Incidentally, I got my example from the Mike Stark of Calling all Wingnuts: http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2006/03/wingnut_petri_d.html [INDENT] You find yourself in a blazing fertility clinic - the fire is ferocious. In one corner there is a two year old girl. In another, there is a petri dish with five fertilized blastula in it. You can rescue one or the other, but not both. Which do you rescue, the girl or the petri dish?
The follow up question is, of course, “Well, why don’t we see pro-lifers demonstrating outside fertility clinics?”
Hilarity ensues. My favorite part is when Wilkow starts ranting about how there’s no right answer to the conundrum. If he saves the five blastocysts and leaves the baby, his listeners will doubt his sanity. If he saves the child, he’s not really pro-life! So, in classic winger logic he blames Mike for proposing a moral dilemma that he can’t resolve. [/INDENT]
See, even the Supreme Court got caught up in this medical fiction of “viability” as if there’s some set point at which a given fetus will survive if removed from the womb. But there isn’t. We know what point we can “save” most preemies, when we throw a ton of expensive, invasive treatment at them, but nothing is guaranteed. We also know that there are babies born at full term who do not survive, for reasons we can’t immediately discern.
Because there are no guarantees, drawing bright lines at viability (or the new canard of “when the fetus can feel pain” which medical authorities say is pretty much bunk especially at the limits being proposed around the country with that justification) creates a sliding timescale, that is going to further restrict abortion access the further we improve preemie care, even though the two have nothing to do with one another.
And when we understand the reasons why the few women who have later term abortions do so, supporting this iffy standard for restrictions becomes all the more cruel.
That won’t stop abortions. It might reduce them. But it won’t stop them because no contraceptive is 100% effective, (including abstinence, which only addresses consensual sex) and no one can mandate its use.
Making abortion harder and harder to access, or outright illegal only stops safe abortions and maims and kills women.
Canard? Are you familiar with Utilitarianism? Your cite claims “the fetus never experiences a state of true wakefulness in utero and is kept, by the presence of its chemical environment, in a continuous sleep-like unconsciousness or sedation”, which strikes me as special pleading.
Then there’s this “does not mean that the fetus is aware of pain”, which is shifting the goalposts. One does not need to be sentient to experience pain. It’s simply not the criterion used to assume other entities experience pain in other instances. See here or here.
I really think you know I wasn’t meaning a horse’s fertile ova was a human being, so I will over look your question. Nor does a chicken become a different animal. If I didn’t make my self clear to you, then It was my fault. Most people I remind this of, do not see it your way, but understand that Biologically an egg(OVA) will become the species it belongs to. And a fertile chicken egg is never thought of as a chicken etc. Nor a pollenated apple blossom an apple. Once a human ova can be recognized as a human person then it is a different story, Once born the child is recognized as a human child and has the protection of society all through it’s life.
If (I believe) that if all people who are anti choice would be making sure the already born are cared for, educated, fed, have a safe environment in which to live and all needs met, then perhaps I could accept that they are Pro-Life. Until then it is just talk. How many sacrifices are you making to support the already born, in every way possible? If you aren’t willing, then I would think it just lip service. It is so easy to see the speck in the neighbors eye if one over looks the plank in their own!
Only the woman and her doctor know the reason for her not being able to carry a fertile egg until adulthood. Judge not, lest you be judged. Jesus stood up for the prostitute, and I believe he would stand up for the woman, If he was as written abou. he stood up for the sinners, but despised the Pharisee’s who though they were so perfect, and spent their time looking for faults in others.
I’m suggesting that the abortion debate is a winning issue for Democrats if they stick to making sure abortion remains safe, legal and rare. Hammer the Republicans with what they really want: abortions to be illegal. That’s a losing proposition for the Republicans and it’s easy to explain. If you think it’s worth getting into a debate about whether abortions increase the risk of breast cancer, all I can say is: good luck.
That’s unfortunate, because most people in the US think restrictions like waiting periods are a good thing.
Are you uncomfortable with people making it difficult to obtain a gun? That is, background checks, waiting periods, etc? That right is explicitly in the constitution, not found in the penumbra.
Yeah, I’m sorry, I thought the technical criteria for “sentience” required “self-awareness” as demonstrated by a mirror test (or similar), but I don’t know where I got that impression. At any rate, I think there is some form of special pleading occurring, since the standards for accepting that infants and animals feel pain are not accepted for those of the foetus.
If your boss had a moral objection to contraception, then they still had to provide coverage for the pill but only if you provided evidence that there was some medical need for the pill beyond contraception. So yeah you had to tell your boss why you were on the pill if you wanted it covered.
The ultrasound provision in Virginia was originally for a vaginal probe (see “governor vaginal probe”). It required an before every abortion and the ultrasound had to show the fetus. For any pregnancy in its first month or so when most abortions occur, this means a vaginal probe.
It took a lot of political pressure and national ridicule for the language to be changed.
