I don’t know whether it’s the content or the ghastly color design of this page. Seriously — here’s a sample of what they think looks good on the screen:
Jebus, that color combination hurts my eyes.
Oh, wait, no…it’s the content. It’s like a collection of the most ignorant arguments against abortion anyone could find — and they triumphantly present each bit of glib inanity, and follow it up with Checkmate, Pro-Choicers!
I’m not going to even try to dig into all of their idiotic cliches, but here’s a couple that represent a major pet peeve of mine — the conflation of “life” with “deserving all of the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of an adult woman.”
If we found something on Mars with a heartbeat, we would call it “alive.”
Checkmate, Pro-Choicers
Oh, sure, and then we’d let it vote, marry it, and let it own an ice cream shop in Philadelphia. This has never been an argument about what is alive or not; a fetus is alive. But merely being alive has never been sufficient criteria for giving something human rights. We don’t even need to go to Mars to find things with heartbeats that we willingly turn into Happy Meals, poison if we find them in our kitchens, or turn into pets. We are selective in the assignment of human status, and having a pulse or breathing are the very least of them, and are definitely not sufficient.
A zygote meets all of the scientific qualifications of HUMAN life at the moment of conception.
Checkmate, Pro-Choicers
How interesting. I’m always amused when I see these bozos insist indignantly that they’ve got science behind them. And what are these “scientific qualifications”? List them, please.
The problem here is that there are scientific markers we could use to define whether something is of human descent, but they tend to be fairly reductionist and don’t provide a good indication of the kinds of sociological distinctions we want to make with the word “human”: it’s not just the zygote at the moment of conception that is human, but so is the sperm and the oocyte, as are cancers and HeLa cells. And when you look at cells as being of human origin, that still doesn’t help you in the slightest in determining whether a cell has rights.
Waving a flippant hand in the direction of undefined “scientific qualifications” is useless. Tell me what the specifics are, and I promise you, I can shoot them down one by one. How do I know that? Because the people who put these lists together are ignoramuses, every time.
(via Pandagon)
605 comments
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irenedelse
6 June 2012 at 12:20 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
And as Prometheus shows, vs vg jnf va n jbzna’f oryyl, jr jbhyq phg vg bhg dhvpx!
(For a spoilers-included version, use rot13. Heh.)
cervantes
6 June 2012 at 12:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
They are even more absurd when you consider that their stated basis for saying that abortion is sinful is religious — purportedly abortion is proscribed by Christian doctrine. But of course there is not one word about abortion anywhere in the Bible, New Testament or Old. Lacking any scriptural basis for claiming that human life begins at conception, they have to cast about for scientific justification — which is a category error, since the claim is not about any scientifically verifiable fact, but rather a normative claim in the first place.
But baldly asserting that a single microscopic cell has the moral status of a human infant seems preposterous if you don’t sanction it with some sort of mystical authority. Yet there isn’t any, so they find themselves spinning around in these circles until they are so dizzy they can’t stand up.
Pathetic.
Ye Olde Blacksmith - in bed with absolute evil and a Spocktopus!
6 June 2012 at 12:27 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
From the site’s About Me page:
Oh my. Words…inadequate…*so much rage now*
Ogvorbis
6 June 2012 at 12:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
As long as we can still shame them and blame them, all is still good, right?
robro
6 June 2012 at 12:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Pink & blue…baby colors. Superimposed. Ouch! An abomination of design, unreadable as much for its physical effect on our eyes as its content. It reminds me of that TBN video last night. Tackiness is next to godliness.
Beatrice
6 June 2012 at 12:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Well, you’d first have to determine if we can recognize its sex. Wouldn’t want to allow someone to marry an alien life form and later realize we allowed (persons?) life forms of same sex to get married, now would we?
Sastra
6 June 2012 at 12:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
After reading what Ye Old Blacksmith quoted from the “About Me” page, I had to ignore the warning about the headache-inducing color design and check the site to see if it was perhaps satire. Such mistakes have happened, I thought — even to people as wary and experienced as PZ.
I should have had more faith in PZ.
And now I have a headache.
Brownian
6 June 2012 at 12:45 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Only until we sent good, Christian soldiers to Mars to spread ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’.
Beatrice
6 June 2012 at 12:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
One of the gems:
Suuure.
Ms. Daisy Cutter, Gynofascist in a Spiffy Hugo Boss Uniform
6 June 2012 at 12:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I am guessing that her blog is mainly pink because, since she’s a GURRRLL, she’s “supposed” to like pink, and therefore it’s got to cover everything.
Needless to say, pissing on everything girly is misogynist. That’s not what I’m doing. She pings me as one of those “militantly girly girls,” and I bet she polices other women for being “insufficiently feminine.”
There are aesthetically pleasing uses of pink, needless to say. That blog isn’t one of them.
Alverant
6 June 2012 at 12:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
There’s a guy on YouTube named EdwardCurrant who does Poe-style posts often giving out some crazy logic ending with “Checkmate Atheists”. I wonder if this guy is the same way. (Yes EdwardCurrant is intentionally using crazy logic. He’s on our side.)
Brownian
6 June 2012 at 12:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Psalm 137 would seem to support it, or at least infanticide: “8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us.
9 Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”
So, it’s all good.
Kalliope
6 June 2012 at 12:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’m not convinced this isn’t satire.
In re: the Mars bar…
If you can’t kill anything that ever had a heart beat, I guess you must be a vegan!
Check. Mate.
Brownian
6 June 2012 at 12:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
They should talk to my mom.
steve oberski
6 June 2012 at 12:55 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Which is more than an anti-choicer would do, who are at this moment busy disenfranchising black and hispanic voters in Florida and stripping gays of their right to marry.
Beatrice
6 June 2012 at 12:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It seems there is no end to the depravity of this forced birther:
feralboy12
6 June 2012 at 12:58 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
A zygote doesn’t meet the biblical qualifications to even be considered alive, much less human since Leviticus 17:11 quite clearly states “the life of the creature is in the blood.”
King me, anti-choicers.
Kalliope
6 June 2012 at 1:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@ Beatrice -
It’s comments like that which make me think this site is satire. By including such outdated expressions, which most women and girls cannot relate to, I think it might be making a larger point.
I.E., the writer might be a provocateur who is trusting the intelligence of the women and girls who visit these sites, even if they are anti-choice.
irenedelse
6 June 2012 at 1:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Bwhahah! “Mothers don’t regret motherhood.”
Yeah, right. Lots of them actually regret having kids *when* they did, or how many, or to not have known beforehand that their kid would be born with heavy disabilities. I’ve known good Catholic women to rue their compliance with the Vatican’s edicts the first time they get pregnant “even though we used the temperatures method”! And start, next time, to use contraception. Win-win.
gmacs
6 June 2012 at 1:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I recently saw a copy of the Iowa Republican Party Platform (horrifying) and one of the planks was that science had affirmed that life begins at conception because this is when an individual gets their genetic code.
Um… Do they mean a complete genetic code? Is a zygote a person before it attaches? Because that would be problematic since most zygotes do not make it to term.
More importantly, I assume they’re going for some uniqueness of genetic code point. So what does that mean for identical twins?
Aratina Cage
6 June 2012 at 1:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No wonder these people use homeopathy–they can’t take a chance of actually killing any disease they have because to them it would be killing a human.
dianne
6 June 2012 at 1:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Leviticus 17:11 quite clearly states “the life of the creature is in the blood.
But which part of its blood? Platelets, leukocytes, erythrocytes, plasma? And is it really “blood” before the adult beta globin takes over from fetal gamma globin? Does that mean that beta-thal major victims aren’t really alive? Does hydroxyurea make a person less alive? So many questions…
Beatrice
6 June 2012 at 1:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Kalliope,
Honestly, I doubt it’s satire. She strikes me as perfectly serious. And I believe that someone raised in a very strict religious household might use expressions that seem outdated to us.
dianne
6 June 2012 at 1:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If humans were made from mud, why isn’t mud human?
And WHY IS THERE STILL MUD? HUH? HUH? Not to mention DWARVES + PYGMIES!!!
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
6 June 2012 at 1:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
So… no popplers?
OM NOM NOM
Beatrice:
Besides the incredible amount of victim blaming and the view of women as delicate property that can’t be allowed any freedom whatsoever*, what happens when your chaperone is also a rapist?
*I shouldn’t even have to point that out, but lord knows we’re gonna get some Fetus Champion trolls soon enough.
truthspeaker
6 June 2012 at 1:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
*dies laughing*
duce7999
6 June 2012 at 1:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If we found a hair on Mars we would declare “LIFE! Life has been found on Mars!”. Therefore if you wax or pluck, you are a murderer!
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
6 June 2012 at 1:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Also:
I fucking ♥ you, feralboy.
dianne
6 June 2012 at 1:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I occasionally challenge “pro-lifers” to come up with a rational definition of “human life” that meets the following criteria:
1. Includes all human concepti
2. Excludes brain dead people (or gives an alternate definition of “death” that is consistent)
3. Defines monozygotic twins as two people
4. Defines chimeras as one person
5. Excludes cancer cells, including molar pregnancies/teratomas
6. Defines (artificial) clones (if they turn out to be possible) as people
7. Excludes non-fertilized gametes
8. Excludes somatic cells
9. Isn’t based entirely on prejudice and irrational attempts to make a single cell that is the product of a sperm and egg more important than one that is the product of mitosis.
No one’s managed to even come close so far. The smarter “pro-lifers” ignore the question, recognizing it as unanswerable.
irenedelse
6 June 2012 at 1:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@ feralboy12:
Oh, so a zygote is kosher? Interesting.
yessenia
6 June 2012 at 1:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Many women regret their abortions. Mothers don’t regret motherhood.
Ironically, my mother only regrets her abortion BECAUSE she regrets having me. It’s the only socially acceptable way of expressing those feelings.
It’s generally articulated as, “You were trying to be born when I had my first abortion. I’m so sorry I aborted you; that’s why you’re always so angry with me. You were supposed to be older by now.”
zb24601
6 June 2012 at 1:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Since “murder” is the illegal taking of a human life, and abortion is legal in the US, abortion is not “murder” in the US. QED!
Use of hyperbole does not encourage me to take the argument more seriously.
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
6 June 2012 at 1:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Dianne,
I’m kind of surprised that no one has answered your questions by telling you that god doesn’t put a soul into cancer cells (or whatever). ‘Cos, really, that’s the crux of their stupid argument.
Brownian
6 June 2012 at 1:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yikes, yessenia. That’s some fucked up right there. Talk about delegitimising your issues and making it all about her in one fell swoop.
Brownian
6 June 2012 at 1:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
For fuck’s sake, Christians: stop trying to convince me I’m evil without God and give me your fucking wallet before I shank you!
Beatrice
6 June 2012 at 1:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Audley,
She’d need a woman chaperone (someone who is assumed would never be an accomplice to rape or wouldn’t be abused too)? I don’t know how these people think. Even trying makes my brain hurt.
dianne
6 June 2012 at 1:31 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’m kind of surprised that no one has answered your questions by telling you that god doesn’t put a soul into cancer cells (or whatever).
Yes, but it’s hard to make that argument when you’re claiming to be all rational and atheistic and also “pro-life”. Also how do they know? Isn’t it sacrilege to put a limit on what god can do? So the faithful should believe that he can put a soul in a cancer cell. That argument never goes over well with the lifers either.
Illuminata, Genie in the Beer Bottle
6 June 2012 at 1:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
From the comments at Panadagon: I Regret Having Kids
Yeah, no mothers EVER regret motherhood. Except, you all, the ones that do.
(and seriously, after reading that link, I’m even more committed to never breeding.)
CJO
6 June 2012 at 1:37 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
the people who put these lists together are ignoramuses, every time.
Yes, and they’re incoherent also because they’re suffering from the cognitive dissonance of trying to justify abrogating women’s right to self-determination with sciency assertions and false dichotomies pertaining to issues they don’t understand and actually couldn’t care less about. They hate and fear female sexuality and bodily autonomy generally, but their rhetoric must always hew to the supposed defense of life.
I was reading this article in the NYT last night about objections to the morning-after pill, and just getting infuriated at how far the terms of the debate are shifted in favor of this kind of weaselly, ultimately irrelevant rhetoric. Why the fuck are we dithering with forced-birth activists about product labelling and fertilization and implantation, when they don’t give two shits about any of it? It’s so clear in the article that perception completely trumps reality for them. They want the product labeled a certain way, only because it allows them to sustain this fiction that their concern is for what goes on inside a uterus, when what they care about is actually everyfucking thing else about a woman’s behavior.
/rant
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
6 June 2012 at 1:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Beatrice,
Hmmmmm, maybe.
I thought that generally “chaperone” meant “older male relative”, but it’s hard to make any sort of assumption about a woman who is so ignorant that she thinks pregnancy is awesome ‘cos you don’t get your period of nine months. *facepalm!*
Nightjar
6 June 2012 at 1:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Sorry for being kind of a pedant, but it’s a pet peeve of mine. The genetic code is actually (almost) universal. Across all life.
Brownian
6 June 2012 at 1:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
By now I’m thoroughly convinced these people have never played chess.
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
6 June 2012 at 1:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Dianne,
Trying to think about what god can/will and can’t/won’t do with souls is making my brain hurt. :(
Of the “rational” pro-life atheists, I generally don’t hear arguments about the fetus, but that a woman needs to “take responsibility for her actions”. *spits!* I don’t even know how I’d respond to any other argument from an atheist.
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
6 June 2012 at 1:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I take it that this person never met any women.
(Yes, I am aware of the gender of the person who is posting this. All I can say is that she is wearing a mental burqa.)
irenedelse
6 June 2012 at 1:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
“Being pregnant means no periods for nine months!
How can you say no to that?
Checkmate, Pro-choicers”
Sure, trade 9 months of no periods for 9 months of several assorted physical disagreements, plus a few harrowing hours (or days) at the hospital during delivery, and 20+ years of work child-raising. That kind of chess skills are just the stuff we humans need to beat computers again.
Oh, wait…
Millicent
6 June 2012 at 1:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No periods for nine months. *Snerk*. Yeah, okay. Except for when you do have spotting, which freaks you the hell out because it might be the sign of a miscarriage. And then of course there’s what happens after you give birth, but since the author of this Tumblr appears to be about 11 years old, I won’t go into it (she should definitely not Google “lochia.”) Bless her heart.
Illuminata, Genie in the Beer Bottle
6 June 2012 at 1:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Lol that is excellent. so stealing this.
Gnumann
6 June 2012 at 1:55 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Being pregnant means no periods for nine months!
How can you say no to that?
Checkmatelock, Pro-choicers
Someone needs to tell the little twerp about lochia.
Gnumann
6 June 2012 at 1:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
And someone needs to tell me about da blockquotez… :(
Amphiox
6 June 2012 at 1:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Even if it was fully human, the fundamental principle of Stand Your Ground laws means the woman is entitled to an abortion from the first fetal kick at the latest, no questions asked.
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
6 June 2012 at 1:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I bet that you did not regret one second of that.
Amphiox
6 June 2012 at 1:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Incidentally, it isn’t checkmate if you have to say it more than once. What we have here is Perpetual Check, which makes the game a draw.
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
6 June 2012 at 2:01 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Gnuman, take a look at the tags just above where you type your messages.
For just blockquoting, you do not need to use “cite”.
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
6 June 2012 at 2:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You know, I recently made the mistake of Googling “lochia” while eating lunch. NOT A GOOD IDEA.
Millicent:
Or when you suffer from abdomial cramps because of your expanding uterus.
Nope, nothing like having your period at all.
dianne
6 June 2012 at 2:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Being pregnant means no periods for nine months!
How can you say no to that?
If it’s no periods you want, just go get a hysterectomy. No more periods ever. And as a bonus, no more pap smears. How can you say no to that?
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
6 June 2012 at 2:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Feeling evil.
lollochia?
Does anyone want to touch that?
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
6 June 2012 at 2:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Or the tender breasts, or the back pain, or the bloating…
Being pregnant is still nothing like having your period, guyz! Geez!
truthspeaker
6 June 2012 at 2:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
FTFY
zmidponk
6 June 2012 at 2:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I could be wrong, but I think this is either run by the user ‘Conservative’ at Conservapedia, or someone taking the piss out of him. The reason I say that is that the various things said here is about the same level as his various howlingly funny imbecilic screeds on Conservapedia, and those screeds quite often contain ‘checkmate, atheists/liberals/Darwinists/evolutionists/whatever’, in exactly the way that ‘checkmate, pro-choicers’ is repeated here. The only thing that makes me think it might not be him is that I would expect him to make it ‘checkmate, anti-lifers’, or something of that nature.
Sastra
6 June 2012 at 2:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If nobody ever regrets being a mother and pregnancy is a period-free breeze, then it looks like we’ve got a successful case for premarital sex! I sunk your battleship, pro-lifers!
dianne
6 June 2012 at 2:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
My favorite pregnancy symptom was nausea. Nine months of feeling like your chemotherapy dose is just a little too high. And being forbidden to take any effective remedies. Happy for the people that ginger, bracelets, crackers, etc work for, but I wasn’t one of them.
Crip Dyke, MQ, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden
6 June 2012 at 2:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@truthspeaker:
How about putative or purported instead of “alleged” gender… ?
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
6 June 2012 at 2:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It’s over!
It’s all over!
Sastra just won.
interrobang
6 June 2012 at 2:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I dunno, Janine, all I can come up with is Livin’ La Vida Lochia, and that just sounds really gross.
The twerp with the Tumblr needs to grow up. Someone at Pandagon noted that she’s one of these “Stay-At-Home Daughter” types, which means that even if she’s physically as old as she says she is, she’s been put into a state of patriarchally-suspended adolescence, so mentally, she’s not older than the average Justin Bieber fan. What I want to know is given that, why her owner hasn’t found her a substitute owner yet, and why she thinks it’s Godly to be political at all. I mean, shouldn’t she be devoting her energies to learning how to please men rather than shaming women?
