for America trying to circumvent its fairly stringent privacy laws to provide medical records, even of visiting nationals.

If the US can’t influence Americans or foreign governments so close to home, how would they influence the entire globe on limiting abortions for Americans?

Banning abortion does not necessitate the “monthly monitoring” of “every fertile woman” or traveling blocks on pregnant women.

Heh, that’s not what your staunch ally has been saying!

Just realized how much effort it would be to destroy the economies of the developed world *just* to save lives when we’re not even forcing everyone to donate blood every four months to save lives.  It would be a lot cheaper and probably less bureaucracy to mandate blood donation than it would be to create an embargo against the entire world.

Austin, shouldn’t we start small and work our way up?  Mandate blood donation so people get used to the idea of sacrificing their body parts for another person who relies on them, and then outlaw abortion.

Nic_C, you beat me to it.

The other countries would give in and not perform abortions on American women far sooner than they would be cut off from all trade and travel with us.

You are vastly overestimating the USA’s economic and moral clout, particularly in these troubled times.  Cutting off relations with China, in particular, would be an economic disaster for the USA.  I’m sure your right-wing American Catholic education taught you that the whole world looks up to and depends on the USA, but it’s just not true. 

If a woman told any of her friends that she was leaving the country to have an illegal abortion, word would get out and the abortion would be reported to the police.

How did networks like Jane manage to survive for years if word inevitably gets out about these things and someone inevitably reports it to the police?  Do you run to the police every time someone engages in underage drinking?  How do you have time to study?  And tens of millions of Americans are pro-choice—you really think they’re going to side with the police over someone they love who is doing something they don’t think is wrong?

Now what the hell, pull the other one—tell me how everyone in North America stopped drinking during Prohibition.  Oh, and how no one in North America smokes pot, it’s been a while since I heard that one.

Remember, abortion was once illegal throughout the land without any of that nonsense.

Yeah, but abortions still happened all of the time. I thought you REALLY wanted to save babies. Not just compromise with the greatest Holocaust ever.

I do.

They might have still happened, but the benchmark for potential legislation is not “will this law magically stop all instances of what it is intended to stop” rather it is “will this law reflect the moral opprobrium of the state and/or decrease the occurrence of the activity banned?”

The flaw with your argument - that abortion should be legal because people could effectively controvert it - is simply asinine. People can evade all laws with a little enterprising. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have laws.

Remember, abortion was once illegal throughout the land without any of that nonsense.

That’s right! And NO one EVER had an abortion while it was illegal. Why, it’s not as if there were entire rings providing black-market abortion access to women, or women who went overseas to get abortions, or women alive today who have written about their experiences doing one or both.

Oh ... wait.

Austin,
I’m still waiting to hear your Biblical reasoning for thinking that abortion is murder.  As a Christian, it’s important for me to know if I missed an important piece of the Bible.  I’m sure your teachers in Catholic school explained to you very clearly where the Bible defines life as beginning at conception.  This should be an easy one for you because you just have to regurgitate what you’ve been fed.  Is it possible that your teachers never explained the Biblical connection because it doesn’t exist?  I can’t wait to hear this.

Heh, that’s not what your staunch ally has been saying!

You do get that just because two people are defending the same overall position - that doesn’t mean they necessarily hold that position for the same reasons, right?

I’m offering to you again, Austin:  you’re wrong.  You don’t have to admit it to anyone but yourself, but you’re wrong that it should be illegal for the purpose of saving babies.  If you still want it to be illegal, that’s totally fine, but you’ll have to find a new reason for wanting it outlawed.  The one we suggest is:  women shouldn’t be allowed to have sex.  It’ll still wouldn’t prevent me from getting an abortion, but since the goal is to inconvenience my life, it’ll still work.

I came here trying to have an intelligent conversation.  Every single person who disagreed with me, without exception, has resorted to name-calling and hair-splitting.

Honey, I know you think teh wimminz are bizarre nonhuman creatures, but this does not mean we are telepathic. None of us have a god damn way of knowing what you came here trying to do, so it doesn’t fucking count. We are responding to what you came here and actually did--which was come on to a thread about misogynistic assholery in politics and how it sucks for actual women, and insult all the actual woman by engaging in the same sort of misogynistic assholery that we’re here specifically because we motherfucking hate and want with every fibers of our OMG, ACTUAL REAL LIVE HUMAN beings (radical, I know!!) to destroy so that it can stop fucking our lives up. You might think you’re having a fancy debate and people lose fancy debates when they name-call, but in reality, you’re being a douche, and when in reality people are douches, the people around them call them douches. Suck it up.

Either:

A. You just wasted your time arguing with an empty hat - indicative of a lack of life on your part OR
B. You are lying about it being such a waste of time and saw something in what he said to merit a response.

Because we’re insulted and angry, and, out of all the people who are insulting us and making us angry, which is lots, you two are much easier targets for venting our spleen than pistol-whipping half the House of Representatives to death, which is what most of us are probably fantasizing about doing, plus it gets us in much less trouble.

but then, i guess if you think we’re just hormonal womb-machines who are too stupid to keep our mouths shut, much less make rational health decisions on our own, this would fit.

I know, right. It’s not like we can ever learn to shut up, we’re GURLLLLLLLZ for godsake.

Eh, I ‘spect Austin will clam down and stop stressing about women’s sexuality when he accepts the fact what he really wants in life is a big, juicy cock penetrating various of his orifices. Mind you, given the example set by his elders in the conservative realm, this could take several decades, a wife, kids, election to public office and a fuckton of cash spent on rent boys.

No, really, every single virulently anti-gay young male I’ve ever come across eventually turned out to just be wanting the cock and not able to accept the fact. Austin, it’s not a crime! Accept your true nature and stop taking your bile out on the women, will you?

PP!  You were honest!  Thank you!  Outlawing abortion won’t save fetal life, it’ll kill lots of women, will send me and a few lucky ones on a Norwegian vacation, and will make the majority of women completely hate their lives by having more kids to raise than they wanted.

The flaw with your argument - that abortion should be legal because people could effectively controvert it - is simply asinine. People can evade all laws with a little enterprising. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have laws.

No, the problem is that you want a law that you don’t want to bother to enforce. Imagine if I murdered my girlfriend, but you didn’t really want to prosecute me for murder. It was just like I had attempted suicide, so I would go to a hospital for a few months, and then be let free. It’s like drug use or prostitution: to effectively combat it, you would need to use entrapment, surveillance, and undercover agents to detect its presence.

Exactly.  The other countries would give in and not perform abortions on American women far sooner than they would be cut off from all trade and travel with us.

OK. This is just getting surreal. Not least that Austin apparently thinks that being anti-abortion is sufficiently popular with rich men that they will be happy never to trade or travel outside the US, Nicaragua, and Ireland again, in exchange for Saving Babies.

Looking on the bright side, however, abortion is legal in Iraq, so that would screw Halliburton.

when we’re not even forcing everyone to donate blood every four months to save lives.

Four months?  I donate every 8 weeks.

Since Austin is so fond of ridiculous hypotheticals, let’s go with it.  Blood and kidney donation become mandatory.  Of course, forced bodily donation has to be punishment for something.  We know he doesn’t like sex, so we’ll go with that.  In an attempt to put up the facade that he’s not a hypocritical jerk, sex will be considered just as bad for men as for women.  Each time a person has sex, they enter their name into a drawing, and it stays there for 40 weeks.  Whenever any citizen needs a kidney or a blood transfusion, a name is drawn randomly from the database.  I’ll even be really nice and say that the selected donor can be excluded for health reason as minor as fainting when giving blood.  Of course, Austin doesn’t want women to get out of pregnancy for things like fainting, nausea, calcium leeching, or constipation.  Being Catholic, he probably doesn’t even want them to be allowed out of pregnancy when their life is clearly at risk.  But, we’re not huge jerks so we won’t force people to donate when it risks their health, even if they are a bunch of naughty sluts that deserve it.  On top of that, things like condoms and hormonal contraception would lower the risk of your name being drawn.  Of course, it would be impossible to enforce this list and monitor everyone, but we know that Austin only cares about hypotheticals.  No one can complain about this system because if they don’t want to donate their body, then they just shouldn’t have sex, amirite?  I mean, they would know about the risk of forced organ donation long before they ever sex, so it’s their own fault.  On the plus side, if you’ve been chosen to give a kidney, it wouldn’t matter as much because if your second one fails, you can easily get a replacement from the list of recent fuckers.  We end up saving actual lives, and people are properly punished for having sex, but somehow I doubt that Austin would go for this plan.  Maybe it’s because it would actually affect him?  Oh wait, he can just come up with some ridiculously arbitrary justification for why he shouldn’t have to participate.

They might have still happened, but the benchmark for potential legislation is not “will this law magically stop all instances of what it is intended to stop” rather it is “will this law reflect the moral opprobrium of the state and/or decrease the occurrence of the activity banned?”

So, you don’t actually want the law to be *effective* at reducing unwanted behavior.  You just want it to express a religious moral point of view.  Congratulations.  Of course, the problem here is whose religion morals get to be represented?

That’s right! And NO one EVER had an abortion while it was illegal. Why, it’s not as if there were entire rings providing black-market abortion access to women, or women who went overseas to get abortions, or women alive today who have written about their experiences doing one or both.

Oh ... wait.

Yeah I have heard this argument countless times.

First of all, I would like to point out that if a practice is evil, as I hold abortion to be, the mere fact that it will always be present in a society does not justify making it legal: even if it could be demonstrated that making it illegal has no effect on its prevalence.

For example, take human trafficking. It exists. Everywhere. In this country, in the most developed nations and in the least developed.

If someone were able to demonstrate irrefutably that human trafficking is unaffected by illegalization (or even decreased by legalization; because of regulation) would you be in support of making legal this essentially modern day slavery?

If you wouldn’t that’s pretty much where I am on abortion. If it is an evil I am against it even if making it illegal wouldn’t decrease it.

Secondly, if you want evidence that bans on abortion significantly lower the abortion rate just look at the U.S abortion rate after Roe. According to the Guttmacher Institute the overall number of abortions significantly decreased. Even after almost two decades of decreasing post-Roe the overall abortion rate is still higher than before Roe was handed down.

Specifically, the study shows that estimates of the number of illegal abortions in the 1950s and 1960s ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year. One analysis, extrapolating from data from North Carolina, concluded that an estimated 829,000 illegal or self-induced abortions occurred in 1967.

According to the Guttmacher Institute legal abortions preformed within 5 years were standing at about 1.6 million - twice the illegal rate of abortions - that occured while it was banned in all states.
By the late

In other words, abortion rates in this country are definitely impacted by it’s being legal or not - by a factor of two.

They might have still happened, but the benchmark for potential legislation is not “will this law magically stop all instances of what it is intended to stop” rather it is “will this law reflect the moral opprobrium of the state and/or decrease the occurrence of the activity banned?”

