# Damn abortion protesters **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 4, 2005, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649 "2005-04-04T13:06:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 26
**Author:** ![Muad\_Dib](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/35a633/32.png) [@Muad\_Dib](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muad_Dib)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2005, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/502 "2005-04-10T08:28:07Z")
> [@Stonebow](#): > > I’ll weigh in. I’ve been trying to follow the thread, but if someone else has made the point, I apologize in advance. > > I am willing to concede a gray area in when a fetus is to be granted rights as a human. However, being a cautious man, I am willing to concede that human life begins at conception. > > Here’s the thing- it doesn’t matter. I am very much pro-choice, not because of any arbitrary judgment on when life begins, but because no matter what, we as a society have no right to force someone to bear, host, and support that life with their bodies. We have become really blasé about pregnancy, ignoring the complications, strain, and all around misery that results from even the most wanted, routine pregnancy. Someone else made the point that abortion is less risky than pregnancy…doesn’t that make make every case of abortion one of ‘life or health of the mother’? Where does the woman’s right to self defense kick in? > > I would not want to be forced to be a life support vehicle for anyone else, and I don’t think that the courts should be able force me to. That’s what you’re asking, those of you on the pro-life/anti-choice side. > > Sure, there are instances where abortions are really not necessary, or even advisable…but that’s not my call to make. That alternatives are always worse. Too often, it all boils down to ‘this woman must shoulder the burden of her sexual behavior.’ that’s not the sort of thinking I want to be associated with. > > Get back to me when you figure out how to remove a zygote and raise it to viability with no burden to the mother. get me past those 9-10 months of being enslaved and forced to bear the child. Then we can talk about being pro-life. I understand your point, and frankly the idea of forcing another human being with the work, weight and inconvenience of a pregnancy makes me feel ill. However I see this as the cost of having sex. No, it is not fair that a woman has to bear this burden while a man can go free, but it is still there no different from a gambling debt. Also, I see this as no different than the enslavement of parents of born children. Once the egg is fertilized a child is created and you must care for that unborn child just as you would for a five year old. Do you consider parents of a five-year old “enslaved”? ---
**Author:** ![Muad\_Dib](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/35a633/32.png) [@Muad\_Dib](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muad_Dib)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2005, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/503 "2005-04-10T08:30:27Z")
> [@robertliguori](#): > > That can be flipped around. We can (and have) just as easily said that a z/e/f does not have a right to a uterus with lining and a lack of certain chemical substances in the mother’s bloodstream. In fact, this can be invoked in the exact same way that your slapping example can. They have a right to those things by the fact that the mother consented to sex and thus consented to the possibility of a fetus demanding those things. > [@](#): > > Ooh. If we can have abortions for self-defence, can we also have them for trespassing, vandalism, theft, and invasion of property? Those would only have the possibility of working in the case of rape. ---
**Author:** ![Muad\_Dib](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/35a633/32.png) [@Muad\_Dib](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muad_Dib)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2005, 8:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/504 "2005-04-10T08:31:47Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > You beat me to it. > > Even to save a wonderful, educated, saintly adult, we wouldn’t forcibly use someone else’s body. We wouldn’t steal organs, or even borrow them. We wouldn’t force blood transfusions, or bed rest, or time off work. > > We don’t do these things even if it means the death of self-aware, intelligent, adult citizens. We don’t do these things even if it means the death of persons we all acknowlege have all of the same rights we do. We don’t do it for a pope or a president or a child prodigy. No one has the right to use someone else’s body, not even for their own survival. But I say that the mother consented to those burdens by taking the risk of sex. ---
**Author:** ![Muad\_Dib](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/35a633/32.png) [@Muad\_Dib](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muad_Dib)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2005, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/505 "2005-04-10T08:37:41Z")
> [@eleanorigby](#): > > Where is the male in that shouldering of the burden of behavior? > > You forgot to mention him. He is not always held responsible. Ideally, and in my world legally, he would be. It is not fair that the woman is so physically burdened with the child. ---