I think its worth pointing out how silly the Republican attempts to restrict abortion have become.
The objection to abortion is certainly sustainable without an appeal to religious values or even a subjective personal morality. You can have morality divorced from religion, a morality that says it is wrong to kill babies a morality that extends the definition of babies to soem point before birth. It is probably very difficult to extend it all the way to the point of conception but it is not difficult to extend it to the point the fetus first becomes viable and reasoanable people can extend it beyond that.
My notions of right and wrong, fairness and justice, are driven by Rawls’ theories. I don’t always end up where he did but I like the starting point.
I frequently don’t understand what youa re saying. Its like youa re thinking faster tahn you can write and it comes out garbled sometimes.
There is a huge excluded middle in a lot of these debates where people assume that any defense of anti-abortion positions means a support for the notion that human rights attach at conception. How do you feel about second trimester restrictions on abortion that do not threaten the life or health of the mother? how do you feel about third trimester prhibitions on abortions taht do not threaten the life or health of the mother? For argument’s sake, lets assume that there are no restrictions on aborting fetuses that are so badly deformed that they will die soon after birth.
When you use words like “anti-choice” it makes you seem unreasonable. Once again, to use Finn’s analogy, you can object to killing homeless people without supporting homeless shelters.
Sure, Jesus stood up for the sinner, he never stood up for the sin. Are you saying that Jesus would have had infinite sympathy for the pregnant woman to the exclusion of any thought to the fetus within her?
The bible is ambiguous on the status of a fetus. It certainly implies that life begins sometime before birth. It also implies that a fetal life is not equal to the mother’s life.
+1. I object as much to people putting up senseless barriers to gun ownership that don’t really serve any legitimate state purpose as i do to senseless barriers to abortion that don’t serve a legitimate state purpose.
Yeah, they support waiting periods and parental consent for minors, which is sadistic and evil. Father molests his daughter and she gets pregnant? Make her beg him for an abortion! The slut deserves it, right? And of course women are too stupid to know what they want and need to be forced to wait for it. We don’t want to skip all that ritual humiliation before she gets her abortion, after all.
Then you are arguing about abortions that don’t happen.
No; that’s just being honest. You can be pro choice and still disapprove of abortion; the “pro-life” movement is anti-choice, not just anti-abortion.
:rolleyes: You aren’t really equating gun ownership and abortion, are you? Guns are just weapons. Forcing a woman to go through pregnancy and childbirth against her will is the moral equivalent of rape, or worse.
What’s unfortunate is how many people think comparing apples and turnips constitutes a valid argument.
Waiting periods for guns serve a purpose other than to deter someone from buying a gun. It isn’t an artificial obstacle created solely to reduce the number of gun owners.
Sure it is-- especially since I include background checks. But at least you clarified that you were only uncomfortable with people making it more difficult to exercise certin of your rights. Other rights, not so much.
I’m pretty sure there is usually an exxception for rape and incest.
(A) I thought we established on a thread years ago that they do occur. Of the over 1000 abortions that occur after the 24th week the vast majority are of severely deformed children who could not survive outside the womb but some are not. Some are the result of broken relationships, children that will be retarded or disabled, or simply lack of access/information.
In what way are they anti-choice rather than anti- abortion because as far as I can tell the only choice they want to restrict is the one on abortion. They aren’t picketing Baskin Robbins for giving you 31 flavors to choose from, they are almost invariably picketing places with a nexus to abortions.
I’m pretty sure that the regulations we are talking about do not force women to carry a fertilized egg to term. They do things like impose a 24 hour waiting period or mandate counseling.
The question is whether or not the state has a valid state interest in imposing that burden.
Yeah; it’s called “beg a judge and hope he isn’t ‘pro-life’”. I recall a case in IIRC Georgia where the judge did force a girl to beg her molester for an abortion, and he murdered her. But hey; there wasn’t any abortion and there’s one less slut, so it was win-win from a ‘pro-life’ position.
And whenever this subject comes up, these voluntary late term abortions are always phantoms. There’s like 1-2 doctors in the whole country who’ll even perform them; one was recently murdered, to the general acclaim of the ‘pro-lifers’.
:rolleyes: They oppose choice when it comes to an abortion, as opposed to other people who may or may not approve of abortions but support it being a choice. They are anti-choice; it is a central feature of their position.
In other words, they humiliate and punish the woman, who may not even be able to get to the clinic twice in 24 hours. And “counseling” is just a noble sounding way of saying “lie to, threaten and insult”.
Anti-choice individuals willfully insert their choice in place of my reproductive choice, but it does not end here; their choice also affects the lives of my family, my ability to provide for the needs of my other children, our health and financial concerns, etc. So why do they believe they have the right to choose our future, our fates? This is not just anti-abortion, this is disrespect for our very being, and discrediting our ability to know what is best for our families and ourselves. Anti-choice individuals are not concerned with the unique circumstances of our lives, because that is something only we can know. Anti-choice individuals do not care about our hopes, dreams, goals, needs, etc., because it does not matter to them, in that it clashes with their choice for us. This is anti choice, they bend us to their will.
