abortion classic or dud?

A story: in the '80s my wife suffered from Chron's Disease. One side effect was that, the doctors told her, she lost any chance of ever getting pregnant. Relieved rather than upset, she stopped taking the pill. In 1989 she became pregnant. Her doctors told her that her health would suffer hugely if she tried to have the baby; that she had only a tiny chance of carrying it to term; and that if she did there was only a tiny chance of the baby being born healthy. Neither of us wanted a child anyway. We wanted an abortion. We went to the Health Authority's appointment to set this up, and gave him this background. He said (I swear this is absolutely true) that the pregnancy was clearly a miracle, and had my wife considered that she might be carrying the Second Coming? Did she want to kill the Second Coming? Knowing we had to go through this doctor to get the abortion, we stayed calm but stood our ground. He eventually told my wife that she was a very evil woman who did not deserve this miracle, and he would authorise the abortion to protect the baby from her.

I know that doesn't make any kind of case for or against abortion, but I think it explains some of why I don't believe that it should be available at doctor's discretion: it gives crazed doctors this kind of colossal power over other people's lives.

Let me emphasize again that this clinic is practically next door to a fucking Burger King.

One thing that's definitely dud: a LOT of doctors won't tell women about -or prescribe- the emergency contraception pill, which is nothing more than 2 birth control pills, taken 12 hours apart. It has to be taken within 72 hours, and I've heard horror stories of racing against the clock to try to find a doctor (esp. if you have a HMO) to prescribe it. That's just ridiculous; women should not have to be bouncing from doctor to doctor over something as simple as that.

I dont know how is it in places where abortion is okay but in Brasil where its prohibited most of the abortions by poor people are made by people there are more butchers than doctors. That or you take a shitload of pills there are prescribed for something else since there isnt a abortion pill

No but its unfortunate Martin, still Id be interseted in a rational explanation for abortion. Torankeo is the only one who appears to have any reason behind her beliefs. Anyone else?

The question of when life begins is a tough one though Donna I hope that its not something that cannot be looked at objectively -re belief systems.

Martin I find your definition about being able to survive independantly outside the mother not the most helpful- what happens in the future when they will be able to grow a baby from a test tube and never use the mother at all?

The Roe vs Wade really it was a non decision. The courts chose not to decide when life began because of conflicting medical evidence basically it was chucked in the too hard basket. Thirty years of medical evidence has swung the balance of scientific evidence in favour of the "religious pro life side" and will continue to do so. Thus we see arguments such as Tornakos ethical ones being pushed to the fore by abortion activists Id like to discuss that as well but later eh .

So when does life begin? Can we define it? Surely if we can define when death occurs we can define when life begins? That seems logical to me. So when do we die...
Where does life begin?:
1) Clinical death: Your heart stops. If when your heart stops, you’re dead, then by extension when your heart starts, you’re alive. Using this definition, most of even the earliest abortions are now illegal. But there is a problem. Clinical death is not final. You can be “brought back” from that, so it isn’t really death.

2) Biological death: All electrical activity in the brain stops. If when you cease to have an EKG reading you’re dead, then by extension when you start to have an EKG reading you’re alive. Since these brain impulses must be present to start the heart, they are readable before that. Even more of the earliest abortions are now illegal. But there is a problem. Even without the brain you can be put on machines that keep your body “alive”, so that isn’t really death, either.

3) Cellular breakdown and organ failure: The machines can feed you and pump your blood until your organs give out. Once the cell structure disintegrates and your organs fail there isn’t anything a machine can do for you. You would require an organ transplant which you would not get if you were in this degrading situation. Therefore, when your cell structure gives out you’re dead (really dead this time), SO BY DEFINITION WHEN YOUR CELL STRUCTURE IS FORMED (CONCEPTION) YOU ARE ALIVE.

I dont pretend to be an expert doctor, so my logic might be faulty nor take the moral high ground on abortion Id just like to hear rational sciencetific arguments for abortion not ethical ones as interesting as they are.

I firmly believe that abortion should be freely available to those who want it, those who don't believe in abortions needn't have them. The exception to this being that if the father wants the foetus aborted then I don't believe the woman should be allowed to carry on with the pregnancy.

I do understand than many anti-abortionists feel that they must protect the rights of the foetus because it cannot protect itself - even if the parents believe in abortion, *perhaps* the foetus doesn't?? This is where I have to partially agree with Martin - I don't consider the foetus's "live" status to be important but I do not believe that a foetus has any rights. The main difference between Martin & my beliefs is that "when it can survive independently of its mother" doesn't do it for me. Foetuses can survive from less than 20 weeks old with medical support these days. I'd say "when it can survive without any more assistance than the average full-term baby" or something like that - although that would be a bit of a compromise because I don't think a woman who gives birth to a full-term baby and kills/attempts to kill it straight away has done anything wrong.

As for abortion as birth-control, I reckon this almost doesn't exist, even amongst women who say that is what they have done/will do. I'd say most of them are actually in total denial of their fertility status - which is really a psychological problem that may have "abortion as birth-control" as a resultant symptom, or they have a lot of difficulty with birth-control for maybe physical or non-compliant partner reasons. Especially when a woman is in a compromised state due to depression & other mental problems, drug-abuse, physical or psychological abuse, etc. responsibiliby for fertility control can be beyond her abilities. I know quite a few people who've had multiple abortions and not one of them considers it to be a "form of birth control" but rather an unpleasant but thankfully available last resort.

For a woman who uses the rhythm or billings methods for birth-control then perhaps 3 abortions in 20 years would be far more acceptable than being on the pill or depo-provera or whatever (let's say she is intolerant to hormonal contraceptives, gets urinary tract infections from using the diaphragm and is allergic to the spermicide, can't use an IUD and is or has a partner who is allergic to latex or a partner who is too well hung for condoms or refuses to use them due to decrease in sensation) - especially seeing as women who are using the pill/diaphragm/IUDs etc also get pregnant every so often.

As I see it (and have studied it), you're not sentient until at least 3 months (but I suspect it's more like 6 months). Thus, by my definition, a 2-month-old foetus is not human. I give not a scrap for 'potential human beings', the same way I don't worry about potential car accidents.

If it has not and will not happen, then those involved (including the 'potential' itself) are not harmed.

I dislike the way anti-abortionists are labelled 'pro-life'. In my eyes, abortion is pro-life. It's pro the lives of the parents, or those who would have to care for an 'unwanted' child.

Ah Im not really surprised at this type of thinking but it still horrifies me... but I guess my views must be as offensive to others as this is to me.

Torankeo

"Classic, not least of all because if the body is able to decide to spontaneously abort a foetus for whatever (frequently physical) reason, then when the mind decides that it wants to abort one for whatever physical, social, economical, psychological, etc. reason then it should also be able to follow through with its decision."

This to me is perhaps the most interesting point you make, still I find it difficult to accept as logical- any way I think about it.
Let me see if Im reading you right. Bear with me Ill try and extend your logic.

If we kill someone in self defense that gives us the right to murder *innocent*others?

If cancer or other diseases kill people then we should allowed to murder *innocent * others?

What you have avoided is intent.There is a crucial distinction between an unavoidable physical process taking place, and someone actually using his or her *will* to cause the death of another. Wrongdoing takes place in the will, whether in acting, or not acting.

Why is it that this sentence is never followed up with an extrapolation that supports the original speaker?

as lyra said, emergency contraception is a big part of this. it needs to be readily available to women who want it.

me too. mind you...

http://www.theonion.com/onion3119/stupidbabies.html

Andrew Im not sure what gives you the right to create a whole new defintion of a human being. I would venture my guess but that would be uncharitable of me. No honest biologist would agree with you.

A "human being" is defined by objective reality -- i.e., someone existing [a "being"] and consisting of at least one living cell that contains "human" chromosomes. The term "human being" can't be defined by a political, arbitrary formula based on convenience to you.

Even pro-death courts admit that there are non-sentient "human beings" (both born and pre-born).

& kiwi - yr third paragraph makes no sense/contradicts itself!

I think it's completely tragic, too, that the 'using it as birth control' idea is so often bandied about by the antichoicers -- women who do that are probably a bit less mythic than the 'welfare queens' so often invoked by anti-public assistance politicians.

Also the high percentage of in-power antichoice types who are male = total dud to the umpteenth degree, because like they've ever had to deal with worrying over a missed period, or not having the money to feed and care for a baby if it comes to term? (Note how the antichoice and anti-public assistance politicans frequently walk in the same personae?) And how many of those placard-wavers have funded abortions of wives, daughters, mistressesof theirs, anyway? I suspect the answer to that question is not "zero."

actually i DO know someone who uses abortion as a method of contraception. i don't know why - its bloody illogical, you're not okay with condoms but you ARE okay with abortion??!!

other than that, i think abortion is classic, for exactly the reasons ned said. i also think that someone who has never and will never carry fetuses inside them has a downright gall to decide that abortion is wrong period. if you are the biological father of the child maybe you have some say but ultimately it is a womans choice because a woman plays a much greater role in childbearing than a man. i agree with toraneko that arguments when about when life begins are not productive. even if they were, defining what life is by using medical definitions of death is pretty faulty. what is not death != life.

*blush* To you and to Di both, thanks. :-)

All I was trying to illustrate (however muddily, and I apologise), is that I don't have any problem with destroying something that isn't sentient.

(unless it was once sentient, in the case of someone in a coma or some such, and has the potential to become sentient again. Obviously the destruction of such a future-sentient being would be detrimental to those who loved it in it's previous sentience.)

You're the only one who'll nurture this discussion into an "atomic kitten sized debacle" with blatantly provocative comments like "do you hate all men or just the ones who have a penis?"

I don't agree with this, for any number of personal reasons. Your body is your own, not your partner's (or anyone else's for that matter).

The decision to abort a child is, ultimately, the mother's.

However, if a man and a woman are in a relationship together, and the woman becomes pregnant, obviously the two will have to have lengthly discussion, and arrive at a mutual decision, before any action is taken.

From the male point of view:

I would not want a child that is 'half me' being born without my consent, especially if I wouldn't be able to care for the child directly. I would expect many to react with sympathy for me on this issue.

On the other hand, were I anti-abortion, and were I wanting my partner (or ex-partner) to have this child on my behalf, I would expect people to react negatively towards me. I have no right to force someone else to have a child.

I guess the bottom line is this: before sleeping with someone you should find out how they feel about abortion. If you're not comfortable with their views, then don't fuck. End of story.

translate: you feminist bitch, shut your mouth, how dare you make valid criticisms of my flimsy arguments?

I realize that this is considered the "logical" way of looking at pregnancy, but unfortunately it is wrong wrong wrong. A women HAS to DO NOTHING (and should not have to DO ANYTHING). She does not have to inform her husband. No mutual decision need be arrived at. No lengthy discussions either. A women wants to end a pregnancy, she does. No man, no other woman, no government, no religious organization should be able to decide whether or not the pregnancy is carried to term. End of story.

Additionally how pleasant is life likely to be if your parents resent you before you are even born.

Also, the morning after pill isn't "a simple fix", it's a bloody painful one

"Additionally how pleasant is life likely to be if your parents resent you before you are even born."

I would guess that having my parents "resent" me would be slightly more pleasant than the alternative of having my parents "terminate" me before I was born. :-(

I wonder how many people here would rather not be living today because their parents weren't perfect.

I suppose that you could be severely injured by either an accidental car crash or an intentional car crash; but you view both as morally equivalent events. Is life just a big game of chance? Is moral ambivalence the answer? That solution seems a bit defeatist.

Looking at your argument, if your parents never met, you are correct: you would never have existed. If your mother chose to abort you, you would most certainly have existed. If you argue that you "didn't exist" in the second case, it's funny that pro-choice doctrines even claim that the baby of a pregnant woman doesn't "exist."

It seems that you want to tie personhood to consciousness--a "person" only exists when he/she is self-aware. Following this logic, murder is only wrong if the person killed "knows" that she has been killed. Would it be OK to kill someone in her sleep because she wouldn't realize that she was killed? She couldn't speculate on the reasons for her non-existence. So is this the new litmus test for murder: the victim must know that she has been murdered?

Gareth, you write: "what if two people decide not to have sex but to just be friends. a 'potential life' has been lost hasn't it?"

Gareth, I guess some would argue that a potential "opportunity" for life has been lost. But, in your hypothetical, no life has been lost, because no life had been created.

Enjoy

This is obviously not a pro-choice argument, and I never said it was - I was just pointing out that "how would you like it if you had been aborted?" doesnt work as an argument.

(I am pro-choice as it happens for the simple reason that I think the mother has a right to decide whether or not a pregnancy should be brought to term. I think this does, morally, involve classification of foetuses as 'not-alive', and I'm willing to do that.)

"it has life = it is sacred" is not a position most christians adhere to: the get-out clause is of course the exchange of the "soul" (unquantifiable argument-winner) for "consciousness"

Kiwi's definition of a "human being," above, would include the hangy bit of skin I just picked off of my pinky and flicked into the trash.

El Catracho doesn't get at what Gareth is pointing to, how purpose-laden the Catholic idea of sex is: i.e., if two people are going to copulate, they're not to do anything at all to try and prevent a live birth from resulting. (I'm still not certain where the great "rhythm"-type loopholes come from, as they seems to violate the overarching spirit of the doctrine.)

I think this issue comes down even more to religion than people like to think -- which is to say, I don't think it's so much a matter of asking at what point a fertilized cell becomes a murderable "person" as it is about a lot of people who have a sort of non-biological idea of "souls" lurking behind their thinking. (See El Catracho's questions to Tom.)

IIRC, the most important factor affecting a woman's attitude after an abortion is the nature of support she receives (if any) from her family and friends, and most women report feeling relieved afterwards.

1. the character of the debate around it, as Alex in SF says.

2. because they were pressured by partner, parents, or work environment into making the decision

3. because they do actually think that pro-lifers' arguments have a genuine moral force. I dont think its 'natural' to view a baby you're carrying as a separate individual but I've certainly known women who do feel that - and if you do think that then abortion surely will be traumatic, propaganda or no propaganda.

With 1 and 2 the trauma is the by-product of other people's misguided or evil actions. With 3 the trauma is the by-product of a difficult ethical choice. A compound problem with 2 and 3 I'd think is that women are then SOMETIMES told AFTERWARDS very AGGRESSIVELY that abortion is something NOBODY should feel ANY GUILT about it so ARE they some kind of WHINER whose parents wouldnt get them a TOOTHBRUSH?

"Very often"? No. That it happens? Yes. It happened to someone I know quite well actually: a kind of angry resentment from friends and family that she did feel bad and didnt 'get over it'. I wasn't trying to be funny, Alex, and no I don't think it happens often at all and yes I think the general rhetorical climate/automatic assumptions around abortion is much worse which is why I put it as point #1 agreeing with you in my list.

Look, from my p.o.v. it's simple. Hand in hand with the absolute right a woman has to determine what happens in her pregnancy is an absolute right to feel however the hell she likes about it and not be told how she should or should not feel. Your uncharacteristically super-aggressive tone seemed to me (and maybe I overreacted cos I'm sensitive on this point too, see para above) to be suggesting that women who do feel traumatised are dismissable or suffering from some kind of false consciousness or irritating hindrances to the righteous pro-choice cause. Apologies if I misrepresented you on that.

You write:

"El Catracho doesn't get at what Gareth is pointing to..."

Nabisco, I do get what Gareth is "pointing to." I was simply answering his question that "pointed to" something else. He had a misconception. I addressed his misconception. I'm not going to pretend I know what he is thinking. I just kept it simple and answered his question.

Alan responds to me:

" it is not that people are connecting personhood with consciousness (however you like to think about that word), but I think most people here (unlike yourself) would not identify a grown person with the earlier fetus/embryo/egg that they developed from. at some point most people would say, OK, they are not the same person."