Balstrome
6 June 2012 at 2:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
What the hell is a soul and where does it fit into a human body?
lostintime
6 June 2012 at 2:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
“We don’t even need to go to Mars to find things with heartbeats that we willingly turn into Happy Meals”
I think she comes from Mars. The hypocracy of ‘pro-life’ arguments always reminds me of the line from Gaps in the Mind:
“Tie the label Homo sapiens even to a tiny piece of insensible, embryonic tissue, and its life suddenly leaps to infinite, uncomputable value.”
dianne
6 June 2012 at 2:20 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I mean, shouldn’t she be devoting her energies to learning how to please men rather than shaming women?
Conservative men are often pleased by shaming women. Especially when it’s done by other women. Makes them feel so much better about themselves.
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
6 June 2012 at 2:20 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Livin’ La Vida Lochia?
I likes it, interrobang.
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
6 June 2012 at 2:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Also fits into the idea that women cannot get along because they are competing for the menz.
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
6 June 2012 at 2:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Interrobang:
Isn’t part of pleasing men demonstrating how you’re so much better than those abortion havin’ Slutty McSlutterpants?
Sastra:
*fans self*
Oh myyyyyyy…
jackrawlinson
6 June 2012 at 2:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Err, yeah, this whole “Checkmate” thing is your clue that the intent is satirical. Come on folks, try to keep up with the memes.
Millicent
6 June 2012 at 2:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Balstrome:
Mine was stuck to my appendix. Whoops.
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
6 June 2012 at 2:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Jackrawlinson, before you insist that this is a Poe, please check out some anti-choice sites. They are just as silly as that site.
dianne
6 June 2012 at 2:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Clicked on the link to the site. Don’t ask me why. Masochism perhaps. But I notice that today’s argument is “If everyone had abortions there’d be more people” (I may not have the quote quite right…not going back to make sure.)
This argument seems to me to indicate that the writer thinks that abortion is more attractive than completing pregnancy. After all, few people use the argument “If no one had sex there’d be no more people” to argue against someone who wishes to be celibate for a time or for life. The assumption is that for most people most of the time sex is more attractive than no sex and so a few people choosing otherwise is no threat. One only makes the argument “If everyone did X then bad thing Y would happen” if one thinks that most people would rather do X than not and must be convinced to not do X.
Kind of negates all her previous arguments about how wonderful pregnancy and motherhood are.
Ogvorbis
6 June 2012 at 2:40 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Janine:
As long as Jackrawlinson can feel superior to regulars here, nothing else, including reality, matters.
Ms. Daisy Cutter, Gynofascist in a Spiffy Hugo Boss Uniform
6 June 2012 at 2:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Audley:
Especially if you were eating, say, pasta with a lot of red sauce. Particularly the homemade kind, with lots of chunky bits.
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
6 June 2012 at 2:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I am aware of that, Ogvorbis. It is just that I am pissed off that while women in the US are actually be deprived of their rights, chuckleheads like jackrawlinson dismisses a cheerleader as a joke.
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
6 June 2012 at 2:49 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Janine:
Hence Poe’s Law.
She’s so damned earnest about everything, plus very “mild mannered” as opposed to a Betty Bowers type. I gotta say, it’s just impossible to tell eight way.
Ogvorbis
6 June 2012 at 2:51 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Sorry. That was meant as a snarky comment on Jackrawlinson’s failure to grok what is happening, not yours.
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
6 June 2012 at 2:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Damn it! “Either way”!
Daisy:
D:
(I was eating blood orange yogurt, whih was bad enough.)
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
6 June 2012 at 2:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
TPYPOS! Here are my offerings!
*dumps misspelled words into thread*
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
6 June 2012 at 2:55 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Audley, blame your typos on the darkfetus.
Ms. Daisy Cutter, Gynofascist in a Spiffy Hugo Boss Uniform
6 June 2012 at 3:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Just like “Your God, Charles Darwin.”
Janine:
Rawlinson has proved repeatedly that the topic of women’s well-being is little more to him than a chance to score rhetorical points.
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
6 June 2012 at 3:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The same mindset that insists that Richard Dawkins is The Atheist Pope.
lorn
6 June 2012 at 3:20 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If the issue is a simple one of life versus not alive then I would expect all Christians to be, at the very least, vegan. They might have to follow the precepts of another religion and avoid wearing shoes and boiling water as both hurt living things.
Of course the issue isn’t a matter of life and not alive. Otherwise the ‘meat is murder’ argument would cut. And clearly any heartbeat on Mars, barring the heart of an astronaut abandoned after NASA budget cuts, would not be human.
joey
6 June 2012 at 3:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
dianne:
And I occasionally challenge “pro-choicers” to come up with a rational definition of human life that distinguishes between the following:
1. Viable fetus 100% inside the woman.
2. Viable fetus 75% inside the woman.
3. Viable fetus 50% inside the woman.
4. Viable fetus 25% inside the woman.
5. Viable fetus 1% inside the woman.
6. Viable fetus 0% inside the woman, but still attached to the woman through the umbilical chord.
dianne
6 June 2012 at 3:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I wondered when the “pro-lifers” would find this thread. Joey, how many elective abortions take place after labor starts?
dianne
6 June 2012 at 3:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Viable fetus 0% inside the woman, but still attached to the woman through the umbilical chord.
This is an interesting statement. Do you know what the umbilical cord actually attaches to? Do you know what happens in the third stage of labor?
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
6 June 2012 at 3:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yes, joey, because a woman will wait until the fetus has crowned before deciding; “Fuck it, I want an abortion!”
Is your brain outside of you body but still attached to the spinal cord?
peggin
6 June 2012 at 3:29 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I don’t know why these anti-choicers waste so much energy arguing about whether or not the fetus is alive or whether or not it’s a “human life”, because even if you could convince me that it is a full-fledged person, 100% entitled to all the rights of every other person, I would STILL say abortion is morally justified. Because there is no case where any person is entitled, just by the fact of their existence, to any part of the body of another person.
If I need a kidney transplant to stay alive, that doesn’t entitle me to insist that someone give me their kidney. If I need a bone marrow transplant, I’m not entitled to insist that someone give me their bone marrow. Even something as simple as a blood transfusion, the fact that I need it to stay alive and that giving me blood would only inconvenience another person for 20 minutes or so is not sufficient argument for me to say I’m entitled to it. If the other person doesn’t want to donate it to me, then I have no right to it, regardless of any “right to life” I might have.
So even if we concede the “personhood” argument, why should that give the fetus the right to occupy a woman’s uterus for nine months?
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
6 June 2012 at 3:29 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
More fuckwitted questions from a fuckwit. What is your opinion, and why? Or shut the fuck up.
No One
6 June 2012 at 3:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I religious woman a knew used to bewail an abortion that she had while in college. “He would have been this old” etc… I pointed out that she would have never met her husband if she had left college to deal with an unplanned pregnancy, and not given birth to her(current)three children. First came the look of astonishment and then “I can’t talk to you when you say that kind of stuff”.
peggin
6 June 2012 at 3:34 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Janine, I think you’re giving the troll too much credit by assuming it has a brain at all.
Gregory Greenwood
6 June 2012 at 3:34 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
By that… err… ‘logic’ we all commit genocide every day simply by shedding skin cells.
Checkmate, morons.
dianne
6 June 2012 at 3:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@90: Even if you needed blood/a kidney/bone marrow to live and only one person could donate that blood/etc to you, that would not make it right for you to force that person to donate whatever body part you’re talking about.
In case you’re wondering, yes, there are situations where a person has so many antibodies that literally only one person in the donor pool can safely donate to them. It’s a fortunately rare situation but when it occurs it can be…bad. Because even blood donation isn’t always simply a 20 minute inconvenience. A person who donates too often can become quite ill from it.
dianne
6 June 2012 at 3:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I religious woman a knew used to bewail an abortion that she had while in college. “He would have been this old” etc…
There was a time in my life when I regretted not having a baby with my college boyfriend. I thought about how old the baby would have been, what my life might have been like, etc. That doesn’t make our unconceived “baby” a real person.
Ogvorbis
6 June 2012 at 3:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
And then along comes Joey just to provide evidence that one of the dumbest anti-choice arguments of all time was missed. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any dumber.
Joey, can you provide documentation for even one case in which a woman opted for an abortion after labour had begun for a viable foetus? If not, shut the fuck up and try listening to other people. Specifically, the people who are affected when idiots like you decide that women are not capable of using their bodily integrity to your standards.
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
6 June 2012 at 3:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hey, joey! Are you just a hit and run troll?
peggin
6 June 2012 at 3:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@95, that was kind of my point. That just the fact that something/someone is a “person” with the “right to life” doesn’t entitle it to any part of another person’s body without that person’s consent. So, even if the fetus is a “person” it’s not entitled to occupy its mother’s uterus against her wishes.
Illuminata, Genie in the Beer Bottle
6 June 2012 at 3:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hi joey. I need a new lung or I will die. Give me one of yours. AFterall, as you just implied, abortion is no different than murder. Therefore, not giving me your lung would be murder. You’re not a misogynistic hypocrite, are you Joey?
dianne
6 June 2012 at 3:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@99: Just anticipating the usual anti-choice counterargument, which is that blood and tissue donation are different because anyone can do them. I only wish that particular argument were true.
No One
6 June 2012 at 3:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
joey @ #83
If “lifers” wanted to decrease abortions they would make sure as many men & women as possible would have access to birth control. Period. Full stop.
And to any disingenuous rejoinder you might have to the above statement of fact that you chose to sling at this blog, I call bullshit.
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
6 June 2012 at 3:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I just shitted on the chessboard and knocked all the pieces down when I took flight. Pigeon checkmate, Pro-Choicers!
The Laughing Coyote (Canis Sativa)
6 June 2012 at 3:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Irenedelse, @ 1: Hahahahahaha. Timely!
Aratina Cage
6 June 2012 at 3:49 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
*eye roll*
What do you mean by viable, joey? What if the mother’s life is in danger? What if the fetus has a terminal condition that will kill it soon after birth? Don’t overlook the exceptions and don’t smugly pretend that a woman with a choice will go through an entire pregnancy just to be able to abort a fetus.
Gregory Greenwood
6 June 2012 at 3:54 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
joey @ 86;
As noted by Janine: History’s Greatest Monster @ 89, you have fallen into the trap of uncritically accepting the myth of ultra late term abortion. In reality, where the foetus is viable and quite capable of sustaining life outside the woman’s body but is unwanted, it will be delivered (perhaps by caesarian section) and put up for adoption. Thus your hypothetical is moot.
The issue occurs when the foetus is not yet viable – when it cannot survive outside the woman’s body. To all intents and purposes, the foetus in such a case is a parasite. The only way to argue that abortion should not be allowable in such cases is to claim that this non-conscious, non-viable foetus is to be afforded greater rights at law than any adult human possesses; a right in the flesh of another person.
That this is unethical can be demonstrated by the example of organ donation. No matter how much a person may need an organ donor, they can never demand that another person give them an organ, and the law does not recognise any contract as providing a right to claim another’s organ – it is simply beyond the realm of legitimate contract. It is not a right one can simply sign away. The principle of bodily autonomy is considered too important to be cast aside.
Outlawing abortion changes all this. It establishes the first positive right in law over someone else’s flesh since the abolition of slavery. Doing this is tantamount to declaring pregnant women to no longer be people, but instead to be merely living, ambulatory incubators.
It would be nothing less than the establishment of procreative slavery. Is it any wonder that people of conscience would oppose such a thing?
No One
6 June 2012 at 3:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
dianne @ 95
Good point.
No One
6 June 2012 at 3:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Gregory Greenwood @ 106
Another good point.
twincats
6 June 2012 at 3:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Lochia. Wow.
How I got to the ripe (tho admittedly child-free) age of 52 without hearing about this, I have no idea. 4 – 6 WEEKS?? Even my best friend didn’t tell me, and she tells me everything.
I mean, I’d seen those special sanitary pads they give you at the hospital, so I figured some stuff comes out, but I never heard about that kind of duration! Yeesh!
That’s a pretty damn weak check-mate in my book!
NuMad
6 June 2012 at 3:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Janine,
And is it viable?
Stella
6 June 2012 at 4:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Amphiox makes a good point about Stand Your Ground. For me, the biggest mindfuck is that these anti-choicers are usually in favour of war, the death penalty, and killing in self defence. If we accept for a moment that an unwanted fetus is a person, then it’s a person who is occupying a woman’s private property without her permission, stealing her resources, and putting her at risk of significant discomfort if not major health problems. Why shouldn’t she kill it in self defence? These are usually people who would insist that if they find some stranger in their home, carrying a big knife and stealing their stuff, they have every right to shoot that person dead.
Loqi
6 June 2012 at 4:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@Janine #98
You mean “shit and run troll.” Because his post can be accurately described as brain poop.
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
6 June 2012 at 4:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey:
LOL, wut?
How about some real world examples, scumfucker? I want to know how often women go into labor and then say, “fuck this, kill it” and I want to know how many doctors comply with that request.
Abortion isn’t about our lust for destroying fetuses, idiot. It’s about ending a pregnancy. If the pregnancy is naturally ending on its own, why in the world would a woman demand that the resulting infant be killed?
Also, a “viable fetus 0% inside the woman” isn’t a fucking fetus anymore, it’s an infant.
Agent Silversmith, Feathered Patella Association
6 June 2012 at 4:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Back in the pouch with you, joey. 100% all the way. You’re clearly not intellectually viable.
CJO
6 June 2012 at 4:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
For me, the biggest mindfuck is that these anti-choicers are usually in favour of war, the death penalty, and killing in self defence.
It’s not a mindfuck at all, for me. It should be a mindfuck for forced-birthers, as it’s yet more clear evidence that “life” is not among their concerns.
Tony
6 June 2012 at 4:18 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Is this person even aware of the complications involved in pregnancy and childbirth? Are they aware that women have died during childbirth?
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe
6 June 2012 at 4:20 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
She pings me as one of those “militantly girly girls,” and I bet she polices other women for being “insufficiently feminine.”she’s a “stay-at-home daughter”, so yes.
again, she’s not just you standard forced-birther, she’s either Quiverful or something very similar to that. So probably she’s into “courtship” instead of dating etc. as well, and as I already noted, she’s a “stay-at-home daughter”, meaning she wants to go directly from being a servant to daddy to being a servant to hubby. and yeah, she probably totes believes that’ll protect her from sexual abuse :-/
QFT. to quote myself from pandagon:
O.o
I think I’ll never be able to eat Spaghetti Marinara ever again.
irenedelse
6 June 2012 at 4:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
That one’s easy. The baby’s born, you placenta-for-brain! Time to cut the cord.
Now I’ve seen it all. The forced-pregnancy brigade should go take a course in basic sex ed. Oh, wait! Preferably not from a Bible college!
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe
6 June 2012 at 4:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
oops. failed the first blockquote
she’s a “stay-at-home daughter”, so yes.
Marcus Ranum
6 June 2012 at 4:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
To all intents and purposes, the foetus in such a case is a parasite.
Next up: tumor’s rights. Won’t someone think of the poor cancers that are being poisoned with chemo or blasted with radiation? They have rights, too!
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe
6 June 2012 at 4:27 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
oh joey, you ridiculous fuckweasel. at a point where the easiest way to end a pregnancy is to give birth, that’s what’s done, and once that’s done the newborn is obviously a separate person. abortion is what happens when the easiest way to end a pregnancy isn’t birth.
there really is no gray area here.
Improbable Joe
6 June 2012 at 4:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If there was a fire, and you had time to carry one thing out of the fire, would you carry out the crying baby, or a cryogenic tank with frozen embryos in it? In practice, a real live baby is worth more to all of us than any number of hypothetical potential people. No funerals for first trimester miscarriages.
And, as always: There’s good eating on a fetus.
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe
6 June 2012 at 4:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
anyway, these are my “favorite” “arguments”:
and
the first one could have an entire Masters Thesis written about just how wrong it is, in many many ways; the second one can be rebutted with one word: “exactly”.
Aratina Cage
6 June 2012 at 4:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
This women-ain’t-shit shit supported by joey is real and happening in the USA:
Tony
6 June 2012 at 4:37 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
peggin @90:
Yes. QFT. I recall hearing this argument before, but couldn’t remember where, or the exact details.
carlie
6 June 2012 at 4:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
joey, the reason for an abortion is to stop the pregnancy. When a fetus is being expelled, the easiest way to stop the pregnancy is to get it the hell out.
(just to reiterate what Jadehawk just said)
No kidding. Mirena is the best invention the modern world has ever made, in my opinion.
joed
6 June 2012 at 4:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
here’s the deal:
what the christians are really saying is that the soul enters the egg at the same time as the sperm. without the soul there is no human life.
thus, they are saying, life(the human soul) begains at conception.
they can’t really bring the idea of “soul” into their bullshit because then they would have to put up with “where’s the evidence for a soul”
“or” please define “soul”.
soul is the name of their game and if they are confronted with “soul” then stultification will set in and they will wither on the you know what.
andybreeden
6 June 2012 at 4:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Don’t forget the germs. Germs have rights, too. Checkmate.
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe
6 June 2012 at 4:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
seconded
Amphiox
6 June 2012 at 4:51 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
And the fetus is also armed. The placenta is a weapon more insidious than any knife. The thing literally secrets enzymes that digest the woman’s uterus wall, and sends tendrils of cells that literally invade the woman’s body in the same way that many cancers do (in fact many cancers use the same genes that a placenta uses to infiltrate and invade surrounding tissues).
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
6 June 2012 at 4:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If Joey is true to form, he will keep pestering us for an answer once or twice a day for eons. PZ, I would suggest TZT for Joey. Let him mentally wank where we are expected to rewd, lewd, and crewd, and we definitely will be until he decides to take his wanking elsewhere.
Amphiox
6 June 2012 at 4:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If by viable, joey, you mean the medical term, and not something you just made up to tailor-fit your lame argument, then viable means able to survive on its own outside the woman’s body. When a fetus is viable, pregnancy is terminated by INDUCED LIVE BIRTH, and NOT by abortion.
What few cases where abortion comes up as an option for a viable, undamaged fetus rather than induced live birth are so rare and so varied that honest people understand that they need to be considered separately, on a case by case basis, and are not part of the bigger abortion debate.
Absolutely NONE of your 6 scenarios are relevant to the abortion debate in any way.