In other words, you want a law for symbolic purposes only.  You want it on record that the state thinks abortion is rilly rilly bad, but as Seebach said, you don’t want to enforce that in any way that would actually stop people from getting abortions.

This doesn’t really surprise me, as you antis mostly use abortion as a symbol for other things you hate (feminism and female sexuality), but it’s funny to see it so nakedly stated.

magine if I murdered my girlfriend, but you didn’t really want to prosecute me for murder. It was just like I had attempted suicide, so I would go to a hospital for a few months, and then be let free.

More than that—it’s like you thought in advance about killing your girlfriend knowing perfectly well that there are zero mechanisms in place to prevent you from being able to do it and zero mechanisms for actually detecting, after the fact, that you did it. Zero mechanism, in fact, for proving that your girlfriend ever existed in the first place, so the only way to get caught would be to brag to someone that you had a girlfriend but you killed her. If you get unlucky and there were witnesses to your girlfriend existing (because you told people about her before you killed her) all you have to do is assert that she died naturally. Easy peasy.

Outlawing abortion won’t save fetal life, it’ll kill lots of women, will send me and a few lucky ones on a Norwegian vacation, and will make the majority of women completely hate their lives by having more kids to raise than they wanted.

But OPPROBRIUM. That’s the important thing here, Rachel. OPPROBRIUM. The highest priority is letting sluts ‘n’ bitchez know you Officially Disapprove.

You do get that just because two people are defending the same overall position - that doesn’t mean they necessarily hold that position for the same reasons, right?

Of course. I was just amused. Also, bemused that you apparently don’t even want to expend much effort enforcing your shiny new law.

It’s quite simple. If outlawing something does more harm than the original crime did, and if said law is largely unenforceable and affects certain groups of people disproportionately and unfairly (e.g. poorer women who can’t afford to travel for safe abortions), it’s a bad law. I (and many others here) believe that an abortion ban would be such a law, for all the various reasons given above. You, for all the reasons you and Austin have given above, don’t.

And so long as you don’t have any ability to determine what I can and can’t do with my body - and since I wouldn’t dream of telling you what to do with yours - you’re welcome to all the joy your beliefs bring you; as I am to mine.

If someone were able to demonstrate irrefutably that human trafficking is unaffected by illegalization (or even decreased by legalization; because of regulation) would you be in support of making legal this essentially modern day slavery?

Modern day slavery, however, is okay if the slaver is a fetus?

I was not asking what you think the punishment should be for women who have abortions. I was asking how you suggest women be prevented from getting those abortions, or alternatively, how you suggest illegal abortions be investigated and prosecuted after the fact in a way that’s both practical and effective enough to deter other women from seeking abortions.

It would be very difficult to prosecute abortion tourism.  The only way we could do so is if the woman told some of her friends that she was going to have an abortion abroad or did have one, and word got out.

How did networks like Jane manage to survive for years if word inevitably gets out about these things and someone inevitably reports it to the police?  Do you run to the police every time someone engages in underage drinking?  How do you have time to study?  And tens of millions of Americans are pro-choice—you really think they’re going to side with the police over someone they love who is doing something they don’t think is wrong?

Poor enforcement.

That’s right! And NO one EVER had an abortion while it was illegal. Why, it’s not as if there were entire rings providing black-market abortion access to women, or women who went overseas to get abortions, or women alive today who have written about their experiences doing one or both.

Oh ... wait.

Like I said… poor enforcement.  Under my regime, doctors performing abortions would spend a good decade in prison, and anyone who set up an abortion black market would be charged under RICO.

I’m still waiting to hear your Biblical reasoning for thinking that abortion is murder.  As a Christian, it’s important for me to know if I missed an important piece of the Bible.  I’m sure your teachers in Catholic school explained to you very clearly where the Bible defines life as beginning at conception.  This should be an easy one for you because you just have to regurgitate what you’ve been fed.  Is it possible that your teachers never explained the Biblical connection because it doesn’t exist?  I can’t wait to hear this.

I’m not opposed to abortion on religious grounds.  I just think that all our children should have the same rights that we do.

PP!  You were honest!  Thank you!  Outlawing abortion won’t save fetal life, it’ll kill lots of women, will send me and a few lucky ones on a Norwegian vacation, and will make the majority of women completely hate their lives by having more kids to raise than they wanted.

In 1965, when abortion was largely illegal in the US, fewer than 1,000 women per year killed themselves trying to obtain illegal abortions.  The coathanger argument is nothing more than an urban legend.  In industrialized countries like America, we can safely ban abortion.

No, the problem is that you want a law that you don’t want to bother to enforce. Imagine if I murdered my girlfriend, but you didn’t really want to prosecute me for murder. It was just like I had attempted suicide, so I would go to a hospital for a few months, and then be let free. It’s like drug use or prostitution: to effectively combat it, you would need to use entrapment, surveillance, and undercover agents to detect its presence.

That’s exactly how we’d find illegal abortion providers.

No, the problem is that you want a law that you don’t want to bother to enforce. Imagine if I murdered my girlfriend, but you didn’t really want to prosecute me for murder. It was just like I had attempted suicide, so I would go to a hospital for a few months, and then be let free. It’s like drug use or prostitution: to effectively combat it, you would need to use entrapment, surveillance, and undercover agents to detect its presence.

I do want to enforce it. I just don’t have this ridiculously high standards of enforcement you seem to have. Take murder for example: we could lower the murder rate by installing cameras in all public places, hiring ten times the number of police we presently have, seize all guns, eroding constitutional protections in the issuance of warrants and the inadmissibility of evidence and incarcerating everyone who even appears mildly violent.

If we did all that I am sure the murder rate would decrease - but then we would live in a police state.

Assuming you don’t want to live in a police state I am sure you will understand that it doesn’t make you not want murder to be enforced - it just makes you sane. All enforcement of laws - even the most morally required laws - require - gasp! - a balancing act.

Wanting abortion banned doesn’t make you on Orwellian. It just makes you a decent human being.

If someone were able to demonstrate irrefutably that human trafficking is unaffected by illegalization (or even decreased by legalization; because of regulation) would you be in support of making legal this essentially modern day slavery?

Of course not, you moron. What I would be in support of is better enforcing the laws against it. That’s because I believe it’s wrong and horrible and should be stopped because people are being harmed by it every day.

You, on the other hand, are apparently perfectly happy to pass a law forbidding abortion, but shy away from the slightest hint of suggesting how we would enforce it, even though you supposedly think abortion is wrong and horrible and harms people. Where the fuck is your spine, man? Why can’t you stand up for the babies?

entrapment, surveillance, and undercover agents to detect its presence.

That’s exactly how we’d find illegal abortion providers.

Oh fer crissakes, if you wanted to imagine yourself as International Panty-Sniffer of Mystery, you should have just said so from the start.

Assuming you don’t want to live in a police state I am sure you will understand that it doesn’t make you not want murder to be enforced - it just makes you sane. All enforcement of laws - even the most morally required laws - require - gasp! - a balancing act.
Wanting abortion banned doesn’t make you on Orwellian. It just makes you a decent human being.

So, individual rights trump the right to life of an innocent baby?

Like I said… poor enforcement.  Under my regime, doctors performing abortions would spend a good decade in prison, and anyone who set up an abortion black market would be charged under RICO.

Did you graduate from prep school not even understanding English? Let me use short words:

How. Are. You. Going. To. Detect. And. Prosecute. These. Crimes. In. Order. To. Enforce. Them. ?

my regime

More delusions of grandeur. Honestly, this guy gives even your average teenage snotball a bad name. Readin’ a lot of Rand lately, punkin? Not gettin’ laid at all? Poor punkin.

In other words, you want a law for symbolic purposes only.  You want it on record that the state thinks abortion is rilly rilly bad, but as Seebach said, you don’t want to enforce that in any way that would actually stop people from getting abortions.

No, I want a ban because countries that ban abortion - like the US prior to ‘67 and Ireland today - have lower rates of abortion than countries that don’t ban it. In fact, as my post indicates - abortion was dramatically lower (800k or so) compared to what it is today (1.2M or so).

Bans work - but yeah - even if they didn’t I would still support one because my conscience demands it.

So, individual rights trump the right to life of an innocent baby? 

Well, sure, if the individual has a penis. Otherwise, no dice.

I just think that all our children should have the same rights that we do.

I don’t have the right to be inside someone else’s body against his will.  Why are foetuses special?

Under my regime, doctors performing abortions would spend a good decade in prison, and anyone who set up an abortion black market would be charged under RICO.

This is exactly the same logic that justifies the never-ending escalation of the War on Drugs, and it would work about as well as that.

Under my regime

ROFL. You’re definitely not for real. So much so that I’m going to give you a pass on once again suggesting that 1000 dead women per year is a tiny, forgettable thing (pro-life! hee!). I call shenanigans.

And probably ought to go and do something productive with what’s left of my evening (since it’s nearly 11pm here).

Like I said… poor enforcement.

Dictionary time.  You’re talking about punishment, not enforcement.

abortion was dramatically lower (800k or so) compared to what it is today (1.2M or so)

‘Dramatically’ isn’t the term I’d use for a difference of 400k, but your mileage evidently varies. How does this work out proportionally, given that the female population of the US has undoubtedly increased considerably since 1967?

(Really going now.)

Of course not, you moron. What I would be in support of is better enforcing the laws against it. That’s because I believe it’s wrong and horrible and should be stopped because people are being harmed by it every day.

You missed the point. It’s a hypothetical. By it terms it was asking: is enforceability the sole criterion for a law or can moral purpose alone suffice.

You, on the other hand, are apparently perfectly happy to pass a law forbidding abortion, but shy away from the slightest hint of suggesting how we would enforce it, even though you supposedly think abortion is wrong and horrible and harms people. Where the fuck is your spine, man? Why can’t you stand up for the babies?

For the provider: I would take the licenses of any doctor who provided abortion. If they practiced without a license they would be jailed the same as any other doc who practices without a license repeatedly.

For the woman: I would consider the totality of the circumstances (i.e. her age, economic means, prior offenses) and leave it to the judge and jury to decide the individual sentences. Probably as a guideline - punishment would start at some community service and maybe a course on contraception - the more egregious the offense - potentially prison.

I am against the death penalty - so none of that nonsense.

So, PP, what do you intend to do if Austin’s regime comes into effect? Are you willing to fight his more draconian restrictions on trade and travel and his surveillance regime in order to restore individual rights under the constitution?

And Austin, what a moral sellout PP is, isn’t he? He’s not actually willing to do anything to stop abortion. He wants to morally posture, but 800,000 abortions is considered satisfactory in his twisted mind. Will you fight him to increase restrictions?