Alan, I wouldn't be able to identify close friends in their childhood pictures. Does this mean that they are "not the same person?" And if so, who were they back then? Is this more pro-choice wisdom: the fetus/child is an entirely distinct person? The fetus that developed into "Alan Trewartha": was that someone else? The logic is dizzying.

Back to Nabisco who writes:

"I think this issue comes down even more to religion than people like to think -- which is to say, I don't think it's so much a matter of asking at what point a fertilized cell becomes a murderable "person" as it is about a lot of people who have a sort of non-biological idea of "souls" lurking behind their thinking. (See El Catracho's questions to Tom.)"

I might agree with you that this can be seen as a "religious question." I think that there's a blurry line between fields like law, philosophy and religion--they all overlap one-another. To me, every attempt to impose temporal power is a morality issue. Every law, right down to speed limits, is an attempt to impose one person's beliefs on another. Every law is a "restriction of choice"--a imposition of "anti-choice" beliefs. I guess some die-hard pro-choice people will try to argue away this statement; but I leave it for everyone to consider on his/her own.

Mystery writes:

"I don't want your opinion of me or what I've done, the only opinions that matter to me are those of the people I love, but I feel some of you are looking only at the moral question and not the reality of what you would do should it happen to you."

Mystery, I respect your wishes and won't comment on your story. Separate from your personal experiences, I will say that you should not presume to know what is going on in another persons mind and judge them based on your "feelings." I know what choices I have made in my life, and I don't need someone chiding me as if this is all hypothetical to me.

All my best,

"clearer way to put it: it takes time and work to make a person, it doesn't happen in a magical mystical instant"

OK, Mark...so is there a point at which you were 1/2 a "person"? Or is there a "magical mystical instant" when you transform from "blob of tissue" into "legal person" at birth. Is that the instant you're talking about? I'd better take a few deep breaths...

if person [x] dies, are you entitled to back-argue from their corpse nature that since they were always going to be dead, being dead is part of their personhood so it doesn't matter when it occurs (some strands of martyr-friendly xtianity — arguing from the eternal nature of the soul i spose — have argued something not unlike this btw)?

I'm afraid you'll only be getting insight into my position. To me, the material loss would be equal. One life lost. Emotionally, I'd be affected by the relationship I had to the loss. If my wife and I had lost a child due to miscarriage, we would most certainly be affected by the loss, even more than the pain of the loss of life due to 9/11 (I'm trying to give something more contrasting than the child who dies of leukemia). Does that mean that roughly 3000 people are less important than the life of the fetus that was lost due to miscarriage? One of my co-workers is going through the emotional impact of his wife's miscarriage--I wouldn't wish that on anyone. It's a terrible loss.

Now, may I get some insight into your position: would you get more, less, or equally upset if your mother had died from colon cancer when you had a strong bond with her, versus when you had little or no relationship with her? In this case (as most), the emotional effects don't determine the value of the life.

Is an unknown homeless person's life "less valuable" than a rich person's? This reflects something truly American: "All men are created equal." Plenty of people have argued that economic classes determine the value of life, or that race determines the value of life, or that gender determines the value of life. I'm sure there were plenty of emotions backing up their arguments, too. But emotions can mislead.

Enjoy,

"erm the instant i'm "talking about" i'm saying doesn't exist, that's what the word "doesn't" is doing in that thread"

OK, Mark, so you're trying to demonstrate the absurdity of the pro-choice position? Now I get it...that's what "'doesn't' is doing in that thread." 8^)

No, one person's subjective emotional response to a death is not a good guide to morality (though I wonder whether that if you aggregate/draw patterns from these responses, it is ultimately what all these matters rest on, for the non-religious) and I don't mean that if you say 'yes, obviously I'd be more upset by a child dying than a foetus' your argument is undermined. It was just of interest, that's all.

In answer to your question, yes, obviously it would make a huge difference how strong my mother bond was.

personhood is a social manifestation of biology: but so is death, so rather, so it ought to be => one of the deep problems in this particular debate is that it's actually a face-off between two completely different (possibly incommensurable) versions of a refusal to believe in the existence of death

(v.loosely speaking, xtians — and/or kantian universalists — say it's just a bodily thing, but there's this eternal monad whose status remains unchanged; "secular humanists" think of it as condition which can be deferred, meliorated, somehow technologically or culturally dissolved, which is to say shuffled equably into a calculus abt general quality of life...)

The discussion about trauma resulting from abortion has mostly been contributed to by guys - and despite having covered many logical reasons why some women may feel trauma one very important reason was missed: Hormones.

Whether a woman is going to feel emotions of guilt, regret, relief, pleasure, or whatever from an abortion, she is definitly going to suffer from major hormonal upheaval when her body discovers it is not pregnant any more. She is also going suffer pain, lots of bleeding, perhaps some side effects from anaesthetics & antibiotics, and maybe skin changes, breast changes, hair-loss and depression from the hormonal changes. This means that a woman who feels not guilt/regret/social disapproval can still be quite traumatised.

The "child's 5th birthday" thing strikes me as something far more likely to be healthy reflection (of the this is where I am now, this is where I might have been, let's keep life in perspective and make judgements about what I where I want to be in the future variety) than guilt inducing regret.

It was me who said earlier that a woman should not be allowed to carry a foetus to full term if the father does not want the baby born. Some people may argue that if a man doesn't want his baby born then he shouldn't go around porking women. I don't have any objection to women having sex and deciding that they want the resulting foetus aborted and I consider men to have the right. I don't believe that anyone has the right to take another persons genes/gametes/whatever and use them to reproduce with against that persons will. Obviously forcing women to have abortions is a pretty horrendous thing to do but so is using someone else's genes to make a baby against their will. I doubt (I hope, I could be wrong) that many men would go this far if options such as having no financial or other responsibility for the child were available.

The tragedy in "losing a life" through abortion, miscarriage, childhood leukemia etc. is not the tragedy of losing a life, it's the tragedy of losing hope. For those who have invested all their hope in a maybe-potential life, then it's loss is a horrible thing.

"If the loss of a loved one would be equal to the loss of potential loved one"

Plinky, I don't know exactly what you mean here when you say potential. Do you mean that the fetus has a potential for a relationship with me, or do you mean that the fetus has a potential for life?

You've given an interesting hypothetical. I'm sure there are plenty of variables like the month of pregnancy, etc. I'll try to be general.

1) I'd get a second opinion! This assumes that she doesn't need surgery immediately. That's a natural response to any serious diagnosis from a doctor. I'm here to tell you: doctors make mistakes.

2) If the second opinion confirmed a high risk to my wife's health, we would protect both lives while not actively killing either life. I would guess that this often results in premature, induced deliveries. The hospitals' NICUs work miracles each day. Chances are, some premie-babies will die, and others will live.

If you're so inclined, feel free to read this document regarding the ethics of your hypothetical. I'm sure that many others on the web will argue the details of this commonly discussed hypothetical better than I.

--------------------------

Nick writes:

"I thought the 'all other things being equal' was assumed."

Well, I may sound callous, but I'm not all that bothered that each day thousands of people whom I don't know die around the world. I just don't think about it...I don't see the point. Death is part of nature. Is there a difference between death and murder? Yes. Is there a difference between my emotional reaction to the death of a loved-one versus my reaction to the death of a stranger? Yes.

The fact that we don't "see" the preborn babies might take away some of the feeling of loss. The same thing happened to the Jews in Germany. Enough Germans didn't like Jewish people that they started killing them. And the deaths were hidden from view of the general public. One thing that the Allies did at the end of the war was get images out to show the atrocity. The images spoke for themselves. We don't need philosophers to explain to us that the concentration camps were immoral. Similarly, we don't need to ponder the minutiae of philosophical arguments to see the injustice.

Toraneko writes:

"The tragedy in "losing a life" through abortion, miscarriage, childhood leukemia etc. is not the tragedy of losing a life, it's the tragedy of losing hope. For those who have invested all their hope in a maybe-potential life, then it's loss is a horrible thing."

I'm sorry; I just want you to run this by me again. You believe that children who die from leukemia are not alive, but merely potential lives? Wow. When do we become "alive"? Is it when we get our driver's license? I know I was alive then!

Enjoy.

"el catracho why are so you much more concerned with the feelings of the dead than the living?"

Mark, are you feeling left out because I didn't respond to you? I'm so sorry! I promise I'll pay more attention to you in the future! LOL.

It's like when two good-looking, 18 yr old, footy-playing guys die in a car crash. Everyone considers it such a tragedy because of their "potential". Not their potential to be wife-beating rapists though. Their potential to live out other people's fantasy lives. I suspect many people don't gain this potential until they have died.

Who do you rely on to "invest in you" and what would happen if they all closed their accounts? Do you cease to exist? :-)

"The hope is invested in the imagined potential, not in the life.

It's like when two good-looking, 18 yr old, footy-playing guys die in a car crash. Everyone considers it such a tragedy because of their "potential". Not their potential to be wife-beating rapists though. Their potential to live out other people's fantasy lives. I suspect many people don't gain this potential until they have died."

Reflecting on your thoughts, I'd say this is a bit of a self-centered way to mourn others. Are we mourning that lost benefit that we could receive from the dead person had he/she lived? If so, does life have inherent value outside of the value that other people give it?

The equations for this stuff become confusing fast: let's say I live comfortably on a small island with my beautiful wife. We have everything we need to live long lives. I value her; therefore her life has value. She values me; therefore I have value. But, if I had no value before she "gave" me my value, what is the "value" of my value for her?!?!? OK, I'm making myself dizzy... OK, so what happens if I stop valuing her? Does her life cease being valuable?

Well, Christians (or as Mark says, xtians :-) ) believe that life is inherently valuable. The US Declaration of Independence states:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Without arguing about the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, our government is saying that none of us need another person to "invest hope" in order to be valuable. No investment of hope for potential...life is unalienable right that no one else can give or take from us.

Enjoy.

That's ridiculous, right? But can you find a way to tell me it's ridiculous without acknowledging that there's a very close interplay of dependency involved there, a period during which this "potential life" is in fact not a separate entity but rather very much a body's work-in-progress (on which work can be suspended)?

Value means value to someone (sing or plur). This can include value to one's self obv (so does the self continue after death, cz if YES then why is death treated as a social problem?) or value to He Who Died for Us All or other deity (if you decide you need a super-being to ground inherent-value-for-no one-living). Erm there's a whole LOTTA dizzying stuff in this. The condition of possibility of either framework, to establish "inherent value", ends up valorising the unbiddable but also unreadable opinions of the non-living (also known as the ever-living) over the living, unfortunately: ppl who will die turn out to be second-calss citizens in this Eternal Polity.

Work from your assumption that a cell cluster is in fact a viable individual human being: what obligates the first human being -- the mother -- to have it in her body without her consent?

Work from your assumption that non-"viable individual human beings" don't have rights. Why can't I just run around intensive care units and pull the plugs of all the patients? Why can't I argue for my government to kill all those terminally ill (mentally or physically) who are draining our tax dollars for their medical treatment? Many people aren't "viable." If we could reduce the tax burden (ie. give citizens more "freedom of choice" with their money), why shouldn't we do this? Even more extreme: what if we could just kill ~10% of the least productive members of society? Despite the "graphically ridiculous" arguments, these ideas have all been championed at one time or another.

If society doesn't "consent" to these burdens (elderly, mentally ill, sick), is it still morally bound to care for them, or may it kill them? I think the situation is the same for both the mother and society.

For what it's worth, both the law and society often reprimand parents who fail to fulfill their obligation to protect and care for their children. What happened with the young mother who slapped her child under the watch of Big Brother? Maybe this mother didn't want to accept the responsibility of being a mother. Yet despite her daily problems, society sees it as her responsibility to care for her child.

Nabisco writes:

"El Catracho let me put the question this sort of graphically ridiculous-sounding way. (If it's really an "individal" what makes this not rape?)"

Are you really convinced that an unwanted baby is "raping" its mother? That's pretty weird. Well, OK it's ridiculous too. :-)

Mark writes:

"In order to say yes to this, you have to argue that there's this big person-who-isn't-a-person outside time and history, in whom the recognition of value can reside."

Actually, there's a big "person-who-isn't-a-human." A "person-who-isn't-a-person" would not be a person.

Well, there's a bunch of questions that science hasn't the slightest idea of how to answer. All the big questions of the Universe are pretty interesting to me. Theists and atheists come from different starting points; but I'm always interested in hearing the views on these questions from diverse points of view.

Enjoy.

The new Christian strategy, though, is to pretend that their ridiculous claims would still be true in the absence of God. They wouldn't, though, and no amount of slumming down here with the godless intellectuals will change that.

[mandatory self-outing: I am in fact religious though not Christian]

ie it's not *my* contradiction

Hello. How are you doing today?

You write:

"The new Christian strategy, though, is to pretend that their ridiculous claims [hahaha, which claims have I made here?] would still be true in the absence of God. They wouldn't, though, and no amount of slumming down here with the godless intellectuals will change that."

OK, J0hn, I've spent most of my time here trying to figure out if non-Christians (atheists?) really think that any life has a provable value. If you review my posts, I'm not talking making many claims, let alone what you refer to as "ridiculous claims." I'm asking questions.

I haven't heard a reasoned argument yet that supports that any life is worth more than a hill of beans. Help me understand this, please. I'm coming here with questions that you seem afraid to answer. Is it that your arguments fall apart when you face these questions? Well, if your arguments answer my questions, why are you holding back?

Considering that you want us all to "ID" ourselves, why does Christianity matter if it's not part of the discussion? Why does your "mandatory self-outing" matter if it's not germane?

Despite your stance, most people here are interested in having a dialogue. If you're not, then why bother posting?

-------------

I wrote:

"does life have inherent value outside of the value that other people give it?"

Mark responds:

"assuming you want your answer to be YES..."

Mark, I don't "want" you to answer yes or no. I just am interested in your answer. BTW, aside from your conjecture about my intentions, you didn't answer the question. Would you care to give me your answer?

Enjoy

It is utterly germane if it's the sole informing ideology behind your reasoning, which is clearly the case here.

I am fine, thanks for asking :)

i don't think you know what you mean by "value" and i don't think you know what you mean by "life"

"It is utterly germane if it's the sole informing ideology behind your reasoning, which is clearly the case here."

Is this some kind of a litmus test that you use on people? Should I believe that atheists' beliefs are their "sole informing ideology" behind their reasoning?

I'm just here asking some questions. Some people have chosen to answer and give their views. Others have chosen to skirt my question and focus on my intentions.

My intentions are to think about and discuss the questions that I ask. That's why I ask questions. I want to learn. I'm sorry if you think that I've got some kind of defect in my ability to reason because my beliefs don't match yours. Is my "rhetoric loaded"? Well, yes, just like everyone else here! Others have asked me to answer hypothetical questions. Would you argue that these questions weren't "loaded"? I guess if the questions weren't loaded they'd be empty, right? :-)

Could I turn the tables for a second? Let's say that an atheist posts a bunch of questions to a group of mostly Christian contributors. When the atheist asks hard questions, the Christians avoid the question and say, "Why should we waste our time with you, you are blinded by your atheism. If you were a Christian like us, you'd understand." Doesn't that sound like a cop-out? Well, it works both ways...it's still a cop-out when the tables are turned.

Either you have thought about the questions that I ask or you haven't. Either way, it's your opportunity to shine and show that atheists aren't afraid of these questions.

Maybe you believe that my questions are uninteresting. Well, in that case, no one's forcing you to answer. I personally wouldn't ask the questions if they didn't mean anything to me. I hope you would respect that.

Enjoy.

PS--I guess this thread proves the point--the abortion debate is a classic.

