the facts are biased, we all know that

I think the most shocking thing about it is that Pinsky wasn’t the total douche he usually is.

It’s kind of amazing how subversive it seems to air a show where a doctor asks questions of women and listens to their answers. I’ve certainly never seen anything like this on television. His objective is just to give these women a voice.

Also, surprised that he wasn’t a total douche. I guess I didn’t give him enough credit.

And to think, when I was in grade school, MTV had a reputation for being a rude, troublemaking influence on youths. Now it’s MTV that’s the one not afraid to broadcast a mature, open-minded consideration of serious public issues?

11:30 PM on the Tuesday after Xmas might not be high-profile, but how often will we see other networks do better?

The whole LA Times article is also good journalism, offering a broad look at the issues surrounding this TV special, and doesn’t even waste time with any token antichoice “balance” except for the quote Amanda highlights, in which the antichoicers embarrass themselves.

Best, most honest and informational quote (taken from the special) might be:

“About 750,000 girls in the U.S. get pregnant every year, and although nearly a third of these teen pregnancies result in abortion, we’ve never shown this choice on ‘16 and Pregnant’ up until now,” he admits. “It can be a polarizing topic, and there’s quite frankly no way to talk about this and please everyone. Although controversial to some, abortion is one of the three viable options, and it’s among the safest, most common medical procedures in the U.S., so we thought it was important for us to discuss.”

I hear that, pablo. I was really worried he was going to be a dick, but instead he offered solid information and kindness, and even asked good questions.

Refreshing to hear that journalism is being committed somewhere in America.

You want to see more journalism?  Watch E.R. Murrow’s/CBS’s “Harvest of Shame”.  Those guys just asked very simple, non-leading answers, and let the responses speak for themselves.

Harvest of Shame is incredible. I also highly recommend.

“It’s fascinating that conservatives basically are admitting up front that they have no argument if they’re not allowed to introduce lies and propaganda into the situation.”

Well, yes, that’s true. And they hate to have you point it out.

From growing up in the Born Again World, I can say there’s nothing they hate more than reality; or those who attempt to embrace it.

MTV usually has good documentaries. Its their reality programming that makes me cringe. At one point in my life I had an extended period of unemployment and during that time I watched a lot of MTV documentaries, which are usually on during the middle of the day.

“It’s fascinating that conservatives basically are admitting up front that they have no argument if they’re not allowed to introduce lies and propaganda into the situation.”

Well as you know reality has a well known liberal bias.

It’s true—when you think about everything factual about abortion that the anti-crowd has claimed, you’re hard pressed to think of anything that’s not a lie.  Abortion causes breast cancer, burdens women with depression and grief, impedes carrying a pregnancy to term later on, gives careless men an excuse to run away whereas in an alternative world without abortion they’d provide marriage/support, etc.—all lies.  Facts just don’t work for their side.  I guess that’s why they prefer theology and vague abstractions like the right of an embryo to life.  Equally wrongheaded, but harder to refute.

I love the idea that the documentary was biased because it didn’t include some cheerleader for doctor-killing psychopaths shrieking hysterically about the Wrath of God…

What exactly, would the ‘other side’ be, anyway—someone helpfully explaining to the subjects that they were Fallen Women in the thrall of Satan?

It’s fascinating that conservatives basically are admitting up front that they have no argument if they’re not allowed to introduce lies and propaganda into the situation.

Well of course.  Jill Stanek was canned from her nursing job for lying and it turned her into an antichoice superstar.

Countdown to Jerome incoherently shrieking about child killing.

Isn’t Jill Stanek the one who claimed she stole fetal remains and photos from the hospital where she worked? And it was proven she had faked all the so-called ‘evidence’? I get trolls from her Godforsaken site to this day.  They’re all pathetic little guys who can’t get laid who turn their sexual frustration into concern about babies—-babies that they wouldn’t want in real life, but as long as they can’t laid, they’re very obsessed with.

Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true!

Jill Stanek is the one who claimed that the hospital where she worked was leaving babies to die in the laundry room. An investigation ensued, because what she described is illegal, obviously. But the investigation turned up nothing.

Facts just don’t work for their side.  I guess that’s why they prefer theology and vague abstractions….

Interesting angle!  So, despite the preponderance of liberals in what we consider creative endeavors, the true creators, pound for pound, are the self-deluding rightists.

And ‘poundage’ is the proper unit of measurement.  Or is sewage measured in gallons?