They do make magnificently flammable strawmen, though.
And I hope you understand that, in scenario 6, if absolutely nothing is done at all but wait, most of the time the placenta will, naturally, involute, detach from the uterine lining, and be expelled, and the umbilical cord will naturally close itself off, degenerate, dry out, and fall off the child in due time. The cutting of the umbilical cord is merely a question of medical convenience and increased safety for mother and child. It has no bearing whatsoever on the status of the child as fetus vs baby.
Amphiox
6 June 2012 at 5:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
On, and since joey’s 2, 3, 4, and 5 will, (if the fetus is viable) always turn into 6 if one simply waits a relatively “short” while, for practical purposes you can consider them all to be 6. And 6 is irrelevant.
And if we encounter a situation of 2, 3, 4, and 5 which will NOT be turning into 6 in a relatively “short” while, then the fetus, stuck like that, is NOT viable! Then the medical issue becomes whether or not some form of intervention is available that can MAKE the fetus viable again, what that intervention means in terms of risk for the woman, and whether it is advisable to pursue that option. Abortion only pops up as an option in those cases where the medical options that make the fetus viable again either do not exist or cannot be done safely for the woman. And then the alternative is either abortion or wait for stillbirth (at increased risk of maternal mortality).
joey’s little “dilemma” is only relevant if you have a pregnant woman giving birth stuck in a broken time machine.
It’s fanfiction.
kemist, Dark Lord of the Sith
6 June 2012 at 5:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
While this is tempting, several hormonal drugs and well as an intensive athletic program can maintain the same effect for an indefinite period of time with much less nasty side-effects, such as putting on a huge amount of weight, deconditionning, oedema of the lower limbs, vomiting, back pain, possible diabetes, dangerous infections, post-partum depression and having an unwanted baby to take care of.
Amphiox
6 June 2012 at 5:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Going back to the OP topic’s chess analogy fail, one cannot help but notice that most of these arguments are actually the same argument dressed up in different words.
And the rules of chess have a scenario for that. It is called three-fold repetition. And just like perpetual check, it makes the game a draw.
That post author needs to stop wasting time angsting about abortion and learn how to play chess. I can assure him or her, from personal experience, that it would be a rewarding experience.
'Tis Himself
6 June 2012 at 5:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Also they’re usually against government welfare. Once the kid is born, then xe and the mother are on their own. The anti-abortionists couldn’t care less if both of them starve in the gutter.
Anri
6 June 2012 at 5:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
All of these are human life.
So is the tip of my nose, 100% attached to the front of my head.
What’s your point?
David Marjanović
6 June 2012 at 5:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
joey may be smart enough to understand it now, but I’m sure he has never encountered that information before.
Most people never have. This stuff isn’t taught in school.
I love that.
Anri
6 June 2012 at 5:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Except for being constantly laughed out of matches for shouting “King Me!”
David Marjanović
6 June 2012 at 5:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
As I keep saying: Republicans stop caring about you as soon as you’re born.
Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven
6 June 2012 at 5:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’ve encountered a new one, from someone playing Devil’s Advocate: that having an abortion is an ACTION, whereas refusing to donate organs/blood/whatever is an INACTION.
Do sets of moral precepts exist under which this would even be relevant? O.o
Pteryxx
6 June 2012 at 5:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
as far as I know, only the “It’s God’s Will” excuse.
dianne
6 June 2012 at 5:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Do sets of moral precepts exist under which this would even be relevant?
Probably, but there is a specific counter-precedent in medicine: The (active) act of withdrawing care from a terminally ill patient is considered the moral equivalent of the (passive) act or inaction of not starting care.
Sili
6 June 2012 at 5:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yes. It’s called Catholicism.
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe
6 June 2012 at 5:37 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
1)both baby-eagles and baby-people are protected
2)the analog to a fetus is an egg, not an eaglet
2)humans are not an endangered species
3)humans don’t lay eggs; if they did, abortion wouldn’t be an issue, since “pregnancies” would be happening outside our bodies
so yeah. if humans were an endangered species that laid eggs, I’d be all for protecting human eggs, too.
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe
6 June 2012 at 5:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
and hen there’s this comment, from a privileged white dood:
1) no it isn’t
2)fuck you for the scarequotes; some lives really are bad
3)your existential wangsting is not a good enough reason to enslave women, you entitled douchebisquit
grrr
CJO
6 June 2012 at 5:40 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Do sets of moral precepts exist under which this would even be relevant?
Not logical ones, perhaps. But observation has shown pretty clearly that our default moral intuition seems to draw a sharp distinction between causing harm actively and passively allowing harm to occur. A well known example is the so-called “Fat Man” variant of the Trolley Problem.
Most people never bother to interrogate their ethical intuitions, which is probably partly why such dumb-ass arguments as these for the forced-birth position seem to have such traction.
Amphiox
6 June 2012 at 5:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Here’s a hint, which I advise that you consider carefully, to avoid being eaten alive here in the very near future.
It’s not about you.
kemist, Dark Lord of the Sith
6 June 2012 at 5:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Pick one
1) You’re pretty young
2) You’ve had a very, very sheltered life
3) You have a pathological lack of imagination
Believe me my friend, there is a level of “bad” that would make you wish you were never born.
Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven
6 June 2012 at 5:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Odd, I haven’t heard any complaints from anyone who was.
Balstrome
6 June 2012 at 5:55 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I am in the lucky position of being a male and so I am only allowed to give my personal opinion once per pregnancy that I am responsible for. So in that case I would have to consider exactly what I want to say and then tell the woman I made pregnant my point of view on the matter. Then it is up to her and the medical advice that her consulting doctor is giving her to make a decision on what to do.
Whatever her decision, is hers and I believe it my right and duty to support her in this decision, whatever it may be. And everyone else can just shut the hell up, your views are not wanted or needed here.
ButchKitties
6 June 2012 at 5:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Did someone seriously bring up the “what if you were aborted” argument as if it carries any weight?
My mom was not the first person my dad intended to marry. His first fiancee was killed by a drunk driver shortly after their engagement. If it wasn’t for said drunk driver, I would not have been born.
I’m for drunk driving, because I know I’m enjoying not having my existence prevented.
Sili
6 June 2012 at 6:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
She always does.
Sastra is the Grandmistress of Atheism.
Sili
6 June 2012 at 6:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Funny that.
Personally, I’m rather in favour of his having been aborted while there was still time.
"We Are Ing The Matrimonial Collective"
6 June 2012 at 6:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Trust me they didn’t like my snarky response.
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe
6 June 2012 at 6:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
oh hey, that atheist pro-lifer douchecake has a tumblr. it’s called “No Gay Shit”, and is plastered with porn
Shocking, amirite?
Antiochus Epiphanes
6 June 2012 at 6:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
{OT}
“wangsting”?
= expressing masculine angst?
daddy like
{/OT}
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe
6 June 2012 at 6:18 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
wangsting = wanking + angsting
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe
6 June 2012 at 6:20 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Wangst (warning: link to TVTropes)
Pteryxx
6 June 2012 at 6:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
(the thread has been Tropewinned!)
Sili
6 June 2012 at 6:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
My tumblr is plastered with pr0n as well.
I do like the gay shit, though.
kayden
6 June 2012 at 6:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If it’s life the anti-choicers love so much, why are they so pro-war and pro-death penalty? What are they doing to help children after they leave the womb? The anti-abortion movement is strictly about exercising power over women.
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
6 June 2012 at 6:54 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
*headdesk!*
But… I… my brain is cracking under the pressure of trying to describe the utter wrongness…
*deep breath*
If you were aborted, there would be no being to miss being alive. That’s just such a… religious way of thinking about it.
Janine:
Good idea!
*shakes fist in general direction of belly!*
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
6 June 2012 at 6:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Pteryxx:
Speaking of, has anyone Godwinned the thread yet?
‘Cos you know who made abortion illegal, don’t you…?
Brownian
6 June 2012 at 6:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
But it does. Just not for the side that usually invokes it.
Consider two people: a pro-choicer and a pro-lifer. Each considers that the world would be a better place if the other did not exist. Each also has an equal likelihood of being terminated before birth. Simple game theory* reveals that:
A) If neither is aborted, then the situation is exactly as it is now. No gain, no loss.
B) If the pro-choicer is aborted and the pro-lifer is not, then there is one less pro-choicer to argue for abortion. The pro-lifer is happy. The pro-choicer is unaware of the life they missed. Gain for the pro-lifer.
C) If the pro-lifer is aborted and the pro-choicer is not, then there is one less pro-lifer to argue for abortion. The pro-choicer is happy. The pro-lifer is unaware of the life they missed. Gain for the pro-choicer.
D) If both are aborted, then the situation is exactly as it is now, less two people to argue about it. Neither is aware of the life they missed. No gain, no loss.
Abortion is clearly the most beneficial strategy.
*No need to re-check my claims. I assure you that the above argument is air-tight.
Louis
6 June 2012 at 7:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ecce! Anti choice anti woman scum-gobbling pissants!*
I see Joey is back with his “WHAT ABOUT TEH 100% OUTSIDE BABBY WITH INSIDE PLACENTA HUH!?”. Joey, in sci-fi universes where said baby is leeching life from the woman by Mysterious Processes As Yet Unknown To Science and is acting as an anti-life vortex sucking in the very souls of the medics around it, then kill it. Until then, your straw man is noted, and ignored as the mindless distracting bullshit it is. Again.
Now do the world a favour anti choice fuck pigs and go and get yourselves post-natally aborted by ritually sacrificing yourselves with a papier mache weapon made from your own anti woman frothing dribble and leaflets comprising dead baby photos.**
And I see we have a “herp derp what if you’d been aborted?” dingleberry and a “a bad life is better than no life” fuckwit.
The only reason I exist is because my dad had a wank the week before and cleared out the load ahead of the one containing me. The day you start waving a flag with a photo of my dad’s cock on it at your anti-woman rallies is the day I actually take you zealots seriously for longer than one minute.
And a bad life is better than no life? Come here and give me five minutes with this set of mole grips, your genitals, and a bag of freshly amused weasels and tell me that. I assure you that will be 4 minutes and 50 seconds longer than you want to live.***
Louis
* The whole lot would have been in Latin if I could be bothered to translate “anti choice anti woman scum-gobbling pissants”. I can’t be bothered.
** The hyperbole should give you a clue: don’t really do this, I’m not actually serious. Mind you, if you are determined and have such a papier mache weapon, upload the attempt to YouTube. Watching you beat yourself about with a lump of gooey paper should be good for a laugh. It won’t actually harm you, but it will be a welcome distraction from dealing with your asinine “arguments”.
*** Again, comedy. Use your fucking imaginations people. Why would amused weasels be especially bad? I’m telegraphing this shit. If any of you pull an “Intersection” I will be mocking you even more. You have been warned.
Oh and P.S. Jack Rawlinson: do fuck directly off you pointless waste of good jism. The best part of you ran down the inside of your momma’s leg.
Louis
6 June 2012 at 7:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Audley,
Abortion? Illegal? Was it Stalin?
Louis
David Marjanović
6 June 2012 at 7:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
*successfully resists urge to click on What Measure Is a Non-Badass*
*pathetically fails at resisting urge to click on You Need to Get Laid*
“I mean sex.“
chigau (違う)
6 June 2012 at 7:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Brownian
after
the rest of your comment was in Rod Serling’s voice.
Brownian
6 June 2012 at 7:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh, good. I didn’t know whether or not FtB supported the <twilightzone> tag.
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
6 June 2012 at 7:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yes, Louis, I Godwinned the thread by bringing up Stalin.
:p
David Marjanović
6 June 2012 at 7:23 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
*having progressed all the way to Ethical Slut, goes back to Wangst and clicks on What Measure Is a Non-Badass*
I don’t know about Stalin, but Hitler definitely didn’t like it, and… there’s always Ceauşescu. *shudder*
Louis
6 June 2012 at 7:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Please tell me that I didn’t just fool Audley AND David M with a really obvious joke about Godwinning.
That’s nearly as bad as me missing the “but” joke of Lyn M the other day. I took a remedial comedy awareness class after that. ;-)
Louis
Louis
6 June 2012 at 7:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Do I need to retake that damned class?
Louis
"We Are Ing The Matrimonial Collective"
6 June 2012 at 7:27 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@Brownian
You truly have a staggering intellect.
tim rowledge, Ersatz Haderach
6 June 2012 at 7:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
There’s quite a lot of ‘the creature’s blood in the placenta as well – so when do *they* get a vote?
Don’t be silly – it’s sliced bread. That is why every new! exciting! thing! is ‘better than sliced bread’.
Antiochus Epiphanes
6 June 2012 at 7:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I am not laughing out loud, but I am smiling broadly.
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe
6 June 2012 at 7:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I wish sliced bread could be un-invented…
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
6 June 2012 at 7:37 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Louis:
Remember, Louis, we’ve established that my brains no wurk to gud anniemoar.
chigau (違う)
6 June 2012 at 7:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
sliced bread
http://xkcd.com/
see the alt text
Agent Silversmith, Feathered Patella Association
6 June 2012 at 7:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Why not, indeed? Turns out they are.
1: f3 e5
2: g4 Qh4 – checkmate. Thanks for the own goal, choice-deniers!
interrobang
6 June 2012 at 7:55 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’ve been bringing up the “castle doctrine” thing about abortion for quite a while. So far, the response has been predictable, and can be pretty much summed up as *crickets*. But I’m perfectly serious. Even without invoking lethal force, even if I invite you into my house, if you come into my house and crap on my Kashan rug, I’m going to throw you out on your ear. I mean, I personally don’t hold with the idea that summary execution is an okay response to B&E, but some people do.
So what on earth gives these idiots the idea that someone should be able to come into my body and not get turfed out on their ear if cause arises?
Pteryxx
6 June 2012 at 7:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
SAVE THE INVASIVE TROPHOBLASTS
Rey Fox
6 June 2012 at 8:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I think I’ve mentioned before how annoyed I get when antichoicers try to co-opt environmental arguments to support further overpopulation. Particularly in a country with overconsumption issues.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
6 June 2012 at 8:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Talk about your fuckwitted arguments. Eagles are protected from outside influences, like humans. The equivalent would be protecting pregnant women from outside influences, like anti-choice zeolots….DUH!
tim rowledge, Ersatz Haderach
6 June 2012 at 8:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Pteryxx –
Tourist fist-bump! Placards! Teary TV funds appeal!
Jadehawk-
Inclined to agree. We don’t buy commercial bread though, so not a practical issue in this house. Bread machines FTW.
SallyStrange: bottom-feeding, work-shy peasant
6 June 2012 at 8:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’d rather not exist than be responsible for forcing my mother to give birth against her will.
joey
6 June 2012 at 10:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
peggin #99:
So why can’t you apply this same logic to a “person” who is occupying against your consent another form of your own property, such as your home? Would this person have a “right to life” in this case?
John Morales
6 June 2012 at 10:51 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
[meta]
joey the hoggler persists, I see.
Yes, Joey. Because people can sell their bodies just like any of their other property, and even do without if necessary. Heck, they can even upgrade to better ones, by dint of diligence!
Quite comparable.
joey
6 June 2012 at 10:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Aratina Cage #105:
No, you don’t overlook the exceptions and pretend that’s an impossibility that a woman cannot change her mind about a pregnancy at any stage. After all, don’t you think she has the right to do so?
John Morales
6 June 2012 at 10:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
C’mon, joey.
Tell us some more of how it’s just like some person inhabiting one’s body (which is one’s property like any other) and to support pro-choice means one can evict someone from their own property.
‘Cos is such a good argument towards your position, no?
Aquaria
6 June 2012 at 11:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If humans were made from mud, why isn’t mud human?
Not mud!
Humans are dust bunnies!
It’s always more fun to ridicule them with their own moronic book when you get the quotes right.
Sheesh.
Markita Lynda—damn climate change!
6 June 2012 at 11:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Paul Bernardo used to be a volunteer “safe escort” for women at Glendon College in Toronto. He was the Scarborough Rapist (in one of our suburbs), who went on to become a rapist and murderer.
There is no bottom to that kind of wilful stupidity.
Dianne @29, I like your list. You can also ask people to add a distinction that will define conjoined twins with two separate heads and personalities as two different people but those with extra limbs as one person. Then ask them where to put those that are joined at the brain.
ibyea
6 June 2012 at 11:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ah, anti choicers and their insane troll logic. A bottomless pit in which no brain escape unscathed.
Markita Lynda—damn climate change!
6 June 2012 at 11:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
There’s one thing that argues this is a deliberate satire: the use of “Pro-choicers” rather than “pro-aborts.”
joey
6 June 2012 at 11:34 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
John Morales:
Sounds similar. But my question is whether the person being evicted from your property has a “right to life”.
SallyStrange: bottom-feeding, work-shy peasant
6 June 2012 at 11:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yup.
Abortion on demand. No restrictions.
Like in Canada.
In the US, it’s illegal to get a 3rd trimester abortion unless the mother’s life is in danger, or the pregnancy is caused by rape or incest.
In Canada, a woman can get an abortion (if she can access it, but that’s different from legality) at any point in her pregnancy, for any reason.
Joey, you obviously care deeply about these things, so surely you’ll be able to share with the class what the difference in 3rd trimester abortion rates in Canada vs. the USA. Since women often decide to abort their babies at the last minute, unless constrained by the law, the difference will no doubt be striking.
Right, Joey? Go ahead, don’t be shy.
WMDKitty
6 June 2012 at 11:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
All I have to say is that if something wants to live in (and off of) my body, for any period of time, it needs to be paying rent.
consciousness razor
6 June 2012 at 11:58 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Having an abortion is like making a person leave your house?
My advice: You wouldn’t fail at analogies if you stopped using them altogether. Try an actual argument sometime; you know, with logic and facts and shit.
theophontes (坏蛋)
6 June 2012 at 11:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@ Sally
{enter theophontes, demonstrates google-foo kata}
Indeed. And:
Percent of known pregnancies ending in legal abortions,…
USA 22.2 vs Canada 20.3 (2008) (map)
Canada is doing a better job at saving “unborn babies”. If the goddists were honest about their true objectives, I guess they would be more pragmatic.
joey
7 June 2012 at 12:08 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
SallyStrange:
Such statistics do not answer the question of whether abortion of a viable fetus is ethical or not. Is it?