Ok PP and Austin: I’ve heard that in theory, a man can grow a fetus by it being implanted in their intestines. So man up! And save the babies by having a soon to be aborted brat inserted. Assholes.

I just realized that about half of the insulting comments directed at me basically say “Austin, when you get older, an unintended pregnancy will make you betray your moral principles, as soon as they become inconvenient.  Trust me, I know - it happened to me.” : D

For the provider: I would take the licenses of any doctor who provided abortion. If they practiced without a license they would be jailed the same as any other doc who practices without a license repeatedly.

Why not first degree murder? I thought abortion was morally equivalent to infanticide?

For the woman: I would consider the totality of the circumstances (i.e. her age, economic means, prior offenses) and leave it to the judge and jury to decide the individual sentences. Probably as a guideline - punishment would start at some community service and maybe a course on contraception - the more egregious the offense - potentially prison.

Why not first degree murder? I thought abortion was morally equivalent to infanticide?

To answer my own question, because curiosity got the better of me. US population was just short of 200 million in 1967, and is nearly 308 million today (according to a page on census.gov).

Assuming women are half the population in any given year, that means that the number of women in the US has gone from 100 million to 150 million, i.e. half as many again. The abortion numbers you quote, PP, indicate that abortion has gone up by 400k in the same timeframe, i.e. half as many again as the 1967 level.

Which suggests to me that the abortion *rate* hasn’t actually shifted at all, relative to the female population of your country.

Oh, ONLY a thousand women a year dying from septic wounds, uncontrollable bleeding, and/or their intestines hanging out of their vaginas. ONLY a thousand families a year deprived of an actual, living, feeling person they know and love. Yeah, that’s totally OK.

“Austin, when you get older, an unintended pregnancy will make you betray your moral principles, as soon as they become inconvenient.  Trust me, I know - it happened to me.” : D

What moral principles do you have? You support an organization that organized a coverup of systematic child rape. I am a more moral person than you are, so don’t dare drag me down to your depraved level.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think a trade and travel ban would be realistic at any point in the near future.  I’d rather stick with prosecuting abortion tourism whenever we find it.

when you get older, an unintended pregnancy will make you betray your moral principles

No, honey, with any luck, an unintended pregnancy will make you DEVELOP some moral principles, because what you have now are not them.

Dramatically’ isn’t the term I’d use for a difference of 400k, but your mileage evidently varies. How does this work out proportionally, given that the female population of the US has undoubtedly increased considerably since 1967?

The total number of people in the US in 1971 was 207M In 1981 it was 229 so a rise of 10.5% or so - during this same time the number of abortions doubled.

So yeah, legalizing abortion resulted in an immediate and dramatic increase in abortion - far exceeding the population growth at the time.

I just think that all our children should have the same rights that we do.

How have you decided that a fertilized egg is the same as a child, if not by your religion?

What moral principles do you have? You support an organization that organized a coverup of systematic child rape. I am a more moral person than you are, so don’t dare drag me down to your depraved level.

They certainly didn’t do it as a matter of principle!  The Church had an absolutely wretched policy on reporting child abuse; there’s no getting around that.  It’s not like they actively promoted it, or tried to make it legal.

In any case, infanticide is worse than child molestation by a long shot.  Abortion is not substantially different from infanticide.  So what you’re doing is actually worse than what the Church did.  A lot worse.

Good God. Ordinarily I"d keep trying to point you towards the path of reality, but as a writer, I’ll use the path of fiction to see if it illustrates anything…

GO WATCH A COP SHOW. There are lots of them. There’s quite a good on on at the moment called Castle about an NYPD homicide department, although you probably wouldn’t like it since the main detective is a woman, and the show actually portrays her as fuckin’ awesome.

The thing about investigating murder, even in fiction, is that almost every murder investigation starts with A BODY… sometimes they start off with a missing persons report, because already-borned people usually know somebody to notice they’re missing, and then the police go look for the body, but it still doesn’t become a murder investigation until AFTER THEY FIND THE BODY (unless you are reading Lady Audley’s Secret, but then, Robert Audley is a totally slacker lawyer). And then there is a big whole crazy investigation, where they solve it by expending lots of time and energy and resources.

And murder is (a) relatively rare compared to crimes like, say, underage drinking or speeding--ie, the number of people who commit it in the US each year is generally counted in thousands rather than millions, and (b) generally considered to be one of the more difficult crimes to hide, due to human bodies being notoriously difficult to dispose of.

Any crime the target of which can be *flushed down a toilet* and which *nobody will miss because it did not exist yet in the real world* is going to be a fuckton harder to prosecute than the murder of a whole grownup human being with family and a job and ID papers and credit cards and expanses of skin on which to leave fingerprints and a car and a house and all sorts of tiny shiny personal possessions to potentially take as trophies, and who is big enough that you can determine *how* it died so you know if it was natural or not…

Do they literally just keep you in a box ‘til you’re 18 at Catholic school?

In any case, infanticide is worse than child molestation by a long shot.  Abortion is not substantially different from infanticide.  So what you’re doing is actually worse than what the Church did.  A lot worse.

Your money was used to defend pedophiles. And I’m certain they are still shielding pedophiles. And you still support them. You owe me an apology.

I just think that all our children should have the same rights that we do.

I do not have the right to live inside someone else’s body no matter what.  Even newborn infants do not have that right.

Austin and PP are you for or against contraception? Were/are you for or against the Family Medical Leave law? Are you for or against increased support for child care? Are you for or against support of families through unemployment insurance and public support of healthcare?

You see, most ‘pro-life’ organizations also want to make all contraception illegal. They also were against the Family Medical Leave Act and increasing support for child care. That’s why we think all these organizations are anti-women--they want women to have no choice. In practice they make it more likely that there will be abortions because they make it harder to prepare for pregnancies and then don’t want to support the baby once it’s born.

Also, Austin it seems we are at or near the time when we can clone humans: this means all human cells are potential individual human lives--do you think we should no longer be allowed to scratch ourselves because we kill skin cells that are a potential human life.

They certainly didn’t do it as a matter of principle!

Sure they did. The principle that the church is to remain unquestioned at all times. Do you support a prosecution of the Catholic Church under the RICO act for obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and related charges? Why not?

Ruining actual children’s lives is worse than preventing someone’s birth? No, y’all. This one is a true believer. You can only say that if you a horrendous monster. Also, interestingly, the one thing YOU care capable of is not as bad as the one thing you AREN’T capable of. I fear for your nieces and nephews.

The Church had an absolutely wretched policy on reporting child abuse; there’s no getting around that.  It’s not like they actively promoted it, or tried to make it legal.

The church has a very long history of promoting child abuse.  Up until the past few centuries, the church promoted a system of marriage that is basically slavery, and it often involved young girls who were essentially sold by their fathers.  And of course corporal punishment was strongly promoted by the Catholic church until the last few decades.  There are even some people out there who might think it’s abuse to try to force a 9 year-old rape victim to give birth to twins even though it would risk her own life and health.  I know that girls don’t count in your world, but what about the male victims of corporal punishment?

Why not first degree murder? I thought abortion was morally equivalent to infanticide?

I never said that abortion was morally equivalent to infanticide. I think debates as to what is worse, fetacide or infanticide are besides the point. To me that is like getting weighed down with questions like: what was worst? - the Holocaust or slavery? Or the destruction of the American Indians - Or Jim Crow? I think such endeavors are pointless and fruitless. It’s enough to simply say they all, really, really sucked and none of them should have been allowed.

As far as I am concerned it is enough to say abortion is immoral and it should be banned.

I think all people of faith in this thread need to pray that Jesus Christ will speak to Austin’s soul, and make him realize that pedophilia and rape are wrong. It’s sad to see such a young man in a depraved state, but through the power of our Lord, hopefully he can yet be saved.

I never said that abortion was morally equivalent to infanticide. I think debates as to what is worse, fetacide or infanticide are besides the point.

What is worse? First degree or second degree murder? Second degree or third degree murder? Third degree murder or manslaughter?

Why do we have different categories and different punishments for each type of offense?

Are you for or against support of families through unemployment insurance and public support of healthcare?

Of course not, because he’s pro-life dontchaknow.  Once babies are born they can just fuck off and die for all he cares (unless they’re useful in providing further punishment to mothers who have no access to breast milk alternatives).  Why should he donate blood to save a life?  It’s not his problem that someone is in need.  <i)He</i> has never been in accident or been born with a genetic illness that requires transfusions, so why can’t everyone else just be like him and not need them?  Plus, why should his (hypothetical) tax money pay to save a life?  If those people wanted to live, they shouldn’t have chosen to be poor.  They should have worked hard to be born to well-of parents like he was.  I mean, come on.  Do you think Jesus would give his own body to save people that don’t deserve it?

Pandagonians, you’re never going to get people like Progressive_Prince or Austin to admit that they really are emotionally attached to slut-shaming and minimizing women’s humanity and really don’t belief that a fetus is a human life. You can’t dislodge an irrational, emotional, na-na-nah-can’t-hear-you belief with logic.

Consider that if life begins at conception, or implantation, the answer to the question of “how do we handle abortions?” is perfectly simple: We handle it the same way as if the victim was a born child, and look at how the law handles that situation.

But that doesn’t really much leave room for slut-shaming. Arguing “But we shouldn’t punish that mother severely for paying a hit man to execute her toddler; it was a product of rape” is so bizarre as to be a non-sequitur. There’s no way to punish the bad, bad woman who had sex and forgive the innocent, if soiled, woman who was raped.

It also requires them to treat women like adults with full moral agency. Nobody pretends that the woman who pays somebody to strangle her baby “didn’t understand that the child was human” or “was duped” by the hit man. But if you treat abortion differently, then you have room to pretend that a woman was simply too stupid and morally stunted to understand what she was doing, and it was all the doctor’s fault for duping her.

That’s why you see the ridiculous and tortured-legalism arguments that abortion is “not substantially different” from infanticide; somebody who truly believes a fetus is baby would say that abortion is infanticide.

Oh no, Austin. I don’t think an unplanned pregnancy in someone ELSE is going to teach you a damned thing.

What I propose is that you be obliged, as closely as possible, to experience it for yourself. Someone described the process here before, so this is just a rough fleshing-out:

For nine months you must be attached, at all times, to a pregnant woman (god...that’s cruel and unusual--to the pregnant woman--but hear me out.)

Every time she pukes, you must stick a finger down your throat and lose *your* breakfast, too. Every time she needs to take a break at work to pee, you take a break too. When she gets fired for missing days due to hyperemesis, you lose your job too. You must gain every single pound she gains, and wear weights or harnesses to shift your balance. Use meds to simulate high blood pressure for preeclampsia, and have fun on bed rest!

But the best is labor. Every time she has a contraction, she gets to crush your balls. With whatever she deems necessary.

Then, maybe, you might learn something about that of which you spout such endless nonsense.