As I've pointed out, I'm not an atheist at all. As to whether atheism creates an ideological superstructure for the atheist in the way that Christianity does for the Christian: clearly not! Though Christians are fond of claiming that atheists are as reliant on faith in their daily lives as are Christians, it's not so. Atheists, for example, can believe that Christ rose from the dead if they like -- nothing in their atheism prevents them from believing that. A Christian, however, can't believe that Christ died & was buried & did not rise. From this example it's clear that atheism per se isn't a governing ideology in the way Christianity is. That's why I think you should be honest and begin your argument by saying "As a Christian, abortion seems wrong to me & here's why" rather than attempting to construct a sort of Socratics-for-Christ style of interrogation.

Your analogy to the terminally ill, by the way, supports my point entirely: as soon as a person is dependent on someone's providing life support to maintain life -- life support paid for and thus "provided" by family -- it's quite normal for the family to cease providing that support. (The strict analogy here is: if it's only through your actions -- above and beyond the provision of basic care, as with a child -- that a particular life can continue to exist, you're in no way obligated to continue providing that support.)

Another important question, just for informational purposes: are you arguing this on a moral or a legal level? Is your viewpoint strictly predicated on any religious or quasi-religious belief? (These are simple questions that you can't spend three paragraphs carefully avoiding, I hope.)

"That's why I think you should be honest and begin your argument by saying, 'As a Christian, abortion seems wrong to me & here's why" rather than attempting to construct a sort of Socratics-for-Christ style of interrogation.'"

With all due respect to Socrates and Christ, my intent hasn't been to ask questions in order to push my position. Maybe my position's not too difficult to imagine. But I'm asking (not interrogating) people why they believe what they believe--I'm genuinely interested. I am not telling people what to believe. I am not attempting to ridicule others for their beliefs, even though others may want to Christian-bash here. I'm just asking questions. Don't get so defensive.

I wonder why you aren't faulting those who have presented totally loaded hypothetical questions to me. Is this something that I should be upset about? Are they "interrogating" me like a police officer? Do I care? No.

J0hn writes:

"it's clear that atheism per se isn't a governing ideology in the way Christianity is."

OK, so if atheism "isn't a governing ideology," don't you think it would be much more interesting to learn about the diversity of opinions of those free from a "governing ideology?" I ask myself questions and I have some answers. I'm curious how other people approach the same questions. Yet, you have expressed that it's better not to discuss these things. Sounds like thought police. Is that the part you need to play? Officer? :-)

All my best,

Officer Catracho.

Incidentally, I haven't opined -- not once -- that it's better not to discuss things. I've pointed out that you aren't entering the discussion in good faith. I don't think that a discussion rooted in dishonesty can produce much more than a lot of words. I have always been eager to hear a variety of opinions; I'd just prefer to actually hear them, rather than having to root them out from "questions" that are actually arguments.

"I don't anticipate your ever properly responding to anything anyone asks you..."

Yet I already have responded to questions directly. The facts are against you.

Nabisco writes:

"Note that one doesn't even have such an obligation for the care of a born infant!"

Laws and penalties exist for those who do not care for infants. And they are pretty severe.

Nabisco writes:

"Your analogy to the terminally ill, by the way, supports my point entirely: as soon as a person is dependent on someone's providing life support to maintain life -- life support paid for and thus "provided" by family -- it's quite normal for the family to cease providing that support. (The strict analogy here is: if it's only through your actions -- above and beyond the provision of basic care, as with a child -- that a particular life can continue to exist, you're in no way obligated to continue providing that support.)"

If the family ceases to provide support, may the state cease to provide support? May the state terminate the life of the "useless eater"? I don't think many people would want to live in a country whose government acted in that way.

Nabisco writes:

"Another important question, just for informational purposes: are you arguing this on a moral or a legal level? Is your viewpoint strictly predicated on any religious or quasi-religious belief? (These are simple questions that you can't spend three paragraphs carefully avoiding, I hope.)"

Which questions do you claim that I have avoided?

1) Am I arguing on a moral or legal level?

I am asking questions which I myself face. I am curious to learn how others answer these questions. I suppose I'm asking the questions on a moral level. Basically, I'm trying to understand how other people form their personal morality. I've stated my motivations repeatedly. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, though.

2) Is your viewpoint strictly predicated on any religious or quasi-religious belief?

No, I'm just here asking questions. I promise I won't push my beliefs on anyone here; but I will state my position if anyone is curious. Is my morality influenced by my religious beliefs? Yes...I would suggest that everyone's religious beliefs (because they are so fundamental) have an important impact on their entire belief system.

Thanks

PS--J0hn, if you believe that I'm avoiding questions after this post, please support your claim with concrete examples.

"I have always been eager to hear a variety of opinions; I'd just prefer to actually hear them, rather than having to root them out from "questions" that are actually arguments."

Though you claim to be "eager to hear a variety of opinions," I'm actually acting on my interest to hear a variety of opinions.

Here's my question, J0hn:

"Does life have inherent value outside of the value that other people give it?"

What "argument" do you have to root out? The question is there. It's an honest question. There's three possible answers: yes, no, or maybe. Which one do you believe and why?

Why do you need to keep avoiding the actual discussion and focus on personal attacks? The personal attacks don't matter to me. They aren't germane. :-)

Why are you afraid of such a simple question?

Enjoy

2) Is your viewpoint strictly predicated on any religious or quasi-religious belief?

No, I'm just here asking questions. I promise I won't push my beliefs on anyone here; but I will state my position if anyone is curious. Is my morality influenced by my religious beliefs? Yes...I would suggest that everyone's religious beliefs (because they are so fundamental) have an important impact on their entire belief system.

This is anything but a straight answer. (It certainly isn't the kind of straight talk favored by the historical personage of Christ as we know him.) No-one asked if your morality was influenced by your religious beliefs. You re-cast the question to suit your own ends. Your questions aren't questions! At all! They're positions! If you want to have it out, then do so honestly, like Paul of Tarsus used to, for example.

The preceding has been a concrete example, or as concrete as we can get at the level of language, of how you haven't answered any of the questions people on this board have asked you.

I'd rather avoid the rest of the thread (i.e. the subject), but I have to say I don't agree with this at all -- the choice is not binary, God vs. social construction/"consensus": there are other alternatives. That's pretty much been one of the core issues that philosophy has been confronting since the Enlightenment, and even if you don't agree with them, it would be unwise to lightly dismiss the attempts that have been made to locate ethics in reason -- in other words, to say that (for one) valuing/having respect for human life is an inevitable consequence of the survival instinct/pleasure principle/etc. that should be present in a sentient, conscious, sane, non-omnipotent being who wants to continue to exist. Yeah, "proven by science", all the attendant dangers, etc., but it beats the hell out of the alternatives.

I do hope for your own sake that you're a vegetarian, as your apparent position leaves little room for the killing of sentient beings who lack the means to speak on their own behalf.

also Phil is right: it's not either life has inherent value OR there's no God -- that's another one o' them Christian tricks

(E.g.: if your reading comprehension was as good as your written grammar you'd have noted that I was very plainly saying that the required level of care for an infant is less than what you're asking of a pregnant woman -- all you're really required to do is feed and generally shelter it as best you can, which is a lot less than feeding it, keeping it inside your body, eating for it, breathing for it, etc. So on the "questions you haven't answered" slate there is still that one, which is a very direct one: what obligates a woman to provide that care?) ("That care" is above and beyond the care of a born child -- see below -- so you can leave children out of it.)

(On the side-stepping front: you seemed to acknowledge that I was correct about families providing life support, and then jumped a little, saying "well would you want the state to do that." So far as I'm aware, we are not discussing any situation in which the state forces abortions -- we're talking about a woman herself deciding not to carry a child to term, which I'm equating to a family's decision not to provide for the ongoing life of another person who can't survive without someone else's providing for their basic body functions.) (I italicize that so you don't say "oh, well children need to be provided for too" -- I'm drawing a line here between caring for something and actually motoring its existence, i.e., without you it wouldn't just eventually starve but it would immediately cease to live.)

Of course, the flip side of your point (which came off the flip side of my own, at that) is that it is entirely possible to be anti-abortion without locating that position in religious beliefs. I daresay the pro-choice rhetoric on this one -- i.e. that anyone who isn't of their views is a Bible-thumping, woman-hating cretin -- easily equals the rhetoric spouted by the pro-life folks about their own adversaries: both sides certainly will stereotype, generalize, and belittle those who don't agree with them, if it serves their own agendas.

"social construction = consensus" isn't a defensible synonym, incidentally

You're right, Phil. I just get kind of worked up when I feel like somebody's trying to weasel through a discussion without putting their cards on the table. I actually believe that the whole abortion question is actually painfully complex and generally do take the position that it ought to be left entirely to women. Our mutual friend Mr. Catracho, though, brings out the troo-black-metal-silence-the-Christians adolescent who's semi-latent within me.

And yes, social construction and consensus definitely aren't synonyms, nor did I intend to suggest they were. I invoked imprecisely.

we value reason = reason is contained within the realm of the values of the living (even if we don't agree on what constitutes reason) (in the sense that i don't think knowledge eventually reaches an indisturbable plateau where you no longer have to worry about its truthm, and can just absorb it uncritically, and that this knowledge can be co-opted into the sphere of reason)

*if god is some big old v.ancient alien who can read all our minds and intervene in earth affairs, then he's "people", even if not my kind of people (necessarily) (if 12-foot tall and saurian i can reconsider)

The Hegelian argument, insofar as I understand it, is congruent with my own: the value of any other human life is the value of one's own, because the process of becoming conscious demands that one be able to recognize oneself in the Other (a recognition in which reason and emotion collaborate -- the instinct for compassion plus the loglcal process which Hegel outlines) (while of course simultaneously recognizing that they are not oneself). Daevid Allen writes "You can't kill me"; maybe the second half of that statement is "...without killing you."

I don't know what this has to do with anything but but I can't think about Hegel without thinking about how De Sade dips his cup into the same waters and comes up with a completely different drink

"Our mutual friend Mr. Catracho, though, brings out the troo-black-metal-silence-the-Christians adolescent who's semi-latent within me."

See, J0hn, at least you're enjoying yourself. :-)

J0hn writes:

"I do hope for your own sake that you're a vegetarian, as your apparent position leaves little room for the killing of sentient beings who lack the means to speak on their own behalf."

Aren't vegetables living things too? According to that logic, your caricature of me should restrict his diet to a balanced diet of water, minerals and other non-living things! :-) Hmm...

J0hn writes:

"also Phil is right: it's not either life has inherent value OR there's no God -- that's another one o' them Christian tricks"

Well, I personally didn't assert (nor infer) the either/or. I simply asked a question related question--no "Christian tricks" here. The answer to the question (not just yes/no, but an attempt at a why) is still interesting to me.

J0hn, thanks for answering my question.

I wrote:

"2) Is your viewpoint strictly predicated on any religious or quasi-religious belief?

No, I'm just here asking questions. I promise I won't push my beliefs on anyone here; but I will state my position if anyone is curious. Is my morality influenced by my religious beliefs? Yes...I would suggest that everyone's religious beliefs (because they are so fundamental) have an important impact on their entire belief system."

J0hn, you weren't happy with this answer. I'm sorry. Let me try again: is my viewpoint strictly predicated on any religious belief? No. My religious beliefs are "predicated" on my viewpoint. Is that a better answer? Here's my breakdown: my viewpoint (my experiences, my education) made me arrive at my religious beliefs. My religious beliefs have an important impact on my entire belief system. I apologize if I didn't articulate my point well before. I hope you'll forgive me.

J0hn writes:

"The preceding has been a concrete example, or as concrete as we can get at the level of language, of how you haven't answered any of the questions people on this board have asked you."

J0hn, are you so sure you should be using absolute statements so freely? Must I re-post each of the questions that I have answered? Have I answered the hypothetical question from Plinky regarding my wife if she had a complicated pregnancy? Yes. I even gave a link. Nick asked me to compare the loss due to miscarriage to the death of a child from leukemia. I gave a complete answer. If you have any more accusations about my ability to answer other people's questions, please give me the specific question and I'd be happy to give the question another try.

Enjoy

PS--this is a fast moving thread!

You get the prize for both the most interesting answer and the most interesting re-phrasing of the question. For those who don't like my phrasing:

Why should one give a tinker's damn about the Other?

Enjoy

I was emotionally incapable of caring for a child, and knew it, and really felt that I had no right to bring a child into the situation I was living in. I decided to terminate the pregnancy (I was 4 weeks along) and I'll harbor some feeling of guilt about it for the rest of my life, thanks partially to my Catholic upbringing, and partially to the letter my 'best' friend wrote me 7 years later berating me for having done it when I "knew" she and her husband were trying to have a baby (I didn't), and how could I have been so selfish.

Ultimately, though, I think I did what was best.

On the other facet of this thread, I can't remember the last time I saw such a volume of sustained, disingenuous, smug, bad-faith 'arguing' (or 'questioning' if you prefer) as from El Catracho here.

I'm starting to believe that he is a troll here.

(In other words, I agree with you, although I think we're able to abstract those types of values until they do seem like they hinge on some overaching non-relative "rule" -- there doesn't have to actually be the arbiter-God so long as we've constructed rules we want to take approximately that seriously.)

(with no offense intended to the ether-dwellers either)

Also note that was I was saying was what you said above (sort of): "the value of any human life is the value of my own" can derive from an outright social contract, a constructed agreement that we all value our lives and thus it stands to reason that not-killing is a net benefit to those collective life-values. I'm saying the end result of that is "thou shalt not kill," whether we thought it up or God said it; I don't think God said it, so I think we should.

One point: since my reason for beliving abortion should be available is nothing to do with the fate of the foetus and entirely about believing a woman has the right to control of her own body, I have nothing to say about what happens to the foetus after removal, which leads to some more questions. If it can be removed and then kept alive, what reason is there to object to this? Should the would-have-been mother know what happens? Or have any rights? Who is responsible for/in authority over the baby that might develop? I am not advocating this - the world is hardly short of people, though adoptive parents are in lengthy queues - but technology is extending the period where this is possible, so the fate of the foetus becomes more separated from the rights of the pregnant woman.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that enlightened self-interest and the social contract -- or analogues thereof -- are in practice what allow society to function: human intercourse is governed, as you say, by constructed laws and contracts. But I stand firm by my belief that the principles that animate those laws and contracts are real and secular -- and that without those principles, they're little more than a charade.

It was in the following months that it began to haunt me somewhat. Yes, I felt bereft at the loss of the pregnancy but the fact that it was necessary to save my life, justified the termination. But I began to question why, when organ transplants are so commonplace today, couldn't the foetus have been removed from my fallopian tube and replanted successfully in my womb. It quickly became apparent that this was not possible for various reasons and re-emphasised to me how totally and utterly dependent this 'life' was on the conditions being right in my body. Therefore, it would put paid to Martin's suggestion that removing the foetus and transplanting it elsewhere (another woman's womb?) would not be an option.

Curiously, Martin's other point about what happens to aborted foetus played heavily on my mind. It only struck my a couple of months after the termination and I've resisted contacting the hospital to date to find out, as I'm not sure I could handle the response, even though I'm already pretty sure about what happens. But I now believe I had a perfect right to say what should/shouldn't happen with my foetus, and yes Martin, you're right, it does throw up some pretty searching questions - questions which I've yet to get some shape and cohesive thought into. Apologies if this hasn't contributed to the philosophical/moral debate, but I just wanted to put it out there.

