Thank you.  I have run into many internet doctors since this happened.  Sadly, several of them have been women:  http://www.justplainpolitics.com/pro-choice-doctor-shot-killed-t18981.html

I think it’s so much easier when it’s men, and it usually is them.  I know how to deal with them because I know what makes them tick; fear, misogyny and the desire to control women sexually.  But the women confound me.  And they enrage me. 

Anyway, this will come in handy.

The women have the same motivations as the men: fear, misogyny, and the desire to control women sexually.  They believe by doing this, they get to be one of the “good” ones.

I think that, with women, there’s another factor, too:  the desperate need to believe that they themselves will never have to suffer through finding out that their wanted child has a fatal birth defect or that their otherwise healthy child is killing them.  That only happens to other people, and they must have deserved it, anyway. 

They don’t want to believe that they or other women they know could die or have to abort a pregnancy gone wrong, so they just don’t.  It’s like the women on rape juries who vote to acquit the suspect to prove to themselves that rape doesn’t really happen, which means they’re safe from it.

I got into a debate with a friend’s girlfriend over late term abortion. She’d had an abortion herself at 15, because she didn’t want to be stuck with the child’s father for the rest of her life, but she believed that abortion was wrong and other women shouldn’t have the option, especially because most of the women *she* knew got abortions all willy nilly and used it as birth control.

Myself and another friend argued that most women don’t use abortion as birth control, because that’s expensive and no one likes having their uterus scraped repeatedly. She kept going on and on about this one girl she knew who had five kids and kept getting pregnant and having a late term abortion. I called bullshit on this last one, telling her that no doctor in their right mind would perform a late term abortion on a perfectly healthy woman/baby, that in and of itself is illegal, with my friend backing me up. She wouldn’t listen and since I couldn’t prove that she was making this story up, I told her that her friend probably went to a shady doctor and had it done, but you can’t punish the entire woman’s population for what a few shady people do and there are a lot of women who’s babies are severally deformed or the woman’s health is in danger.

This conversation went on in a circle for a few more minutes, with the girlfriend insisting we were wrong and that abortion should be stopped. Finally, I got pissed and told her that had it not been for abortion she wouldn’t have the life she has now, which is presumably better than had she been stuck with a child with a man she didn’t love. She looked at me and without missing a beat goes, “I know.”

We had all been drinking but I can tell you that the anger and frustration I felt sobered me up hard. At first I couldn’t believe that she was saying this, and then I remembered the My Abortion is the Only Moral Abortion and the mental disconnect people have when it comes to things that can help them but don’t want to allow it to help others. But still, to have it up close and personal was incredibly jarring.

McArdle is kind of odd - sometimes she says things that make a lot of sense, like “Opposing Sotomayor because of her political leanings is one thing, but all the bigotry is stupid and pointless and makes you look terrible.”

And then there’s this. Oh well.

She kept going on and on about this one girl she knew who had five kids and kept getting pregnant and having a late term abortion.

I always wonder, what do the people who rant about “abortion used as a contraceptive” see as the alternative?  A woman who’s that irresponsible and already has 5 kids is going to magically straighten out and become a good mother because she has yet another kid she can barely support?

If anyone out there actually is using abortion as birth control, we’re probably all lucky that they’re doing it, because they’re not going to be the kind of people who should be raising kids anyway.

I’m watching Hardball w/Chris Matthews - his coverage is painful.  On what planet is William Saletan from Slate an appropriate authority on reproductive rights?

argh.
s.

This doesn’t sound right to me, but I did some googling on it and can’t find any rebuttals. This is from a comment section after an article in my local paper:

Posted by Comrade Xi back from reeducation 05:02 PM, 06/01/2009
Rich and especially schoolmom….“In 1987, the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), an affiliate of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), collected questionnaires from 1,900 women who were at abortion clinics procuring abortions. Of the 1,900, “420 had been pregnant for 16 or more weeks.” These 420 women were asked to choose among a menu of reasons why they had not obtained the abortions earlier in their pregnancies. Only two percent (2%) said “a fetal problem was diagnosed late in pregnancy,” compared to 71% who responded “did not recognize that she was pregnant or misjudged gestation,” 48% who said “found it hard to make arrangements,” and 33% who said “was afraid to tell her partner or parents.” The report did not indicate that any of the 420 late abortions were performed because of maternal health problems. [“Why Do Women Have Abortions?,” Family Planning Perspectives, July/August 1988.]”....quick with invective, short of fact.