Austin and PP are you for or against contraception? Were/are you for or against the Family Medical Leave law? Are you for or against increased support for child care? Are you for or against support of families through unemployment insurance and public support of healthcare?

For them all - in part because they probably decrease abortion.

You see, most ‘pro-life’ organizations also want to make all contraception illegal.

Is this true?: I know that protestant pro life organizations tend to be ok with contraception (at least inside of marriage) and I know that the Catholic prolife orgs tend to think contraception is immoral - but are there really a significant number of prolife organizations which are for contraception being made illegal?

but are there really a significant number of prolife organizations which are for contraception being made illegal?

Yes.  Try watching any news program for a few months and one will pop up.  Of course, you might not see it on Fox News, so you should try some other channels.

Any crime the target of which can be *flushed down a toilet* and which *nobody will miss because it did not exist yet in the real world* is going to be a fuckton harder to prosecute than the murder of a whole grownup human being with family and a job and ID papers and credit cards and expanses of skin on which to leave fingerprints and a car and a house and all sorts of tiny shiny personal possessions to potentially take as trophies, and who is big enough that you can determine *how* it died so you know if it was natural or not…

It is going to be very difficult to enforce with respect to the women who have them.  Finding doctors or other people willing to perform abortions should be a lot easier.  All you need is a community willing to report them, and some undercover cops.

Do they literally just keep you in a box ‘til you’re 18 at Catholic school?

It was a cave, actually.  Hey, were you the person who went crazy and killed a ton of people in an attempt to get back in?

I do not have the right to live inside someone else’s body no matter what.  Even newborn infants do not have that right.

You’re not at a point in your development where it would be at all normal or natural for you to live inside someone else’s body.  Babies born into environments in which no replacement is available for their mother’s breast milk have a right to breastfeed, but you don’t have a right to a blood transfusion from anyone.

Austin and PP are you for or against contraception? Were/are you for or against the Family Medical Leave law? Are you for or against increased support for child care? Are you for or against support of families through unemployment insurance and public support of healthcare?

You see, most ‘pro-life’ organizations also want to make all contraception illegal. They also were against the Family Medical Leave Act and increasing support for child care. That’s why we think all these organizations are anti-women--they want women to have no choice. In practice they make it more likely that there will be abortions because they make it harder to prepare for pregnancies and then don’t want to support the baby once it’s born.

We want to make abortifacient contraception illegal.  I don’t have much of an opinion on the family medical leave law, adoption, or even health care.

Also, Austin it seems we are at or near the time when we can clone humans: this means all human cells are potential individual human lives--do you think we should no longer be allowed to scratch ourselves because we kill skin cells that are a potential human life.

I don’t know why, but I’m actually going to answer this.  Skin cells would be a part of a potential human being, they are not actual human beings, because they are not the product of reproduction of two other human beings, nor are they similar to said product.

Sure they did. The principle that the church is to remain unquestioned at all times. Do you support a prosecution of the Catholic Church under the RICO act for obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and related charges? Why not?

Prosecute any individuals within the Church for whatever laws they broke.

Prosecute any individuals within the Church for whatever laws they broke.

Including Cardinal Ratzinger, John Paul’s lackey? That might be pretty hard to do.

You disgust me you morally corrupt pervert.

What is worse? First degree or second degree murder? Second degree or third degree murder? Third degree murder or manslaughter?

As I pointed out above its not a question that really matters much as to whether or not it should be illegal - any activity which is immoral should be illegal, in my mind.

Why do we have different categories and different punishments for each type of offense?

Because, although all types of murder are immoral and illegal - our society recognizes that different sentencing may be appropriate. The ax murderer is more dangerous to society than the drunk driver who killed through negligence. In turn the drunk driver is more dangerous than the poor girl who, in a moment of desperation, got an abortion.

That’s why I am ok with lighter sentences for fetacide.

I hope you die painfully and friendless with only your child-raping church to mourn the loss of its foot soldier in its war against decent humans born with critical thinking capacities.

any activity that is immoral should be illegal?

are we going to stone people for adultery now?
what about lying--i told my coworker i liked his tie earlier and it was like the ugliest effing tie i’ve ever seen.  should i be issued some sort of citation?

We want to make abortifacient contraception illegal.

There’s not such thing.  If someone told you that hormonal contraception works by inducing abortion, they lied to you.  How do you feel about regular contraception like condoms?  We know that the Pope hates those, so do you want them to be illegal too?

any activity which is immoral should be illegal, in my mind

Pfft. You know you don’t really mean that.

As for contraception, I know you know this, but for the benefit of the audience at home, there is no national pro-life organization which is in favor of contraception. The best you are going to get is an organization taking “no position” on contraception. Not merely “abortifacient” contraception, either. Many, like the American Life League, are outright opposed to contraception. Yes, this is like being opposed to children drowning but having no position on whether they should be taught to swim.

That’s why I am ok with lighter sentences for fetacide.

What about aborting a pregnancy where no fetus is involved?  What should be the punishment for “killing” and embryo?  Should “killing” a fertilized egg be punished only slightly harder than masturbating into a sock and “killing” all those sperm?  What should be my punishment for every month that I live but fail to have my egg fertilized?

A pregnancy with no fetus?!  Oh my god!  Are you trying to imply that biology and reproduction *isn’t* as simple as “dick goes in, dick comes out, baby comes out 9 months later”?!  I won’t believe it, I tell you!  I won’t!  Next thing you’ll tell me is that child rape *doesn’t* hurt people for years longer than abortion does!

Ruining actual children’s lives is worse than preventing someone’s birth? No, y’all. This one is a true believer. You can only say that if you a horrendous monster. Also, interestingly, the one thing YOU care capable of is not as bad as the one thing you AREN’T capable of. I fear for your nieces and nephews.

Ruining someone’s life is worse than ending one.

The church has a very long history of promoting child abuse.  Up until the past few centuries, the church promoted a system of marriage that is basically slavery, and it often involved young girls who were essentially sold by their fathers.  And of course corporal punishment was strongly promoted by the Catholic church until the last few decades.  There are even some people out there who might think it’s abuse to try to force a 9 year-old rape victim to give birth to twins even though it would risk her own life and health.  I know that girls don’t count in your world, but what about the male victims of corporal punishment?

Corporal punishment isn’t all bad.  I have no idea what sort of marriage systems the Church promoted, but I don’t think they ever supported forced marriage.

And don’t forget about us anti-forced organ donation activists, who would even force small children to die of organ failure. “You can’t violate someone else’s rights as a means of preserving your own life"… what a silly idea.

Of course not, because he’s pro-life dontchaknow.  Once babies are born they can just fuck off and die for all he cares (unless they’re useful in providing further punishment to mothers who have no access to breast milk alternatives).  Why should he donate blood to save a life?  It’s not his problem that someone is in need.  <i)He</i> has never been in accident or been born with a genetic illness that requires transfusions, so why can’t everyone else just be like him and not need them?  Plus, why should his (hypothetical) tax money pay to save a life?  If those people wanted to live, they shouldn’t have chosen to be poor.  They should have worked hard to be born to well-of parents like he was.  I mean, come on.  Do you think Jesus would give his own body to save people that don’t deserve it?

If there was an actual shortage of blood, or if I had an extremely rare blood type, I would donate blood.  I don’t need to in order for my argument to be successful, obviously, but I still would do it anyway.

But that doesn’t really much leave room for slut-shaming. Arguing “But we shouldn’t punish that mother severely for paying a hit man to execute her toddler; it was a product of rape” is so bizarre as to be a non-sequitur. There’s no way to punish the bad, bad woman who had sex and forgive the innocent, if soiled, woman who was raped.

It also requires them to treat women like adults with full moral agency. Nobody pretends that the woman who pays somebody to strangle her baby “didn’t understand that the child was human” or “was duped” by the hit man. But if you treat abortion differently, then you have room to pretend that a woman was simply too stupid and morally stunted to understand what she was doing, and it was all the doctor’s fault for duping her.

That’s why you see the ridiculous and tortured-legalism arguments that abortion is “not substantially different” from infanticide; somebody who truly believes a fetus is baby would say that abortion is infanticide.

Read this. This is probably the fifth time I’ve linked to this post.

Austin,
You still have not explained why you hold the position that a fertilized egg is the same as an infant.  You claim that it’s not based on religion, but your religion is one of the few that is that extreme on their stance.  Very many Christians will use IFV and allow the extra fertilized eggs to be destroyed.  So if your position isn’t based on your religion, then what is it based on?  What non-arbitrary reason do you have to believe that life begins at conception.  Also, do you think that an apple seed is the same as a tree?  Am I actually chopping down a whole tree, or even uprooting a sapling, whenever I accidentally swallow an apple seed?

Can we not wish for people to die? I know they’re wishing for us to die. But it squicks me, especially since suicidal ideation is so common (particularly for young adults...).

It also requires them to treat women like adults with full moral agency. Nobody pretends that the woman who pays somebody to strangle her baby “didn’t understand that the child was human” or “was duped” by the hit man.

This is because no one really debates that it is murder to kill a newborn. We’ve settled that question as a society - so no one would make that argument in a court.

But if you treat abortion differently, then you have room to pretend that a woman was simply too stupid and morally stunted to understand what she was doing, and it was all the doctor’s fault for duping her.

I run into this argument occasionally. It’s main flaw is that it treats being wrong about a moral issue as though it were a result of immorality or stupidity. Morality is an extraordinary complicated thing that can be hard to come to. The fact that a good number of people disagree with me on this issue does not mean I think less of them - it is just evidence that we are still debating the issue as a society.

For example, take George Washington and Thomas Jefferson - two men who I hold in high esteem - you can’t really argue that they weren’t brilliant (especially Jefferson) or heroic - moral exemplars in their own way - but yet they still owned slaves. Why? Well they grew up in a society that told them it was okay - doesn’t make them stupid or morally weak that they fell prey to this anymore than women or men who buy into abortion are stupid or morally weak.

They just disagree with me, in my opinion, and are wrong.

There’s not such thing.  If someone told you that hormonal contraception works by inducing abortion, they lied to you.  How do you feel about regular contraception like condoms?  We know that the Pope hates those, so do you want them to be illegal too?

Yes there is. Hormonal contraception works by preventing implantation, among other things.  It is therefore abortifacient and it not something that any pro-lifer would ever support.

As for contraception, I know you know this, but for the benefit of the audience at home, there is no national pro-life organization which is in favor of contraception. The best you are going to get is an organization taking “no position” on contraception. Not merely “abortifacient” contraception, either. Many, like the American Life League, are outright opposed to contraception. Yes, this is like being opposed to children drowning but having no position on whether they should be taught to swim.

Hormonal contraception is abortifacient.  Obviously, no pro-life organization would ever support it.