"why shd i care about others?"

once we get beyond a basic "as people it's what we do already" (in other words, once we start to refine the answer into a practice, an argument, a culture, a polity, into something we can discuss and explore and use)

i. "care" is very roomy
ii. "others" is very roomy

i: eg just because you have your old dog put down when it gets sick doesn't mean you didn't adore it
ii: eg a pigfarmer who feeds porkchops to his kids (and not childchops to his hogs) nevertheless gives more than a cuss about all the species of other in his charge

sometimes people kill people *because* they love them: sometimes identification-confusion of "me" with "the other" goes too far

(part of) reason is this testing: but the tests aren't over yet (which is why we're arguing)

I don't think a woman who gives birth to a full-term baby and kills/attempts to kill it straight away has done anything wrong.

I consider myself pro-choice, but that sounds completely insane to me.

I never said it was better or worse to act any way on a message board. I was just pointing out that the anonymity of the internet allows people a certain freedom to exaggerate (both themselves and their opinions) that "real" social interaction does not necessarilly allow. It's not that internet is "unreal", it's more that is not an adequate reflection of the kind of interaction most people have with one another in the work-a-day world. It's much like saying that the sort of social interaction you see college seminars are the same sort you will experience on a day to day basis at your job. And those differences (or more accurately perhaps the freedom and anonymity allowed by the internet) are precisely why you see people trolling internet message boards and not harrassing people at their local cafes (although I occassionally do that too so haha). The fact is though that anyone who posts on boards is (or should be) WELL aware that the range of opinions (and the unfilterability in a certain sense of those opinions) means that there is a HIGH probability that someone is gonna say something that offends you and that you may very well say something that will offend someone else. It's a fact of the medium.

That said, I didn't quite mean to sound quite as insensitive as I sounded so for anyone who thought that I was saying that feeling bad about their abortion was dopey or that their trauma was equivalent to not getting a toothbrush (which isn't actually what I said, but whatever) then I sincerely apologize. Obviously Tom is right, people have an absolute right to feel however they choose about whatever. It's the AUTOMATIC assumption that they SHOULD feel a certain way that I found problematic and I inadvertently allowed myself to become part of that problem.

more evidence that el catracho can't read.

You have got to be pulling my leg.

-- Kiwi (csisherwood@hotmail.com), September 30, 2002.

"Have I answered the hypothetical question from Plinky regarding my wife if she had a complicated pregnancy?"

I have read the article from your link, thank you.
I'm sorry but I don't think you did answer my question fully, I feel you skirted round the issue by giving a moral standpoint. What I was looking for was an honest, emotion based answer from you. If you had to choose between your wife and your unborn child, who would you choose? No matter how many religiuos, ethical, moral arguments we may have, when it comes right down to it, your life would be turned upside down and your emotions which would be in turmoil at that point. I just wondered if you were capable of getting down off your high horse and actually thinking how you would react put in that situation.

I haven't read the El Catracho stuff cause when I argued w/him way upthread it took him 3 go-rounds to get my basic point, if indeed he did. Is it worth reading?

This thread has proven me wrong. To repeat what jim said: if kiwi/anyone on the greenspun forum thinks that el c has addressed any of the issues raised they are inhabiting a different mental world.

I think the nub of the disagreement appears to be a sort of essentialism, something akin to a belief in the supernatural: a belief in souls or the essential "life". fair?

phil of course i go hammer and tongs with because the difference between is microscopic!!

It strikes me that technology will eventually provide a solution to the 'abortion question' by making it the norm for human infants to be conceived and gestated outside of a human womb.

Having said my piece all that way above, I figured I would just watch from the sidelines as El-C complained and all. Sorta sad, really.

Actually, I've figured I'd just watch from the sidelines as you all complained about me with your little ad hominem attacks. I think I'll just sit back and pour myself a nice tall glass of lemonade. Yawn...sorta sad, really.

Enjoy.

Martin said that I'm the one that is supposed to be smug, not you.

el camatcho hasn't made me change my mind at all. but then, is that down to my inflexibility or el camatchos lack of persuaveness. do i feel like i've been 'defeated'? its difficult for me to think in such terms with an issue like this. i haven't been able to accept any of el camatchos points (but then he could say the same in reverse). is an argument like this 'winnable'? should it be?

It strikes me that the mindsets of both "sides" of this conversation are sufficiently alien to each other that it shouldn't come as a surprise that everyone is walking out of this thinking that the other side is incapable of reason or logic.

I am dumb . cheers kiwi

"Damn Jenny, that's a huge zit you've got on your forehead."
"That's not a zit, that's MY BABY, you horrible person! *sob*"

phew...i'm glad i wasn't 'around' back then if this was the case, week in week out.

The repeat:

"Abortion is great (as in INCREDIBLY fucking CLASSIC). Questions about when life begins are stupid. There is NO compelling reason to force a women to carry a child to term. Any argument which distracts from that ARGUMENT is a bullshit one."

So if anyone on THIS board or ANY other board wants to focus on that FUNDAMENTAL question without resorting to the same tired smoke and mirrors of "when does life begin" then does so. But I guarantee that THIS is an ARGUMENT that you cannot win.

1. Supreme Court says it's okay to do.
2. Some people say "b-b-but that's murder!"
3. (Murder is still officially bad.)

I.e., the objection that's being raised is that the act is a "murder," and as such shouldn't be allowed no matter what negative effects that may have on anyone else. And since the number of people raising that objection is a significant one -- and since that's their sole central objection -- you can't really have much of a discussion with them without responding to that objection.

(It's absolutely fine to say "well the Supreme Court disagreed so shut up cause I don't want to hear about it," but then you really shouldn't enter the discussion in the first place.)

That said, I think it would be interesting to have a thread that's not "abortion: right or wrong" but actually "abortion: personal experience thereof" (which is how this one sort of started out).

Sadly, I feel that this argument, if it's ever won, will have to be won by cold, hard, undeniable logic (though I doubt, unfortunately, this will ever happen, especially since you can't logically argue against the existence of an abortion-hating god), because too many of the people fighting against it will NEVER be able to understand or to empathize with the emotions involved...

Tatyana: I was sort of vaguely in agreement with what you were saying earlier, but now I'm starting to think you can sort of fuck off -- you really have no idea how any of us feel about those posts, and it's rude and presumptuous to pretend that simply because we didn't openly express our feelings about them we must necessarily have none.

So you're right: they're using their moral decision on the matter in an effort to change the legal status of it. You can just say "no fair" to that, sure, but don't bother saying it to them.

Though I DO think it's a shame that the emotional element can't be a larger portion of the debate (its bearing on the ethical question, Nabisco), but I'm fairly positive that the powers-that-be (primarily men) sitting in some conference room or court room or white house discussing the possiblity of "reinterpreting" Roe v. Wade or some other such nonsense are not going to accept an empathetic, emotion-based stance.

For the record, my response to those posts ran about how Nory outlined it: I don't pretend to have had anything to say in response to them beyond the most generalized sympathy and good wishes (and approval). If you look at the beginning of the thread, you might agree that it would have run more in the direction you were asking for, if not for the arrival of posters who vigorously objected to the ethical premise of the thing as a whole (no matter what the circumstances, understandable, empathisable, or not).

If someone else would like an emotional discussion of this topic - then start one.

But yes, given that I do think honesty and courage here are a good thing I probably should take more time to acknowledge when someone posts about personal experience: I don't do it for the same reason I don't reply to every 'Happy Birthday' thread - after a while it would feel more dutiful and less meaningful, and so I try and keep it for the rare occasions when I feel I have something more than rote empathy to offer. Maybe this is a bad policy. FWIW, thankyou Saskia, Mystery, Martin and everyone else for feeling able to write about your experiences, and thankyou Tatyana for pulling us up on it.

http://yaledailynews.com/story.html

Martine Powers
Staff Reporter
Published Thursday, April 17, 2008
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Art major Aliza Shvarts '08 wants to make a statement.

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts' project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock — saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.

But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for "shock value."

"I hope it inspires some sort of discourse," Shvarts said. "Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it's not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone."

The "fabricators," or donors, of the sperm were not paid for their services, but Shvarts required them to periodically take tests for sexually transmitted diseases. She said she was not concerned about any medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body. The abortifacient drugs she took were legal and herbal, she said, and she did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated miscarriages.

Shvarts declined to specify the number of sperm donors she used, as well as the number of times she inseminated herself.

Art major Juan Castillo '08 said that although he was intrigued by the creativity and beauty of her senior project, not everyone was as thrilled as he was by the concept and the means by which she attained the result.

"I really loved the idea of this project, but a lot other people didn't," Castillo said. "I think that most people were very resistant to thinking about what the project was really about. [The senior-art-project forum] stopped being a conversation on the work itself."

Although Shvarts said she does not remember the class being quite as hostile as Castillo described, she said she believes it is the nature of her piece to "provoke inquiry."

"I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity," Shvarts said. "I think that I'm creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be."

The display of Schvarts' project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts' self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Schvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

School of Art lecturer Pia Lindman, Schvarts' senior-project advisor, could not be reached for comment Wednesday night.

Few people outside of Yale's undergraduate art department have heard about Shvarts' exhibition. Members of two campus abortion-activist groups — Choose Life at Yale, a pro-life group, and the Reproductive Rights Action League of Yale, a pro-choice group — said they were not previously aware of Schvarts' project.

Alice Buttrick '10, an officer of RALY, said the group was in no way involved with the art exhibition and had no official opinion on the matter.

Sara Rahman '09 said, in her opinion, Shvarts is abusing her constitutional right to do what she chooses with her body.

"[Shvarts' exhibit] turns what is a serious decision for women into an absurdism," Rahman said. "It discounts the gravity of the situation that is abortion."

CLAY member Jonathan Serrato '09 said he does not think CLAY has an official response to Schvarts' exhibition. But personally, Serrato said he found the concept of the senior art project "surprising" and unethical.

"I feel that she's manipulating life for the benefit of her art, and I definitely don't support it," Serrato said. "I think it's morally wrong."

Shvarts emphasized that she is not ashamed of her exhibition, and she has become increasingly comfortable discussing her miscarriage experiences with her peers.

"It was a private and personal endeavor, but also a transparent one for the most part," Shvarts said. "This isn't something I've been hiding."

He, he

rereading this thread has proven to me, pretty much definitively, that anyone who says ilx hasn't gone downhill is full of shit. it's hardly a perfect thread, but it's worthwhile and thoughtful in a way that 99% of ilx isn't, anymore.

She did admit it was all a hoax, though. (xpost)

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/yale-abortion-hoax-performance-art/2008/04/18/1208025477707.html

Stam "comin' correct" M

*STAN

rereading this thread has proven to me, pretty much definitively, that anyone who says ilx hasn't gone downhill is full of shit. it's hardly a perfect thread, but it's worthwhile and thoughtful in a way that 99% of ilx isn't, anymore.

-- Charlie Rose Nylund, Saturday, 19 April 2008 06:43 (7 hours ago) Bookmark Link

Good point here from somebody I've never heard of.

She did admit it was all a hoax, though. (xpost)

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/yale-abortion-hoax-performance-art/2008/04/18/1208025477707.html

-- StanM, Saturday, 19 April 2008 07:53

man ur supposed to let it become a shitstorm thread first before dropping that

Oops, sorry :-(

Maybe her hoax admission was a hoax too and it was true after all?

The abortifacient drugs she took were legal and herbal, she said...

lol

Young person showing bad judgement in pursuit of attention shockah!

Outrage over Planned Parenthood Christmas 'gift' cards
'It is difficult to think of a more tasteless, ghoulish thing to give anyone'
Posted: November 26, 2008
9:05 pm Eastern

By Bob Unruh
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/images/misc/pp.jpg

Planned Parenthood's "gift" certificates

Planned Parenthood, which in past years has promoted a "Choice on Earth" abortion campaign during the Christmas season, has a new outreach, offering Christmas gift certificates to be used for abortions.

"It is difficult to think of a more tasteless, ghoulish thing to give anyone. I refuse to refer to these financial instruments as gifts as they are nothing more than a legal way to put a hit out on someone," said a participant in a forum at the online Lone Star Times, where the plan was reported.

"Planned Parenthood, this generation's King Herod, you know, the guy who ordered the mass slaughter of babies when Jesus was born," added WND columnist Jill Stanek, who also documented the plan on her blog.

Display the classic magnetic bumper sticker: "Former embryo on board," only from WND's store.

According to the Lone Star Times, the nation's leading player in the abortion industry is "celebrating the most important crisis pregnancy of all time by selling gift certificates, perfect for the woman who has everything but moral fiber … And it's so much easier than finding the perfect 'Baby's First Christmas' ornament."

According to WISH-TV in Indianapolis, the controversial plan has people talking.

"People are making really tough decisions about putting gas in their car and food on their table, so we know that many women especially put healthcare at the bottom of their list to do," Chrystal Struben-Hall, an official for the abortion business, told the station.

The report said the certificates come in $25 increments and can be used for everything from birth control to $58 examinations that include breast exams and pap tests.

"They can be seen for sexually transmitted disease screenings, HIV tests and general prostate exams and those kinds of things," said Struben-Hall.

But can they be used for abortions?

Of course, Struben-Hall said. "We decided not to put restrictions on."

Stanek has campaigned to alert the American public of President-elect Barack Obama's extreme pro-abortion position. In fact, Obama considered partial birth abortion a "legitimate medical procedure" and opposed a requirement that abortionists provide life-preserving care for infants who survive abortion attempts, because of the burden it would impose on the abortionist.

On the Lone Star Times forums page, the reactions ranged from horror, to, well, horror:

* "A gift for those who only want to kill the very innocent."

* "Good for one dead baby."

* "Redeem this at Planned Parenthood. No other redemption possible. Ever."

* "I cannot think of a more evil organization."

* "What a marvelous way for the donor as well as the recipient-user to have blood on their hands."

* "No matter what you believe about abortions this has GOT to disgust people that you would 'give' that kind of thing as a gift to someone!?? I mean WHO would you give it to??? 'Here best friend in case you ever need an abortion.'"

* "I met a woman once who CELEBRATED her abortion because she was 'happy that no MAN could tell her what to do with her body.' It was all I could do to walk away silently without puking in her face. She's the kind of person that would give all the women she knew one of these gift death certificates.

WND has reported Planned Parenthood's various "Choice on Earth" campaigns at Christmas.

One promotion included a "holiday" card that said, "'Tis the season to share with family, friends, colleagues and loved ones the message of 'choice on earth.'"

At that time Jim Sedlak, executive director of American Life League's STOPP International, slammed Planned Parenthood.

"In its continual attempt to 'normalize' abortion, Planned Parenthood has once again chosen to offend the Christian community by releasing the latest edition of its 'Choice on Earth' holiday cards," said Sedlak in a statement. "Contrary to the open-minded image the abortion organization aims to present for itself, Planned Parenthood has zero tolerance for anyone – or any religious group – that recognizes abortion as an evil act that kills a pre-born baby."

The controversial theme is derived from a passage in the Gospel of Luke, where an angel announces to shepherds the birth of their savior in Bethlehem.

The King James version of the Bible states: "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.'"

"By replacing 'peace' with 'choice,' or more accurately, 'killing the innocent on earth,' Planned Parenthood is essentially saying 'abortion on earth,'" Sedlak said. "This blatant mockery of Christian values – and of Christ Himself – truly demonstrates the bigoted, anti-religion, anti-God nature of Planned Parenthood."

WND reported during the 2008 presidential election campaign when Obama's team struck out at an abortion survivor.

It happened when an Obama advertisement implied the abortion survivor was part of a "sleazy" campaign for promoting a "despicable lie" about the senator's voting record.

Abortion survivor Gianna Jessen's responded, "I've dealt with worse; I survived an abortion."

As WND reported, the 31-year-old Jessen, who was born alive following her mother's botched abortion, made a television advertisement highlighting Obama's votes against born-alive infant protection bills while he was serving as a state senator in Illinois.