UltraMagnus says: My Abortion is the Only Moral Abortion

Ding, ding, ding!  We have a winner!  This comes from the same playbook as “Do as I say, not as I do”.

So.  Now I can move onto the observation that if you actually think late-term abortion is murder, then the murder of Dr. Tiller makes total sense.

In other words, if you’re aggressively stupid and completely ignorant about a medical procedure, then murdering a physician who performs it makes total sense. Thanks for that, Megan—just the kind of reasoning I’d expect from a Libertarian.

And of course, the last thing this champion against the Tyranny of the State® wants is for the government to make the law more permissive for medically ethical procedures—Ms. Teabagger understands that deregulation is only a good thing when it’s applied to corporations.

This doesn’t sound right to me, but I did some googling on it and can’t find any rebuttals. This is from a comment section after an article in my local paper

Here’s the problem, though—16 weeks is not usually considered a “late-term” abortion.  Under Roe, it’s a second-trimester abortion and is subject to more restrictions, but it’s still legal in many states.  Dr. Tiller did abortions that were well beyond 16 weeks—more like 22 or 24 weeks.

There unfortunately is not a good definition of what “late-term” is.  Obviously, the forced birthers put it as close to the end of the first trimester as possible (like, oh, 16 weeks, 4 weeks past the first trimester) and others put it later.

And for people who think that women always know that they’re pregnant, Discovery Health now has a whole series on women who didn’t realize they were pregnant until they went into labor.  Hell, my sister-in-law’s friend was misdiagnosed and the doctors didn’t realize she was pregnant until 6 months in.  It’s not so hard to believe that a woman wouldn’t realize she was pregnant until 4 months in. 

Pregnancy is not an exact science, no matter how much wingnuts want to pretend it is.

Also, rich, you can ask your trollish friend if he has any statistics that aren’t old enough to drink—that’s from an article published in 1988.

I always wonder, what do the people who rant about “abortion used as a contraceptive” see as the alternative?

Sluts keeping their legs together, presumably.

While I disagree with Amanda in that I think it is both possible and more common than she gives it credit for to be both principled *and* anti-abortion, bringing up contraception and sex education is a good litmus test. If they’re against all three, it’s all about the sluts.

Mnemosyne, I did look at the AGI site and they themselves said in 1995 “Well, the last time we looked at this was 1988…” so they don’t appear to have anything more current. I did find one item that our guy neglected to include “The vast majority of respondents cited a variety of socioeconomic and family considerations as their main reasons for seeking an abortion,” which is consistent with what feminists have been claiming, that when women seek abortions, they generally have good reason to do so.
One would think that as the prospective birth date approaches, then a woman’s reasons would get more and more serious, but that the thesis that he was trying to refute.

Really, rich? I found statistics from 2004. Right here: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html Search the page for “When women have abortions (in weeks from the last menstrual period)” and then come back and try and tell us about how 22% were having them post-16 weeks.

Oh cool! I copied and pasted their list of reasons as to why women get abortions into my local papers comments section. Yeah, the reasons again closely track with the idea that it’s a serious thing to do and women aren’t going to seek abortions for trivial reasons. The fact that the numbers of abortions go down with each succeeding period, well it just makes sense that the reasons for getting abortions should be more and more serious as time goes on.

On what planet is William Saletan from Slate an appropriate authority on reproductive rights?

Planet Abortion Is Icky So I Wish It Would go Away.

As Cynthia Gorney noted, the prom-dress abortion (the pregnant teen realises her dress won’t fit, so she goes off to have a late-term abortion) is basically a myth. However, the nature of the debate in the US is such that defenders of the right to a safe, legal abortion, who can point to cases with awful medical complications that occur late in pregnancy, are also forced into taking a position on prom-dress abortions. That’s the consequence of the belief that the decision is a private one between the woman and her physician.

There is, of course, a distinction between supporting the right to choose and supporting or even being comfortable with the choice. On the other side, there’s no real distinction. Lord Saletan’s position is the worst of both ways; like Justice Kennedy, he demands moral agency over women’s bodies—and implies that women are not adequate moral agents—on the basis of his own emotional reaction.