SallyStrange: bottom-feeding, work-shy peasant
7 June 2012 at 12:12 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’ve actually made that analogy myself. What happens to the fetus once it’s outside a woman’s body isn’t her business. If the anti-choicers feel they have a compelling interest then I think they’d be better off researching and developing an artificial uterus.
SallyStrange: bottom-feeding, work-shy peasant
7 June 2012 at 12:16 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If the “abortion of a viable fetus” is a non-event then your question is worthless. Let us first establish that this is a thing that happens in reality. Then we can debate whether it is ethical or not.
"We Are Ing The Matrimonial Collective"
7 June 2012 at 12:18 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey you know the answers because we’ve had this discussion. Either state your point or GTFO, but do not goddamn put us through a back track of your last 300+ post comment diarrhea.
Here I’ll jump ahead for you Joey.
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH KILL VIABLE OFFSPRING MEANS WE SHOULD KILL BABIES BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH *drowns in a ever growing puddle of own piss*
"We Are Ing The Matrimonial Collective"
7 June 2012 at 12:22 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hey everyone, my name is joey! Let me painstakingly describe to all of you ever pair of socks I have ever owned through the Socratic method (cause I’m tots smart and the first ot figure that out). Don’t worry if you miss it, I’m just going to show up again in a few threads and start over as if nothing ever happened because I presume everyone is like me and has the attention span of a coked up chipmunk.
joey
7 June 2012 at 12:27 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
SallyStrange:
You’re being dishonest by saying it’s a “non-event”. Of course late term abortions occur. Maybe not nearly at the same rates as early term abortions, but they do happen.
Mothers dumping their newborn babies in the garbage is also “rare”, but they do happen. Just because such instances are rare doesn’t mean it’s ethical and there shouldn’t be laws outlawing such acts.
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe
7 June 2012 at 12:35 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
late-term abortions =! abortions of viable fetuses. viable means able to live outside of the woman’s body, which means aborting a pregnancy at that stage is synonymous with inducing labor.
SallyStrange: bottom-feeding, work-shy peasant
7 June 2012 at 12:41 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Apologies if I was unclear. Although, it would seem that by mentioning that there are “rates” of 3rd trimester abortions, I am implicitly acknowledging that they do occur.
I thought we were talking about those cases that most people agree are unethical, i.e., the anti-choicer’s favorite myth, that of the woman who’s 8.5 months pregnant and suddenly decides that she doesn’t just want a c-section, she wants the fetus dead.
consciousness razor
7 June 2012 at 12:44 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I think it makes things more confusing, not less. A fetus isn’t a person. A person isn’t a house. A fetus isn’t a mere inconvenience which is taking up space in some building which you yourself could decide to leave, because you are the building and the fetus is made of that building. You can’t just ask it to leave. You don’t call the police to perform an abortion, because it’s not a matter of property rights but a medical decision. The analogy makes it seem as though there are all sorts of valid options, but most don’t carry over to abortion, so you’d have to tweak the “unwanted person in my house” scenario a whole lot just to get it to work, and then what seemed so obvious with the simplified version of the analogy becomes obscured with all of the complexities of the storytelling.
No, you’re being dishonest. You should find out where your goalposts moved. How many of late term abortions are not performed to save the life or health of the mother?
The more we outlaw these rare events you’re so worried about, the more non-rare lives we put at risk. So are you more worried about saving lives or treating women like garbage?
SallyStrange: bottom-feeding, work-shy peasant
7 June 2012 at 12:55 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yeah. I didn’t say it was a great analogy. Really more of a joke. “It’s not an abortion, it’s an eviction!”
On account of me being callous and stuff. Cuz I hate babies.
consciousness razor
7 June 2012 at 1:00 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Have you tried boiling them first, before you put them on the barbecue?
John Morales
7 June 2012 at 1:02 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Specimen:
These. Are. The. Acts. Of. Desperate. People.
They. Would. Oh. Ever. So. Much. Not. Be. In. That. Desperate. Situation.
Such people need help, not punishment.
–
[Fuck, I'm channeling Walton!]
The Laughing Coyote (Canis Sativa)
7 June 2012 at 1:20 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Fuck you, Joey.
You’re not interested in debating the reality of abortion at all. You’re interested in painting women as callous murderers who abandon their own offspring. That’s it, that’s all. I’m sick of this dishonest tactic.
Abortion is about bodily autonomy, not some sick desire to kill babies. And the pro-life crusade is about controlling women and women’s bodies, else pro-lifers like you would be all about the social welfare and the benefits for single mothers.
Louis
7 June 2012 at 2:05 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Have we made no progress overnight? I’m off back to murder babies. In the tradition of Bill Hicks I shall also be smoking while I scrape a uterus. That way I can piss off non-smokers too.*
Louis
* A group that includes me. I don’t smoke. Don’t worry, I’m not fanatical about it. I can cope if other people smoke. I don’t get that funny look on my face when I see a smoker, you know the one, like someone is sucking on a dog turd covered in lemon juice.
Louis
7 June 2012 at 2:11 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Audley, #179,
Ahhhh you has Baybee Bwain™. Don’t worry, it’s permanent. I’m still suffering from it 3 years after my wife gave birth. Hell, I had a bad case, I managed to suffer from it for the previous 30 or so years too! ;-)
One of the (highly educated and successful) cousins of the Beloved Mrs we were celebrating with this last weekend summed up her feelings on baby brain thusly:
“It’s bad enough I have to deal with male consultants who look through me but it really stinks when they’re almost right to do so because hormones made my brains drip out my ears.”
She’s something of a fierce women’s rights advocate in the workplace (male dominated top end of public medicine). 5’2” of very angry intelligent lady. I rather like her.
Louis
hotshoe
7 June 2012 at 2:13 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Sorry, TLC, you miscalled it. Joey’s not a “pro-lifer”.
He’s a a forced birther, which imeans he’s a pro-deather. Because forced birth is guaranteed to kill innocent adult women, his insistence that they can’t be allowed to abort – because they’re too immoral to be trusted to do it for the “right” reasons or at the “right” time – means that he chooses women dying over women living. That’s NOT pro-life.
Just like all the rest of the anti-abortion creeps.
The Laughing Coyote (Canis Sativa)
7 June 2012 at 2:48 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hotshoe: I stand corrected.
Of course it’s not about ‘life’. It’s about control.
Ichthyic
7 June 2012 at 2:57 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hey everyone, my name is joey! Let me painstakingly describe to all of you ever pair of socks I have ever owned through the Socratic method (cause I’m tots smart and the first ot figure that out). Don’t worry if you miss it, I’m just going to show up again in a few threads and start over as if nothing ever happened because I presume everyone is like me and has the attention span of a coked up chipmunk.
I’ll just make that my reply to Joey as well, if you don’t mind.
so tired of seeing forced-birthers repeated endless childish, unthought out arguments, full of red-herrings.
it’s not worth debating with them any more.
just step on them.
it’s what they want. then they can cry “victim!” like they really want to and we can get on with life.
Louis
7 June 2012 at 3:07 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If you ever libel coked up chipmunks like that again, I shall become vexed, Ing.
;-)
LOuis
sonofrojblake
7 June 2012 at 3:17 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
PZ has here been drawn into repeating a canard of the pro-lifers that irks me particularly: he says “it’s not just the zygote at the moment of conception that is human, but so is the sperm and the oocyte”
To which, in conversation with pro-lifers, I always respond, what is this “moment of conception” of which you speak?
Is not conception a process, a continuum, with no single moment within it being any more special than any other? In conversations with pro-choicers, I find they’re wedded to the idea that there’s a moment, a single instant at which life begins, and presumably the fetus is ensouled or whatever… but when you ask them they can never be specific. I’ve even tried to be helpful and give them a list: this “moment” of conception, when is it?
- at ejaculation?
- when the sperm first reach the egg?
- when the sperm first penetrates the cell wall?
- when the sperm stimulates the egg cell to produce calcium ions to block the entry of further sperm cells?
- at formation of the male and female pronuclei?
- formation of the segmentation nucleus?
- first cell division of the zygote within the zona pellucida?
- formation of the blastocyst?
- attachment to the wall of the uterus?
- subsumation in the endometrial wall?
I’ve tried many times to get someone to tell me which of these instants is THE MOMENT of conception, but nobody seems to know.
John Morales
7 June 2012 at 3:28 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
sonofrojblake: Conception is another word for fertilisation, that is, the moment when the gametes fuse.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
7 June 2012 at 3:58 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
What makes you think there aren’t such laws? Some states created safe haven spots to prevent women being prosecuted. You appear to be factually stupid, want to remain factually stupid, hence you can’t make logical arguments based on facts, only your emotions. Which is why philosophy not based on reality, and only emotions, is worthless.
If there is a problem, show us that the problem exists and is wide-spread enough to require laws. You know, you do your homework before disturbing your betters with your blather…
theophontes (坏蛋)
7 June 2012 at 3:59 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@ sonofrojblake:
Conception is the moment when the daddy places the homunculus in his furrow.
birgerjohansson
7 June 2012 at 4:06 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
(Non-English speaker here)
Some muslim countries define THE MOMENT as when the egg attaches to the (the English term for cavity where the fetus developes) and thus have no objections to condoms or the (name for spiral-like thingie stuffed up to prevent the egg from attaching).
So muslims at least seem to have a consitent notion of The Moment. Forced Birthers being less consistent than mullahs? Who would have guessed.
Damn! I know the English terms used by NASA but I suck at medical terms.
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe
7 June 2012 at 4:12 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
the words you’re looking for are “uterus” and “copper coil”
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe
7 June 2012 at 4:14 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
`
Louis
7 June 2012 at 4:16 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh and by the way pro-women killing-ers, if all life giving fluid is sacred, come here and let me put a massacre in your napkin.
Yahtzee Anti Women Scum!
Louis
StevoR
7 June 2012 at 5:17 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@140. David Marjanović :
Ahem, Terri Schiavo?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Schiavo
Republicans seem to prefer those with undeveloped or non functional brains, I wonder why?
Under the Coathanger Lobby as I prefer to call the anti-choice mob, aborton will still happen. It will just be done in back alleys and outside proper medical environments and the unfortunate women* caught having them will be victimised all over again. Bastards!
—–
* Read poor women – as opposed to the wealthy who will go overseas for them.
StevoR
7 June 2012 at 5:32 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Bastards = the Coathanger Lobby NOT the unfortunate women to clear up any faintly present ambiguity.
The Coathanger lobby site by an apparent Aunty Thomasina, yeesh. So much FAIL and stoopid on there.
carlie
7 June 2012 at 5:38 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
And wouldn’t happen nearly so often if abortions were easier to obtain.
About 1% of abortions are late-term, and every single one of them is due to severe fatal problems with the fetus.
But I’ll go ahead and address your ridiculous question.
Yes. Yes, it is. You know why? Because that’s what happens as a side effect of making it legal for everyone. Don’t be shocked; this is not something we don’t already do in a lot of other cases. Joey, I’ll make a bit of an assumption that you’re anti gun control, because being anti-choice correlates very highly with being pro-gun. The lack of decent gun control in this country kills about eight thousand people per year. Most all of those would not be dead with strict gun controls, but people think that it’s worth it to have those deaths in order to keep guns easily available. There were at most about 1000 late-term abortions per year in the US before 13 states outlawed it altogether, and that’s late term meaning after 24 weeks (not the baby in the middle of delivery you like to think about).
So late-term abortions are at absolute most 1000 per year, while gun deaths are 8000 per year. Every anti-gun control person thinks that 8000 is an acceptable side effect to keep their ability to have guns; why isn’t 8 times fewer deaths than that an acceptable side effect to keep bodily autonomy?
And we could do that on lots of other types of legislation. We accept upwards of 9000 deaths per year from food contamination, not from any lofty ideals of freedom, but just because we don’t want to pay more for our food or for government inspection, for example. Lives definitely have a trade-off value in this country, and you’ve accepted all of the ones that have a much higher death count than abortion. Why focus on the one that has the least collateral damage?
scottjordan
7 June 2012 at 5:40 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
<sarcasm>Then I’d be curling in the foetal position and weeping for all eternity in hell.</sarcasm>
Seriously, was that the answer they were expecting?
carlie
7 June 2012 at 6:00 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
And if you want to cry that I’m not making the proper comparisons, we can just stick solely with bodily autonomy, which means you decide what happens to your body.
About 6000 people per year in the US die waiting for organ transplants. Know what would eliminate that number? Making organ donation opt-out instead of opt-in. Making the default legal assumption that after you die, your organs can be used. But this country refuses to do that, even with keeping an opt-out so that it can be refused. We consider bodily autonomy of dead people important enough to allow 6000 people a year to die because we refuse to take the organs of dead people without their express permission.
So bodily autonomy of dead people is worth 6000 deaths per year.
But you don’t think the bodily autonomy of women is worth even 1/6 of that. Think about that for a moment. In this country, dead bodies are worth six times more than living women to about 40% of the population, including you.
peggin
7 June 2012 at 6:24 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey
No, they don’t; they’ve forfeited that right by coming into my house uninvited. If an unwanted intruder comes into my house, I believe I should have the right to take any steps necessary to remove them, up to and including killing them.
Lars
7 June 2012 at 6:40 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@carlie:
Your argument in comment #230 is brilliant. (But will likely go over the heads of pepole like Joey.)
Your argument in comment #232 is even better. (But will likely also go over the heads of people like Joey.)
"We Are Ing The Matrimonial Collective"
7 June 2012 at 6:46 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Republicans like fetuses and the comatose because you can coopt them without worry of them speaking out. Like why Cartman fromSouthpark felt Clyde Frog was the ideal friend because he had no autonomy.
Nightjar
7 June 2012 at 6:52 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No, but something tells me that if you were honestly concerned about minimizing the occurrence of late-term abortions you’d want to know about such statistics. You’d want to know if outlawing it is effective, or if you should be looking for other solutions that don’t involve punishing women for being desperate. Because you wouldn’t want a law that on top of causing even more suffering to actual persons and violating their bodily autonomy… was also ineffective.
On the other hand, you totally wouldn’t want to know about such statistics if all you want is to punish women just for the sake of it. And you would, in fact, dismiss their importance because they “do not answer the question of whether abortion of a viable fetus is ethical or not”.
Am I right, joey?
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
7 June 2012 at 7:13 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey, do some real work now. Show us the number of third trimester abortions done solely for birth control, compared to those done to save the life of the woman, or for fetal deformity. Get it? Show that your scenario is anything other than mental masturbation on your part, that it has a true basis in reality.
Or are you really arguing the feus should be able to kill the woman, and that a woman must birth a deformed fetus?
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
7 June 2012 at 7:26 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
While digging through that dreck last night, I came across the best anti-choice argument yet. Are you guys ready for it? Brace yourselves!
Steve Jobs invented computers.
Steve Jobs invented computers.
Steve Jobs invented computers.
Steve Jobs invented computers.
Nope, no matter how I write it, I just can’t seem to make it work.
And hey, since I’ve already Godwinned this thread: if Hitler’s mom had terminated her pregnancy, we wouldn’t have had the Holocaust. The “great man” argument works both ways. CRITICAL HIT, ANTI-CHOICERS!
birgerjohansson
7 June 2012 at 7:43 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Soo…those big things with blinking lights NASA used to calculate orbits when Steve Jobs was in shortpants were not computers?
Steve Jobs invented some things, stole some ideas for other things, was a brilliant entrepreneur an an asshole as a human being. But if he had been aborted someone else would have made analogous inventions eventually. For instance, the theory of evolution was discovered three times independently of each other.
opposablethumbs
7 June 2012 at 7:51 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Carlie, thank you for posting 230 and 232, and Nightjar for 236. You express so succinctly what the forced-breeder brigade are really about.
Oh, and joey? Show us your campaigns to make reliable contraception and fact-based sex-ed and healthcare freely available to all; show us the practical steps you’re taking to reduce the number of abortions you’re so worked up about by reducing the need for them in the first place. Except, you don’t actually care about that, do you. If you did, your priorities would be very very different.
dianne
7 June 2012 at 8:02 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’m against abortion is because I know I’m enjoying not being aborted,
Oh for…I’m against abstinence because I’m enjoying being alive and I wouldn’t be if my parents hadn’t had sex. I’m in favor of the Holocaust because without it my step-mother-in-law would never have been born (her parents met in the resistance-seriously, they did) and I’m glad she was. When your argument can be used to justify the Holocaust it’s time to SERIOUSLY rethink it.
and I would no matter my quality of life. A “bad” life is better than no life at all.
Do NOT say things like this. It may be noted later. I’m serious and not trying to be mean or snarky here: If the writer were in a bad accident and had, for example, head and neck trauma that left him a quadraplegic and unable to communicate in any way and s/he left no other living will or indication of his/her wishes, the doctors involved in his/her care would be obliged to take this statement as definitive and continue aggressive care indefinitely. Including painful procedures, indefinite intubation, life in a bed unable to move when the folds in the bed irritate his/her body enough to cause sores…It’s not a pretty life and s/he may quickly decide that there is a quality of life s/he wouldn’t want to put up with. Never make this sort of judgement without considerable thought and always leave a loophole.
dianne
7 June 2012 at 8:11 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No, you don’t overlook the exceptions
Citation needed, Joey. All this babbling about how it’s POSSIBLE and I’ve yet to see you give one case example of a perfectly healthy woman aborting a perfectly healthy 8.5 month old fetus when she had access to abortion earlier in the pregnancy. I won’t call it impossible-people are strange and there are 7 billion of them out there-but I’ve never seen an example and certainly haven’t seen one from you.
"We Are Ing The Matrimonial Collective"
7 June 2012 at 8:19 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey why did you lie before about being prochoice? And why did you try gotcha arguments while lying like that?
carlie
7 June 2012 at 8:19 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
,blockquote>Oh for…I’m against abstinence because I’m enjoying being alive and I wouldn’t be if my parents hadn’t had sex.