Speaking of the gap between ideology and facts on the ground:  in yesterday’s Times blog Linda Greenhouse says that much of the U.S. is turning into Ireland.  Women in Ireland are citizens of Europe and have human rights under the European Convention but they have no right to an abortion in their own country.  They must travel, and too bad for them if they can’t afford a trip—just like women in Wyoming, where abortion is unavailable even though Roe v. Wade is still the law.

Eric @ 17 - Usually cubic volume - either meters or feet/sec or hour.  Gallons is usually too small a unit.  The biomass removed is sometimes referred to in pounds.

Am I the only one who misses when Music Television showed music videos and the Cable News Network actually did the news rather than endless hours of commentary and pundits screaming?

@helen #20: we live in a world in which it is simply passe to say things which are basically true.

I’m totally amazed taht MTV pulled this off.  A friend of mine was laid off from MTV News much of a decade ago so they could produce more reality TV.  Well folks, journalism IS the ULTIMATE reality TV.

<i.Now it’s MTV that’s the one not afraid to broadcast a mature, open-minded consideration of serious public issues? </i>

Never mind that what this clearly shows is that it is a serious PRIVATE issue, and damn well should be.  The only way they could have gotten “balance” is to talk to someone who considered abortion and then decided against it.  That might have been worse for the anti crowd, as it would likely have involved someone in blackout on camera honestly saying that she wishes she hadn’t had her baby.

Haters gonna hate,

For balance they could have some women who decided to continue the pregnancy but now regretted it.

Hey dumbass, liberals wouldn’t feel the need to defend abortion if it weren’t under attack.  Can you explain to me how you managed to type all those words without having a functioning brain?  That really is kind of weird.

Amanda, cleanup on aisle 26 and 28 please?

Paultard777 #26:

Two reasons:

1. A woman’s right to control her own body
2. Actual life > potential life.

Most of us like babies just fine, and no one—no one—should be encouraged to have an abortion against her will. But the right should remain, because we don’t know enough about another person’s life to judge their reasons for having one.

But you knew all that already, didn’t you? I bet you just don’t care as long as you can cause trouble.

why liberals are so desperately, madly in love with abortion?

Why are conservatives despise taxes so desperately and madly? Would they really rather carry a baby for nine months than write one check in April?

Reminds me of the most fervent Libertarian I knew. He—a graduate of UC Berkeley when attendance was dirt-cheap because the taxpayers footed the vast majority of the cost, and the child of two public school teachers—resented paying taxes the most.

Unfortunately for you, R3v, you being a douchey smarmy doucheburger smarmosaur, you only get the one civil response before I start mocking you as the doucheosaur smarmburger concern troll you are. Mmmm, feeding time….

R3v, why are libertarians so interested in government leaving them alone, while so eager to get into the gynecologist’s office with others to second-guess the patient and doctor?  And for the record, fertilized egg is not a “baby”, it’s something that could become a baby months hence under the right circumstances.

Try this on for size, 777.

Pregnancy and giving birth are hazardous, and the hazards are not terribly predictable. Some women are terribly sick straight through. Some women have fine pregnancies and horror show births. As it happens my pregnancies were both fine, but the second birth included surgery the old-fashioned way - you know, where two large people hold you down so you don’t thrash too much while the guy with the scalpel works.

I like babies quite well, thank you, and I adore my two kids, but I’m not doing that again short of someone tying me down and holding me at gun point.

Nor am I thrilled about legislatures getting the final say as to what does or doesn’t qualify as sufficient hazard - that’s not their area of expertise, not something they have a stake in, and not their business.

Nor, as much as I am fond of babies, do I consider a 2-3 month fetus a baby, any more than my ten-year-old is an adult, or I am a senior citizen - developmental stages count.

Its like the old saying about how nobody thinks more about gay sex than a homophobe. “pro-lifers” just sit and imagine all those dirty dirty sluts having all that unprotected sex and they go to that abortion clinic with that DJ music pounding and they whisper sweet nothings in to their ears….

I would like also to point out that the pro-life movement is objectively full of shit. I can say this because pro-life women—sincere, dedicated anti-abortion activists, not just wishy-washy ones—have abortions too, for the same justifications as pro-choice women.

Chet, sorta technically - it is called a VIABLE fetus, meaning “can survive outside the womb long enough to become a kid”.  In other words, no longer a parasite.

Of course, getting an abortion at such a late stage is VERY rare and usually requires a legal hearing and court consent and pretty extreme circumstances or an already dead fetus or nearly dead mother.  Idiots from the Pro-Misogyny brigade want you to think that large numbers of women wake up one day late in pregnancy with second thoughts, and waltz over to an “abortionist”.  Doesn’t happen.