The Obama campaign responded with an advertisement of its own labeling Sen. John McCain's campaign ads as "sleazy" and "truly vile," while showing clips from Jessen's ad in the background, including a photo of Jessen.

Jessen then created another commercial in response, opening with clips of the Obama campaign's ad, which she says amounted to a personal attack.

"Seen this ad? In it, Senator Obama personally attacks me," Jessen says in the commercial. "I've dealt with worse; I survived an abortion."

The latest ad from Jessen can be seen below:

Jessen's organization, BornAliveTruth.org, is responsible for the advertisement and was not – as Obama's advertisement implied – connected to the McCain campaign.

to answer the original question:

Never on the first date.

My feeling about that woman who survived her teenaged mother's attempted abortion is: did the abortion give you that underbite? Because THAT is something I would resent.

classic!

whatever happened to C on Ts?

a shower

I can't even begin to describe how angry that article made me. Fucking idiots.

Oh and in case I needed to clarify I didn't mean the people at PP I meant whoever wrote and was quoted in that piece of shit "article".

"Sounds like a get out of being knocked up free card. It also sounds about as exciting as a set of new tires for the car. Can you see a mom giving one of these to a daughter ans telling her here is something to use when you screw up? I can't. "

Shithead. OK, I have to stop reading these now.

If you follow to the original story, the gift certificates are intended to be used for routine health care. There are no restrictions, but clearly the story has been put thru the WMD distortion filter.

WND, not WMD.

Yeah I know, exactly! That was what I was angry at - the distorted perspective of the article! I don't have any probs with the certificates themselves.

where is kitten "I can has abortion?" .jpg

Display the classic magnetic bumper sticker: "Former embryo on board," only from WND's store.

Bad freaking journalism, there.

I love a good abortion, me.

I don't think anyone ever uses abortion as "birth control," there aren't really any blasé "oops lol pregnant again?" women. Or so few as to nullify the percieved truth of the meme.

^^^
This is true, similar to the tabloid meme in this country of the council estate woman pumping out babies just to get benefits; it may happen very very occasionally, but not nearly enough to warrant the cutting of child benefits.

Abortion is way too expensive, for one thing!

Though SURPRISINGLY its price has been almost untouched by inflation (thank god – the $400 I spent was still several months' free money, including groceries).

Not if those darn liberals get their way!

xpost

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v134/tracerhand/snewlaw.gif

from feministing:

Conservatives are freaking out because Planned Parenthood in Indiana is offering gift certificates. Granted, a pap smear is not the most exciting Christmas gift I can think of, but it sure is practical. Oh, wait -- you mean they're claiming these are going to be used for abortions? As if that's all Planned Parenthood does? I'm shocked.

links to news article:

The certificates come in $25 increments. They can be used for everything from birth control to $58 examinations that include breast exams and pap tests. Men who receive healthcare at Planned Parenthood can use them too.

"They can be seen for sexually transmitted disease screenings, HIV tests and general prostate exams and those kinds of things," said Struben-Hall.

Some Hoosiers 24-Hour News 8 talked to asked if the gift certificates could be used towards abortions. The answer is yes. But, Planned Parenthood said that's not the purpose of the gift certificates.

Struben-Hall said, "They really are intended for preventative healthcare. We decided not to put restrictions on the gift certificates so it's for whatever people feel they need the services for most."

I had an abortion when I was in my early 20s. The abortion was far less traumatic than having a baby and giving it up would have been. I knew I was not ready/able to be a mom. I got pregnant while using birth control. My boyfriend was a mean mofo. Best decision I ever made. The clinic was clean and caring. No regrets here.

this looks quite interesting

Femifisting.

ahhh those were the days, like candy from a fetus

ugh ugh ugh fuck wnd seriously

meanwhile, on their way out of power:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/bal-te.conscience30nov30,0,7247123.story

Rule will strengthen right to refuse care
Measure focuses on health workers' 'right of conscience'

By David G. Savage | Tribune Washington Bureau
November 30, 2008
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is planning to announce a broad new "right of conscience" rule permitting medical facilities, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health care workers to refuse to participate in any way in morally "objectionable procedures" such as abortion and possibly including birth control and artificial insemination.

For more than 30 years, federal law has dictated that doctors and nurses may refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further by making clear that health care workers may also refuse to provide information or advice about abortion to patients.

It also seeks to cover far more employees. For example, in addition to a surgeon and a nurse in an operating room, the rule would extend to "an employee whose task it is to clean the instruments," the draft rule said...

^ That is fucking ridiculous. If you don't want to dispense accurate MEDICAL information to which all your patients have a right then don't become a health care professional. Fuck.

I am helping with an annual meeting for the MA Emergency Contraception Network this afternoon. I wonder if this will be brought up.

Also, I love Jennifer Baumgardner.

Yeah, I read a quote from some religious spokesperson about how this will protect Catholic hospitals etc who said they should be protected from both PERFORMING the services, and also from having to REFER anyone to another practitioner. I mean, REALLY?@?@?

have definitely run into some srsly pro-life ppl at med school :-/

I'm sitting at my desk coding surveys we're conducting regarding educational attainment among preg and parenting teens. I just worked out that one of the respondents got preg at 12. So great we already don't provide these kids with accurate comprehensive sex ed and now we're going to further restrict their access to vital reproductive and sexual health services? Way to go Bush!

x-post

One of my prof is currently doing a study on med students and their decision whether or not to be trained to preform abortions. It sounds pretty interesting from what she's told me.

That recent article (somewhere online?) was interesting, about the woman in med skoo who thought all the way through that she'd be an abortion doc but ended up realizing that even though she still supports students being trained to do abortions, a different field was a better fit for her.

Oooh, interesting. I'm going to see if I can find that. If you remember where it was online def let me know.

WaPo

Also a detail not to be missed is that this rule-change is going to be an exec order, which will probably be on the stack of crap that the incoming Obama admin will just cancel come Jan 21st-ish.

Fun bit is that this is pretty much W not giving a shit about something for 8 years, but tossing a bone and just setting something up for RW douchebags to rail against and solicit funds for when it will inevitably be overturned.

posted elsewhere about this, but a rep from Nat'l Advocates for Pregnant Women came and spoke and it was very eye-opening

Where did you post elsewhere about that? I wd like to know.

chicago thread. basically i just said that it infuriated me (eg. women that have refused c-sections are being locked up under the statutes used to protect fetuses).

ditto women that used illegal drugs during pregnancy: woman had a stillborn child, and was also discovered to have used cocaine while pregnant. locked up for HOMICIDE because the law said that the fetus was a person, and that she killed it with drugs. THIS IS DESPITE THE FACT THAT COCAINE HAS NOT BEEN LINKED TO STILLBIRTH whereas, say, EtOH has but no one goes to jail for that

Ahhhhh yes, is this an unfortunate side-effect of that drunk driver who killed a pregnant woman being prosecuted for TWO deaths??? I believe this is what's known as a slippery slope. o_O

btw she was a poor minority lady lol

>:(

:-( I am too busy to really think/post about this now but it's all such a dangerous thing legally and well - argh. It's just so complicated. I would have loved to hear that woman's talk.

she was a real firebrand :D

OK, I had to look. From the NAPW website:

In the name of fetal rights and under the guise of the war on drugs, hundreds of women have been arrested for being pregnant and continuing to term in spite of a drug or alcohol problem. One state, South Carolina, by judicial fiat has declared that viable fetuses are legal persons and that pregnant women who use illegal drugs or engage in any other behavior that jeopardizes the fetus can be prosecuted as a child abusers or murders. Indeed, the arrest of pregnant women is not limited to those using illegal drugs. In Utah, a woman was charged with murder based on the claim that she caused a stillbirth by refusing to have a c-section earlier in her pregnancy.These arrests are taking place in spite of the lack of authorizing legislation and in spite of overwhelming opposition from medical, public health and child welfare organizations.

While hundreds of women have been arrested, there thousands more who have been subjected to punitive and counterproductive child welfare interventions that treat what women do or experience during pregnancy as evidence of civil child neglect or abuse. In increasing number of state are using a single unconfirmed positive drug test on new mothers or babies as a basis for involving child welfare authorities and in some cases removing the newborn from family custody. Women who have tested positive for drugs administered during labor, women in federally approved methadone treatment programs and women whose drug use in no way compromises their parenting ability have had their children taken from them.

~~blood coming out of my eyeballs~~

Yeah, head exploding, cannot think too much about it this morning lest I start screaming in all caps.

If fetuses are legal persons, can you have them arrested for stealing nutrients from your bloodstream?

A mirthless "haha" -- maybe it would lead to mandatory abortions, in order to keep the fetus in custody while his or her case went to trial.

~~blood coming out of my eyeballs~~
Yeah, head exploding, cannot think too much about it this morning lest I start screaming in all caps.

Exactly.

Just one more way of preserving the rights of those who can afford to go to court...

engage in any other behavior that jeopardizes the fetus

height of ridiculousness. foetal rights outstripping women's rights.

jennifer baumgardner and amy richards are great. i went to see them read at bluestockings a month or so ago. i was reading a review of the recent abortion/family book that accused her of some white privilege, but it's kind of hard to take seriously because i learned about white privilege from their writings.

RW'ers are freaking out over Obama's inauguration, and a lot of it is over abortion. It just seems like it is the only issue they care about.

Even if you didn't vote for Obama, it is an historic occasion, no? I think the sore loser attitude and the "one issue" approach says a lot about some people's commitment to politics.

I mean these people don't want to talk politics at all unless it is about abortion. I think this is very controlling and a bit disturbing. A lot of Republicans are pro-choice and are guilt tripped about their beliefs.

It's always some old religious white guy doing this. I go to church, and the people that nod their heads and do whatever the church says are usually white guys aged 50-70. What is the psychology behind this.

http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2009/01/pro-life_group_up_in_arms_over.php

It's just tradition to show respect for the occasion, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican.

What is it with these old white people who refuse to talk politics unless it is some religious issue (gays, abortion)? Younger people who are anti-abortion at least try to discuss it with others, in my experience.

What are these people so bitter about? If you disagree with abortion, you can still protest at a clinic or offer counseling for pregnant women.

Even if you didn't vote for Obama, it is an historic occasion, no?

Seems there are some who disagree. Some friends of my grandparents are hosting an inauguration party and one woman has reportedly declined the invitation because she "sees nothing historic about the event". I don't even know on what grounds you could possibly argue that! It's just code for "I AIN'T VOTE FOR NO N1GG3R" afaic. Fuck this lady.

Hi 3v3rybody!

N3xt Monday 3v3ning, __________ ar3 co-sponsoring an MVA workshop h3r3 on campus! With a fr33 dinn3r!

MVA stands for manual vacuum aspiration. It's a r3lativ3ly simpl3 surgical t3chniqu3 for t3rminating a pr3gnancy. Two local physicians, Drs. __________________ , will b3 coming to campus to t3ach you (y3s, YOU) how to p3rform an abortion on a papaya.

If you'd lik3 to com3, 3at and l3arn, pl3as3, pl3as3, PL3AS3 RSVP to m3, or to ____________________ by th3 3nd of th3 w33k. W3 n33d to g3t an id3a of how many papayas to g3t, and how much food to ord3r.

l33t'd up for.....no particular reason, i guess

anyway, papayas!

uh

http://img.groundspeak.com/waymarking/display/04716e74-a9f1-4477-ad9d-54b10501f6c5.JPG

are you going??? sounds fun

would it be rude to eat the papaya, after

OK that baby papaya thing is amazing.

I've heard of that, gbx. In that one article where the woman med stude went to the same workshop. Did I ever find that Wash Po article for you?

Laurel I think you did because I read it after you mentioned it.

I don't think you did!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/14/AR2008111401698_pf.html

She linked to it upthread. Unless you're talking about a different article?

Good memory, E! Thanks for reposting.

Papayas??

Regarding the idea that abortion is "traumatic to the mother"

http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/127868/why_are_even_smart,_liberal_men_freaked_out_by_abortion/

And I wanted to throw in that I am fond of replacing "pro-life" with "compulsory pregnancy advocates" (thx Jenny, and feminist bloggers everywhere).

oh cool, thanks, i will read that E!

....later, at least

Ah, now I understand about the papayas, sort of.

I would totally go to this fyi. Even if there were not fr33 f00d.

So would I.

should i go and BLOG about it?

You should go and learn about it so that if you decide you want to provide comprehensive women's health care services, you know how.

yowch

abortion never tasted this good
http://www.tinymuse.org/~mint/fastfood/papaya.gif

How was that a "yowch"?

Wasn't meant to be zingish.

oh sorry, i thought it was a zing :( but yeah, you are correct, I should go! am reading that article now, btw

hey GBX when does the medical community consider embryo/fetus a person? i mean is there a point your average dr considers "too late"?

too late for the abort, of course

I recalled the article when it was posted a while ago; it seemed relatively well-balanced and. . .

OK I bring the baggage of working in a lab with a very talented med student who chose the OBG-YN path but was all "no, I'm Catholic and there is no way I'd condone abortions." This was really bothersome to me--I really feel that particularly as a women's health provider, you are ethically obligated to provide at least a neutral opinion on abortion; even if you do not do abortions yourself, ethically you are obligated to advise a women of her options and make the appropriate referals according to her choice.

Obv. this is a debatable stance.

That question is decided by each state, sunny. Usually in the low-20s (weeks).
xpost

wow that seems late. is that to account for birth defects found at 20 wk ultrasound or also for people who decide they dont want a baby? or is that not an issue?

Quincie I agree with you 100%.

SS - in MA for instance it's legal up until 24 weeks for any reason but only after 24 weeks if the mother's life is in danger.

Ugh I know of women--girls, really--who don't even understand that they are pregnant at 24 weeks???

Limits are imposed based on how each state defines "viability", or when a fetus could survive outside the womb. Exceptions for health of the mother are in place to allow for abortion even past those limits.

I, too, agree with you, quincie. I will not allow myself to get started on that topic...

x-post Yeah, I've seen that happen. It happens more frequently then you'd think esp with young girls.

There are so many situations that can make a woman seek an abortion that late. I one woman who was married but in an abusive relationship. She hadn't known she was pregnant until around 3 mo and then it took her a couple weeks to decide that she had to terminate. She then had several these complications with medical clearance due to a heart condition and rescheduling so that she just made it in at 23 weeks by which point she had to undergo a saline abortion which is really intense procedure.

q: When does human life begin?

a: What is the smallest number of grains that can constitute a heap?

(Inconveniently, the insolent physical world refuses to reconstitute itself to conform to our words for it.)

one of the most depressing things in the most recent abortion debate in britain was the way the time period was floated as an entirely subjective, moral, flexible measure; while there should obviously be debate that looks for an appropriate measure between one week being o k and fifty weeks not being o k, there are still fundamental, natural stages that should dictate the limits. the brain of a foetus is not fully developed at twenty weeks, and will not continue to develop outside of the womb, and so viability becomes this skewed measure of potential life trumping quality of life. it seems kind of low key to concentrate on the small variations between states and their time limits, but a consensus drop towards the low 20s would be pretty disasterous i think.

the girls not knowing they're pregnant thing is complicated too - young girls who don't present, people who don't or aren't in a fit state to acknowledge the pregnancy, people who for whatever reasons (relationship, economic) wouldn't have access to a doctor until closer to the time limit - i know it veers close to the grey areas the article talks about, but targeting the tiny group of late term abortions as a way of decreasing the number as a whole really hits some of the people most in need of abortions the hardest.

xp enbb - right. the stats on the number of abortions that happen in this period - it's miniscule, but it'll really disenfranchise sections of society desperately in need of such services

Schlump, what you said there is exactly what I would have tried to say had I not been exhausted and about to go to bed when I last posted. It is also the reason that I'm 100% pro choice for any reason at any time. Thank you.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/abortiondifficult.jpg

As evidenced in my previous posts on this thread this is a very serious issue to me and quite frankly Omar I'm offended by that.

sorry :(

Actually I'm not, it's awesome.