**Author:** ![Muad\_Dib](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/35a633/32.png) [@Muad\_Dib](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muad_Dib)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2005, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/506 "2005-04-10T08:43:29Z")
> [@Maureen](#): > > Well, nothing, really. And people SHOULD be responsible for their actions. Unfortunately, men won’t be held physically responsible for their actions. The body changes, the labor pain, the recovery; that’s solely on the woman. Which is why I, for one, resent being told by any man that it’s my responsibility, I didn’t have to have sex, yadayadayada. It’s very easy to be judgemental when you never have to go through the consequences. > > I forget: Which comedian said that if men were to ever have to bear children, abortion would go up by 50%? They probably would. You are absolutely right. It is not fair. The woman is forced to carry the burden of pregnancy. I don’t like it. The idea of it makes my Libertarian heart feel nauseous. Women are stuck paying a price for their actions that men can never really carry and can skip out on. Maybe if we were egg laying creatures it would be different, but we are not. We are mammals and we are designed so that the female must carry the burden of pregnancy if she is going to have sex. It is not fair, but it is how things are. ---
**Author:** ![Muad\_Dib](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/35a633/32.png) [@Muad\_Dib](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muad_Dib)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2005, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/507 "2005-04-10T08:46:31Z")
> [@Maureen](#): > > Also, what kind of home life do you think a child will have when the mother is forced to have the baby? Do you really think she’s going to see that child as a blessing? Let me clue you in, bub. > My mom got pregnant with me when she was 19. Pre Roe v Wade, and she’d seen her best friend butchered by a Mexican abortion clinic, so that was out. She and my dad got married. She resented the daylights out of the fact that she never got to go to school, never finished her degree, never got to be young. Does she love me? Most assuredly. But I was very aware that the reason she didn’t become a vet was because she had me instead. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure no child ever has to feel that kind of guilt. 1. She should have then given you up for adoption. 2.So to avoid some guilt you would kill the child? ---
**Author:** ![Muad\_Dib](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/35a633/32.png) [@Muad\_Dib](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muad_Dib)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2005, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/508 "2005-04-10T08:57:55Z")
> [@Stonebow](#): > > \*\*eleanor \*\* and \*\*Maureen \*\* nailed it. There’s no equality between the genders where this is concerned, and at present, I don’t see any way in which it could be enforced. > > I also don’t like the idea of children as ‘punishment’ or ‘burdens’…‘expressions of love,’ yes…I’ll even settle for ‘happy accidents’…but when a woman does not want to bear the burden of carrying a child to term, no force should be allowed to compel her to do so. To allow it is invasive, and grants authority to my neighbors that I’d rather they not have. I don’t like it either, but I see it as no different than how we compel parents to care for their born children. > [@](#): > > As \*\*jsgoddess \*\* points out, there’s no other sphere in which we accept forced donations of organs. Why should the uterus be any different? Because with the uterus a person took actions that directly led to the situation of pregnancy. > [@](#): > > The simple answer tends to be that some people just don’t like the idea of women fucking around, and will use any cudgel necessary to attempt to curtail it. That is not true in my case or arguments. I don’t give a damned what a person does in the bedroom. I don’t care if you are gay or straight, if you are monogamous or a swinger, if you own every toy under the sun or are a strict missionary only person. All I care about is protecting peoples lives. > [@](#): > > I don’t buy the idea that “sex=baby, get over it”…simply because it’s not so. Never has been. Even when birth control was much less reliable, people took the risks to fuck around, and when it didn’t work, some of them availed themselves of perfectly natural herbs and berries to give abort their pregnancies. And, by my view, those people were murderers. . ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2005, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/509 "2005-04-10T12:06:08Z")
> [@Muad'Dib](#): > > What if my happiness depended on raping random women. Do I have a right to pursue it? I’d say that if the woman was completely contained within your body and drawing critical sustenance from you… go for it. > [@](#): > > Murder is as old as man and making it illeagal does not make it go away, but we still must fight it the best we can. I daresay slavery has a similar record. ---
**Author:** ![Syntropy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/65b543/32.png) [@Syntropy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Syntropy)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2005, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/510 "2005-04-10T18:49:36Z")
> [@Muad'Dib](#): > > They probably would. > > You are absolutely right. It is not fair. The woman is forced to carry the burden of pregnancy. I don’t like it. The idea of it makes my Libertarian heart feel nauseous. Women are stuck paying a price for their actions that men can never really carry and can skip out on. Maybe if we were egg laying creatures it would be different, but we are not. We are mammals and we are designed so that the female must carry the burden of pregnancy if she is going to have sex. It is not fair, but it is how things are. And yet, you didn’t answer as to how you would go about punishing the man who is aware of the pregnancy and assists with the abortion, monetarily or otherwise. It has nothing to do with fairness. > [@Muad'Dib](#): > > 1. She should have then given you up for adoption. > > 2.So to avoid some guilt you would kill the child? 