“You know, the quality that genuinely decent and brave people like Dr. George Tiller had in spades,”

The problem is, every photo of Tiller made him look like a complete psycho, a guy incapable of feeling any human emotion beyond sadism and greed. Maybe, under that mask of brutality lay a beautiful soul. Then again, Adolf Hitler did love dogs and small children ...

Gee, Eric, ya think maybe:
1. ugly people can be nice
2. a high stress job takes a physical toll notable in one’s appearance
3. folks eager to portray him as controversial (mainstream news) to a complete psycho (the right wing) aren’t choosing pictures of him frolicking with puppies
4. EVERYONE has unflattering photos taken

The problem is, every photo of Tiller made him look like a complete psycho, a guy incapable of feeling any human emotion beyond sadism and greed. Maybe, under that mask of brutality lay a beautiful soul. Then again, Adolf Hitler did love dogs and small children ...

Thanks for continuing to confirm your mouth-breathing idiocy, EricJG (see also your: voting for the “idealist” Bush twice; climate-change and evolution denialism; anti-choice Libertarianism). I’ll bet you’ve voted against a candidate soley on the basis on his unflattering B&W;photo in his opponent’s TV ads (as long as the voice-over ended with a sneering “He’s a liberal).

Here’s a noble-looking hero that’ll be more to your taste, Eric. Read about what lies under his mask, then read the patient testimonies about Dr. Tiller, and then tell us about the value of superficial appearances, moron.

[oh, and speaking of heroism, where’s your friend Dana? He always has something to say about abortion posts here, and yet he’s strangely absent]

I don’t see that, Eric.  He looks like your typical Midwestern man to me—-cheerful visage that comes from a humble dedication to a bullshit-free lifestyle.  In a world like ours that’s full of shit, that can look different.  It especially contrasts with the faux piety and sanctimonious drama queen shit of anti-choicers.

But I know who I’d rather be alone with, for sure.  The pious nutbags of the world are the ones who, for instance, are eager to cover up for priests who molest children.

So.  Now I can move onto the observation that if you actually think late-term abortion is murder, then the murder of Dr. Tiller makes total sense.

So do you personally want murder actual murderers?  Then get out there and murder the guy who murdered Dr. Tiller.  Then I guess someone else gets to murder you because you murdered someone.  This only makes sense if you think that capital punishment should be used and you don’t believe that people deserve due process (although Dr. Tiller never did anything illegal anyway).  If it “makes sense” to just murder anyone you don’t agree with, then we’d all be dead pretty fast.  I don’t even think that actual murderers should be executed, and I certainly don’t think they should be murdered in their church, where they should be the safest.

Yeah, the reasons again closely track with the idea that it’s a serious thing to do and women aren’t going to seek abortions for trivial reasons.

I don’t give a shit if a woman’s reason is trivial from yours or anyone else’s perspective.  It’s her personal uterus inside her personal body.  Whatever reason she has, it’s not trivial to her.

Saying that these reasons aren’t trivial suggests that women, with our little ladybrains, are just casting about, flitting from idea to idea, much like a butterfly in a field.  We are helpless!  We are simpletons!  We are mental and moral children!  Abortion must only be for those with serious, serious issues.  And other people, i.e. the patriarchy, gets to decide which reasons are serious and which aren’t.

If you or anybody else wants to gestate the fetus, have at it.  Until that is possible, kindly STFU with your “good reasons” and “bad reasons.”

Shorter Eric:
It’s OK to judge people by their looks and it’s also OK to murder ugly people.

Of course anti-choice people like Eric are overjoyed that one of their own murdered a doctor who saved women’s lives (Eric is a conservative no matter how much he claims to be libertarian).  Of course, he realizes that wanting women to die and wanting men to die if they don’t also want women to die seems heinous to any reasonable person, so he’s grasping at straws.  The best excuse he can come up with is that the guy looked ugly.  Of course, if your only source of information is Bill O’Reilly, and intelligent person would realize that O’Reilly will purposely pick the worst possible pictures.  But if you accept that people should be murdered based on how evil they look, then I’m surprised you’re not advocating the murder of several conservative leaders.  Stop being a hypocrite.

Judging what people do by how people look?  Look up photos of Ted Bundy and see how well that fits.  Jeffrey Dahmer wasn’t all the hideous either.  In other words, Eric is an idiot.

I’m sure McArdle had similar posts after 9/11 and the Holocaust, since in both cases the people doing the killing thought they were saving people (it’s ok for me to bring up the Nazis since Megan does it first). Idiot.