That’s my point, you pedophiliac jerk.  Ruining a life is worse than ending one.  Doubly so when the “life” you’re ending doesn’t have a single emotion available with which to give a shit about the end of its life.

I really, really hope you die soon.  The type of hatred you hold in your heart is too poisonous for a society that avoids coddling sociopaths.  Jesus christ.  If you could save a child from being raped versus saving a 4 week old bit of nothing, you would let the child continue to be abused.  You are a horrible person and I feel *sick* that I’m even spending this much time on you.  You’re so evil, that I’m going to focus on studying rather than letting you know how much I fear your continued existence.

Oh, and total props to everyone who’s arguing on the side of the non-literal angels here. The urine-check plane scenario had me totally cracking up. I love how helpless the pro-life position is in the face of basic logic.

This is where I decide that these guys are sociopaths. Because SO MUCH of what they propose actually does make sense, if, you know, you discard all those parts about women being humans who have lives and desires and intimacy and making decisions; if you truly do lack so much basic humanity that you can weigh 800,000 clumps of cells against 1,000 living women and “rationally” decide that the 800,000 are the ones to preserve. Sociopaths.

Mandolin, some people are so evil that they lose whatever claim to life they ever had.  Austin is one of those people as evidenced by his support of children being raped.

I have no idea what sort of marriage systems the Church promoted, but I don’t think they ever supported forced marriage.

Honey, there are tons of things that you have no idea about.  Do a little research on the history of your church.

If there was an actual shortage of blood, or if I had an extremely rare blood type, I would donate blood.

I bet Jesus would take the very same stance.

Anyway, there is a shortage of blood.  What is wrong with you?  How can you not know that?  In most areas, hospitals are lucky to have more than a day’s worth of blood at a time.  Every day they face the possibility of running out, and sometimes they do.  Plus, how do you know that you don’t have a rare blood type?  And if you found out somehow, how do you decide between “extremely rare” and just sort of rare so you don’t have to bother helping people.

Austin,
You still have not explained why you hold the position that a fertilized egg is the same as an infant.  You claim that it’s not based on religion, but your religion is one of the few that is that extreme on their stance.  Very many Christians will use IFV and allow the extra fertilized eggs to be destroyed.  So if your position isn’t based on your religion, then what is it based on?  What non-arbitrary reason do you have to believe that life begins at conception.  Also, do you think that an apple seed is the same as a tree?  Am I actually chopping down a whole tree, or even uprooting a sapling, whenever I accidentally swallow an apple seed?

They are both human beings with whom we share a parent-child relationship.  I’m sure many people who identify as “Christian” will use IFV and allow the fertilized eggs to be destroyed.  It is quite likely that they do not understand the nature of what they are doing.

I don’t think an apple seed is the same as a apple tree, any more than a newborn infant is like an adult.  Suppose that, say, oak trees reproduced in pairs, by creating together a new, single organism.  This organism would not have reached the arbitrary stage in its development at which we would consider it to be an oak tree, but it would be an oak.

Although, unlike him, I’m not going to create death panels with which to screen for sociopathic behavior and so I can then lethally inject them.  I think actually killing him would be horribly wrong.  Not as wrong as raping a child, but pretty wrong.  I only hope that his hatred turns into inoperable rectal cancer that ends his hate-filled life before he can do real harm with it.

Hormonal contraception works by preventing implantation

Someone lied to you.  Hormonal contraception works by preventing ovulation in the first place.  Congratulations though; you’ve been trained well if you regurgitate their lies.  And how do you feel about condoms?  I know the Pope doesn’t like those either.

Austin, the post you linked to claims that our ancestors were too stupid to know how to perform abortions. This is both silly and factually wrong. It also pretends that our ancestors universally condemned infanticide. Again, silly and factually wrong. Why are you offering as “proof” such an ignorant, poorly-written and unsourced blog post?

It’s especially stupid because even if we lived in a fantasy past where it was in fact true that all humanity loathed infanticide and didn’t know what abortion was, now we live in a world saturated with anti-abortion propaganda. At best, your post is an argument that because women ten thousand years ago couldn’t perform abortions, women now cannot be blamed for killing their babies, as long as the babies aren’t actually born yet.

Again, it’s inconsistent to claim that a fetus is a human life yet abortion is not infanticide. There is no reason to try to make this pretzel-argument except to alleviate one’s discomfort at the consequences of such a position, or to indulge one’s desire to slut-shame and elevate Innocent Womanhood.

any activity that is immoral should be illegal?

are we going to stone people for adultery now?

Pfft. You know you don’t really mean that.

You’re right. I misspoke. I should have qualified what I said - I was writing quickly.

As for contraception, I know you know this, but for the benefit of the audience at home, there is no national pro-life organization which is in favor of contraception. The best you are going to get is an organization taking “no position” on contraception. Not merely “abortifacient” contraception, either. Many, like the American Life League, are outright opposed to contraception. Yes, this is like being opposed to children drowning but having no position on whether they should be taught to swim.

Well I think there are a few prolife orgs like Democrats for life which are pro-contraception - I don’t know if you would call that a “national” org or whatever?

My comments above were simply challenging the notion that most prolife orgs want to make contraception flat out illegal - which is different than simply thinking that they are immoral.

Read this. This is probably the fifth time I’ve linked to this post.

Yeah, and it’s the fifth time I’ve read the post. It’s still simple-minded nonsense.

Anyway, now that I know Austin thinks raping children is cool, I’m really wasting my time. There really is no reasoning with moral monsters and sociopaths.

Out.

I don’t think an apple seed is the same as a apple tree, any more than a newborn infant is like an adult

Your analogy fails.  An apple seed is analogous to a fertilized egg.  A sampling is analogous to an infant.  I thought that science classes were actually pretty good in Catholic schools, but I guess I was wrong.

Suppose that, say, oak trees reproduced in pairs, by creating together a new, single organism.

They already do this.

It is quite likely that they do not understand the nature of what they are doing.

You’re the one that does not understand the nature of reproduction.

You still have not answered the question as to why you think life begins at conception.

Comment number #358!  That means that my post yesterday has generated three hundred responses total.  Who here thinks I can make it to 400?

Someone lied to you.  Hormonal contraception works by preventing ovulation in the first place.  Congratulations though; you’ve been trained well if you regurgitate their lies.  And how do you feel about condoms?  I know the Pope doesn’t like those either.

Preventing ovulation is one of the ways that it works.  Another way is by preventing implantation, which is the same thing as abortion.

Austin, the post you linked to claims that our ancestors were too stupid to know how to perform abortions. This is both silly and factually wrong. It also pretends that our ancestors universally condemned infanticide. Again, silly and factually wrong. Why are you offering as “proof” such an ignorant, poorly-written and unsourced blog post?

If you’d carefully read what I’d written, you’d have noticed that I was not just referring to our human ancestors.  I was referring to all of them.  Obviously, we evolved to bond with our born offspring because if we did not, they would die.  Animals do not have the technology to perform induced abortions; there are no species of animals that do this.

Your analogy fails.  An apple seed is analogous to a fertilized egg.  A sampling is analogous to an infant.  I thought that science classes were actually pretty good in Catholic schools, but I guess I was wrong.

No, it’s not.  It is analogous to a sperm.  The manner in which human beings and apple trees reproduce is entirely different and disanalogous.

You still have not answered the question as to why you think life begins at conception.

A fertilized human egg is a human being with which we share a parent-child relationship.  The only difference between a baby born prematurely at 21 weeks who is capable of surviving and a fertilized human egg is that we care about the former.  Since we would not kill the baby born prematurely, we should not kill the human embryo.

Uh, Austin, human beings an apple trees reproduce in gobsmackingly similar ways. The male reproductive cell of apple trees fertilizes (pollinizes) the female reproductive cell, resulting in a seed embryo. A seed is in fact directly analogous to a zygote because that’s exactly what it fucking is.

And if you really believe that an apple seed is analogous to a sperm, that means you have all the reproductive savvy of our Medieval ancestors who were convinced the sperm cell carried a tiny homunculus, one which simply embedded and grew in the woman’s womb. According to this idea, she didn’t contribute anything at all to the pregnancy beyond empty fertile space for the man’s sperm to grow into an infant. So that explains a hell of a lot about your anti-choice beliefs.

Plus, you still haven’t answered how you know a fertilized human egg is a human being (if not because of your religion). I suspect you never will, since there’s no good reason, but whatever.

Uh, Austin, human beings an apple trees reproduce in gobsmackingly similar ways.

She’s right Austin. I mean who among us can honestly say they have never had the embarrassment of accidentally interrupting two apple trees having sex in the park. Oh to come across an orchard in orgy! Forever seared into my mind!

But I have to say - the horrors of seeing denderlove are more than made up by the beauty of witnessing a live apple tree birth - to think that just a few years prior that little apple was making its way through the apple tree fallopian tubes!

Uh, Austin, human beings an apple trees reproduce in gobsmackingly similar ways. The male reproductive cell of apple trees fertilizes (pollinizes) the female reproductive cell, resulting in a seed embryo. A seed is in fact directly analogous to a zygote because that’s exactly what it fucking is.

They do not combine and form an entirely new and distinct organism of the same species in the way that human beings do.  There is no such thing as a “seed embryo”!  The best analogy (which is what you want if your position is correct) would be a plant that reproduced by combining two seeds together, which resulted in the formation of an entirely new organism.  Such a seed would be of the same genus as the two trees that produced it; if oak trees reproduced this way, the product would be an oak.

People who don’t know anything about biology shouldn’t be allowed to speak about it.

Wait. What. Does Ausitin think that two homo sapiens having a baby don’t produce a creature that’s the same genus as they are??

People who don’t know anything about biology shouldn’t be allowed to speak about it.

Rachel, I think kristen should be allowed to continue to post despite her embarrassing ignorance regarding reproduction differences between apple trees and humans.

Don’t silence her voice simply because she is misinformed.

I’m sure many people who identify as “Christian” will use IFV and allow the fertilized eggs to be destroyed.

Honey, you can’t pretend that your belief that life begins at conception has nothing to do with your religion, but then question other people’s religion based on their disagreement with you.  My guess is that your stance is heavily based on your religion, but you realized that there aren’t any parts of the Bible that actually support your position, so you try to pretend that you have some other reason.

There is no such thing as a “seed embryo”!

The seed is the embryo!  The pistil within the flower is the plant equivalent of a mammal egg cell.  It contains half the DNA from the “mother” plant, and it’s produced by the same method.  Pollen is plant sperm.  It contains half the DNA from the “father”.  Gametes from plants and animals are amazing similar.  The pollen enters the pistil to form a seed.  If it happens to implant correctly (in the ground rather than a uterine lining), it can become a tree.  Geez, didn’t they teach you anything in your high school science class?  How did you think trees reproduce?  Did you think they are all just clones?  I thought Catholics were a little better than other fundies in their tolerance of science.