So is this ad for Baby Safe Haven brought to you by the people of my glorious state.

whew~

i will refrain from reposting the five second films pregnant woman clip though

lol @ "if you have a baby and don't know what to do"

man that rap gets downright mf doom in the middle

The Baby Safe Haven clip is one of my fav things ever. The fist time I saw it on TV my jaw just dropped. I knew that the program existed but I couldn't believe the ad wasn't a parody.

is it intentional that the baby is not seen? like was there research that if they showed the baby it would make people feel like that baby shouldn't be given up?

I think it's probably more because given the $5 budget they probably had they couldn't hire a real babby and people wouldn't feel so bad about whatever doll that girl is holding being given up.

ok i will repost it

It is a difficult issue. I've never understood why the sides are necessarily alligned as they are: That is, Democrats consider themselves champions of the powerless, which could be the basis for a pro-life position, and Republicans consider themselves defenders of liberty against government intrusion, which could be the basis for a pro-choice position.

Anyway, I'm pro-choice, but conflicted about it. I like the old Clinton line about keeping abortion "Safe, Legal and Rare."

No to take away from D Esq. serious post but

xpost omg hahahahahahahaha @ that video

i definitely understand how non-asshole, non-bible beaters can be conflicted on this issue but at the end of the day, (1) legal = safer, and (2) none of my business, so...

what really grinds my gears is that if the religious right were reaaally that concerned about reducing abortions, they'd maybe get behind proper sex education and making contraception readily accessible. but they don't, which makes me think it's not really about their concern for the unborn and maybe more about political litmus tests, sexism and discrimination. and so maybe FUCK them.

(1) legal = safer

i'm pro-choice in a lot of ways, with (2) - constitutional right to privacy way behind a lot of other good reasons, but sometimes i think it starts and ends with (1); that old line about the time for an abortion debate being when abortion is readily and safely available. abortion is an option and is going to happen, so government should accommodate this and act accordingly. actually rolling back the existing laws - which i know is perpetually in the balance, but apparently at the moment 51% of usa is pro life - would be retrograde in so many ways beyond controlling whether or not women have reproductive rights or not.

re: daniel - i know that it's been polarised since forever in the states, but i think the entrenched democratic/pro-choice, republican/pro-life split has been reinforced by the rise of the religious right; there's a way more logical pairing between beliefs and policy there.

Without the proper legal training but with some knowledge of the Supreme Court battles since Griswold vs Connecticut, I'm very curious about the line of reasoning that Ruth Bader Ginsberg, among others, follow: finding a right to abortion amid the right to privacy was a poor decision, and came too soon, at a time when state legislatures were about to allow abortions anyway. Thoughts?

(in other words, I'm open to the argument that justices like William O. Douglas went too far in pursuing a results-oriented jurisprudence)

"Ruth Bader Ginsberg, among others, follow: finding a right to abortion amid the right to privacy was a poor decision"

does she mean it's a tactical mistake or that it doesn't reasonably fall under privacy under any application?

Both. She was skeptical about locating a right to an abortion within the so-called right to privacy.

I need to find a link to the article in which she wishes Harry Blackmun had used the due process clause instead of the Right to Privacy.

nonono she wishes he had used equal protection, not the due process clause iirc

the due process "right to privacy" thing was kind of made up, perhaps a right to an abortion would be easier to ground in the equal protection clause but i'm not 100% convinced because of the way other EPC cases come out though. it's an interesting question, how stuff could have been different.

like around the same time geduldig v. aiello makes it look like it would have been impossible for the court to say there is a right to an abortion in the due process clause, that's what makes it hard for me to wrap my mind around. i dunno.

er i mean equal protection clause

i'm drinking btw

i think the tactical argument has a counterpart in what optimists are saying about obama and policies toward on gay rights: that they'll be easier to pass and built on stronger foundations if things progress incrementally rather than through turnaround legislation. i do not know if this is true of ginsberg's theory though.

Yeah: Ginsberg theorizes that state legislatures were headed in this direction anyway.

She has said, unequivocally, that Roe v Wade was a poorly decided and written decision.

i think many people, including pro-choicers agree that it was poorly written

having a kid really fucks up with your belief system with most everything but esp wrt abortion. noone warns you about the vicious wave of regret.

Yeah. Despite the fact that I hate how the pro-life movement uses post-abortion trauma as a platform now, I think that this is something that isn't addressed very well in general. The bottom line is that it is a serious issue and the feelings that one goes through afterwards are real and can be devastating.

I've counseled some women during post-abortion check-ups and the experience was heartbreaking for me. I can't even imagine what it was like for them tbh.

btw pretty sure i used to live with that dog up there, who is vexed by abortion

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/211/488863262_072763a23b.jpg?v=0

yay the return of fun afternoon with vacuum salesman guy

UH that is in reference to that picture, not the topic of abortion BTW

omg

LOL

still feelin bad for that dude :(

noone warns you about the vicious wave of regret.

You may have been warned, but did not regard it in the same way. Which makes sense. At the time you were faced with a wholly different set of circumstances and were working from a different pov.

Don't castigate yourself now. That sense of desperation you felt then was real enough.

I said this on another thread but I felt after mine that it was kind of right-wing propaganda that you were supposed to feel fucked up afterward. Things wld have been a lot easier if someone had said, "No, it's a complicated thing and of course it's okay and often natural to have volatile, unpredictable emotions. You're still a good person."

but apparently at the moment 51% of usa is pro life

i didn't know this : /

for some reason i was under the impression that with males it's about 50-50,
and 60-40 with females (in favor of choice)

I'd say 45% prefers it to be legal and rare while another 45% thinks it should be illegal with certain exceptions.

but apparently at the moment 51% of usa is pro life

i didn't know this : /

source

noone warns you about the vicious wave of regret.

You may have been warned, but did not regard it in the same way. Which makes sense. At the time you were faced with a wholly different set of circumstances and were working from a different pov.

Don't castigate yourself now. That sense of desperation you felt then was real enough.

― Aimless, Saturday, May 23, 2009 1:19 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

no i was warned it would happen directly after and it didnt. i didnt think anything of it after or for the next 15 years but when i did have a kid it was like holy shit. the gravity of it smacked me in the face.

I'm kind of surprised not to have seen anything on George Tiller's murder here. Fucking horrible.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hEsxTHOvCbc954sBWc59DuoqWxiwD98J7UOG0

"As one of a few doctors across the nation to perform third-trimester abortions, Tiller had survived an earlier shooting, his clinic was bombed, his home picketed. He hired a Brink's armored truck to take him to work for several weeks, and he frequently had the protection of federal marshals. He built a new surgical center without windows and was known to wear a bulletproof vest, sometimes even to church."

That someone would have to go through all that (and still get murdered!) because they preform a medical procedure is beyond ridiculous.

___________________________________________

Also, seriously PETA?

http://www.kansas.com/946/story/836204.html

Fuck you <3 E (a vegetarian for over 16 years)

"That someone would have to go through all that (and still get murdered!) because they preform a medical procedure is beyond ridiculous."

You're dealing with some serious psychopaths on the so called "Right to Life" side. Almost al-Queada like delusion.

I know. That's why it's beyond ridiculous.

RIP Tiller, sorry there are some really twisted fucks in this world.

Keith's show the day this happened was really good, albeit heartbreaking.

hero, that dude.

Yes, definitely.

This was passed on to me by one of my former professors and I think it's a pretty great concept:

I Am Dr. Tiller

More info about the site here.

That's wonderful and is going to make me cry. A lot.

wow, ditto and thanks, Erica!

a good roundup of some testimonials from dr. tiller's patients.

Sullivan's run a slew of heartbreaking posts in the last week.

Protesters bored, miss their reason for existing :-(

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/us/08wichita.html?_r=3&hp=&pagewanted=all

Tiller clinic closes:

http://www.ourbodiesourblog.org/blog/2009/06/dr-george-tillers-clinic-closes-for-good

And the assassin proclaims victory. I am not normally in favor of torture, but someone Abu Ghraib this fuck.

what for

fun

http://mobile.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/10/07/okla_abortion/index.html

read that. wtf are they thinking? ok i know what they're thinking but x-(

infuriating

I just posted a link about this on facebook. I AM SO ANGRY!

shit like this makes me want to secede and start my own country, whos with me?

Christ, what next? Forcing women who have had abortions to wear red armbands with foetus symbols on them?

Crazy. They can't do that, can they? It doesn't seem legally possible, and I am too lazy to comb through the whole issue. I want someone here to do it and then put it in a nutshell, please.

Let's not give them ideas because obviously there is no limit to the CRAZY.

what the fucking fuck how can this possibly be legal

the good guys are attacking on procedural merits, but I can't help but think that there might be legit privacy concerns (legally). I looked over the opening questions of the questionnaire and they really did seem like they'd be enough to ID someone from small town. doubt it'd get by a univ IRB for instance

tbh i'm not sure it is legal but they do this all the time--pass an abortion law they suspect is unconstitutional or violates privacy laws because they want to see it challenged in courts that are favorable to them. so even if it's struck down they come out with case law that supports them overall. i think that's why the challengers tried the "single-subject rule" method first, to avoid getting a ruling about health privacy or abortion. xp

^^^this seems savvy

I don't know if this is any crazier than the healthcare "argument" about not using any of the federal money/tax credits for ANY insurance packages that, as part of their standard coverage MIGHT include abortions IN THE EVENT that you are even a woman and therefore hypothetically eligible for one at some point in your life.

The result of which, of course, would be for insurance companies to drop abortion coverage from all their plans. Which HEY is a lot easier than taking the issue back to the Supreme Court, huh guys?

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/sfaa/oklahoma.html

So there are only 6 abortion providers in the entire state of OK, a parental cosent law and a 24 hour waiting period. This is yet another law that might discourage women who are afraid of their identities being discovered (which in small towns could easily be done from the questions like Ev said) from obtaining abortions. Great.

Ha when I got an abortion I was worried somehow people were able to magically scan my mind & see this happened – let's just make the paranoia a reality, eh?

*googles*

(j/k <3 u abbs)

hahahahahahaha

Are you fucking kidding me? Why on earth are you going to go & give a list of names & personal info to the same nutjobs who would murder doctors for the prestige of (legal) martyrdom? The very existence of such a list/database is essentially an open sanctioning of, at best, harassment & exclusion.

does not include the name, address or "any information specifically identifying the patient." - I guess I should actually read things before indulging kneejerk posting impulses. Still, tho, a dubious proposition, the fuckheads.

cervix-a-lot is concerned

wow, what the fuck

this is not OK, lahoma

a store i worked at a couple of years ago, we'd occasionally get these faxes from an abortion clinic in another city, containing patient's full info. i rang them twice to tell them what was going on, you'd think they'd be a little more fucking careful. what if i was some religious nutto? that kind of info is a loaded gun in the wrong hands.

You made the right call when you made the call jufteen.

Collecting the information that OK wants to publish is nothing new. AB clinics already do this and confidentially report to state agencies. It's the posting it online that probably won't pass muster under HIPAA. What is that HIPAA waiver even gonna look like?

"by signing this waiver you agree to be targeted by murderous psychopaths"

Yeah, something like that.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100112/ap_on_re_us/us_abortion_shooting_trial

^^ another day, another conservative activist judge

delete kansas

the important question in that article:

Does the Justice Department plan to file charges against Roeder under federal statutes guaranteeing access to clinics?

just wrote my congressman to ask that he do whatever is necessary to ensure federal charges under the access to clinics law & would urge pro-choice people who read this thread to do the same with their representatives. this is an outrage.

What will it take, someone walking into Phelps church and slaughtering them pre-emptively as potential abortionist killers, to make people realize this is a preposterously scandalous ruling?

the ruling is new; if the white house & congressmen made it known to the justice dept. that federal charges under the access to clinics law are called for now (not "after we see whether this ridiculously loaded deck pans out as both defense & the kansan judge clearly hope it will"), then there's opportunity for the whole anti-choice strategy here to backfire badly. I am holding off my usual cynicism about how committed the white house is to the right to choose and just urging people who give a shit about this to write their congressman NOW and say that you as a constituent believe that federal charges are called for.

any time a murderous psycho is flabbergasted in a good way is a good time to pick up the phone and call yr congressional representatives

max you know more about politics than I do, is emailing as good as calling or do I need to be getting on the horn about this kinda thing

do both bro! im sure it works differently in all offices but my congressmans office has difft ppl answering the phones and checking email.

and even if its the same poor intern fielding all calls and emails at least they'll know how passionate you are

might as well fax 'em too come to think of it

voluntary manslaughter for premeditated murder...because you had a philosophical difference with your victim is like something from the worst episode of law & order ever

so fucking pissed

"I hate this episode of Law & Order" is my reaction to about half the rulings that make the new tho tbh

i feel like i am less mad about this than i should be

a little context from a lawyer bro:

A criminal defendant has a constitutional right to defend himself. He may argue that his beliefs somehow change the elements of the offense of murder. But they do not as a matter of law. The judge can, and should, give him the right to make his defense any way he sees fit but the judge must also instruct the jury on the elements (premeditation, knowledge, purpose, etc.) of murder. And the jury cannot disregard those elements of the law simply because a criminal defendant decided to argue a ridiculous defense. That guy is going down.

i wish i felt a secure as he does on that final point. Kansas, etc...

yup that's kinda how i feel. most of the quotes in the article are from people who think the sky is falling or want to kill more abortionists, not necessarily people who know what they're talking about.

That is the line I was thinking along as I read this story (no lawyer).

given kansas's definition of voluntary manslaughter if i was the judge i might let him present it too. he could even make himself look worse trying to do it.

I wonder, can they convict him on the lesser charge and then recommend he be locked up forever due to being batshit crazy?

lol no

aw, that's too bad

Despite the assurances of will's lawyer bro, I wrote my congresspeople.

"...an unreasonable but honest belief that circumstances existed that justified deadly force."

Would that mean I could go and waste some Blackhawk employee on the theory that they might eventually end up murdering some in Mosul or wherever?

Unless he was prepared to argue that he shot Tiller in the foyer of the church because he thought Tiller was about to perform an abortion right there (and even then...), this should never have been ruled on this way.

but I mean - a judge also has the right to say that a defense is unmountable, doesn't he - a judge allowing a defense that's essentially "the crime isn't as bad because I disagreed w/my victim" is imo giving the defense way too much leeway - I mean, here's the prosecutor's take:

Prosecutors argued Monday that such a defense should not be considered because there is no evidence Tiller posed an imminent threat at the time of the killing.

"The State encourages this Court to not be the first to enable a defendant to justify premeditated murder because of an emotionally charged political belief," the prosecution wrote.

Vol. manslaughter = imminent threat or no go. I can't imagine an assassin would be allowed to mount the defense "my target was going to enact policies that would result in deaths," right?

