It’s a legal hoop to jump through. The ONLY reason that it’s required is to make an abortion harder and more expensive to obtain. Can you give me ONE good reason, just ONE, other than this, for requiring it of all patients? Just one reason.
Shall we have women who want to get an abortion sing “I’m a little teapot” in public? Yes, we could legally require it. However, there would not be a medical reason for it.
As I pointed out, relevance is… not relevant. I 100% agree that the ultrasound is not needed and wrong. I also 100% agree that searches at airports are useful. My point is that we are discussing whether or not it’s coercion/consensual/rape, not whether or not there’s any purpose to it. Rape is still rape whether it’s to save the world or just for the amusement of the rapist. Everything else is not rape, whether it’s to make some pro-lifers happy, humiliate women or prepare the world for invasion by pod people. Not rape + poor justification ≠ rape.
How many "how about we… " replies can this thread get?
FTR, you quoted me using Lynn’s name somehow.
I don’t understand what you think is wrong with this if you don’t think it is in any way coercive. I agree with you that it’s probably not correct to call it rape, but I disagree with the idea that women are in no way being coerced when they have to have an irrelevant procedure done before they can get an abortion. The state is using their vulnerable state to compel them to do something they don’t want to do. Pregnancy, labor, and delivery is a significant physical challenge. They are being threatened with that if they don’t comply. It’s coercion.
Even the Virginia law does not purport to go into effect immediately. They recognize that they can’t enforce it until Roe v Wade is overturned so they are passing dead letter law. Why are they doing it?
For the same reason that Christie vetoed the gay marriage bill in New Jersey. They have a governor that would like to be Mitt Romney’s running mate.
As for rape. If you think rape requires physical force then no its not rape. If you think rape only requires coercion then yes its rape. This is clearly something a woman would not do absent a legal requirement to do so.
No, the medical necessity does matter. If you are unconscious and thus unable to give your consent, you can still be operated on if it is medically necessary. But you cannot simply be cut open for amusement. Even though you are unconscious in both situations one is a crime and one isn’t.
In particular, if you are unconscious and in an emergency state where your bodily orifices must be penetrated to save your life, it isn’t a crime. But if you are unconscious due to, let’s say, head trauma, and the doctor penetrates your bodily orifices for amusement, that is sexual assault.
So yeah. It matters. And as you have already said, this is not medically necessary.
The government doesn’t decide what scans you make before a surgery. Your doctor decides that.
And, as pointed out, rape is defined of nonconsensual penetration of a bodily oraface. If you stick a cucumber inside a passed out lady’s vagina for giggles, you have just committed rape.
You could argue that there are times when such actions are medically necessary, but that would be giving the act context, which you just said you can’t do. Rape is rape no matter the context, according to you.
Then it is clearly a form of anger rape or I guess anger sexual assault. There are many variations in the motivations males seems to have for rape/sexual assault. Look up “rapist typology” to give yourself an idea. If I told you I went out and inserted an ultrasound probe into an unwilling woman, you would be correct in saying that I confessed to sexual assault as defined by Jimmy Chitwood in post #34.
Let’s say I was bragging to you about running a beauty salon. In order for a beautician to rent some of the space, I required that he/she shove an ultrasound probe up any of their clients’ vaginas before giving a Brazilian wax; even though they professionally knew that the ultrasound probe didn’t help with the wax and the clients found it humiliating and uncomfortable/painful. You would be correct in saying that I confessed to creating coercive conditions for sexual assault as defined by Jimmy Chitwood in post #34.
It’s clearly coercion because all laws are coercive. I wouldn’t pay my taxes if the consequences were not grim. I wouldn’t pay a parking ticket if I didn’t stand a chance of losing my license. Or I shove an ultrasound probe up a vagina even though I think it’s useless because I want to continue to practice medicine, and I let somebody stick an ultrasound probe up my vagina because I really want an abortion even though I know it is a useless procedure and it hurts.
Consent is given because of coercion. If I hold a gun to a woman’s head and she says yes to intercourse, it’s either a sex game or rape.
What’s left but rape? See it isn’t rape because the law says it isn’t rape and only the law defines what rape is and is not. Yet if you go to research on rape you see that it’s almost an exact match in features to anger rape with all of its most ugly elements disguised by the legitimizing force of law.
Sorry about using the wrong name. Essentially… maybe it counts as coercion, maybe it doesn’t. But if it does count as coercion then coercion doesn’t automatically make it rape, because that definition of coercion is too broad. I’ll mention this again later.