I mean who among us can honestly say they have never had the embarrassment of accidentally interrupting two apple trees having sex in the park.

If you’ve seen pollen wafting around flowers, you’ve seen plant sex.

There is no such thing as a “seed embryo”!

Learn to botany, dumbass: http://www.wpclipart.com/plants/diagrams/Dycotyledon_seed_diagram.png

When a male and female cell are required to unite for reproduction, that’s called SEXUAL REPRODUCTION, you know.

You’re an idiot.

Jesus fucking Christ, is Austin actually that ignorant of the basics of biology?  My jaw is dropped here.

You’re an idiot.

Rachel - try to be more polite. Kristen is doing the best she can. Name calling is simply not appropriate.

A fertilized human egg is a human being with which we share a parent-child relationship.

But why do you choose to put the distinction there?  Why is this point less arbitrary than any other?

No, it’s not.  It is analogous to a sperm.

I’m very curious now.  How exactly do you think trees reproduce?  A seed already has genetic material from two different trees (although some plants can self-fertilize).  What do you think happens to seeds?  Do you think they find some egg cell in the ground?

I’m not quite sure why the cave comment was supposed to be funny.

And at any rate, wherever the fuck they kept me when I was still Catholic, I’m the person who went sane and killed whoever was in my way to get OUT.

Luckily, this did not include me literally needing to kill anyone. But if it ever did, I probably would. I stop seeing you as human when you stop seeing me as human. Since I have a silly little ladybrain, I just have no head for double standards at all!

Although even my tiny ladybrain, with its tendency towards liberal artsy humanities stuff rather than science, understands that there are male and female parts to plants which need to be fertilized before any baby plants get made.

Pee pee: orchards in orgy are damn messy. It gets all over your car, and… wait, you probably think I’m making a joke. Ever wonder what the crap that gets all over your car in the spring actually is?

What would I do if I encountered a woman who had the means to breastfeed her child, but refused to for selfish reasons.  I’d force her to do it, just like any other morally sane person who saw a parent selfishly starving their child to death. We’d really only be justified in executing them if they had the means to breastfeed, and breastfeeding would be about as inconvenient and unsafe as your average pregnancy in the US, but refused to do so for selfish reasons.

If you had any common sense and empathy, you would arrange for the child to be taken into competent foster care and arrange healthy psychiatric treatment (good treatment and rehabilitation, not the shit you suggest, which just seems to be forced incarceration for women who won’t act like they are communal property) for the parent, because there is no smoke without fire. Forcing her to do whatever may provide a short-term, generally useless solution, like feeding the child that one time, but it will not correct the problem causing the abuse; mental illness, addiction, etc. Prosecuting and executing everyone you consider insufficiently motherly is something I’d expect to find in Malleus Maleficarum, not in modern law.

Or, we could just make it illegal for women to leave the country and obtain abortions.  I’d have no problem prosecuting abortion tourists, since it’s not as much of an act of desperation as obtaining one in a country where it is illegal.

Interesting how you propose lesser consequences upon conviction if the woman was prepared to mutilate herself to end the pregnancy. It escapes your notice that women willing to resort to such extreme measures really don’t want to be pregnant but are utterly desperate for some reason. It shows that you don’t really think of anyone outside your primary demographic as real people, but a kind of sub-human whom don’t have personalities or lives bar what you define as appropriate for them to live by. Of course, white, wealthy, relatively privileged women you hate too, as you seem to think that they have the moral capacity of alley cats and should be treated as errant children, but their punishment should be harsher because they didn’t do the job of the Inquisitor, sorry, upstanding moral pro-lifer, for them and mutilate themselves first, nescessitating a higher degree of punishment? That’s fucking cold, dude.

Pandagonians are being far too nice to you right now, probably because they think you’re just immature and misguided. They are allowing you the benefit of the doubt, not because you are clever and right, but because you are wrong and need to be taught not to be so hateful. Stop whining. When you grow up, you may stop hating women and start seeing them as people with real, complicated lives, not ambulatory vessels for fetuses and inhuman creatures that deserve psychological torture and death for not subjugating themselves to your beliefs… maybe.

I notice that the two stooges, here, have managed once again to turn the discussion away from how exactly they know an embryo is a human being without a religious dictate telling them so.

Well, this discussion has just turned hilarious.  Do both trolls really lack an understanding of basic biology?  Next we’ll find out that they’re both creationists, which would surprise me because that’s one area that the Catholic church is relatively sane about.

What with all the tree-based shenanigans I think that little comment, about how preventing implantation is the same thing as abortion because Austin says so that’s why, slipped by.

I mean who among us can honestly say they have never had the embarrassment of accidentally interrupting two apple trees having sex in the park.

I think this summarizes nicely.  Biology doesn’t matter at all.  Reproduction is about the shameful act of sex.  Since tree sex isn’t shameful but human sex is, they’re two completely different things.

Well, this discussion has just turned hilarious.  Do both trolls really lack an understanding of basic biology?  Next we’ll find out that they’re both creationists, which would surprise me because that’s one area that the Catholic church is relatively sane about.

Reminds me of someone I was lightly acquainted with, who was a home-schooling Catholic fanatic.

She threw a fit at a mutual acquaintance of ours, that the textbooks we got for her (for free, being from the discard bin at the company I and the mutual acquaintance worked at) contained references to evolution.

She was invited to speak to her priest about evolution. She did. She then found herself one of the Catholic sects that don’t recognize Vatican II to belong to.

What with all the tree-based shenanigans I think that little comment, about how preventing implantation is the same thing as abortion because Austin says so that’s why, slipped by.

What really concerns me is why Austin not out right now giving Last Rites to every dumpster containing pads or tampons that contain all those fertilized eggs that fail to implant all on their own.  According to Austin’s logic, about half of all people die before they ever implant into a uterus.  Why aren’t we having funerals for them?

Dear Austin and Progressive Prince,

Please become Republican politicians and loudly advocate imprisoning women for self-inflicted abortions.  And definitely scream about banning “abortifacient” oral contraceptives and IUDs. 

Thanks,
Liberal Democrats

(P.S.  Most men are very big fans of their partners using effective contraception.  They do not particularly like condoms, nor do they like the idea of supporting tons of kids and/or raising them alone while their wives serve time for trying to limit family size.  Way to get a majority of white men voting for liberals!)

Honey, you can’t pretend that your belief that life begins at conception has nothing to do with your religion, but then question other people’s religion based on their disagreement with you.  My guess is that your stance is heavily based on your religion, but you realized that there aren’t any parts of the Bible that actually support your position, so you try to pretend that you have some other reason.

Genetic fallacy.  Abortion is like infanticide - you don’t have to be a Christian to be opposed to it, but if you are, you must be opposed to it.

The seed is the embryo!  The pistil within the flower is the plant equivalent of a mammal egg cell.  It contains half the DNA from the “mother” plant, and it’s produced by the same method.  Pollen is plant sperm.  It contains half the DNA from the “father”.  Gametes from plants and animals are amazing similar.  The pollen enters the pistil to form a seed.  If it happens to implant correctly (in the ground rather than a uterine lining), it can become a tree.  Geez, didn’t they teach you anything in your high school science class?  How did you think trees reproduce?  Did you think they are all just clones?  I thought Catholics were a little better than other fundies in their tolerance of science.

When a female plant fertilizes a male seed, all it does is put biological material on top of the plant seed.  It’s like sprinkling salt on your food.  When humans reproduce, they create an entirely new, living organism.  They don’t put fertilizer or some other material on top of a seed like plants do.

I’m not quite sure why the cave comment was supposed to be funny.

And at any rate, wherever the fuck they kept me when I was still Catholic, I’m the person who went sane and killed whoever was in my way to get OUT.

You wouldn’t have been able to see, so that’s not possible.  Your neck would have been pretty stiff, too.

If you had any common sense and empathy, you would arrange for the child to be taken into competent foster care and arrange healthy psychiatric treatment (good treatment and rehabilitation, not the shit you suggest, which just seems to be forced incarceration for women who won’t act like they are communal property) for the parent, because there is no smoke without fire. Forcing her to do whatever may provide a short-term, generally useless solution, like feeding the child that one time, but it will not correct the problem causing the abuse; mental illness, addiction, etc. Prosecuting and executing everyone you consider insufficiently motherly is something I’d expect to find in Malleus Maleficarum, not in modern law.

I’m assuming, for the sake of argument, that none existed, in order to make it analogous to pregnancy and childbirth.

Interesting how you propose lesser consequences upon conviction if the woman was prepared to mutilate herself to end the pregnancy. It escapes your notice that women willing to resort to such extreme measures really don’t want to be pregnant but are utterly desperate for some reason. It shows that you don’t really think of anyone outside your primary demographic as real people, but a kind of sub-human whom don’t have personalities or lives bar what you define as appropriate for them to live by. Of course, white, wealthy, relatively privileged women you hate too, as you seem to think that they have the moral capacity of alley cats and should be treated as errant children, but their punishment should be harsher because they didn’t do the job of the Inquisitor, sorry, upstanding moral pro-lifer, for them and mutilate themselves first, nescessitating a higher degree of punishment? That’s fucking cold, dude.

In industrialized countries like the US, illegal abortions abortions very, very rarely result in a woman mutilating herself.  Read this. Educate yourself on the facts before you embarass yourself again - if it’s even possible for pro-choicers to feel ashamed of themselves.

Another fun fact: eating fruit is analogous to eating a plant’s placenta.  Science is fun!

The offspring of two human beings is, by definition, a human being.

What do you mean by “offspring” in the context of this discussion. [The result of fertilization is a bunch of totipotent cells.]

If conception is arbitrary, than so is birth; but unlike birth, conception does not.. er.. “coincide” with the point in our children’s development at which we evolved to begin caring about them.

If conception is arbitrary, so is birth.  Since we cannot arbitrarily exclude any group of human beings from having the same rights that we have, we must include all groups of human beings - since there is no non-arbitrary way of excluding any of them!

You need to define “conception” and “human being” and show how/why the fetal part of the pregnancy, and only the fetal part (what about the placenta? Will no one think of the placenta!!!11!!), qualifies for legal rights.

Also, [s]ince we cannot arbitrarily exclude any group of human beings from having the same rights that we have is an absurd assertion. We arbitrarily exclude various groups of people from having equal rights all the time. Like, for example, pregnant women. Male patients and non pregnant females have the right to access medical care without a “being brutalized” prerequisite. Some pregnant patients, on the other hand, are excluded and don’t have that same right. They’re only allowed access to medical care if they’ve been assaulted.

[Women would not be charged with murder] with abortion, for reasons I’ve explained here.