Singer isn’t talking about abortion so his views are irrelevant to this discussion. 
89% of abortions occur during the first trimester.  A first-trimester fetus isn’t a baby, and has a long way to go before it becomes one.  Viable, as you know, means capable of living outside the womb.
You raise the question of a fetus nearing viability.  Nobody aborts that late unless there are very serious reasons, such as a threat to the life of the mother, which is why such procedures are so rare, and so necessary, like the case in Phoenix where the Catholic authorities were willing to let both mother and child die rather than performing an abortion to save the life of the mother.  Would you have let both mother and child die to preserve your principles?

Sorry, revo, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…

Ms. Kate and gretchen: you leave out the case of the anencephalic child. Destined to survive only briefly, if at all, outside the womb, possessing only a brainstem they are yet fully equipped to vote Republican.

For every Elgin, there are numerous babies that do not make it at that stage. Connection to ECMO and other technologies is hardly “viable” and most babies that age DO NOT survive. That is why the legal definition is 28 weeks FOR GOOD REASON.  Deal with it.

Getting over the fact a reactionary is calling himself a ‘revolutionist’ (at least doesn’t have the cheek to call himself a revolutionary, that would take the cake):

Since when are Libertarians so enamored with defending squatters’ rights? It seems they’ll go to any lengths to defend the right to own land (which is a commons and isn’t the fruit of any man or woman’s labor) whereas a woman’s own body can just be squatted by any foreign entity that comes along.

Oh right. Libertarians don’t care about unpersons’ (womens’) rights, nevermind property rights.

r3v:

You aren’t interested in being educated at all. You’ve already demonstrated your malicious intent with your slanted language.

The basic truth that underpins all libertarian philosophy and makes sense of all their otherwise nonsensical arguments: their ideal state is a medieval monarchy with themselves as king of it. (Naturally they think they would be benevolent despots.)

We had to have at least one prolifer showing up as a practical demonstration of how ridiculous prolife thinking is.

r3v:

Do you always think in reductio ad absurdum, or do you just do it when you’re trying to harrass people you disagree with?

Not to mention “honoring its women” - you know by not subjecting them to involuntary slave labor?

I would like to live in a culture of life promoted by Jesus which honors its women and protects its children (born and unborn) and the poor and powerless.

So good to see you’re all on board with the Quakers and Unitarians, then.

Jesus neve said a word about abortion.  Not one.  And again, a six-week embryo is not a “child”, or a “baby”, it’s an embryo that has a long way to go to be a baby.

I must say that I am somewhat bemused by your statement, “Most of us like babies just fine…” unless your definition of the transitive verb “like” is significantly different than mine, most people I know do not burn alive (saline abortion) butcher and dismember (D & E/Dialation & Extraction abortion) or crush the skulls (IDE/Intact Dilation & Extraction, aka, “Partial Birth” abortion) of people whom they “like.” Please clarify.
Comment #31: r3VOLutionist777

Most people I know have nervous systems and cognitive abilities, something that the bioplast you incorrectly lump in with actual, viable independent beings.

As a “libertarian” you must believe that freedom is preeminent right of all people.  An organic mass of tissue that has no independence of it’s own and must leech off of a working, independent being for a minimum of 6 - 7 months before even being able to sustain its life then another 16 years after isn’t really an independent or viable person.

If this is your current definition of “libertarian,” then I have a friend who has been unemployed for the last 18 months and would appreciate your sustaining him for the next 14 years until he is once again independent and viable in the current socio-economic state.

Please bring more strawmen.

to quote r3v “...As a Libertarian, I also (much like yourself) am opposed using force on any individual (including pre-born children) to make them do something against their will(s)...”

But forcing female to carry a pregnancy to term is acceptable?  The pre-existing female, old enough to be of reproductive capability, has less validity than the fetus? 

Forced birth should rile your Libertarian sensibilities, yet it does not. 

I wonder if you could look a wife, daughter, niece, friend, aunt, etc. in the eye and tell them that their right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term has less weight/validity to you than that mass of cells. 

I wonder if you would assert that your same female relative should risk her life to bring a fetus in to the world. 

I wonder if you would tell your female relative to carry a child to term whose conception was achieved through violence.

I wonder how you can reconcile “honoring women” while taking away their ability to make a choice for themselves about something that literally happens inside of them.

I often wonder about the anti-choicers…

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