1. Why? She loved me, and didn’t want anyone else raising me. She wanted children, just not that young. And, had she given me up after I was born, she would have regretted it her entire life. You seem to think that giving a child up for adoption is somehow less traumatic and painful than having an abortion. That just isn’t so. The bond that is formed after nine months of carrying a child is stronger than after, say, six weeks, and far more wrenching when that bond is broken. 2. No, not “kill a child.” I’m sorry, a six week fetus is not a child. Or a person, or a baby. And yes, I would terminate a pregnancy before I would bring a child into the world and resent that child for its existence. I’m just funny that way, I think children should be planned and wanted. Forcing a woman to have a child as a punishment is torture to all parties involved. I’m not sure why you fail to understand that. But again, I see what happens to that child _after_ it’s born is of no concern to you. It seems to me, **Muad’Dib** , that you simply refuse to allow yourself to see any perspective other than your own. If that’s the case, I see a very lonely life for you. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2005, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/511 "2005-04-10T20:54:33Z")
> [@Muad'Dib](#): > > And, by my view, those people were murderers… Isn’t it possible they just didn’t _understand_ what they were doing, like the women in this thread, apparantly? ---
**Author:** ![beckwall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b487fb/32.png) [@beckwall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beckwall)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/512 "2005-04-11T00:22:29Z")
> [@PinkMarabou](#): > > How about showing pictures of starving children and people who die from lack of health insurance? How about the 20,000 poeple who die every single day from extreme poverty? How about showing the number of people who have slipped into poverty? The number one reason women get abortions is because THEY CAN’T AFFORD TO HAVE THE CHILD. > > You know, the “love the fetus, hate the child” syndrome our culture perpetuates. Why don’t we put a stop to that? Get rid of the root problem first. You should be mad at the LAWMAKERS for having people in poverty to begin with. Agree. 100% on the mark. I like to ask anit-abortion people how many unwanted, disabled or uninsured children they have adopted or are supporting. Usually a moment passes as confusion spreads across their face, and then inevitably they say “But this is different” or “It’s murder”. When you think about it, a child who lives through birth only to die from malnutrition or child abuse is a pretty bad way to die, don’t you think? ---
**Author:** ![VarlosZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d78d45/32.png) [@VarlosZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VarlosZ)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/513 "2005-04-11T11:11:28Z")
Just thought I’d pop back into the thread one more time to say this: what goddamned train wreck. Whether or not you agree with it (and I don’t), the basic anti-abortion argument is a valid one and deserves to be treated with respect. Given the utter disrespect with which his views generally been treated, as well the numerous, completely uncalled-for personal attacks directed at him, **Muad’Dib** has been remarkably patient and polite. > [@](#): > > It seems to me, Muad’Dib, that you simply refuse to allow yourself to see any perspective other than your own. If that’s the case, I see a very lonely life for you. I understand that this is an easy thing to say when virtually everyone in the thread shares your perspective, but that doesn’t stop it from being either wrong-headed or ironic (or both). ---
**Author:** ![Siege](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Siege](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siege)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/514 "2005-04-11T11:49:26Z")
I think what’s drawing so much heat isn’t just his opposition to abortion, it’s also his opposition to the most effective forms of birth control, the very ones which are most likely to reduce the risk of an unwanted pregnancy and his statements that he doesn’t care about the mother of the child, not to mention statements about locking people up. I’ve read a certain callousness into his statements which you may not have. Respectfully, CJ ---
**Author:** ![Arwin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/51bf81/32.png) [@Arwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arwin)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/515 "2005-04-11T12:02:30Z")
> [@VarlosZ](#): > > Just thought I’d pop back into the thread one more time to say this: what goddamned train wreck. > > Whether or not you agree with it (and I don’t), the basic anti-abortion argument is a valid one and deserves to be treated with respect. The basic anti-abortion argument is not a valid one, and it deserves to be treated with the respect of an invalid argument. I agree that personal attacks on **Maud’Dib** are undesireable, but I have to point out that the consequences of Maud’Dib’s arbitrary decision to want to assign human rights to a bunch of cells within a woman’s body are a deep insult to many people. This includes board members, who will very understandably consider **Maud’Dib** ’s stance a personal attack on their life choices. What **Maud’Dib** has done, is work with a dataset of one (his sister), forms a relatively arbitrary theory to justify the results of that dataset (seems to have worked out ok), and then proceeds to apply this to the whole world with a dogged persistence showing a near complete disregard for the consequences of that position. The train-wreck is of **Maud’Dib** ’s own making. But I still like to give him the benefit of the doubt. I think he means well, and he seems to have a general respect for science and philosophy. He will soon learn that it doesn’t take a cruel law to justify the joy he experiences in seeing his 5 year old nephew and his 21 year old sister doing well and having had a part in that. ---