I use the word anti choice,because that is in reality what you are sounding like to me. There are people who seem to understand what I am implying so maybe the fault lies with each one of us, and understanding of the other, or it could be that we just see a different side to the debate? Of course “Life” began before birth, it began eons ago, and even if you believe the Bible writers, it began about 5,000 years ago.Each ejaculation kills thousands of human lives, they are not human beings,but if met with an ova (most of the time) will gradually become a human being.
Because the Bible is entirely from humans and belief in the Bible is believing in the Bible writers then it in reality it is just the human we choose to believe.The Bible writers never mentioned abortion, and archeologists have found burial sites of fetus’s near house of illrepute from the time of Jesus.
If one goses by the Bible ,then killing a lot of innocent peole was in God’s plan, he is said to have his chosen go and kill a whole town just to gain land for them. Not a loving being but a terrible monster, and surely not a good father.
I would like to see it possible for a woman to not have the neeed for an abortion at all, it is hard on her system. I had 2 miss- carriages, of wanted children, I asked the doctor to see them and there was no resemblance to a child. So I don’t believe I lost a child because it was not yet formed, and besides I was ill for a long time afterwards. I doubt that many women who seek abortions are cold hearted people who just enjoy putting their own health in danger to abort!
To compare an already born human who is now a member of society,to an unformed fetus etc. is no where near the same as an unformed child. I don’t know any woman who had a funeral for her early loss of pregnancy,but yes, once it can be recognized as a child, then she does in most cases. If a woman doesn’t want to have a child then she should have the option of the morning after pill,have her tubes tied or a relatively sure method of birth control. And in my belief, War and self defense have their reason for killing and is not murder, so if a woman uses abortion as a last resort as self defense or the defense of her other children, then it is not Murder.
One cannot use the Bible as an excuse to torment a woman, the Bible can be proven to be the work, and words of humans…no God involved, just because someone says God told them something, doesn’t mean God did , just their own thinking. No one should be forced to have an abortion nor forced to carry a fertile egg, (or the possibility that she may be pregnant) to use the morning after pill!
Yeah and the ONLY issue where they seem to be anti-choice is abortion. They aren’t anti-choice on the race of the person you marry, the lunch counters you can eat at, the water fountains you can use, the profession that women can enter or a bunch of other stuff. They are ONLY anti-choice on abortion. So then is it more accurate to call them anti-abortion or to call them anti-choice? They are not more anti-choice than you are anti-life.
Then you haven’t been paying attention and the benefit of the doubt I extend to you starts to wear thin.
Look at the post you just quoted. Does my ridicule of the “vaginal probe” laws or my criticism of the “tell you boss why you are on the pill” laws or my pointing out that it is worthwhile that Republicans have gotten silly about restricting abortions make you think I am anti-choice/pro-life/anti-abortion?
I’m having trouble figuring out what you are trying to say. You seem to be repeating some half formed ideas that you vaguely understand onto a post and hope everyone else will fill in the gaps.
I’m not here to defend the bible, I’m just trying to get you to drop some of your sillier arguments and stick to the ones that don’t invite ridicule. The bible does mention abortion (and the bible’s position is somewhat ambiguous). The second part about the fetus graveyards seems silly, where did you pick up that silly idea?
Once again, I am not here to defend the bible. You seem to think that the bible and Christianity is the only reason why people object to abortions.
The original Hippocratic Oath included a prohibition on abortions. They weren’t Christians. In fact the oath starts with an oath to a bunch of gods including Apollo.
Are you saying that you doctor showed you the fetus after your miscarriage?!? That is hard to believe. We’ve had a few miscarriages (one of them quite late in the pregnancy) and we were told it was not possible to see the fetus after the abortion.
Frankly, I don’t care if women use abortion as a form of birth control as long as its in the first trimester.
What?!? You’re rambling. Are you drunk?
Once again, objection to abortion predates Christianity and existed outside the Abrahamic faiths.
Anti-choice calling themselves pro-life is just their propaganda term, as if they really live pro-life, like Jainist monks, never swatting a fly for all of the sacred life it holds. We have the right to call ourselves pro-choice, in this comparison.
When I worked in a feminist woman’s health center, we offered the option of home births, and had the only OB GYN in town who would attend them on our staff, we offered pre natal care, birth control and birth control option information, well woman and well baby exams, STD information and treatment, hospital birth advocates, and safe abortion options and counseling. We were learning about forced sterilization practices on Indian tribes in South America, and we were all about fighting such abuses. We have the right to call ourselves pro choice, and our health care center was an example of that, yet we were constantly being picketed and harassed by anti-choice individuals, and our clinic was damaged, windows broken, and staff threatened.