And the reasons, according to you (emphasis mine):

Any morally sane person knows that murdering born people is wrong, ultimately because of the way evolution played out. During evolution, the genes of our ancestors and groups of our ancestors who killed born members of their species were selected against (for the most part). Long story short, they evolved to feel bad about murder, because those who did not were selected against. This trait eventually got passed down to use. This is how we know that murdering born people is wrong.

But this never could have happened with abortion. Unlike murder, induced abortion did not exist during evolution for natural selection to act on. Our ancestors had neither the intelligence nor the technology to perform them. Since it did not exist for natural selection to act on, our ancestors never could have evolved any particular distate for it, as they did for murder. They could never pass a distate for it down to us, that would translate into an innate moral knowledge that it was wrong to do. This is why the fact that abortion is wrong can be known only through reason. We wouldn’t treat abortion differently from murder because women are too stupid to understand what they’re doing. We would treat abortion differently ultimately because our ancestors were too stupid to know how to perform them.

Forget your tenuous grasp of how evolution works, the very premise of your argument--no induced abortions for our dumb ancestors--is utter bunk. Everybody was doing it, not to mention writing about it, in the ancient world (silphium, Queen Anne’s Lace, pennyroyal); unless you want to argue that they got that knowledge from space aliens what you thought was an argument turns out to be a big pile of nothing.

All I need to do is show that there are no non-arbitrary criteria with which we can exclude [a] group of human beings....

No non-arbitrary criteria, pregnancy vs. neonate: Go!

If she had the means to breastfeed, and selfishly chose not to do so?  Lethal injection.

Name on secular legal system that has death as the punishment for selfishness. As a matter of fact, are you aware of any theocracies that do that under their system of laws?

You can’t promote abortifacient contraception and say that you’ve reduced the abortion rate.  Since sexual standards would doubtlessly reduce the abortion rate, how can you say that they are more important to me than reducing the abortion rate?

and

It really bothers you that hormonal contraception is abortifacient, doesn’t it?

It’s possible that you keep using “abortifacient contraception” when referring to the usual hormonal methods because you think it makes you sound edgy, but I do have to alert you to the fact that you come off as uninformed to those who are familiar with the relevant science.

If you want to be taken seriously when discussing contraception it would be helpful if you familiarized yourself with the basics.

Also, can you define “sexual standards” and produce some data in support of your assertion that these, so far, nebulous standards would doubtlessly reduce the abortion rate?

When a female plant fertilizes a male seed, all it does is put biological material on top of the plant seed.  It’s like sprinkling salt on your food.

What biology book are you using?  Pollen is the male “seed”.  Most plants reproduce sexually, and require genetic material from two separate, male and female gametes.  Even in the cases of self-fertilization, two gametes are still required.

How exactly do you think the female plant “fertilizes” a male seed?  What exactly is the salt that she sprinkles on it?

I think I need to withdraw from the conversation.

All it’s doing is reminding me of why, after graduating from many, many years of Catholic education, I and my friends swore never to date Catholic boys. Me, I’m good with God, and I married an atheist.  Thank God.

When a female plant fertilizes a male seed, all it does is put biological material on top of the plant seed.  It’s like sprinkling salt on your food.  When humans reproduce, they create an entirely new, living organism.  They don’t put fertilizer or some other material on top of a seed like plants do.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.

Dude, you’re the one that just got through assuring us that there was no such thing as a seed embryo. How about you provide some kind of reliable source for this, um, “information” before you start in all explainin’ the botanolobioplantology to us, huh?

Moving on, in response to this comment on the Stupak amendment,

“You can have your abortion covered if the pregnancy threatens your life our health, or if it is the result of rape or incest, but not if the fetus is anencephalic or otherwise severely deformed.”

you say:

Thank God. I don’t want my tax dollars funding the most vile sort of “ableism”.

You do realize that your position is incoherent, yes?

Am I not pro-life because I oppose forced organ donation?  “Forcing” people to carry failing organs is not pro-life?

Try to focus, please. We’re not talking about organ donations, we’re talking about pregnant women. One more time, you are not “pro-life” because you support using the State to increase pregnant women’s mortality by forcing them to carry to term.

In third world countries, mothers are often only able to breastfeed one of their babies; they do not have enough milk to feed both.  This happens in the real world all the time, even though it doesn’t need to for my real-world hypothetical to stand.

In your hypothetical, there’s one woman, one baby, and nothing/no one else--the mother is not producing milk/is dead, the baby is starving/dying. In your third-world country example, there’s a lactating woman, and two babies--one is fed, the other is starving/dying due to limited resources. So?

Your response to the bodily integrity argument appears to be:

The bottom line is, people do have a right to use each others bodies as a means of their own survival if it’s a part of the natural mother/child relationship (and no replacements are available, e.g. artificial wombs, wet nurses, or formula).

Yet another unsupported, not to mention confused--OK to have an elective abortion if there’s formula around?--assertion. Forget your pronouncement that, because a state of pregnancy exists (one entity--the pregnancy as part of a maternal internal organ), part of the products of conception, namely the fetus, gets separate rights. If women people have the right to use other bodies as a means of their own survival in the context of a pregnancy, then pregnant women clearly have the right to terminate the pregnancy and insure their survival.

I came here trying to have an intelligent conversation. Every single person who disagreed with me, without exception, has resorted to name-calling and hair-splitting.

(emphasis mine)

You do realize that we all have access to the comment thread and can fact-check if you lie, yes?

We’d really only be justified in executing them if they had the means to breastfeed, and breastfeeding would be about as inconvenient and unsafe as your average pregnancy in the US, but refused to do so for selfish reasons.

Quantify the inconvenience and safety risk for the average pregnancy in the US.

Or, tell other countries not to perform abortions on American citizens.  Ban travel to countries that allow abortion and are willing to perform them on Americans.  That should fix that problem pretty quickly.  I can’t imagine any country refusing to comply.

You are being facetious, right?

Austin, relax - this is good.

It means you won....Instead they hark on and on about how since you are male, went to catholic school and don’t have a college degree yet - you can’t possibly be right.

Or, it means 1) you’re lying when you say that every single person who disagreed with you, without exception, has resorted to name-calling, and 2) you’re conveniently ignoring all the refutations that make no mention of sex/school/degree.

After all, Austin [what]- we people say is not actually important to their arguments....

Count the comments in this thread. Analyze their content. Now, support your assertion that this blog’s readers do not consider what Austin Nedved has to say important. [If at all possible, resit the temptation to go off on a genital organs tangent.]

Well I think there are a few prolife orgs like Democrats for life which are pro-contraception

If you go to their actual site, rather than a second-hand reference, you find that Democrats for Life is very much not “pro-contraception”:

DFLA does not take a position on contraception.  Despite rumors to the contrary, we do not oppose contraception. We believe that preventing pregnancy is an important part of reducing the abortion rate in America.  There are several ways to address prevention, but there is no clear consensus because of ethical, religious or personal reasons.

I run into this argument occasionally. It’s main flaw is that it treats being wrong about a moral issue as though it were a result of immorality or stupidity. Morality is an extraordinary complicated thing that can be hard to come to. The fact that a good number of people disagree with me on this issue does not mean I think less of them - it is just evidence that we are still debating the issue as a society.

The polite characterization for this comment is “non-responsive.”

As you say, we already have a framework for addressing mothers who kill their children, including mothers who pay somebody else to do the actual killing. This includes mothers who genuinely believe their babies are not human, or who think it’s a “mercy killing” if they kill a profoundly deformed child, or who genuinely believe that a baby should not be considered fully human until, say, the age of one year. For that matter, and contrary to your assertion that everybody agrees infanticide is wrong, there are indeed people who think killing a child is justified (or, at least, not murder) under certain circumstances.

So vague and ill-fleshed meanderings about other people’s morality or their foolishness in disagreeing with you or silly blog posts about how abortion was invented like, yesterday are irrelevant. We have rules for dealing with people who kill babies. All you need to do is roll back the starting date on those rules from “right after birth” to “right after conception”.

Why don’t you and Austin want to do that?

Forget your tenuous grasp of how evolution works, the very premise of your argument--no induced abortions for our dumb ancestors--is utter bunk. Everybody was doing it, not to mention writing about it, in the ancient world (silphium, Queen Anne’s Lace, pennyroyal); unless you want to argue that they got that knowledge from space aliens what you thought was an argument turns out to be a big pile of nothing.

Explain how my grasp is “tenuous”.  The only thing tenuous is your reading comprehension.  When I spoke of our ancestors, I did not limit the term “ancestor” to apply specifically to our human ancestors.

Also, can you define “sexual standards” and produce some data in support of your assertion that these, so far, nebulous standards would doubtlessly reduce the abortion rate?

Making abortion illegal would reduce the abortion rate.  Making abortion illegal is a fundamental part of sexual standards.  Sexual standards = no sex until marriage.

What biology book are you using?  Pollen is the male “seed”.  Most plants reproduce sexually, and require genetic material from two separate, male and female gametes.  Even in the cases of self-fertilization, two gametes are still required.

How exactly do you think the female plant “fertilizes” a male seed?  What exactly is the salt that she sprinkles on it?

I typed “male” when I meant female.  What does the terminology we use to describe plant reproduction have anything to do with the moral status of an embryo, anyway?

Dude, you’re the one that just got through assuring us that there was no such thing as a seed embryo. How about you provide some kind of reliable source for this, um, “information” before you start in all explainin’ the botanolobioplantology to us, huh?

As irrelevant as the terminology is that we use to describe the products of plant reproduction… there is no such term as a “seed embryo”.

you say:

Thank God. I don’t want my tax dollars funding the most vile sort of “ableism”.

You do realize that your position is incoherent, yes?

Explain, don’t assert.

Try to focus, please. We’re not talking about organ donations, we’re talking about pregnant women. One more time, you are not “pro-life” because you support using the State to increase pregnant women’s mortality by forcing them to carry to term.

I am not using the state to do that, because it is neither the means nor the end.  You may as well say that I am not pro-life because I support using the State to increase the mortality of people with organ failure by opposing forced organ donation.

In your hypothetical, there’s one woman, one baby, and nothing/no one else--the mother is not producing milk/is dead, the baby is starving/dying. In your third-world country example, there’s a lactating woman, and two babies--one is fed, the other is starving/dying due to limited resources. So?

In my hypothetical, no other women are willing to feed the baby.  The mother has the means to, and it would put the same burden on her health and liberty as your typical pregnancy in America.  You don’t seem too eager to take on this argument. Hmm…

Yet another unsupported, not to mention confused--OK to have an elective abortion if there’s formula around?--assertion. Forget your pronouncement that, because a state of pregnancy exists (one entity--the pregnancy as part of a maternal internal organ), part of the products of conception, namely the fetus, gets separate rights. If women people have the right to use other bodies as a means of their own survival in the context of a pregnancy, then pregnant women clearly have the right to terminate the pregnancy and insure their survival.