Oh, that’s perfect! My mother got pregnant with me via premarital sex, so everyone must have premarital sex. :)
ButchKitties
7 June 2012 at 8:26 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
re: Carlie @ 230 & 232
I really wish I could give you flowers and homemade cookies right now. Well done.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
7 June 2012 at 8:26 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
What Joey really needs to discuss is how unethical it is of him to tell a grown woman what to do with her body. And how unethical it is for him to demote her status below that of a fetus….
dianne
7 June 2012 at 8:34 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
My mother got pregnant with me via premarital sex, so everyone must have premarital sex. :)
I got pregnant through premarital* sex and was totally happy about being pregnant (apart from the physical side effects which I could have done without but was willing to put up with because I wanted to be pregnant) and am very happy to have a kid. Therefore, absolutely everyone should have to have premarital sex because it worked out well for me.
*Is it “premarital” if you’re not now married and never intend to me? Perhaps “nonmarital” would be a better term, but spellcheck says it’s not a word.
Giliell, not to be confused with The Borg
7 June 2012 at 8:35 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It takes a special kind of idiot (usually a male one) to assume that 9 months of pregnancy plus giving birth are an inaction.
The devil’s advocate needs to hand in his degree.
That’s probably because they couldn’t get an abortion around week 10 or so. I mean, never telling anybody you’re pregnant, hiding it from the world, going into labour all alone and hidden and completely helpless should anything go wrong is just something women (quite often young girls from religious families) do for the fun of it.
dianne
Think of it, my grandparents met when my great-grandparents visited their older daughter in French exile where my other great-grandparents and their children had fled, too.
I should be a Nazi!
joey
7 June 2012 at 8:46 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
SallyStrange:
Alright then. So are these 3rd trimester abortions ethical?
So, do you think such a scenario would be unethical?
Here’s what I think. I think aborting an 8.5 fetus is unethical. Therefore, I support laws that would criminalize such abortions. Just like I support laws that criminalizes dumping newborn infants in the dumpster. Doesn’t matter how rare these instances can be. I favor the laws to be there.
Your turn.
—————–
Coyote:
Isn’t a fetus that is outside the woman but still attached to the mother through the umbilical chord still technically part of the woman’s body?
——————
Nerd:
What makes you think I don’t think there are such laws? Of course there are laws criminalizing infanticide. Likewise, there are currently laws in the US that restrict late term abortions. So what’s your point?
——————
carlie:
You want to share a link that backs this statement up?
You’ve never heard of “intact dilation and extraction” procedures?
Your assumption is wrong. Oops.
——————–
Peggin:
But what if you allowed this “uninvited” guest to stay for a bit. You housed and even fed him for a certain length of time. But then you suddenly changed your mind about his welcomeness and want the person out. You have the right to change your mind, don’t you? You still think your unwanted guest doesn’t have a right to life?
———————
Nightjar:
Yes, I am interested in such statistics. But again, the statistics still don’t answer the question of whether it is ethical or not.
———————-
Nerd:
A woman can’t change her mind at any point during her pregnancy?
Lars
7 June 2012 at 8:54 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey: You obviously don’t care to participate in a discussion. So why do you care to type all this vapid bullshit in this comments section? And more importantly: Why should anybody else care?
Naked Bunny with a Whip
7 June 2012 at 8:55 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
By this argument, a woman gets maximum benefit by getting pregnant and then getting an abortion at the last minute.
Go fish, forced birthers!
Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort
7 June 2012 at 8:56 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@joey:
Is it unethical to kill aliens who decide to come into your home late one evening for some tea and cakes?
Naked Bunny with a Whip
7 June 2012 at 9:00 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@scottjordan #231:
I don’t know. According to their own theology, my soul would either be sent right back to God, or I’d be placed in a new body. So what’s the big deal? Why be so concerned about sinful and corrupted meat?
Giliell, not to be confused with The Borg
7 June 2012 at 9:03 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
*snorfle*
You’re talking to dianne?
*gets popcorn*
carlie
7 June 2012 at 9:11 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I did. It’s the same reference later on as to the number of abortions. You didn’t actually look at any of those links, did you?
Yes. Those are included in the numbers I gave. What’s the point? You know who is hurt by those procedures being banned? People like this woman, who would have died without it.
Ok, fine. Are you willing to spend as much time posting on NRA sites about how important gun control is? Do you vote for all anti-gun candidates? Do you spend time as an activist for food safety and standardized organ donation? Why pick this particular issue to obsess about?
dianne
7 June 2012 at 9:13 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You’ve never heard of “intact dilation and extraction” procedures?
Um…yes. They’re not what you think they are. Performing one on a woman in spontaneous labor would be…challenging. In fact, impossible unless she happened to be in labor with a breech, in which case she probably should have gotten a c-section by now. The one scenario where I can imagine it happening is if a woman labored unattended (or with incompetent attendants) with a footling breech and only presented to the hospital after the fetus was dead, sticking half way out of her vagina. Then it might be the safest procedure to perform. Other than that, a woman in spontaneous labor isn’t going to need a D and X. Just not even physically possible.
And still waiting for any evidence at all that this or any other procedure is being performed on healthy women with healthy fetuses at 8.5 months despite availability of earlier abortion options.
Alethea H. "Crocoduck" Dundee
7 June 2012 at 9:15 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
So according to this what-if logic, I should be anti-abortion.
Because if my great-grandmother had been able to get an abortion, then she wouldn’t have committed suicide in her 7th pregnancy. And then my grandmother wouldn’t have been forced to leave school at 14 to care for her 5 siblings, and she wouldn’t have met my grandfather at the same time (nor probably been so desperate to get married and away from her drunken father) and so my mother wouldn’t have been born, and thus neither would I. And it is ALL about me, so who cares about those other lives?
Other things that I should, by this logic, also be in favour of include:
* suicide
* alcoholism
* adultery
* child abuse
* pregnant women pulling coal-mine carts on their hands and knees for 12 hour days in the Victorian era.
And to get a bit more historically general and further away from my immediate family, I should also be in favour of the black plague, smallpox, and the massacres of the Australian Aborigines.
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
7 June 2012 at 9:15 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Because a woman who is eight and a half months pregnant might change her mind and seek an abortion, that would be unethical.
Ogvorbis
7 June 2012 at 9:16 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
But, for someone who sees the world, and women, as Joey does, allowing women bodily autonomy is anathema because they might actually use that bodily autonomy in ways that make Joey uncomfortable and icky and Joey’s feelings outweigh the rights of every woman on earth because Joey has a penis.
Yes. Who are you to tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her body?
And your thoughts, your beliefs, are more important than those of a woman who wants to terminate a pregnancy.
And how does one separate out the abortions performed because the woman may die without it and ones done for other reasons? Of course, that doesn’t matter because your feelings are more important than those of another adult human being because you have a penis.
So in your view, a woman terminating a pregnancy, for whatever reason, is fully comparable to a woman placing a live baby in a dumpster because, for whatever reason, she feels she has no choice? And you have, in the past, had the temerity to call yourself pro-choice.
You really have no fucking idea what you are talking about, do you? You just keep repeating these ridiculous just-so gothcha stories and have no idea what you are actually arguing.
This from the one who refuses back up anything.
Yes, or a woman no longer has bodily autonomy and is therefore denied her human rights.
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
7 June 2012 at 9:20 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Alethea, using that logic, I should be in favor of owning slaves. If the generations of slave owners were not tied to one plantation, my ancestors from two centuries ago would not have met and produced the linage that leads to me.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
7 June 2012 at 9:22 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey the fuckwit:
Joey, what are the state laaws regarding third trimester abortions? That is your problem. You aren’t real. You are imaginary and delusional, hence pointless and irritating.
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
7 June 2012 at 9:26 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nerd, if only joey were imaginary. It would not be necessary to invent him.
Grumps
7 June 2012 at 9:26 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@joey
I’d like you to take another close look at Carlie’s nos 230 and 232, but this time try to answer the substance of them rather than quote mining.
BTW, do you own a car? Should car ownership be legal? How many innocent lives would be saved if we reduced your autonomy to just jump in and drive whenever you liked and maybe restricted everyone to essential journeys only… or perhaps a complete ban?
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
7 June 2012 at 9:27 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Giliell:
*steals a handful*
*leans back and munches happily, waiting for the fireworks to start*
Alethea H. "Crocoduck" Dundee
7 June 2012 at 9:28 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Exactly, Janine. If it’s not insane troll logic then it’s narcissism gone wild. All of history must be ethically right – slavery, holocausts and all – because it led to PRECIOUS PRECIOUS MEEEEE!
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
7 June 2012 at 9:28 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Grumps, what if a woman decides not to reach her destination using a car and instead, rams it into a signpost?
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
7 June 2012 at 9:30 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey, show me it is ethical for you to tell another adult what they can or can’t do with their body. It is unethical for you to have any say. Show otherwise.
Grumps
7 June 2012 at 9:34 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Janine,
I’m probably being really thick, but I don’t think I understand your question. If you could clarify I’d be happy to try and answer.
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
7 June 2012 at 9:35 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
One word, Nerd!
Because a fertilized egg equals a fetus equals a viable fetus equals .
And babies have to be protected from a mother who just might be mislead by her lady parts and terminate the pregnancy.
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
7 June 2012 at 9:37 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Grumps, I was not asking you to explain anything. I was making fun of one of the things that joey said. I should have made that more clear. I am sorry I caused your confusion.
Grumps
7 June 2012 at 9:42 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No problem Janine. Confusion is one of my default states… but that’s better than joey-like certainty, isn’t it?
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
7 June 2012 at 9:44 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey,
Once more and louder this time: A woman’s desire for an abortion is about ending her pregnany, not killing the fetus. If an infant had been delivered but was still attached by the umbilical cord, then the pregnancy is over.
Not a single one of us has promoted infaticide.
peggin
7 June 2012 at 9:47 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey
Well, to make your example even remotely analogous to an unwanted pregnancy, we’d need to add a few more details. So, we have to say this unwanted “guest” has somehow attached himself to my body, and in doing so he is altering my body; making me gain weight, pressing against my bladder, causing me to feel sick to my stomach, and other assorted “fun” side effects of pregnancy. Additionally, I have reason to know for a fact that he has no plans to remove himself for months on end. Also, I’m apparently living in a theoretical world with no government, which means I don’t have the option of calling the police and having the unwanted “guest” removed, so other than just letting him stay attached to my body until he’s ready to detach himself, killing him is the only way I can get rid of him… well then, YES, I do believe that killing him is a 100% justified way of getting rid of this particular unwanted guest.
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
7 June 2012 at 9:49 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
But peggin, no periods. You forget that.
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
7 June 2012 at 9:50 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Wait a minute…
Joey, do you think that if no one was there to “cut the cord” when you were delivered that you’d still be attached to your mama?
Louis
7 June 2012 at 9:54 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Alethea, #257,
But I am in favour of suicide and alcoholism…
…well, technically I’m in favour of very, very gradual suicide by light to moderate pseudo-alcoholism, but let’s not split hairs. Or indeed hair splits.
;-)
Louis
dianne
7 June 2012 at 9:56 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Think of it, my grandparents met when my great-grandparents visited their older daughter in French exile where my other great-grandparents and their children had fled, too.
I should be a Nazi!
This game can really get out of hand…I should completely be for the Inquisition because if my many times ancestors hadn’t fled the Inquisition, they wouldn’t have met some other ancestors in the Americas and started the line that includes me. OTOH, I’m against genocide, because if they’d killed the locals rather than having sex with them, I wouldn’t exist. Whee! All things are moral if they led to ME!
Lars
7 June 2012 at 9:57 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hum. That would mean that cutting the cord is a form of abortion. Which means that … which means …
*headexplode*
Lars
7 June 2012 at 9:59 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yes! We definitely need another K-T event. Because the previous one led to ME!
Now, let’s start hauling those asteroids!
dianne
7 June 2012 at 10:05 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@279: Let me give you this internet you just won before the asteroids get here.
Ogvorbis
7 June 2012 at 10:06 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Screw that. It was the PT extinction that set the protomammals on the road to ME!
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
7 June 2012 at 10:10 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Janine,
Believe me, right now I’d be willing to trade being constantly kicked from the inside and the whoa! constant heartburn for cramps and crabbiness. At least with your period, you can take decent painkillers.
peggin
7 June 2012 at 10:10 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Janine
Oh, how could I have forgotten about that? Who cares about all the other fun symptoms of pregnancy if they can just not get my period! Because it’s not like I can just take a pill every day and avoid getting my period for the same nine months without all those other side effects.
</ sarcasm
I think that's gotta be the single stupidest anti-choice argument I've ever heard.
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
7 June 2012 at 10:17 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Preggin,
It’s like a contest to see if they can out-stupid the last post. I mean,
The ignorance is simply astounding, don’t you agree?
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
7 June 2012 at 10:19 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Or “peggin” if I was paying any bit of attention. *sigh* Sorry about that, I’ve got pregnancy on the brainz.
Rey Fox
7 June 2012 at 10:22 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey, you’ve lost. Take your parting gifts and go home.
StevoR
7 June 2012 at 10:25 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@81. Ogvorbis :
Don’t forget the Snowball Earth conditions that apparently led to the Cambrian explosion – provided certain current theories are right! (& being correctly remembered.)
Time to turn down the Sun, freeze most of the planet and revert to an environment inhabited mainly by trilobites everyone .. because that’ll lead to me and make everything alright. Won’t it?
Gregory Greenwood
7 June 2012 at 10:30 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
joey @ 188;
This anology is flawed to say the least. Firstly, a bricks-and-mortar property that you own is in no way comparable to your own body – it is not as though you can sell off your vital organs and live to tell about it, or upgrade to a nice new body in the sun somewhere.
Equally, any person squatting in your house would still be a human being with all the attributes that are associated with a human capable of survival independent from the body of someone else. If they were evicted it would not kill them. Conversely, a non-viable foetus is not a person – it is not capable of survival outside the woman’s body and it is not conscious. Abortion is not comparable to eviction. It is better likened to the removal of an unwanted parasite. So once again, your analogy is fatally flawed.
If one uses the term ‘property’ in regard to one’s body, it is important to remember that it must be considered a special class of property, one which the law does not allow anyone else to claim ownership of. I covered this topic in my post @ 106;
The law does not recognise the definition of the body as just “another form of your own property” – it has very different legal status for a reason.
—————————————————————-
@ 190;
Your hypothetical of the abortion of a completely healthy, viable foetus in the ultra late term has has already been addressed repeatedly. Where the foetus is viable, it will be induced so late in the pregnancy (or otherwise delivered). If the foetus is not viable, then efforts will be mde to render it viable. The only circumstances where such ultra late term abortion (like the 8.5 month abortion mentioned elsewhere in the thread) would be performed would be where rendering the foetus viable is not possible or the foetus would either die in any case or be severely deformed, or if any attempt to deliver it would imperil the woman’s life.
Would you seriously argue for letting an adult woman die needlessly (most likley killing the foetus in the process in any case) or for forcing the woman to give birth to a dead, serverly deformed or non-viable foetus solely in the name of… what? Religion? A poor definition of ‘human life’ and its supposed ‘sanctity’? A toxic sexual pseudo-morality that seeks to punish women for having sex? Should not our first concern be the actual personhood of the actual woman, not the potential furture personhood of the foetus?
Again, I covered this in my post @ 106;
So, yes – I would argue that access to the means to terminate the pregnancy should be available to a woman at any point in that pregnancy, but in practice this would mean abortion in cases where the foetus is not viable or the mother’s health is in peril, and delivery by one means or another where the foetus is fully viable.
————————————————————–
@ 201;
Hypotheticals again? Do you have any actual examples of viable foetuses – that is foetuses that that are entirely capable of sustaining life outside the woman’s body – being aborted? I can’t think of any, so why fixate on something that either non-existant or incredibly rare? Other than as a means to construct a faux-moralistic excuse to try to restrict women’s access to abortion services far earlier in the pregnancy process, long before the foetus is viable? I mean, that is what all this is really about, isn’t it? Controlling women? Eliminating their bodily autonomy? Punishing them for violating archaic concepts of sexual morality? I can think of no other reason why the laughably entitled ‘pro-lifers’ would adopt the tack that they do. If they really cared about life, why not concern themselves with quality of life? Why not support proper sex education programmes and greater access to contraception? Why not fight for social healthcare policies? And yet all they focus on is abortion. It is almost as if they stop caring about the supposed ‘sanctity of life’ the moment the child is born and stops being a convenient way to control the bodies of women…
—————————————————————-
@ 206;
You are palying upon the ambiguity of the phrase ‘late term’ here. Anything post 24 weeks is called ‘late term’, but this is hardly the same as your preferred hypothetical of an abortion occurring just prior to birth. As has been noted before, late term abortions occur because the foetus is not viable or the woman’s life is in danger. You have yet to provide evidence of abortions of viable foetuses occuring in the late term as a means of birth control. Until you do so, your hypothetical questions bear little utility as anything other than idle thought experiments. They certainly form no basis upon which to deny women their bodily autonomy.
The dumping of newborns in such a fashion is a desperation measure brought about by society’s ridiculously judgemental attitude toward abortion. If abortion were more freely available, such incidences of abandonment would be sharply reduced, with a greater proportion of children being born actually being wanted.
Also, do not forget that the story does not start and end with the abandonment – what about the desperate women, having to go into hiding to give birth without proper medical care in case of complications, without pain-management and often without even a hygienic envornment in which to give birth? That, and the backstreet abortions that result in women dying needlessly in agony, is the face of the human cost of outlawing abortion outright or severely restricting access to it. You are so concerned about life? What about the lives of women? Don’t they count in your eyes?
—————————————————————-
@ 249;
Short answer – yes. As noted before, abortions at so late a stage are performed where the foetus is non-viable, the foetus is serverely deformed and the resulting child would have an intolerably low quality of life if it survived at all, or the woman’s health is imperiled.
To answer the question I think you want to ask – does a woman have the right to end her pregnancy in the third trimester? Again, the answer is yes. She can end her pregancny at any time, but as noted before where the foetus is viable it will be delivered and put up for adoption, where it is not viable then abortion is employed.