Medical necessity doesn’t affect whether or not it’s rape, which is the point of the thread. That’s what I meant by what you quoted. Of course the medical justification is relevant outside of the “Is this rape” debate.
For the sake of argument let’s say your definition of coercion is correct (and I’m not saying it’s not). By your own admission you’re including paying taxes under the same definiton. When you pay taxes have you therefore been robbed? If not, why not? You’re also comparing the situation to holding a gun to a woman’s head. If so, is it also fair to compare paying taxes to armed robbery? Presumably so.
I should point out that the definition of rape in US law also doesn’t include threats other than threats of force:
If you prefer a broader definition of rape, where would you draw the line? When do “threats” become too weak to justify a rape definition?
Yes it does, although I prefer to use the term “sexual assault” since “rape” has distracting connotations. I just gave you an example.
If you are unconscious and to save your life it is medically necessary for the doctor to penetrate your bodily orifices, it is not sexual assault.
If you are unconscious and the doctor penetrates your bodily orifices for amusement, it is sexual assault.
In both cases you are unconscious and could not consent. Whether or not it is sexual assault depends on the medical necessity.
This thread just goes to show that to the political left, certain people are political causalities in their crusade to protect a woman’s access to abortion. The whole “an ultrasound is equivalent” to rape thing is just so ridiculous, there are no words to even begin to describe just how asinine of a comparison it truly is.
So from now on, you’re okay with a dentist shoving his finger up your ass before cleaning your teeth?
Were you looking for a serious response?
I would expect one. The situation is exactly analogous, if you account for the irrational religious mania on one side of the equation. What does a VAGINAL PROBE ultrasound have to do with an abortion? What does a prostate exam have to do with getting your teeth cleaned? The answer to both is “nothing, other than someone’s desire to unnecessarily humiliate and intimidate the patient”.
Perhaps Lobohan was being slightly hyperbolic to show how little he thought of your post, but his question is fairly legitimate.
Your doctor “sticking his finger up your ass” is a rather crude way to describe a prostate exam but it’s not inaccurate.
Now, I think that one could make an argument(which Lob was hinting at) that requiring w
You aren’t making serious arguments.
Hmm. Well, I take it back then, but I wonder why I was given an ultrasound at 15 weeks then. And there definitely was a difference in the type of abortion at 15 or 16 weeks. They certainly said the scan was to determine foetal age and the chances of twins - they wanted to know about the latter in order to make sure everything was expelled. The NHS doesn’t tend to perform procedures for the hell of it.
I agree about the ectopic pregnancies - perhaps I should have been more precise in my wording, but I wasn’t suggesting that doctors assume all pregnancies might be ectopic with no evidence to suggest that.
In any case, it is not invasive like a vaginal ultrasound and it does not require the woman to see the foetus, so if the legislators changed from vaginal to external ultrasound then it wouldn’t be ‘just as bad.’
See below.
Hey it’s not all the political left. I consider myself a liberal politically, I just don’t support liberal usage of hyperbole and the watering down of definitions. It reminds me of the loudness war in the music industry.
OK, I admit there are times, where it is not possible to give consent, that it may be medically necessary to do such things without it qualifying as rape. But in this instance (and any other instance I can think of where giving consent is possible) the medical necessity isn’t a factor.
There might be a case for a definition of rape if an unconscious woman needs an emergency abortion and the ultrasound is performed first, but I have no idea if abortions can even be performed without consent.
Sitting here with my four month old sleeping on my lap, I have to say that I think you can make a pretty solid argument that pregnancy, labor, and childbirth count as “grievous bodily harm”: the fact that some people choose to subject themselves to it doesn’t mitigate that. It’s a significant threat.
He was obviously being a bit hyperbolic in an effort to show how little he thought of your post, but he has a point.
A doctor “shoving his finger up your ass” is a rather crude way to express a prostate exam but it’s not completely inaccurate.
Now requiring women to recieve sonograms before undergoing an abortionist like asking men to have to submit to prostate exams before other unrelated medical procedures like getting Viagra.
Now, would there have been an outcry if men were required to get a prostate exam whenever they wanted Viagra or, to use Lob’s example, got their teeth cleaned? Yes.
Moreover, I remember the “Don’t touch my junk” guy terming the TSA pat downs “a form of sexual assault” and people referring to the scanning machines as rapeoscans, and since prostate exams are even more invasive, I suspect we’d hear far more cries of “rape” or words to that effect if such a law had been passed.