"I hate this episode of Law & Order" is my reaction to about half the rulings that make the new tho tbh

I swear this was a recent L&O episode, I'm not even joking.

this is an outrage.
this is an outrage.
this is an outrage.
this is an outrage.
this is an outrage.

i dunno maybe there is something in ks case law that says it has to be imminent but "unreasonable" doesn't imply that to me. i agree it sucks but, lawyering, u know?

i mean i get what yr saying harbl/will's brother, but unless this is some cagey 'give em enough rope' ploy by the court, i honestly can't read this as anything other than a sympathetic judge hoping to set some precedent that will allow murderous pro-lifers (and, oh i don't know, TERRORISTS?) a loophole to get out of heavy jail-time.

some precedent that will allow murderous pro-lifers (and, oh i don't know, TERRORISTS?) a loophole to get out of heavy jail-time.

which is why, beyond my own personal passion about the issue, this is a really terrible precedent - seriously wild-west stuff in a "I considered the decedent a bad actor" way. lawyer bros correct me if I'm wrong but a precedent's established by the use of the defense at all, right - not just successful use?

i don't know how many courts in america are following the important precedent of this one trial judge in kansas though

If someone murdered Roder on the steps of the courthouse L&O-style, couldn't they make the same argument in court?

it's not courts, it's that once precedent is established other judges can be persuaded to allow a case to proceed based on precedent having been established, i.e., you'd better believe every pro-life lawyer in the country will have his eyes on this as a way to wedge their murdering/clinic-bombing clients out of long-time charges

i just don't feel like that's true is what i'm saying. the lawyers that defend these guys will try it yeah (they would anyway!) but other judges are not more likely to allow it imo. also if you look at what happened to like all the other abortion clinic bombers and doctor murderers, bad things happened to all of them. if you wanna talk about precedent it looks more like it cuts the other way and rev. don spitz is an idiot. beyond this particular case i actually think defendants should be allowed to present insane defenses if they want to, as a general rule.

i DO agree it will make more unreasonable people think it's easier to get away with killing a doctor though, because they take advice from people like don spitz

at the same time i don't know how much of a deterrent life imprisonment was to them in the first place.....*thinks to self*

guy gives slightly more explanation in this article (warning: comments are ~nuts~) http://www.kansascity.com/news/breaking_news/story/1672142.html

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/01/28/kansas.abortion.roeder.verdict/index.html?hpt=T2

GUILTY

i wonder what Roeder's stance on capital punishment is?

doesn't matter he's not up for the death penalty

What a frigging relief.

*Whew*

see i told u there was nothing to worry about : )

well done, jury.

I hope he gets impregnated in jail fwiw

only 37 minutes of deliberation!

so, what kind of positive changes could obama make in the next 3/7 years to the discourse regarding abortion?

Putting aborted babies in frappuccinos and giving them to the poor.

How dare you figure out my moneymaking scheme.

<IMG SRC="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/comment/7/2010/03/93467f81bc217c065dd3c5e5f6171b63/original.jpg"; ALT="some text" WIDTH=32 HEIGHT=32>

h/t sweet_communist at Gawker.com

None. It was skillfully played a wedge issue by the Right to induce religious fundamentalists to vote against their economic interests.

And for the question, it really comes down to whether one believes a human soul exists (aside a thought placeholder or rhetorical gesture). As a materialist, I see suffering of the living (and of the unwanted to live) from unwanted pregnancies, but embryos with little neural development have the same moral weight as any other tissue. For dualists and other spiritualists, a soul must become conjoined with the embryo at some point. Its impossible to really speak sensibly about the matter as each position is a radical denial of the other's fundamental premises.

I think its reasonable to put the legality of earlier trimester abortions off-limits, while also allowing the religious to have a say in whether their tax dollars contribute to what they consider murder. I have the same say in voting against out war mongers that I consider murderers. So I don't have a problem with the Stupak amendment.

Planned Parenthood has some rather wealthy supporters. Multi-billionaire Warren Buffett, for example, funded two-thirds of the first year's trials of RU-486. So long as the legality of early trimester medical abortions can be safeguarded, there are ways for private concerns to subsidize the costs.

dude, I fail.

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/comment/7/2010/03/93467f81bc217c065dd3c5e5f6171b63/original.jpg

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/comment/7/2010/03/93467f81bc217c065dd3c5e5f6171b63/original.jpg

Thx.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100405/pollitt

katha pollitt otm

jesus i didn't know that about maternal mortality rates

It really IS a good list.

the climate with this is so insanely polarised right now though. it feels like the worst approach WRT the healthcare bill was to try to take abortion off the table and leave hyde untouched, out of play; my question above was trying to work out what kinda of confrontation and reverse psychology and general jedi mind tricks need to happen for there to be any kind of turnaround on protection of foetal rights, criminalisation of mothers & general attitudes.

great article

Posted on a Yahoo News! Article:

"Abortion is evil and it is murder and anyone that disagrees, well, I guess Ronald Reagan said it best about those that value abortions. Honestly, to me, they are no better than those that strap bombs to themselves and kill lots of people, and especially the people that kill tons of children inside of the womb and then try to act as though nothing has ever happened to them in their lives. People like that are on par, if not exceeding, the worst of the black widow/black widower killers that I have seen in my life."

note that was not me that posted that, but some other asshole

black widow killers! hahahha

http://www.big-pix.com/shop/images/posters/f-blac-w.jpg

I believe in retroactive abortion.

so, what kind of positive changes could obama make in the next 3/7 years to the discourse regarding abortion?

I think Obama & his entire party have demonstrated that their only interested in this issue is as a bargaining chip, so don't look for "positive changes" imo

Its impossible to really speak sensibly about the matter as each position is a radical denial of the other's fundamental premises.

sorta feel this is true, hence it's an intractable issue.

well, but lots of things are intractable issues - evolution vs. creationism, for example. so we set a societal baseline, and that's science over spiritual conviction. people on the "spiritual conviction" side of the q are welcome to live their lives as they see fit, but should be told, firmly and repeatedly, that they have no right whatsoever to legislate according to their beliefs.

Okay I've gotta disagree with this somewhat: "I think its reasonable to put the legality of earlier trimester abortions off-limits, while also allowing the religious to have a say in whether their tax dollars contribute to what they consider murder. I have the same say in voting against out war mongers that I consider murderers. So I don't have a problem with the Stupak amendment."

The right to bodily autonomy is a pretty basic human right. Asking to have a say in what happens with somebody else's uterus is a pretty big infringement upon that right, in addition to the fact that women have a specific constitutional right to legal abortion. In other areas of life, we don't consider it acceptable to curtail people's access to their constitutional rights just because somebody else doesn't want to pay for it. The gov't spends money (on police, security, etc.) every time some group wants to have a protest march or rally; they do that even if it's a Nazi skinhead rally or something, because citizens have freedom of speech & freedom of assembly. Do I get to decide I don't want to pay for those things, because I think the U.S. version of free speech is too lax? Hell, no! The same goes for other stuff like defending yourself in court: If we cut off gov't spending on it because some people don't like paying for criminals to have public defenders, we'd be in a fine mess.

I also think the fact that some people have "religious objections" to abortion is sort of a red herring. #1, these views don't deserve special consideration because they are religious in character. They're no more untouchable than whatever philosophical or ethical objections someone might have. And some Americans might have equally strong religious objections to birth control, prenatal care for unmarried women, viagra, keeping comatose people alive on respirators, or lots of other things. It would be absurd for insurance stop covering them for that reason. A person's medical decisions should be between them & their doctor; they're not up for a vote.

but there are ethical (if not typically explicitly or implicitly religious) underpinnings of all of our laws. and i don't think opposition to abortion is always essentially religious; often it is more broadly ethical in character. and i don't think it's as clear-cut as evolution vs. creation. there is no evidence for creation. issues with the personhood (or lack thereof) of a fetus at various stages of development are more contested and complicated.

we're gonna get into the same damn centrist vs. progressive argument we always do here but giving up that ideological ground, as john says a lot, is really dangerous and should not be on the table. really agree with gudrun brangwen's post

Gudrun is so completely OTM! On ILX it's easy to get annoyed with male posters having a huge abortion rights argument with very limited input from anyone who'd actually need one, but I care very little for anyone who trots out their ideology to attempt to deny me equal rights and I hate it even more when *women* do it.

Interesting conversation today: gay friend had to deal with some battyboy-type catcalling from black teens in his neighbourhood and challenged them with 'has being in a minority taught you NOTHING?' Pointed out to him that I could never say that to those kids if they were being rude to me, would probably have to go with 'being oppressed' instead.

My opinion on abortion is that I don't have the right to tell a woman what she does with a foetus in her own body any more than she has the right to tell me what to do with my internal organs.

the only reason this even turned into a debate is because one can't just (cleanly) self-terminate pregnancies and have to seek out a specialist. well that and xtianity but that horse has been beaten to death.

and on the third day, it rose again

i have an eerie feeling that we may be 2-3 posts away from a post involving necrophilia....

equine christ necrophilia

the album-title coil had to shelve

ahahahahahahahha

I think Obama & his entire party have demonstrated that their only interested in this issue is as a bargaining chip, so don't look for "positive changes" imo

eh maybe so, & i'm maybe putting too much faith in campaigning, senatorial obama's stated belief in repro rights, but the guy's in charge of every piecemeal bill that'll constitute a tide just like the erosive one of the bush years. the weird dynamic at the moment is that it's hard - or was hard prior to reading the pollitt article - to see any situations in which he's gonna be forced to stand up and address and defend, rather than avoid, abortion. there are tiny things like waiting until the day after the anniversary of roe to sign the (iirc) mexico city law, so as not to further inflame the opposition, that seem like attempts to manage/circumvent the ideological conflict.

sorta feel this is true, hence it's an intractable issue.

sure, but not everyone's drawn to one of the diametrically opposed positions; there's a huge middle ground which over the past however many years has drifted towards a more conservative anti choice stance - whether it's because of apathetic younger voters or different constituency makeup or whatever. i just don't think the incompatibility of the arguments have to impede on policy so much, because there are laws underneath and - like with gudrun's oppositions to whichever other policy areas - opposition can exist marginally. i'm sure there are things that can happen that liberate it from the separatist ghetto of medicine its currently seen as occupying so that it's perceived as a personal medical procedure, by most.

On ILX it's easy to get annoyed with male posters having a huge abortion rights argument with very limited input from anyone who'd actually need one, but I care very little for anyone who trots out their ideology to attempt to deny me equal rights and I hate it even more when *women* do it.

hesitate slightly to go here but i kinda disagree with this, & w/barbara kruger:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LOouiLW1P4M/SjBqudcZ1iI/AAAAAAAAA-4/z2F0x01ypDk/s400/screen-capture-18.png

obviously this is true, and an indictment of the makeup of government, etc, but in any other situation i'm pretty okay relying on basic human understanding and empathy furnishing individuals with the skills to make a decision, irrespective of gender. i also don't think it's useful to totally distance guys from having some perspective on abortion - i'm not pushing for them to be considered as some equal partner in the equation, nor being part of the choice necessarily, but it just doesn't seem positive to present this as an issue from which they are immutably separate. a lot of things, like age, dictate how views change regarding repro rights, and i have no more time for the women in uk government who oppose abortion than i do the guys in the states. this is a very in a perfect world argument and i realise that we don't have the representatives who can process and empathise with the choice at hand, but it still bugs me a little.

like:

My opinion on abortion is that I don't have the right to tell a woman what she does with a foetus in her own body any more than she has the right to tell me what to do with my internal organs.

OTM, but i don't think gender is the variable here: it's that you don't have the right to tell anyone what to do with their body. it implies that being anatomically similar would equip you with the authority to pass judgement on the myriad circumstances that lead to making a choice about abortion.

I'm on the side of Kruger and I cannot fathom what's swimming around in the brains of men who make anti-choice legislation their raison d'etre/a career thing. I think that's all the piece she made is asking us to consider here.

his ENTIRE party!?

i actually agree with schlump, i don't really use the "it's not my place to say one way or the other, i'm just a guy" argument (while it's empirically vaild) becuase it to me is a matter of medicine and public health, and as a future health care professional interested in pubilc health it's an issue i feel strongly about and want to contribute to

people on the "spiritual conviction" side of the q are welcome to live their lives as they see fit, but should be told, firmly and repeatedly, that they have no right whatsoever to legislate according to their beliefs

kinda sums up this and just about every similar issue for me, but better than i'd have put it.

So a local doctor recently decided he was going to put a note on his door telling Obama-supporters they could find another doctor. He explained (probably to cover himself legally) that he wasn't turning them away, but if they saw the note and went elsewhere, so be it. (Seems a stupid business strategy in this day and age, no?).

Someone I know posts this on facebook and I reply critically, and a female who I don't know (but was on the other dude's friends list) smugly replies "Oh, but it's ok for a doctor to perform abortion?".

Why is abortion used so often in arguments where it doesn't even apply? For all I know that doctor doesn't even perform them.

I'm also real tired of people making us Pro-Choicers out to be goat blood drinking, baby murdering masses who hold monthly televised Abortion Parties.

Report this doctor to the licensing board. It'll take you fifteen minutes to find out their number & make the call. Health care professionals have no business pulling this kinda shit imo.

Abortion is essentially a reductio-ad-Hitlerum - once the conversation is successfully moved into a highly emotional place, the burden of defending one's arguments with reason/science is lifted and you can just yell at people.

The outspoken Grayson described Cassell’s sign as "ridiculous."

"I’m disgusted," he said. "Maybe he thinks the Hippocratic Oath says, ’Do no good.’ If this is the face of the right wing in America, it’s the face of cruelty. ... Why don’t they change the name of the Republican Party to the Sore Loser Party?"

I love this blabbermouth.

I'm always surprised how much religion has a part to play in arguments about abortion - I'll be honest and say I have difficulties knowing 100% how I feel about it and religion (and politics) doesn't come into it - and I agree with the point above that 'beliefs' shouldn't be untouchable because they're religious in nature.

I would have thought the main point of disagreement boils down to whether a foetus of any size is a 'person' and hence it's wrong to kill them whether or not they're in someone else's body. Not "religiously" wrong, just wrong in the same way that killing anyone is wrong. I guess for pro-life (hate that phrase) ppl there is less harm done all round by continuing with the pregnancy than resorting to killing what they see as a person. These aren't my beliefs at all, but for a pro-lifer would abortion be any different from say, killing your conjoined twin who shared 'your' body?

I'm *really* not trying to start a clusterfuck but I can kind of see the logic *if* you are of the belief that conception immediately = person. How this squares with the right not to tell someone what to do with their body I don't know, but then if the foetus = a person they should have the same rights? Feel free to put me straight about any glaring wholes in this train of thought.....

IMO you don't have rights until you are born

yep. there's no "conception certificate"

^^^^

if you're in the ground or inside another person, you don't belong to the body politic

what about zombies

zombies = "enemy combatants"

xposts Ah I guess that's what the pro-lifers would like to change then.. ? although i'm guessing it would cause a whole chain of legal contradictions and the universe would implode.

the problem w/fetus = person is that you get into an almost necessarily metaphysical discussion about when life ~happens~ to an embryo. which basically means that we ARE discussing religion again, however vaguely.

if you believe that the moment a sperm augurs into an egg is the moment at which personhood is established, then zero kinds of abortion are tolerable. if you believe---as i'd wager most of your fence-sitting voters do---that a fetus goes from "weird growing thing in a lady's uterus" to "someone who will eventually have a SSN" at some, poorly delineated time between conception and delivery, then you've automatically opened the door to abortions, in general, if not to every variety.

if we lived in a fantasy world where some scientific test existed to say that "at 16 weeks the embryo does BLANK and is ~sentient~" then we'd probably all feel a lot better about drawing some hard and fast rules about the timing of abortions. since we don't, though, the only hard and fast rules we can draw are "abortions: y/n". if you believe that a woman's right to control her body is sacrosanct (and, similarly, that ANY person's right to medical privacy is inviolable), then you circle "y" and off we go. if you believe that every sperm is sacred and that the baby jesus appears to an embryo at the moment of conception, and that ending the growth of even a 8-celled organism is tantamount to murdering a real person with a name and friends and favorite foods, then circle "no" and buy all the women in yr life longer, less revealing dresses.

many xps

h I guess that's what the pro-lifers would like to change then.. ? although i'm guessing it would cause a whole chain of legal contradictions and the universe would implode.