I can smell the strawmen burning from here…
The abortion of viable foetuses at 8.5 months is your hypothetical – you still haven’t demonstrated that it even happens at all, let alone that it is a basis for outlawing abortion ealier in the pregnancy.
No. legally speaking, once a child has been born it is considered to be an independent entity. The umbilicus is no longer sustaining life functions, and is usually cut as a matter of medical expediency.
This analogy still makes no sense. The ‘uninvited guest’ is still not dependent for hir continued existence on the house in question, unlike a foetus which is dependent on the woman’s body. Besides, as has already been established, your body is emphatically not ‘just another piece of property’ akin to a house.
Where exactly are you trying to go with this?
These statistics help demonstrate the real world impact of the policies in question, which helps us to assess their impact and thus to judge whether or not they are ethical in terms of consequentilist morality. If you are trying to invoke some other (perhaps theistic) measure of ethics, then you will find few sympathetic ears here.
The point Nerd was making is that you have not demonstrated that these late term abortions are being performed simply as a means of birth control, as opposed to being performed because the foetus was not viable, was severely deformed, or the woman’s health was in danger. Obviously, the woman can change her mind at any time, but as has been reiterated over and over again on this thread, where the foetus is viable it will be induced or otherwise delivered and then can be given up for adoption. Until you can demonstrate that viable foetuses are being aborted in the late term simply as a means of birth control, then your hypothetical bears no more relevance to the topic than introducing an argument about the relative morality of attempting to abort a xenomorph chestburster embryo…
Apologies for the lengthy post.
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 10:31 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If that “guest” refused to leave when you asked, and assaulted you with biological and chemical weapons that does as much damage to your body as a placenta does to a woman’s body, then your right to self-protection gives you the right to use lethal force.
This “doesn’t have a right to life” thing is a pathetically transparent piece of dishonest misdirection.
Illuminata, Genie in the Beer Bottle
7 June 2012 at 10:33 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey ignored my desperate need for his lung! He’s a murderer! A hypocritical, misogynistic murderer!
peggin
7 June 2012 at 10:41 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Audley
It really is astounding. Sometimes I want to ask these people how they don’t drown themselves in the shower.
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 10:42 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No.
Not ethically, not legally, not conventionally, not even biologically.
The umbilical cord and placenta are genetically part of the fetus.
Is a child who has accidentally crazy-glued her hand to her mother’s leg technically part of her mother’s body, being attached to her mother through the hand?
"We Are Ing The Matrimonial Collective"
7 June 2012 at 10:44 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey before you claimed to be prochoice and proinfanticide…why did you lie?
"We Are Ing The Matrimonial Collective"
7 June 2012 at 10:46 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Better question: why are we actually taking serious someone who filled whole threads with blatent lies and cowardice?
joey
7 June 2012 at 10:47 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ogvorbis:
Alright then. I commend your consistency.
———-
Grumps:
I did. I’m not against gun control or opt-out organ donorship.
Audley:
But it’s still attached to the mother. Isn’t it biologically still part of the woman’s body?
————–
peggin:
Not true if you want your analogy to be apt.
—————
Audley:
Of course not. After a few minutes the placenta will be expelled. But before that event, the baby is still biologically attached to the woman. How can one argue that it’s still not part of the woman’s body?
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
7 June 2012 at 10:48 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Peggin,
I’ve heard (though I doubt that it’s true) that when it starts raining, turkeys will look up with their mouths agape and eventually down themselves. That’s the mental image I get from these clown shoes: “where is this water coming from? *gurgle*”.
Anyway, I’m willing to trade a month of incubating DarkFetus for a monthly menstrual cycle. Any takers?
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 10:49 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Aborting a viable 8.5 month fetus is unethical. That’s why it is almost NEVER done, and induced birth is done instead. In fact, most 8.5 month normal, viable, but unwanted pregnancies are terminated by waiting a couple weeks and delivering normally, since it often takes that long to even arrange for an appointment to do an induced birth anyways.
Aborting a non-viable 8.5 month fetus IS completely ethical.
Third trimester abortions are any abortions done after 28 weeks. 8.5 months gestation is 36-38 weeks. Late abortions, depending on who is doing the classification, can be any abortion after 20-28 weeks.
Trying to conflate this three as being the same thing is monumentally dishonest.
"We Are Ing The Matrimonial Collective"
7 June 2012 at 10:55 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey why do you lie?
peggin
7 June 2012 at 10:55 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
joey
Really? Please explain to me this mythical way to end a pregnancy that doesn’t involve either waiting months on end for the fetus to “leave” or killing the fetus. (Please note, in my hypothetical, I was very specific that the unwanted “guest” wasn’t planning to leave for months, so we’re talking about an early-term, non-viable fetus here.)
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
7 June 2012 at 10:55 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Fucking amazing how the chess playing pigeon clings to the one part of his argument against abortion that does not occur in real life.
The hypothetical must be held in higher regard that the lives of women.
And simply because I love low comedy, I hope that joey brings back his argument that a woman would wait until she is in the process of birthing in order to have an abortion because she does not want sharp sticks in her.
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 10:56 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It is not necessary to make laws that specifically cover things that happen so rarely that the law will almost never be applied.
It is a waste of limited time, effort, and resources, that can be better spent elsewhere.
For that tiny number of cases that do happen, an intelligent application of EXISTING LAWS (this is why we have JUDGES AND JURIES, not supercomputers with memory banks loaded with the laws, in our legal systems) as needed, is plenty sufficient.
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 10:58 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No.
Anymore than you would be a part of my body if you superglued your index finger to me.
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
7 June 2012 at 10:59 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh god, I hate hair splitting.
In those few minutes when the infant has been delivered but is still attached, the pregnancy is over. Abortion is about ending the pregnancy and if you are dumb enough to argue that in this delivered-yet-still-attached case pregnancy is still occuring, then the pregnant woman could end the pregnancy by simply cutting the cord immediately. Abortion isn’t about destroying a fetus, why do you keep ignoring those of us who point this out?
Anyway, the infant is no longer dependent on its mother for nutrients/oxygen/whatever, even though the cord is present. So after delivery, it’s considered a seperate person. This isn’t rocket surgery, dumbass.
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 10:59 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Biologically attached =/= still part of the body.
Anymore than you would be a part of my body if your index fingered were glued to me with a biological surgical glue.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
7 June 2012 at 11:01 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
NOPE. Only a presuppositional fuckwit who doesn’t understand the biology like yourself would think so. Once out, no longer part of the woman, and independent. End of story. You show otherwise….Or shut the fuck up about it….
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 11:03 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Exactly. In fact, in this circumstance, if you insist that the baby is still part of the mother’s body, and the pregnancy is not over, and since abortion is a procedure that terminates a pregnancy, cutting the umbilical cord (and D and C’ing whatever portion of the placenta is still attached to the uterine wall) is a type of abortion.
The fact that the baby is unharmed by this hilights the reality that abortion is not about destroying a fetus.
joey
7 June 2012 at 11:15 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Gregory Greenwood:
Focusing on these “non-existent or extremely rare” cases distinguishes whether the entire abortion debate is about personhood or bodily-autonomy. If it’s strictly the latter, then the most consistent position is that abortion (termination of the fetus) is not unethical at ANY point of the pregnancy, even the hypothetical 8.5 month viable and healthy fetus.
Anyways, I’d like to respond to the rest of your post but I have limited time throughout my day.
Nightjar
7 June 2012 at 11:16 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I don’t get it. How is this relevant to anything?
Are you trying to imply that in order to be consistent we should somehow be defending that mother’s right to kill the newborn because, uh, she has the right to end a pregnancy that for all purposes has already ended? Or the right to detach herself from the infant, which for some bizarre reason can’t be done by simply cutting the cord, but only by killing the baby?
You can’t possibly be this stupid.
Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort
7 June 2012 at 11:16 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@joey:
Since you’re here arguing hypotheticals that in no way compare to actual physical reality, tell me whether it’s ethical or not to murder an alien who comes into your bedroom late at night.
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 11:17 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You only posted once between this post and carlie’s 230 and 232, and you didn’t even mention these posts in that post.
You’re lying.
And this is still not an answer to the SUBSTANCE of carlie’s two posts. You’re just making yet another deceptive, vague, mealy-mouthed and inaccurate reference to a bad analogy.
If your views on guns are consistent with your views on abortion, then you need to be much more than “not against gun control”. You need to be in support of making all guns illegal, everywhere, for everyone, all the time, and the manufacture of guns must also be illegal everywhere, for everyone, all the time.
If your views on organ donation are consistent with your views on abortion, the you need to be much more than “not against opt-out organ donorship”. You need to be in favor of mandatory organ donorship with NO opt-out option at all.
Which brings us back to the substance of carlie’s two posts and the two questions that you actually need to answer, which I will rephrase for your benefit, since you apparently have trouble with long chains of logic.
1) Is a woman’s right to bodily autonomy LESS THAN, EQUAL TO, or GREATER THAN, a corpse’s right to bodily autonomy?
2) Is a woman’s right to bodily autonomy LESS THAN, EQUAL TO, or GREATER THAN, a gun owner’s right to own a gun?
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
7 June 2012 at 11:18 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Wrong, chess playing pigeon. You fucking focus on this so you do not have to deal with blood and guts women.
You have limited time to deal with real women.
Illuminata, Genie in the Beer Bottle
7 June 2012 at 11:26 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Then give me your lung. Or admit you’re a murderer, just like you pretend women who get abortions are murderers.
And yes, 3rd trimester abortions are ethical, as they are performed to remove non-viable fetuses to save the actual living, breathing humand beings. We call them ‘women’. You call them ‘incubators don’t deserve the autonomy I enjoy’.
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
7 June 2012 at 11:27 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nightjar! I haven’t seen you around lately! *waves*
Ogvorbis
7 June 2012 at 11:28 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I really admire Joey’s cherry picking ability. Goes right up their with the lies and the misogyny. Nice trifecta.
Nightjar
7 June 2012 at 11:29 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
*sigh*
Abortions of healthy fetuses are not performed because the woman wants the fetus dead, you moron, they are performed because the woman wants to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. If the fetus is viable and delivery is possible, that’s what’s done in order to terminate the pregnancy.
peggin
7 June 2012 at 11:30 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
joey
Wrong. The right to bodily integrity doesn’t mean the woman has the right to terminate the fetus at any point in the pregnancy, it means she has the right to terminate the PREGNANCY at any point in the pregnancy. Now, in most cases, terminating the pregnancy has the unavoidable side effect of terminating the fetus as well, but that is not the primary objective of the abortion. So, in the case of your hypothetical healthy woman who is 8.5 months pregnant with a healthy, viable fetus who just decides, on a whim, to terminate the pregnancy, the most reasonable way to do that would be to induce labor and deliver a premature baby. There’s no need to terminate the fetus and, by having the option to end the pregnancy whenever she wants to, the woman’s right to bodily integrity remains intact.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
7 June 2012 at 11:33 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Actually it is about both. A fetus isn’t a person, which doesn’t happen until it is outside and breathing on its own, and bodily autonomy of the woman is paramount and trumps that of the fetus at every step of the prgnancy. You haven’t shown otherwise, just muddied the waters with irrelevant fuckwittery.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
7 June 2012 at 11:36 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey, please name any state in the US that allows abortions for birth control in the third trimester.
The Laughing Coyote (Canis Sativa)
7 June 2012 at 11:36 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
CHILDBIRTH. DOESN’T. WORK THAT WAY.
Fucking idiot.
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 11:38 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No it doesn’t.
You’re being deliberately dishonest again.
The abortion debate is and always will be, ABOUT BOTH. Is is about weighing bodily autonomy against personhood and potential personhood when these two values are incompatible.
I will summarize the scenarios and the pro-choice position for you again, to help make it clearer (not so much for you, as I have little hope that you will honestly consider any of this, but for others observing)
1. Early term fetus/embryo. Fetus is NOT a person. Potential personhood of the fetus is relatively low. Woman’s right to bodily autonomy trumps low potential personhood of fetus. Abortion is ethical. (Note that the woman’s right to bodily autonomy DOES NOT extend to absolute control over HOW the abortion is performed – she is only allowed to choose from among the options that a doctor deems to be medically appropriate)
2. Late term non-viable fetus. Fetus is NOT a person. Potential personhood of fetus higher, but limited by non-viability. Woman’s bodily autonomy trumps potential personhood of fetus. Abortion is ethical.
3. Late term viable fetus. Potential personhood of fetus very high, approaching equality to woman’s right to bodily autonomy. Induced live birth satisfies BOTH. Therefore, if possible, induced live birth is the MOST ethical option. Again, the right to bodily autonomy extends to the right to end the pregnancy but NOT to the absolute right to choose exactly how the pregnancy is ended. If induced live birth/cesaerean is NOT possible (which is very rare), then abortion is ethical, because bodily autonomy still trumps potential personhood.
4. Baby still attached by umbilical cord. Baby is now a person. Personhood of baby EQUALS bodily autonomy of mother. But the two are no longer in conflict. Cutting the umbilical cord (or simply just waiting for the cord to detach on its own) satisfies BOTH.
No it isn’t.
You’re being deliberately dishonest yet again.
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 11:40 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
IF the fetus is viable, then “intact dilation and extraction” is induced live birth.
“Intact dilation and extraction” as an abortion procedure is ONLY indicated for NON-VIABLE late term fetus.
If it is used elsewhere, then this is an issue separate from the abortion debate – it becomes an issue of medical malpractice (as are all cases where a medical procedure is performed when it is not indicated).
The Laughing Coyote (Canis Sativa)
7 June 2012 at 11:41 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
In other words, you just want to hound us into saying ‘Killing babies is OK!’ so you can yell “CHECKMATE, PRO-CHOICERS!” and applaud yourself like a trained circus seal.
You don’t get to decide what distinguishes “Whether the entire abortion debate is about personhood or bodily autonomy”, you stupid, privileged, smug, misogynistic fuck.
Nightjar
7 June 2012 at 11:45 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
*waves back at Audley*
Too many things happening in my life all at once, little time to catch up, so I stayed mostly at Sb where comment threads didn’t move so fast. Things have calmed down in real life now, though, so hopefully you’ll be seeing me around here more often.
Oh, and congratulations on the DarkFetus! I see I’ve missed a lot.
Gregory Greenwood
7 June 2012 at 11:49 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
joey @ 307;
As has been pointed out by peggin @ 316 among many others, the purpose of an abortion is to end the pregnancy, not destroy the foetus. That a non-viable foetus is usually destroyed as an unavoidable consequence of terminating a pregnancy does not alter the fact that the right of the woman in control of her bodily autonomy in this context is the right to end the pregnancy, and the loss of the foetus is merely a side effect of that. Where the foetus is viable, it can and is delivered rather than aborted.
Also, bodily autonomy is a fundamental component of personhood. To deny a person their bodily autonomy – to tell them that their own flesh belongs to the church/state/society – is by definition a denial of their personhood. Thus outlawing abortion is an attack on the personhood of all women by effectively stating that the bodies of pregnant women ‘belong’ to society at large. Only chattels can be owned, and people are no longer considered to be chattel. The whole slavery thing sort of soured the idea of owning humans.
And again – a foetus that is incapable of survival outside the woman’s body and is not conscious cannot, by any rational measure, be called a ‘person’ any more than sperm and eggs are people, or skin cells are people, so talking about the ‘personhood’ or ‘bodily autonomy’ of a foetus makes no more sense than talking about the ‘personhood’ or ‘bodily autonomy’ of hair follicles.
And now to address the most disturbing aspect of your post – you admit that this is about using rare events or non-existent hypotheticals to try to deny women access to abortion entirely. You do realise how many preventable deaths of actual people with actual personhood, not foetuses with only potential personhood, that would cause? Real women would die, in horrendous agony in many cases, all in the name of preventing your pet hypothetical that you cannot even demonstrate happens in any case. Don’t you see how horrific that is? Don’t you see how what you are proposing denies the very humanity of women and treats them as simply biological incubators? Doesn’t that trouble your conscience at all?
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 11:51 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Or wait a week or two and deliver normally.
Joey doesn’t seem to realize, as well, that a significant fraction of 8.5 month pregnant women are already (or very soon will be) going into contractions and about to deliver, and a significant fraction of 8.5 month fetuses have already been naturally born and are babies.
Or that 8.5 weeks = about 37 months, and pregnancies 37-42 months are considered term, and by definition you do not do abortions for term infants. Pregnancy is terminated by either induced birth (live or not), caesarean section, or regular labor and delivery.
There is, by medical definition, no such thing as an abortion past 8.5 months.
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
7 June 2012 at 11:56 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nightjar,
Thanks for the well wishes!
It’s good to have you back.
dianne
7 June 2012 at 11:56 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If it’s strictly the latter, then the most consistent position is that abortion (termination of the fetus) is not unethical at ANY point of the pregnancy, even the hypothetical 8.5 month viable and healthy fetus.
The question of whether it’s unethical, in your opinion, is not relevant. The question is is/should it be legal. I happen to think that it’s unethical to promise to donate blood/tissue/organs and then back out. It’s a jerk move. But I also think it should be 100% legal because it’s more unethical to prevent people from controlling their bodies than it is to risk having the occasional person back out of an organ donation.
Ogvorbis
7 June 2012 at 11:58 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I know it was a Tpyo, but I still imagine Audley screaming, “NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!” at the thought of a 37 to 42 month pregnancy.
The Laughing Coyote (Canis Sativa)
7 June 2012 at 11:58 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Gregory Greenwood: Glad to see I wasn’t the only one disturbed by Joey taking the authority unto himself to distinguish “whether the entire abortion debate is about personhood or bodily-autonomy”
What a smug, arrogant piece of utter SHIT. Hey Joey, the world doesn’t need another authoritarian fuckwad thinking he’s qualified to decide if people have the ‘right’ reasons for making decisions about their own body.
Seriously. Your existence is completely unnecessary.
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 12:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It was a subconscious typo at that. Whatever bunch of medical “experts” who decided way back when that it would be a good idea to communicate pregnancy durations in both months and weeks at the same time need to be found with a time machine, and strangled.
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 12:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Not so much disturbed as nodding knowingly and checking off another box in the “stupid troll” bingo list.