**Author:** ![robertliguori](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/46a35a/32.png) [@robertliguori](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robertliguori)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/516 "2005-04-11T12:09:24Z")
> [@VarlosZ](#): > > Whether or not you agree with it (and I don’t), the basic anti-abortion argument is a valid one and deserves to be treated with respect. Given the utter disrespect with which his views generally been treated, as well the numerous, completely uncalled-for personal attacks directed at him, **Muad’Dib** has been remarkably patient and polite. I can give you a valid argument for the Swiftian feeding of the poor to themselves, based on the principles of Sanger. I would laugh my ass off if anyone gave it any respect whatsoever. The premises are damn important. Although, I do agree, Muad’Dib has been remarkably and pleasantly melt-down resistant. Also, did he ever post his reasoning for assuming that a fertilized egg was a human, beyond the one-line snippets we kept refuting? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/517 "2005-04-11T12:57:14Z")
> [@Muad'Dib](#): > > Then I really expect you to jump to my defense when people start calling me a tyranical misogynist. I’ll do so when you stop advocating tyranny directly solely against women. Sorry, but you should be able to see that if your premise is wrong, then what you advocate is tyranny–and that many of us believe that your premise is wrong. > [@](#): > > I say that this is far more controversial than you seem to think. A person needs experience to form desire, some thing that babies, by their nature, are lacking. I still mantain that babies are tabula rasa. Find me something in a peer-reviewed journal suggesting that neonates can form no desires. It’s an extraordinary claim, that they haven’t the experiences of warmth, of pain, of hunger, of satiety. If my claim is so controversial, prove it. Do you accept that in your farmer example, the only harm done is against the farmer–that the seedlings have no rights? Do you understand that when you say the fetus **would have** become aware, you’re using a verb mood that indicates something contrary to fact? Daniel ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/518 "2005-04-11T14:19:24Z")
I’m just going to duck in here and point out that there really is no historical precedent for Maud’Dib’s opinion. Until recently, the last few hundred years, exposure of children up to about two years of age was, if not common, not unheard of. The death of young children was almost expected, thanks to high infant mortality rates, as well. This created certain traditions, such as baptism after thirty days or so, and various folk sayings, such as the tradition my grandmother once explained to me, that children do not have souls until they’re a year old. Now that we _can_ save almost all children, there is a tendency, understandable, to want to do so, but historically, the concept of a child having a soul before being born doesn’t appear to have much in the ways of legs. This is possibly why the entire concept of ‘quickening’ comes up in the Roe vs Wade decision, as the earliest point that could be justified in law as the child being alive, as some sort of common ground. Also, those bloody pictures of fetuses _generally_ either aren’t abortions, or they are pictures of exceptionally rare ones. They are the rough approximation of denouncing slavery in the 1880s by holding up pictures of a beautiful young white girl who was drowned and eaten by fishes. While white slavery did exist at the time, it’s not what the issue is generally about. Simply more photogenic. ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/519 "2005-04-11T16:43:06Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > They are the rough approximation of denouncing slavery in the 1880s by holding up pictures of a beautiful young white girl who was drowned and eaten by fishes. While white slavery did exist at the time, it’s not what the issue is generally about. Simply more photogenic. Huh? what does being eaten by fishes have to do with slavery? ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/520 "2005-04-11T16:48:43Z")
> [@Muad'Dib](#): > > I don’t like it either, but I see it as no different than how we compel parents to care for their born children. We don’t compel parents to care for their born children. We allow people to put their children up for adoption. There’s nothing illegal about putting a child up for adoption. > [@Muad'Dib](#): > > Because with the uterus a person took actions that directly led to the situation of pregnancy. So, if I shot you and you needed a new kidney, you could take mine? Or when George Bush sends troops to Iraq, he’s on the hook for blood transfusions if anyone gets hurt? Funny, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649/521 "2005-04-11T17:23:40Z")
The point is that, in fact, it had nothing to do with slavery, except possibly runaway slaves could have drowned. The same goes for pictures of miscarried fetuses, which is what most of the grossout pictures are. Nothing to do with abortion. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649.md?page=25) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-abortion-protesters/297649.md?page=27)