― Not the real Village People, Friday, April 2, 2010 1:43 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

fwiw they've succeeded in changing this in several states already, and it HAS caused no end of legal headaches. ironically, some of the ppl with the most headaches have been pregnant mothers (many of them pro-life!): some ladies want to go through with vaginal birth after caesarean (VBAC), which is often medically contraindicated. so even though OBs be shakin they damn heads, it is (like abortion) the right of these women to do as they wish with their bodies/fetuses. however, in states where laws have protected the rights of unborn children (murder a pregnant lady and get two counts of homicide), some women going against medical advice (AMA) and having VBsAC at home have been charged with negligence after their children died in child birth. similarly, some women have been charged with negligence/endangerment after, say, testing positive for substance use while pregnant. that these women are almost uniformly poor minorities doesn't really seem to bother anyone.

I love how everything in medicine is an acronym

ha, i was realizing that as i wrote that post

it was mentioned on some other thread that the anti-abortion position is essentially an outgrowth of old-school anti-pleasure Xtian theology - one that holds that all sexual pleasure is wrong and a sin, and that the only time sex is okay is for reproduction. Ergo, "every sperm is sacred", fetuses are the same as people, sex is only between married people for the purpose of having babies, etc. Which is, to my mind, rooted in a fundamental misreading of humanity and results in an unhealthy proscription that is basically impossible to enforce.

xp

i love the word "contraindicated"

Pro-lifers with genuine moral stances w/r/t right-to-life trumping other rights would naturally curve towards leftish positions on most everything else and it would be great if they could alienate and divide the rest of the movement, like I dunno, send everyone on their mailing lists advocacy literature on global warming, gun control, turn clinic protests into internal shouting matches on universal health care, that kind of thing.

smc - agreed, basically once you sign on for "sex before marriage is ok!" then you've kinda bought a ticket for the abortion party. which is why i'm actually pretty confident about the fact that it will be less and less of an issue once all the old people start dying.

mrque: yeah, it's a good one! useful in casual conversation, too, it just sounds so much more convincing than "would be a bad idea"

like, it's no mystery why a small, persecuted religious group would develop a strident philosophy about the essential importance of procreation for the survival of their sect, but once you've become one of the biggest religions in the world and your species has attained uncontested dominance and security, it's kinda no longer necessary so can we jettison the archaic moralizing k thx bye

xp

Pro-lifers with genuine moral stances w/r/t right-to-life trumping other rights would naturally curve towards leftish positions on most everything else and it would be great if they could alienate and divide the rest of the movement, like I dunno, send everyone on their mailing lists advocacy literature on global warming, gun control, turn clinic protests into internal shouting matches on universal health care, that kind of thing.

― Philip Nunez, Friday, April 2, 2010 1:58 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

yr talking about that unicorn of american politics, the vegan hardline ecoxtian. they all live in vt and NoCal, dude, and are among the most marginal voting blocs in the country. srsly doubt that pamphleteering from smiling weirdos in painted schoolbuses would do much to divide anyone on the pro-life side of things

xp to Philip Nunez
^^ yeah this is why I'm kind of baffled that it's lumped in with all other conservative beliefs, like you have to buy into a certain 'basket' of beliefs rather than picking them individually.

I wonder if Norm Macdonald would show up at an abortion rally with a Free Mumia sign.

pro-death penalty pro-lifers are a wonder to behold

oh man don't even get me started

and i'm sure that they think that their inverse, pro-choice anti-death penalty ppl (ie - me), are just as amazing, but they're wrong >:(

I'm kind of pro death penalty

Like, not in practice but in theory, by which I mean I feel that there are crimes heinous enough to call for execution, but I also believe our legal system, much like any/every legal system implemented on Earth, is too flawed to allow it.

this has been another installment in "HI DERE posts for the sake of posting"

"unicorn of american politics, the vegan hardline ecoxtian."

ha this makes me picture actual vegan xian unicorns!

speaking of unicorns -- any conservatives post to ilx?

in local news, about the nice new PP center opened up just a little south of my neighborhood.

I think the new Planned Parenthood center on NE MLK Ave has a pretty good sense of humor.

The website notes that since the grand opening, nearly 300 anti-Planned Parenthood protesters have shown up on about 75 percent of the days the reproductive health center is open.

Rather than getting its knickers in a twist, Planned Parenthood is asking its supports to Pledge a Picket: you can donate 25 cents for every anti-abortion rights protester who shows up, or you can donate $1 for every day the right-to-life crew turns out. It's like a jogathon. But for abortion rights.

The website says Planned Parenthood has raised over $1,000 from supporters pledging a picket since the protests began.

http://www.portlandmercury.com/images/blogimages/2010/04/01/1270166779-pledge-a-picket_01.jpg

pro-death penalty pro-lifers are a wonder to behold

― Kaleidoscope Funk Network (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, April 2, 2010 3:05 PM (2 hours ago)

i disagree with each position but it's not that hard to understand their synergy, imo - basically there are the desirables (innocent babbies) and undesirables (poor/minority felons). some people "deserve to die"

also gbx is seriously the best poster on ilx imo. agree on the awesomeness of "contraindicated" too - i see it every day and it's still a dope word to me

aw ty ^_^

so more on that rogue doctor. there's a poll on the website to determine whether the doc was in the right or wrong. there were three options, one was like "go get em doc", the other was like "he's wrong", and the third was "regardless of opinion this is unethical". first option got 84% of the vote. I really hope online ballot stuffing was going on :/.

^^ yeah this is why I'm kind of baffled that it's lumped in with all other conservative beliefs, like you have to buy into a certain 'basket' of beliefs rather than picking them individually.

― Not the real Village People, Friday, April 2, 2010 2:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

lots of studies illustrate that people's political or social "beliefs" are mostly formed by family/social milieu. the strongest indicator of whether you will be e.g. democrat or republican is whether your family and neighbors are democrats or republicans.

hardly surprising (and it prob. applies to most of us) that most people don't have time/energy/intellect/interest in getting to the basic ethical questions behind all of their beliefs and opinions, and instead assume what amounts to a kind of received wisdom on most of them.

of course these arguments have a hard time accounting for CHANGE, but i think they are more true than most would like to acknowledge.

also gbx's long post above gets to the heart of the issue (for me anyway), the fundamental uncertainty about what "life" is and when it begins. but of course even if we sorted this out (huge "if"), it would leave lots of basic ethical questions about why human life should be sacrosanct and that of other species' not at all (or less so).

i guess i just get exhausted by demagoguery on both sides of the issue.

i suppose i should distinguish "life" from "personhood." a fetus seems unquestionably alive, whether it is a "person" is a trickier matter. i'm tempted to say that any answer to this question is necessarily contingent.

imo it's not a person until it's born but am i callous for not really caring? if we had a scientific test for determining whether something is a person (to me that doesn't make any sense because personhood is not a scientific concept but eh) and it found a fetus became a person at 16 weeks, i would still be ok with abortion afterward just because it's in another person's body.

the thing i can't explain consistent with that is why i'm against the death penalty in 100% of cases. the unfairness of it is the main problem for me but even if it was fair i can't go along with killing a *person* even if it did something much much worse than occupying someone's body for 9 months. seems like i am pretty religious about it, and possibly do care about personhood, or i'm selfish about my body, maybe. or the fact that an execution doesn't remedy the condition of having murdered someone; it isn't doing anything useful except retribution.

hmm I have never viewed the purpose of punishment as being anything more than acting as a deterrent for other people (although you're right in that people often prefer to see it as retribution)

well people try to justify it as a deterrent because it seems more rational but i do not believe them, also the dp is not a great deterrent for a lot of reasons
that's a whole other thread though :(

not particularly useful as a deterrent tbh

xp

if u guys want i could get high and write what i remember about foucault from college

yeah I'm not saying that the dp is a good deterrent but it just seems as high as you can go without legalizing torture

anyway I can't hate on the death penalty because it has given us an awesome iron maiden song YEAAAAAAh YEAAAAH YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH HALLOWED BE THY NAME

*not gonna go all penology on the thread*

take it to iltmi

huh huh huh I hope that means what I think it means

are you a penologist, harbl

"Contradistinction" is almost as good as "contraindicated."

contradancing

CONTRA, iran

Laws to protect human beings are manmade. Likewise, definitions of "life" and what constitutes a "human being" are manmade. We'll never come to a point where there's a consensus on this, I don't think.

I had a friend who spouted off nonsense about science 'proving' the child was alive and could feel pain. And then when I asked if he'd even think abortions were allowable if the mother's life was threatened, he said no - his opinion was that the mother had already been alive for a decent period of time, and it was time to let the child have a chance. Ya know, ignoring the fact that well the child might die too.

I hate the smugness of some of the pro-lifers. Another friend used to smugly state to me "It's not a choice". Um...yes, actually, it is.

smugness is a bad attribute from anyone

agreed. there are those on our side that can be too....it's unfortunately a point that gets argued quite loudly and abrasively on both sides.

pro-death penalty pro-lifers are a wonder to behold

― Kaleidoscope Funk Network (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, April 2, 2010 3:05 PM (2 hours ago)

i disagree with each position but it's not that hard to understand their synergy, imo - basically there are the desirables (innocent babbies) and undesirables (poor/minority felons). some people "deserve to die"

― k3vin k., Friday, April 2, 2010 9:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

exactly, this is also why the torture debate doesn't really have any traction outside of liberal circles.

so outside of liberal circles, Americans are basically pro-torture then?

yes

I see I never weighed in on the original question in the thread title. Surely someone else must have said it already, but here goes anyway:

abortion == dud
abortion rights == classic

For all of the obvious reasons. No one likes abortions. No one says, "Yippee! Good times!" at the thought of going through with one. But in a bad situation, it can still be the best solution, and removing the possibility of abortion can certainly lead to a worse outcome - much worse for everyone involved.

x-post

most people are stupid, ignorant and pretty awful imo

(i live in one of the reddest of red states so that might be coloring my cynicism right now so feel free to ignore)

No one says, "Yippee! Good times!" at the thought of going through with one.

oh, c'mon, there's gotta be someone out there who does

probably the type of person who writes Dead Ringers fan fiction

http://www.theonion.com/articles/im-totally-psyched-about-this-abortion,10931/

lol

as always, the onion was there first

I see I never weighed in on the original question in the thread title. Surely someone else must have said it already, but here goes anyway:

abortion == dud
abortion rights == classic

For all of the obvious reasons. No one likes abortions. No one says, "Yippee! Good times!" at the thought of going through with one. But in a bad situation, it can still be the best solution, and removing the possibility of abortion can certainly lead to a worse outcome - much worse for everyone involved.

― Aimless, Saturday, April 3, 2010 2:45 PM (36 minutes ago)

i...understand what you're saying but this is kind of a touchy position to take. this basically describes my mom, who is pro-choice but doesn't think abortions should be publicly funded or at least doesn't have a problem with it not being tax-payer funded.

his opinion was that the mother had already been alive for a decent period of time, and it was time to let the child have a chance. Ya know, ignoring the fact that well the child might die too.

Yeah it strikes me that this is what underlies a lot of this pro-life mindset. Kind of why I'm trying to boil down to what the actual pro-life argument is as it seems clouded by all this sort of crap.

imo it's not a person until it's born but am i callous for not really caring? if we had a scientific test for determining whether something is a person (to me that doesn't make any sense because personhood is not a scientific concept but eh) and it found a fetus became a person at 16 weeks, i would still be ok with abortion afterward just because it's in another person's body.

tbh yeah I find this ... odd. Maybe because it's a 'hidden' kind of process due to it being in another body? If it was born way premature and you had to 'put it down' could you still do it? Bit of a non-starter I guess as it would depend what the "determination" of person-status actually was. Dunno, I'm just thinking of a friend of a friend who had a seriously premature baby (didn't know she was pregnant thru most of it) and the baby has serious problems but it seems to me that just by being out of the mother's body there was no question of euthanising her or whatever. The same questions about quality of life etc were potentially there and I get the impression they would have considered abortion had there been time.

^^ I mean hypothetically re the 'euthanising', the NHS hasn't stooped quite that low. My post seems stupid now, please ignore it.

i'm confused

this basically describes my mom, who is pro-choice but doesn't think abortions should be publicly funded

When I say "removing the possibility of abortion" is dud, that includes the fact that, for a poor person, not having the money for one removes the possibility of having one. So, the funding ought to be there, too, for those who require it. That shouldn't be a touchy problem for anyone who believes abortion is morally acceptable.

As for abortion itself being a dud experience, so is getting wisdom teeth pulled, or a colonoscopy. People do it anyway, for reasons far removed from the dudness of going through the experience.

Many socially conservative people believe abortions should be legal, but the woman should have to pay the bill. I often wonder why they don't just call it Slut Tax? It certainly seems like the manifestation of a particular mindset, and it's a prevalent attitude lurking under the surface of women who don't much like other women.

Suzy, the attitude is "that would never happen to ME". It's a self-esteem trip, it doesn't belong in real politics. I can see adopting that position if you are a strict fiscal conservative, but too many people inject their personal hang-ups into their political positions.

Yes but it's 'that would never happen to me, because I'm not a SLUT.' There is a punishment angle there, too, that men are not presented with for their participation in an unplanned pregnancy.

Also my spies tell me Mpls/St. Paul is crawling with anti-abortion creeps this weekend, hope the equivalents of 16-year-old me go to where they are and give them Hell.

No one says, "Yippee! Good times!" at the thought of going through with one.

lol at my school some girl performed like 5-10 "abortions" over the course of a year for her "art" "project"

lol i remember reading about that on nutty pro-life blogs!

That's a pretty expensive "statement," unless by "performed," you mean "pantomimed" or something.

wait "what"?

she just collected menstrual blood and said it was fetal tissue i think

she collected a bunch of semen from her friends and then stuck it in herself and then took a bunch of herbal abortifacients, then she collected the blood and videotaped herself doing it and then smeared all the blood over a big plastic sheet or something and then projected the video onto the sheet

basically it was just like the art scenes in ghost world except with menstrual blood

it was pretty dumb and she had clearly not thought it through but hey that's art for ya I guess

I was kind of hoping she got knocked up & shilled out the $1000s to have that many really for real terminations. I would be impressed by anyone who managed to successfully get pregnant that many times in a year.

Which herbs was she taking? A lot of traditional abortifacients-tansy and pennyroyal, for example-are actually poisons that make the body so sick that it miscarries to save resources for itself. Rue and juniper are the safest, IIRC, but they are a little chancy.

i don't think she really took anything, and this says she didn't even use real blood http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_student_abortion_art_controversy

yeah but I'm pretty sure those statements were made under pressure by the academy - IRL she seemed like the kind of person daft enough to actually carry it out (NB I have only met her like, once or twice)

Herbs as dangerous as henbane have been used in the past for, ah, "stoppages" or "promoting menustration."

it really hits the endowment & giving rates pretty hard when one of your students is getting national news coverage for making herself bleed a lot

if we lived in a fantasy world where some scientific test existed to say that "at 16 weeks the embryo does BLANK and is ~sentient~" then we'd probably all feel a lot better about drawing some hard and fast rules about the timing of abortions. since we don't, though, the only hard and fast rules we can draw are "abortions: y/n". if you believe that a woman's right to control her body is sacrosanct (and, similarly, that ANY person's right to medical privacy is inviolable), then you circle "y" and off we go.

This is pretty much how I view it and it is why I am 100% pro-choice at any point during the pregnancy and for any reason.

That art student girl was a fucking idiot. smdh.

thought the art student project was kind of ballsy and hilarious frankly

me too kinda

cant remember if im supposed to kneejerk hate art students or kneejerk defend them tho