“Women people” do not have the right to use other bodies as a means of their own survival in the context of a pregnancy, if by “women people” you are referring to pregnant women.  This paragraph is incoherent.

Austin?  Dude, I hate to break it to you, but your insistence that there is no similarity between how trees and humans reproduce is definitively not helping your case that your opposition to women has absolutely nothing to do with punishing women for having sex.  ‘Cuz main differences between how trees and humans get “sperm” to meet “egg” is all the bumping uglies that humans have to do.

Holy shit, there is such a thing as a “plant embryo!” That’s the last time I ever assume that just because a Pandagon commenter says something, it isn’t true.

In any case, the terminology we use to describe plant reproduction is entirely irrelevant.  A fertilized oak seed is not an oak tree, just as an infant is not a teenager or an adult.

As you say, we already have a framework for addressing mothers who kill their children, including mothers who pay somebody else to do the actual killing. This includes mothers who genuinely believe their babies are not human, or who think it’s a “mercy killing” if they kill a profoundly deformed child, or who genuinely believe that a baby should not be considered fully human until, say, the age of one year. For that matter, and contrary to your assertion that everybody agrees infanticide is wrong, there are indeed people who think killing a child is justified (or, at least, not murder) under certain circumstances.

So vague and ill-fleshed meanderings about other people’s morality or their foolishness in disagreeing with you or silly blog posts about how abortion was invented like, yesterday are irrelevant. We have rules for dealing with people who kill babies. All you need to do is roll back the starting date on those rules from “right after birth” to “right after conception”.

Why don’t you and Austin want to do that?

Read this.

“Comment number #358!  That means that my post yesterday has generated three hundred responses total.  Who here thinks I can make it to 400?”

Yeah, it’s all about you, isn’t it, “Austin”? While slowly making my way through this monster of a thread, I somehow got the impression you weren’t exactly spouting your looney fundamentalist nonsense because you were interested in the merits of Socratic debate. Call it a hunch. Thanks for proving me right.

Meanwhile, I have to echo the point a couple of others have already made: Isn’t it sad that a couple of energetic sociopaths can highjack an entire thread like this, particularly when there are quite a few issues to be discussed now that the Democratic “leadership” has fucked over its base yet again?

Making abortion illegal would reduce the abortion rate.  Making abortion illegal is a fundamental part of sexual standards.  Sexual standards = no sex until marriage.

You <i>do</do> realize that married women get abortions, right?  Hell, were I to get pregnant right now, my husband would be the one driving me to the clinic.

And per the Guttmacher Institute, the region with the lowest number of abortions is....Europe!  Allow me to quote a few relevant conclusions:

“The lowest abortion rate in the world is in Western Europe (12 per 1,000 women aged 15–44). The rate is 17 in Northern Europe and 21 in Northern America (Canada and the United States of America). [1]”

“Legal restrictions on abortion do not affect its incidence. For example, the abortion rate is 29 in Africa, where abortion is illegal in many circumstances in most countries, and it is 28 in Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds. The lowest rates in the world are in Western and Northern Europe, where abortion is accessible with few restrictions. “

“Approximately 220,000 children worldwide lose their mothers every year from abortion-related death.”

“More than 100 million married women in developing countries have an unmet need for contraception, meaning they are sexually active; are able to become pregnant; do not want to have a child soon or at all; and are not using any method of contraception, either modern or traditional.”

I suck at linking stuff in html, so Google “Facts on Induced Abortion Worldwide” and it’s the first link that comes up.

I typed “male” when I meant female.  What does the terminology we use to describe plant reproduction have anything to do with the moral status of an embryo, anyway?

That still doesn’t make any sense.  Do you think that female plants make seeds and that male plants somehow fertilize them, but the seeds can also grow without fertilization?  Seeds are not made until after fertilization.  Seriously, what biology text are using?  I want to make my sure my future children never end with the same thing.

Hmm...make that I suck at html in general.

This is all quite simple:

most of us here think the people pushing for this are anti-women because they are fighting against things that help women and give them more freedom (abortion, contraception, Family Leave, support of day care, ...) and believe that women are inferior in some major way (most conservative protestant churches think husbands are the ‘natural’ head of the household, some think women’s ‘natural’ place is in the home; Catholics think that women should not be in the main positions of power in the Church and also think the husband is the ‘natural’ head of the household). In other words we have concrete reasons for believing they are anti-women.

most of us here do not think of a blastocyte as human life--it is alive, but it only has the potential for human life (and many fail to become human--miscarriage is fairly common). There is no definite threshold when a fetus becomes human, but since almost everyone agrees that abortion is ok if the woman’s life is in danger then pretty much everyone agrees with us that the woman is more human than the fetus.

As an aside, an identical twin is not formed from any adult but is mostly a clone of its twin-- does that mean it’s not human since it’s not formed at contraception?

Sexual standards = no sex until marriage.

So 95% of American adults have no sexual standards?

Yes, Austin, I’ve read and replied to the link you continue to post. Repeatedly posting the same link isn’t a rebuttal or a persuasive follow-up.

John D., nobody (I hope) thinks that these two actually are reachable - a sufficiently degenerate troll being indistinguishable from a wingnut, and vice versa. But other people reading this thread run into similar arguments all the time; indeed, the “we wouldn’t possibly jail women” idiocy is one of the pillars of the anti-choice movement. It’s useful to present counterarguments that others can take away and apply elsewhere.

I just ... this clown has gone beyond anything I’ve learned to expect from even the stupidest right-wingers. He doesn’t even seem to mind the pants-shitting level of self-embarrassment he’s racked up so far.

‘Cuz main differences between how trees and humans get “sperm” to meet “egg” is all the bumping uglies that humans have to do.

Karinna A:  Get to do, is what I think you meant to say! 

And per the Guttmacher Institute, the region with the lowest number of abortions is....Europe!  Allow me to quote a few relevant conclusions:

“The lowest abortion rate in the world is in Western Europe (12 per 1,000 women aged 15–44). The rate is 17 in Northern Europe and 21 in Northern America (Canada and the United States of America). [1]”

“Legal restrictions on abortion do not affect its incidence. For example, the abortion rate is 29 in Africa, where abortion is illegal in many circumstances in most countries, and it is 28 in Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds. The lowest rates in the world are in Western and Northern Europe, where abortion is accessible with few restrictions. “

What they’re not telling you is that there is a much, much higher demand for abortion in Africa than in Europe - and yet the rates are the same!  Countries in which abortion is illegal have a much higher demand for it as compared to countries where it is legal.  Keep this in mind.

When they say “legal restrictions on abortion do not affect its incidence”, all they are saying is “countries in which abortion is legal, on average, have the same abortion rates as countries where it is illegal”.  This is because the demand for abortion in countries where it is illegal just so happens to be much greater than countries where it is legal. They are not saying “making abortion illegal will not reduce its incidence”.  There is an extremely subtle yet crucial difference between the two claims.

The Guttmacher institute has admitted that “criminalization would reduce… abortion’s incidence...”

“More than 100 million married women in developing countries have an unmet need for contraception, meaning they are sexually active; are able to become pregnant; do not want to have a child soon or at all; and are not using any method of contraception, either modern or traditional.”

I would have no problem with teaching married couples how to use NFP.

That still doesn’t make any sense.  Do you think that female plants make seeds and that male plants somehow fertilize them, but the seeds can also grow without fertilization?  Seeds are not made until after fertilization.  Seriously, what biology text are using?  I want to make my sure my future children never end with the same thing.

I don’t remember what biology textbook we used.  The terminology we use to describe plant reproduction is absolutely meaningless to the abortion debate.  It’s a complete red herring to start talking about plant reproduction.

most of us here do not think of a blastocyte as human life--it is alive, but it only has the potential for human life (and many fail to become human--miscarriage is fairly common). There is no definite threshold when a fetus becomes human, but since almost everyone agrees that abortion is ok if the woman’s life is in danger then pretty much everyone agrees with us that the woman is more human than the fetus.

With the exception of indirect abortions in the case of ectopic pregnancy, I do not agree that abortion is OK if the woman’s life is in danger, any more than I agree that forced organ donation should be allowed if someone’s life is in danger.

As an aside, an identical twin is not formed from any adult but is mostly a clone of its twin-- does that mean it’s not human since it’s not formed at contraception?

The twins were “concieved” when the zygote split.  I never said that being formed at conception is an essential property of being human.

So 95% of American adults have no sexual standards?

I’m sure they have some, but they are not ideal.

And you think that these “ideal” sexual standards (i.e. your conservative christian ones) should have the force of law, Austin?

That means Austin that you are far outside the mainstream. Most people in the US are ok with abortion if the woman’s life is in danger. The fact that you think a woman should have to go through with pregnancy even if it might kill her tells us a lot about you.

The terminology we use to describe plant reproduction is absolutely meaningless to the abortion debate.  It’s a complete red herring to start talking about plant reproduction.

This isn’t about terminology.  I don’t care what you call it, but plant and animal reproduction are very similar.  It’s understandable that you’re embarrassed about your lack of knowledge, but you can’t just pretend it doesn’t matter.  A seed is at the same stage of development as a fertilized egg.  I only asked if you are consistent in your views.  If you think human life begins at conception, do you feel the same way about plant life?  If you think that destroying a fertilized egg is the same thing as murdering a human, do you think that destroying a seed is the same thing as uprooting a sapling?  Being ignorant of basically biology is not an excuse to be hypocritical.

And you think that these “ideal” sexual standards (i.e. your conservative christian ones) should have the force of law, Austin?

To some extent. I don’t think that “the force of law” should play a primary role in directly preventing people from having premarital sex.  Social mores can do that.  What the government should do is clear a path for society to establish those mores, by means of obscenity laws and such.

This isn’t about terminology.  I don’t care what you call it, but plant and animal reproduction are very similar.  It’s understandable that you’re embarrassed about your lack of knowledge, but you can’t just pretend it doesn’t matter.  A seed is at the same stage of development as a fertilized egg.  I only asked if you are consistent in your views.  If you think human life begins at conception, do you feel the same way about plant life?  If you think that destroying a fertilized egg is the same thing as murdering a human, do you think that destroying a seed is the same thing as uprooting a sapling?  Being ignorant of basically biology is not an excuse to be hypocritical.

Morally, I do think that destroying a seed is the same thing as uprooting a sapling.

To some extent. I don’t think that “the force of law” should play a primary role in directly preventing people from having premarital sex.

And what punishment do you propose for people who have premarital sex?  Stoning? The stocks?  Forced childbirth?  Yeah, that’s what I thought.  Isn’t it convenient when women are the ones who get punished most?

Morally, I do think that destroying a seed is the same thing as uprooting a sapling.

I’ll remember that next time I swallow a seed.  Is uprooting a sapling morally equivalent to chopping down a grown tree?