When attempting to defend the indefensible, to argue for that which is clearly wrong, the only option is to redefine the terms of the debate into something that one CAN argue about.
They all do it, the creationists, libertarians, MRAs, anti-choicers, all of them.
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” was meant in jest, but underlying the joke is a very real insight into how the human mind works.
Lars
7 June 2012 at 12:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Because he’s trying to defend an undefendable position. Acknowledging you would make that even more difficult for him.
He is nothing more than a contemptible piece of noise, not worthy of any response save ridicule.
(Of course that won’t stop people from giving it to him anyway, this being the Internet and all that.)
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
7 June 2012 at 12:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oggie and Amphiox,
NOOOOOOOO!!!!!
*collapses in a heap!*
*sobs!*
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 12:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Another example of joey trying to redefine the terms of the debate into something he can actually argue about. If he stuck with the “legal” argument for too long, he would have to face the fact that his stand on abortion is completely contradictory to everything he has ever said or claimed or posted here concerning other issues of legality vs ethicality.
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 12:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You can try to take some small comfort, for what its worth, that humans don’t have gestations like elephants, or whales….
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
7 June 2012 at 12:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Would someone like to get this for joey?
Nightjar
7 June 2012 at 12:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
But, Audley, no periods. For 37 to 42 months. How can you say no to that?
maureenbrian
7 June 2012 at 12:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I think we should kidnap joey and strap him to the light fitting in a delivery room of a busy maternity hospital. We should leave him there for some time – 8.5 months, anyone?
Rhetorical question: does anyone think that knowing what he was talking about would help?
Gregory Greenwood
7 June 2012 at 12:27 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The Laughing Coyote (Canis Sativa) @ 329;
I do find it disturbing that such heinous, dehumanising attitudes toward women are so commonplace but, like Amphiox @ 331, I am sad to say that I no longer find it surprising.
Yet more depressing proof that privileged, uncritical misogyny is not only alive and well in 2012 – it is thriving…
Audley Z Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
7 June 2012 at 12:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nightjar,
So you’re saying that I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth?
Ogvorbis
7 June 2012 at 12:31 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
And by that time, your ‘glow’ would light the world!
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
7 June 2012 at 12:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
One reason I’ve been harping at Joey to show that it is legal to have an abortion for purposes of birth control only in the third trimester is get him to acknowledge it is at present illegal in the US. Ergo, his whole argument is nothing but hot air, as the legal ramifications are in place. All third trimester abortions are done for saving the life of the woman, or in cases of fetal defects, but this goes agains his fuckwitted logic of when does one stop aborting. And we all knew it was nothing but a precursor to stopping all abortions, even previability. Anti-choice fuckwits are so transparent, and so deceptive. The utter lack of ethical behavior Joey has shown with his whole temper tantrum is tremendous. I wouldn’t do or believe anything he says because of it.
Rey Fox
7 June 2012 at 12:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Don’t bother. You’ve lost. You got nothing. Leave pregnant women alone.
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
7 June 2012 at 12:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No, Rey Fox. Joey must make sure that mothers not act in an unethical manner and demand that the fetus dangling on the cord outside their bodies are not
emptybook
7 June 2012 at 12:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Regarding the house guest analogy, where one houses and feeds him and then kicks him out, I’m not sure this works. Most people never know when an unplanned pregnancy begins. I would think of the foetal house guest more as an invading animal like a rat or squirrel.
My cousin keeps rats as pets. She thinks they’re wonderful and would never contemplate getting rid of one. This, even though they kick their wood shavings everywhere and smell. And scare the hell out of my Mam.
I have no pets, but if I discovered that I had a rat in my house, eating my food and digging holes in my carpet, I would seriously consider getting rid of it.
If there was a law saying that I could not get rid of the uninvited rat, because it’s mean to kill the fluffy beady eyed little squeaker because it’s soooo cuuuuute, and because it’d already made a cosy nest and therefore had as much right to my house as I did, I’d be somewhat peeved. Wouldn’t you?
Grumps
7 June 2012 at 1:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
joey,
do you drive a car?… If so you’re a fucking murderer.. why not ban them?
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 1:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
This would only apply to the situation where a woman deliberately decides to get pregnant and have a child, goes through all the necessary preparations, and then, several months in, changes her mind.
How common is that? A wanted, PLANNED pregnancy is almost always preceded by a lot of forethought and consideration. Committing to having a child is committing to rearranging your entire life – emotionally, socially, economically, everything. Few people will go through that degree of soul searching and decision making and just change their minds, unless they were never sure to begin with.
joey probably wanted it to be an analogy for pregnancy after consensual sex (obliquely going for the punishing the slutty women angle), but of course it doesn’t work for that.
dianne
7 June 2012 at 1:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
a 37 to 42 month pregnancy.
If (human) pregnancies lasted 37-42 months, I’d be one of Joey’s women who get an abortion at 8.5 months…of course, if pregnancy lasted an average of 40 months, that’d be first trimester.
I’ve felt sorry for elephants since hearing that their pregnancies last 18 months. But 18 months with no periods…
The Laughing Coyote (Canis Sativa)
7 June 2012 at 1:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Dianne: I hope I’m not wrong, but I kind of assume elephants have a slightly easier time of it… for instance, they have four walking limbs to support the added weight, and a horizontal spine. I’m not sure about the pelvic canal mechanics of elephant birth, but I have a feeling it’s slightly less complicated than a human’s.
carlie
7 June 2012 at 2:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Thanks, Amphiox – I wasn’t quite clear enough and you fantastically closed that little loophole.
Non sequitur: I keep reading “peggin” as “peggle” and envisioning you as a unicorn who disperses rainbows and happiness.
carlie
7 June 2012 at 2:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey, did you read the link I put in #255? Here it is again. READ IT.*
Here’s the thing with outlawing certain types of abortion: when you do that, it makes it impossible to get not just for the slutty irresponsible women you want to punish, it also makes it impossible to get for the woman like the one in the story, who would literally have died otherwise. Because illegal is illegal. And even if you write an exception in for saving a woman’s life, who will perform it? An illegal procedure won’t be taught in medical school. No new doctors will even know how to do it. Any doctor who already does know how to do it will avoid it, because of the potential to be charged with an illegal activity, because it’s never entirely clear what proof will be required to show that it was the only option. Outlaw it, and women. will. die.
carlie
7 June 2012 at 2:45 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Sorry, dangling asterisk. I was going to summarize it, and decided fuck it, it’s not that long. Go read it.
'Tis Himself
7 June 2012 at 3:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey doesn’t care about any sluts that die. He wants to save babez and collateral damage is just too bad. Besides, if the sluts didn’t want to have babez then they shouldn’t be fucking.
Weed Monkey
7 June 2012 at 3:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yay, Nightjar! Nice to see you again! o/
peggin
7 June 2012 at 3:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
carlie @350 — Yes, that’s exactly how I’d describe myself: a unicorn of rainbows and happiness! LOL!
The Laughing Coyote (Canis Sativa)
7 June 2012 at 3:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Unicorn? Rainbows?
Here you go! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxHhBx1FtLQ
Nightjar
7 June 2012 at 4:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hi, Weed Monkey! Nice to see you too!
Just_A_Lurker
7 June 2012 at 5:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
joey #249
Is this the same fuckhead who pulled this shit in the last abortion thread? Went on and on about can you kill a baby that’s still attached to the mother.
Ichthyic
7 June 2012 at 5:31 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Would someone like to get this for joey?
404
:(
The Laughing Coyote (Canis Sativa)
7 June 2012 at 5:34 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
JAL: Probably.
I’m not interested in even addressing Joey’s idiotic hypothetical ‘gotchas’. Even giving ‘good faith’ answers lends them more legitimacy than they deserve. (not that I’m disagreeing with others who choose to answer them in good faith… you’re doing good work here)
Joey is here for one reason and one reason only: To paint women who take control over their own reproduction and their own bodies as cold heartless murderers, or at best, like stupid hamsters that need to be prevented from eating their own offspring.
Now go piss up a rope, you sack of misogynist feces.
Ichthyic
7 June 2012 at 5:34 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I must have missed it.
surely someone has noted that Joey is presenting nothing more than a slippery slope fallacy, right?
Ichthyic
7 June 2012 at 5:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
…in focusing on the outlier examples, and then trying to make everyone conclude that if we don’t make those illegal, then EVERYTHING WILL COLLAPSE!!!!
it’s fucking classic slippery slope.
Just_A_Lurker
7 June 2012 at 5:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It is! I found him in this thread
This argument has been had before. It’s not going to go anywhere since he’s a fuckhead trying to play gotcha.
The Laughing Coyote (Canis Sativa)
7 June 2012 at 5:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ichthyic: I didn’t notice at first actually… but now that you mention it…
I suppose I was focusing too much on the way Anti-Womaners like to imply that pro-choice people are pro choice because they like killing babies.
I wonder if something similar to a partial-birth abortion procedure could be used to remove Joey’s head from his asshole? Or should we just stick to the heavy laxatives?
Ichthyic
7 June 2012 at 5:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I wonder if something similar to a partial-birth abortion procedure could be used to remove Joey’s head from his asshole? Or should we just stick to the heavy laxatives?
no, I think it’s time for the Cattle Prod.
The Laughing Coyote (Canis Sativa)
7 June 2012 at 5:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Good, Ichthyic, because I couldn’t quite figure out where or how to administer the laxatives.
The Damn. Funnel. Just. won’t… FIT!
Louis
7 June 2012 at 5:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ichthyic, #361,
Do we have to post it to have noticed it? Is it post or it didn’t happen? Or do we have to trawl backwards through the endless fucking nightmare of other abortion threads for where someone almost certainly mentioned that Joey was being a slippery slopist?
Can’t we just have him humanely put to rest, after all, since I am pro-abortion, my slope must surely slip to homicide right? Can’t I just kill one little pro-lifer? Just one? A quiet one that no one would really miss? Oh go on. I promise I won’t ask again…
…fuck it. I am really failing this pacifism thing today. Must be because I accidentally got a dose of the Vox.
Louis
The Laughing Coyote (Canis Sativa)
7 June 2012 at 5:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’m not feeling very pacifist either, Louis.
Louis
7 June 2012 at 5:54 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
TLC, #366,
Oh it will fit. If I learned anything from my cousin the mechanical engineer it’s that anything, ANYTHING, will fit ANYWHERE with the application of the right, carefully and professionally, selected hammer.
This case?
20lb iron lump hammer, minimum. Repeated use.
Louis
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 6:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Greased with fat rendered from embryonic stem cells, no doubt.
Ichthyic
7 June 2012 at 6:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Greased with fat rendered from embryonic stem cells
just so!
heh
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 6:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
And if our hypothetical corpses didn’t want to have their organs harvested for donation, they shouldn’t have been doing whatever it was that turned them into brain-dead, beating-heart organ donors (seat belts break just as condoms can – you get into a car you are implicitly consenting to the slight possibility of being ejected out of a collision and ending up brain dead).
But joey STILL hasn’t answered carlie’s question about mandatory organ donation.
Ichthyic
7 June 2012 at 6:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Is it post or it didn’t happen? Or do we have to trawl backwards through the endless fucking nightmare of other abortion threads for where someone almost certainly mentioned that Joey was being a slippery slopist?
yes.
but only because I’m wagering that it was me again.
:)
Ichthyic
7 June 2012 at 6:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
(I’m very good at stating the obvious!)
Alethea H. "Crocoduck" Dundee
7 June 2012 at 6:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
ichthyic, there’s something wrong with blogspot links for non-US people at the moment. But it’s at the blogspot end, there’s nothing anyone can do here. TO see it, follow the link; get the 404; swap joemygod for www in the URL; reload.
caycearnett
7 June 2012 at 6:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey seems to be ignoring the fact that the beginning of a pregnancy is not nearly the same as the end of the pregnancy. Creating a baby is a process. By saying a fetus may be a person at 8.5 months does not imply that it was a person at 8.5 weeks.
By fixating on late term abortions, which do not happen nearly as often as he thinks, and are usually only done in extreme circumstances which he has absolutely no right to judge, he’s able to circumnavigate his arguments against abortions at earlier stages.
"We Are Ing The Matrimonial Collective"
7 June 2012 at 7:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yes.
Joey, why do you feel the need to lie?
Just_A_Lurker
7 June 2012 at 7:11 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If joey remains here and tries to pull the same shit, I’m just going to copy paste responses to him from the Irresponsible Humans thread (with link of course). Honestly, he’s such a waste of time and space. He failed to get us with his gotcha so he’s going to try again. His masks has already slipped in this thread and slipped so many times in the Irresponsible Humans thread.
Amphiox
7 June 2012 at 7:27 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
So joey is pulling the same odious schtick as txpiper did back at the old sciblogs site, of popping into new threads with recycled arguments hoping it would not be noticed that they had already been dismantled in the older thread?
Color me unsurprised.
These trolls are all the same.
Gregory Greenwood
7 June 2012 at 7:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I just had a quick scan of the Irrational Humans thread Just_A_Lurker linked to @ 363, and Joey really does seem to be regurgitating, in some cases almost word-for-word, the same arguments that have already been comprehensively debunked in that thread, right down to the ludicrous hypotheticals and fuzzy definitions of ‘human life’ that he sucks out of his thumb.
It seems pretty clear that he is not arguing in good faith.
Ogvorbis: Ignorant sycophantic magpie.
7 June 2012 at 7:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No question. His gotcha fantasies are rather disturbing. Not to mention repetitive. I think xe may be a might bit pissed that no one is falling for his gotchas.
joey
7 June 2012 at 8:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Amphiox:
So aborting a viable fetus is unethical. Hmmm.
—————-
peggin:
So what happens if the woman decides to terminate her pregnancy at 25 weeks? 24 weeks is generally considered the point where the fetus becomes viable. So at 25 weeks, what are the woman’s options? Does she have to induce birth to a VERY premature baby, risking numerous complications to the development of the infant, not to mention accruing exorbitant NICU medical costs.
The Laughing Coyote (Canis Sativa)
7 June 2012 at 9:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
More dishonest attempts at ‘Gotchas’ from Joey, misogynist douchebucket.
Why can’t you comprehend that people have the right to bodily autonomy? Why is that so fucking hard for you? Why do Anti-Woman scum like you insist on trying to impose your sick religious agenda on people, through legislation if possible?
Joey, why do you hate women? Did you know that your mother is a woman? Why do you hate her, Joey? Why do you think she doesn’t deserve the right to control her own body?
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
7 June 2012 at 9:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Who gives a shit what an ignorant fuckwit like you thinks? Or rather, can’t think due to head up its ass…
Who the fuck gave you premission to ask more inane fuckwitted questions? Who the fuck gave you permission to think at all….All you have is bullshit, if you can’t speak clearly what your thesis is…
jnorris
7 June 2012 at 9:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Sorry to say this True Christians ™ but you know in your heart I speak the truth: if we find anything on Mars with a heart beat you will have it killed and the entire planet sterilized because your God only allows True Christians ™ to live on this planet.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
7 June 2012 at 9:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
And Joey, who the fuck gave you permission to come between a woman and her doctor? Recent signed letter from your imaginary deity, or shut the fuck up, as you have no business, ethical or otherwise in their decisions….
peggin
7 June 2012 at 9:51 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
joey
Under my world, the answer is easy — the woman should decide, in consultation with her doctor, what she wants to do, what’s in her best interest, what’s medically possible or advisably. It’s only in your world, where you think the government should have a say over these matter, where the question of “who decides” is even an issue.
It’s easy to discuss passing laws where the answer is clear cut, like your earlier ridiculous example of an imaginary woman who is 8.5 months pregnant and just decides on a whim to end her pregnancy right that moment rather than waiting another couple of weeks. But it’s the very fact that people like you will then go on to say, “Yes, but what about at 36 weeks? 35? 34? 33?” that makes me despise the idea of ANY laws regulating abortion, even at 8.5 months. Because letting the government pass any laws at all is the real slippery slope. Once it becomes acceptable for the government to regulate a pregnant woman’s uterus, how long is it going to take for them to start telling us how we need to eat and sleep and live our daily lives before getting pregnant, because we have to make sure we’re good healthy little incubators in case we should happen to get pregnant.
But I will answer one part of your question, about who should pay for the medical costs if the woman was required to give birth to a severely premature baby. YOU SHOULD. You are the one forcing the woman to make that choice, so you should be the one to pay for the medical costs. And not just while the baby is in the NICU, but for the rest of that baby’s life.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
7 June 2012 at 9:54 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
QFMFT
You want say Joey, take real responsibility for your fuckwittery. Or shut the fuck up, which is always an option…
Ichthyic
7 June 2012 at 10:11 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
TO see it, follow the link; get the 404; swap joemygod for www in the URL; reload.
ah, that was worth it.
thanks.
I wonder if this will work, just to see the pic.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gou128fufgA/T9DRq6vcZdI/AAAAAAABZf8/DWQ7WNqj8iQ/s400/ItsMyPussy.jpg
WMDKitty
7 June 2012 at 10:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Peggin said:
This. This this this this-ity THIS.
NICU is just the beginning for most preemies — we kind of tend to have issues stemming from being born premature, like, oh, cerebral palsy, blindness, seizures… and that’s if –IF– we’re lucky enough to make it out of NICU in the first place.
Ichthyic
7 June 2012 at 10:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It’s easy to discuss passing laws where the answer is clear cut, like your earlier ridiculous example of an imaginary woman who is 8.5 months pregnant and just decides on a whim to end her pregnancy right that moment rather than waiting another couple of weeks. But it’s the very fact that people like you will then go on to say, “Yes, but what about at 36 weeks? 35? 34? 33?” that makes me despise the idea of ANY laws regulating abortion, even at 8.5 months. Because letting the government pass any laws at all is the real slippery slope. Once it becomes acceptable for the government to regulate a pregnant woman’s uterus, how long is it going to take for them to start telling us how we need to eat and sleep and live our daily lives before getting pregnant, because we have to make sure we’re good healthy little incubators in case we should happen to get pregnant.
again, and much shorter:
slippery slope.
minnie
7 June 2012 at 11:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I would rather be aborted then have sadomasochistic, misogynistic, vagina dictating, vagina-pain mongering men like joey or one of his christian pro-forced birth buddies as a father. Pro-forced birthers on the same power trip as the man who sexually abused me as a little girl. joey do you think women and little girls who get pregnant by way of rape should be forced to stay pregnant and breed with their rapist? Joey, you and your pro-forced birth christian buddies do not own my vagina! You and your christian buddies remind me of my childhood rapist, he was a vagina dictating, vagina pain mongering misogynistic monster too.
This is what i have learned from the pro lifers and christians, little girl rape is pro-family and pro-life. People who hate rape, hate forced birth.
The Laughing Coyote (Canis Sativa)
8 June 2012 at 1:07 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Minnie: Right the fuck on.
Louis
8 June 2012 at 6:09 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Minnie,
Right on the money. I’d also copy the first sentence, and make one change for us men:
I couldn’t live with myself if I were like that.
Louis
minnie
8 June 2012 at 6:29 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Louis you are a sweetie, thank you!
Louis
8 June 2012 at 6:33 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ichthyic, #373/4,
Bastard! ;-)
Louis
P.S. It probably was you. But I’m claiming prior noticing despite the fact that I can’t prove it with
lab booksposts. ;-) It’s just True™. Newton/Leibniz?Lars
8 June 2012 at 7:03 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Now that people seem to be very alert about ableism and mentalism around here at this time, on a slightly related note, I want to point out that sadomasochists are a sexual
minority(?)group associated with much stigma.Using “sadomasochistic” as an insult does not make that stigma any better.
Louis
8 June 2012 at 7:10 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Lars,
Oh dear. I had some sympathy for you. Doubling down isn’t going to cut it. All the porcupines coming your way are going to be fully deserved.
Louism
Lars
8 June 2012 at 7:15 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Something tells me you’re not taking this seriously, and you believe that I’m not either. You’re wrong.
Doubling down? Fuck you!
Lars
8 June 2012 at 7:18 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
(Correction: “Fuck you too!”)
I am a sexual sadist/dominant and I refuse to be ashamed of it, even though people like you seem to do your best to keep it that way.
Rev. BigDumbChimp
8 June 2012 at 7:30 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
jesus that was stupid
John Morales
8 June 2012 at 7:34 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
[meta]
Lars:
Lars, when you sexually, sadistically dominate someone, do you first get consent?
(You sure you want to chastise Minnie for such a terminological peccadillo, when the rest of the comment made it exceptionally clear what it was about?)
–
Minnie, I heard you clear. FWIW.
"We Are Ing The Matrimonial Collective"
8 June 2012 at 7:41 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
FFS joey the gotcha tactic doesn’t work when everyone lnows about it and is telling you that your a lying dick. Congrads it took how many hundreds of comments before you finally bullied someone into giving the response you wanted. Go away now.
Louis
8 June 2012 at 7:44 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Lars,
{facepalm}
The comments that Minnie and I made does not use sadomasochism as an insult in the manner of an ad hominem. Sadism and masochism are also not restricted/limited to sexual matters, mental illness is restricted to mental illness, shock horror.
Lars, you doubled down because you’re being a fucking idiot. The choice to not be a fucking idiot is YOURS.
No one is trying to shame your sexual preferences. Engage in sexual sadomasochism all you like, with my blessing and encouragement and full throated support. Sadism, masochism and sadomaschist acts are not limited to that subset of those acts that are sexual. The comments made qualified what sort of sadism/masochism/sadomasochism was under scrutiny, i.e. that which relates to abortion denial.
People who gleefully deny vital medical interventions to other people and who revel in the pain of those people are engaging in an act of sadism independent from sexual sadism in principle. People who do the same thing and revel in the pain of themselves are engaging in an act of masochism independent from sexual masochism in principle. It’s fuck all to do with sexual sadism/masochism/sadomasochism.
Calling someone a “schizo” or even a “paranoid delusional” (although paranoia has more colloquial uses too, it’s greyer than the others perhaps) or “bipolar” as an insult or ad hominem dependent on the precise usage, designed to borrow from the negative qualities associated with mental illness. It’s a deliberate call to that stigma. I.e. with no actual ability to diagnose these conditions this is borrowing specific “terms of the art” in medicine and apply them in order to denigrate the target individual.
Louis
Lars
8 June 2012 at 7:48 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Same to you, Rev. BDC. Same to you.
Yes.
Did I chastise Minnie? Are you really, really sure about that?
Lars
8 June 2012 at 7:54 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Sadomasochism is, though. Look it up.
See above.
The only definition of “sadomasochism” I can find, that is not related to sexuality, is as a psychiatric disorder. And you were saying…?
joey
8 June 2012 at 7:55 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
peggin:
But this is what you said before in #316…
So according what you say here, it seems like the woman only has two options once a healthy fetus reaches viability:
1) Terminate the 25-week pregnancy, resulting in a very premature baby.
2) Continue on with the 25-week pregnancy.
Are there any other options? Do you still think the woman doesn’t have the right to terminate the fetus at any point in the pregnancy?
Again, the only consistent position if you truly want to advocate no abortion restrictions at all is that the woman maintains the right to terminate the fetus at ANY point in the pregnancy. That is essentially the view stated by Ogvorbis in #259 and I commended him/her for that consistent stance.
Lars
8 June 2012 at 7:58 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
About the psychiatric disorder definition, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReviseF65
Louis
8 June 2012 at 7:58 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Lars,
Your ignorance is not binding on me, and no, sadomasochism is not restricted to sexual matters.
Louis
Gregory Greenwood
8 June 2012 at 7:58 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Lars @ 397;
Given the context of minnie’s comment, I think the meaning was pretty clear. Perhaps the phrase ‘sadist’, used in its original meaning as a person who enjoys the infliction of pain on others, would have been preferable to ‘sadomasochist’ which has a modern connotation of alternate sexuality.
It is also worth noting that sadomasochistic sexuality is not unproblematic, given its connotations of dominance, and that there are cases where such a relationship can be used as a cover for outright abuse. There are regular commenters on Pharyngula who have experienced relationships where consensual sadomasochism has degenerated into abuse, and as sensitive I and many other commenters here are to any language that may be discriminatory or othering, their experiences cannot simply be discounted either.
John Morales
8 June 2012 at 8:01 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
[meta]
Lars:
<sigh>
Good as: you quoted someone and implied they were not helping your stigma.
(You really don’t get my play with words, do ya?)
Ogvorbis: Ignorant sycophantic magpie.
8 June 2012 at 8:01 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joey:
I again congratulate you on your cherry picking skills.
Now shut the fuck up and knock of the childish ‘gothcha’ games.
Lars
8 June 2012 at 8:01 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Then I suppose it would be easy for you to back that up with sources.
Lars
8 June 2012 at 8:03 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’m not in a playful mood right now.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
8 June 2012 at 8:04 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You forget fuckwit, the right runs up against medical ethics and legalities, and can’t be viewed in vacuum except by the terminally stupid like you. So, in effect we are right that the right should be there. You are wrong in that abortion can occur at 8.5 months for reasons of birth control. Which is why your fuckwittery is stupid shit, bad philosphy, a nd argument from ignorance. And your inability to define the situations properly is utter and totall fuckwittery on your part..
Lars
8 June 2012 at 8:06 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’m curious about the non-modern connotations of the word “sadomasochist” that you seem to allude to. Care to enlighten me?
Rev. BigDumbChimp
8 June 2012 at 8:07 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Was that an “I know you are but what am I”?
Lars your comment was stupid for the reasons Louis laid out above. Sadomasochism is not relegated to the sexual proclivities of some of its practitioners. There are real sadomasochists out there who take joy in hurting people who aren’t sexual willing partners. Which is why minnie used it in that way.
Your comment claiming that’s what was being used as demeaning descriptor and was then an insult to you shows you to be a big fucking moron.
And you trying to use this to support some other idiotic argument you were losing reeks of desperation.
And stupidity.
Hence my comment.
You’re welcome.
Lars
8 June 2012 at 8:15 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The same can be said about the term “homosexuality”.
dianne
8 June 2012 at 8:23 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
So aborting a viable fetus is unethical.
So what if it is? Many unethical acts are perfectly legal. KKK rallies are unethical, but they are legal. Backing out after agreeing to donate tissue is pretty ethically shaky, but it’s legal.
In this case, there are two acts that are arguably unethical going on. Using someone’s body for your convenience against their will is definitely unethical and the fetus is doing that if the pregnant woman does not want to be pregnant. Is aborting a 25 week old, healthy fetus unethical? You might say so. I might say so, but only under certain conditions: 1. There is no medical necessity and no change in circumstances that makes continuing the pregnancy an unreasonable risk. 2. Abortion is freely available to all in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. In other words, not just legal, but available at any OB/Gyn’s office and free or very inexpensive. And no ridiculous restrictions like waiting periods or parental consent are put in the way of access.
Obviously, the conditions I outlined are not met in the US. But supposing they were. Now, in the case of a woman who is 25 weeks pregnant and doesn’t want to be, you have two entities both of which wish to commit an unethical act. In that case, I’d say the benefit of the doubt should go to the pregnant woman and the abortion be allowed. We don’t know the level of consciousness of a 25 week fetus, but we do know that the pregnant woman is aware and will actively suffer if we force her to continue the pregnancy. Therefore, her needs should come first.
Gregory Greenwood
8 June 2012 at 8:23 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Lars @ 416;
I was actually alluding to the original meaning of the pharse ‘sadist’ which, as I am sure you are aware, references the name of the Marquis de Sade, the infamous sixteenth century libertine whose absolute embrace of a personal freedom with no concept of personal moral responsibility lead to him being accused of various actions that were criminal at the time – some that today we would consider perfectly legal and acceptable, such as homosexuality, but others that are clearly problematic, such as the wholly non-consensual abuse of women.
Thus, the original meaning of ‘sadist’ is distinct from the contemporary meaning of ‘sadomasochist’, which is (when properly performed in a functional relationship) a sexual behaviour which strongly emphasises full consent and places the power to determine how far the encounter goes in the hands of the notionally submissive partner.
I apologise for my poor communication of this concept in my earlier post.
John Morales
8 June 2012 at 8:23 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Lars:
<snicker>
I didn’t claim you were, O chastiser.
When did homosexuality stop being a sexual proclivity? :)
Lars
8 June 2012 at 8:24 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
(… and I mean that as a comment about your argument. Not as a comment about homosexuality. I just felt the need to clarify that, for some completely fucking infathomable reason.)
Louis
8 June 2012 at 8:28 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Lars,
It sure would, but since all you’re trying to do is play some immature game of tu quoque (as if I haven’t already admitted to my gross imperfections on the matter of discriminatory language a thousand times already this week it seems), why would I bother exerting even minimal effort for so dishonest an interlocutor?
Pick the two dictionary definitions I googled up (this and this) in 2 seconds. Even the one most favourable to your whinging makes it exceptionally clear that the sexual element of sadomasochism is a SUBSET (albeit large) of over all sadomasochism. Further reading show definitions clear from all sexual usage and also dependent on context. The sense Minnie and I were using that word was clearly delineated by the context, it was obviously not a sexual reference.
The examples of you using mental health terms are not the same. You are seeking to insult/dismiss someone or someone’s argument by virtue of ascribing to them a mental illness you can have no idea whether they are suffering from or not. Unless they are your patient and you are a psychologist/psychiatrist, in which case you’re grossly breaking medical ethics. You’re, intentionally or unintentionally, borrowing the stigma associated with mental illness to damn someone and, intentionally or unintentionally, contributing to that stigma by saying “person be bad, therefore they must be mad”.
What Minnie and I did is to note that an act of sadism (i.e. pleasure in a certain cruelty) is necessary for certain types of anti-abortionist. It’s a definitional requirement. Mental illness is not a definitional aspect of being an arsehole. For women, that act of sadism can be coupled with an act of masochism, a taking of (non-sexual) pleasure in denying themselves vital medical treatment. They can claim sanctimony in line with a set of religious ideals, or superiority to women who’ve had abortions, despite the fact that denying themselves access to abortions will in fact (potentially) cause them harm themselves. They can relish their “noble” martydom, they can take pleasure in their struggle and pain as it somehow makes them “good” in their eyes. Nothing sexual there at all, yet masochistic. They can also take pleasure in denying that right to other women, therefore sadistic, yet non-sexual. Sadomasochism in one pot.
Similar things apply to the anti abortion men. As mentioned above they can derive pleasure from denying abortion access to women, sadism, and also suffer (less so) themselves by being forced to help support/parent unwanted children. The exact same sanctimony of the women can apply to the men, they can derive pleasure from having to struggle, from forcing that struggle upon themselves as a consequence of adherence to doctrinal anti abortion. Hence masochism, and since the two can exist within the same person, sadomasochism and not even remotely sexual. Sure, it’s nothing like the degree of masochism which the women could suffer from, but it’s still pleasure in pain/deprivation/struggle/adversity of the self.
Expand your mind, get over your (perhaps accidental) ableism and being called on it and stop being an abject fuckwit.
Louis
skeptifem
8 June 2012 at 8:31 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
this doesn’t even make sense as an argument against abortion. She is against all abortion but settles for justifying it in “most” cases of rape? So everyone who was a victim of incest or was behaving in a ladylike manner should have kids because….?
Lars
8 June 2012 at 8:41 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The term “sadomasochist” was coined in 1890 by the German psychologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. It was used to describe what he AFAIU considered a form of pathological sexual behavior.
And that is one of the two contemporary meanings of the word. The other contemporary meaning is the same minus the pathology bit.
Would not using the word “sadomasochist” (in the pathological sense) as an insult, be a form of ableism/mentalism? If not, why not?
And how can one use it in the non-pathological sense, without it being an expression of sexual prejudice?
Or is there a third meaning of the word that I’m still not aware of?
joey
8 June 2012 at 8:42 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ogvorbis:
If I have taken any quotes out of context, or have misconstrued their actually meaning/intent, then I am open for correction.
I’m just trying to fully understand the position here.
It seems like the advocate of absolutely no abortion restrictions can only fit in one of three groups:
1) Women have the right to terminate the fetus at any time, and it is never unethical.
2) Women have the right to terminate the fetus at any time, even though it can be unethical in certain cases.
3) Women do NOT have the right to terminate the fetus at any time, but it should be legally allowed at any time anyway.
Based on your responses, I group you in #1. If that is incorrect, then by all means correct me. It seems like peggin and Amphiox fall into group #3, or maybe #2 if I misinterpreted what they’ve said.
In any case in terms of legality, bodily autonomy of the woman completely trumps personhood of the fetus. The personhood of the fetus only comes into play in what one personally believes is ethical/unethical. But in terms of strictly the law, it is completely irrelevant. Personhood only becomes relevant once any type of abortion restriction is in place.
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe
8 June 2012 at 8:45 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
*looks at thread*
*blinks*
what just happened? why are people assuming Lars is being an ass because of the disagreement about ableism we just had elsewhere, instead of granting that he may be making a honest argument?
anyway, I don’t know whether Lars has a point and whether the use of kinks as insults is comparable to ableist slurs, but historically sadomasochism has primarily referred to sexual pleasure, and unlike “sadism” and “masochism” has much weaker non-sexual connotations. plus, argument from dictionary isn’t valid when JT does it to defend the supposed non-gendered nature of “bitching”, so it can hardly be more valid for other words.
just sayin’. if you want to refute Lars, it would help not to try do it JT-style
Lars
8 June 2012 at 8:48 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ok, it seems Louis has explained me the third meaning while I was typing my comment. To me it superficially looks like armchair psychology, but WTF do I know, I’m not a psychologist. So let’s just say I stand corrected.
Lars
8 June 2012 at 8:52 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@Jadehawk. Thank you. I’m leaving for now, to try to shake off the anger and get my brain partially functioning again. No use discussing while in this state. Must remind myself this is the Internet.
skeptifem
8 June 2012 at 8:55 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ogvorbis: Ignorant sycophantic magpie.
8 June 2012 at 8:57 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If you are, it would be the first time since you showed up around here. Do you ever get tired of spouting the same nonsense, often word for word, again and again and again?
If you were actually trying to understand anything, there would be evidence: your arguments would change based on new information, for instance. You are not trying to understand. You are playing a childish game of ‘gotcha’, just waiting for someone to make a comment which can be taken out of context so you can crow that you have won and can prove that I, or someone else, says it is okay to kill a baby as long as the baby is still attached to the mother via the umbilical cord.
See, this is an example of you refusing to understand. A woman may choose to terminate her pregnancy at any time based on the laws of her residence and her doctor’s input. Terminating a pregnancy does not, necessarily, equal terminating a foetus. Your refusal to understand this shows that you are lying.
Another example of your refusal to understand what others have written. Whether it is ethical or not does not matter. There is lots of shit going on that I think is unethical. Does that mean it is necessarily illegal? No. Your refusal to understand this shows that you are lying.
Another example of your refusal to understand what others have written. Why should I, or anyone else other than the doctor have the right to tell another human being what medical procedure is allowable? Why do your views on abortion (a medical procedure to terminate a pregnancy) automatically trump the views of other human beings? Once again, your refusal to understand this shows that you are lying.
This is correct. So your fantasies about a foetus/baby that is 99% through the birth canal are exposed for what they actually are. If you can get someone here to admit that, even though some of the foetus/baby is still in the mother, it is a person, you can then declare victory and claim that personhood begins as soon as the sperm and egg unite, thus outlawing all abortions.
You have this strange idea (well, you have a lot of strange ideas) that there is a point at which a switch is magically thrown to transform foetus into baby. There is not. It is a process. Again, you claim you are here to try to understand, but your rantings and games give lie to that assertion. You are not here to learn. You are here to play rhetorical gotcha games.
Go fuck yourself with a decayed porcupine soaked in crushed joloka peppers.
skeptifem
8 June 2012 at 8:59 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
wow blockquote fail, sorry.
joey
8 June 2012 at 8:59 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
dianne:
But if it’s simply to end the woman’s suffering due to the pregnancy, why not just terminate the pregnancy via inducing labor as opposed to terminating the fetus (as others here have argued)? Would there be a point to terminate the viable fetus?
Amphiox
8 June 2012 at 9:02 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment