She’s brave and honest, and she doesn’t hide her full objectives.
I am a Protestant who opposes contraception, not only because some of its forms may cause abortions, but also—moreso—because the thinking behind contraception makes it the forerunner to abortion.
That’s a simple, clear, and believable statement. I’m sure she does believe that, as do many others, but it’s to her credit that she is not ashamed of her beliefs and states them forthrightly. Bravo, Ms Stanek!
I think she’s wrong, of course, but the openness is commendable. I’ll be similarly honest.
I’m an atheist who thinks contraception should be freely available to anyone who asks for it, no matter what their age. I think abortion should be freely available as well, and ditto for emergency contraception—and I don’t think pharmacists should have the right to deny it to anyone. I oppose notification laws. I think high school nurses should have a big jar of condoms that they hand out to any student who asks for them. I believe in sex education, and that abstinence is a reasonable choice…but one that many young people will not make.
I also think Ms Stanek is a kook.
I base my thinking on several Biblical concepts. The foremost concept is that God is always described in Scripture as the sole procreative decision-maker. To my knowledge, every incident in Scripture describing pregnancy or barrenness gives God complete credit.
If that premise is true, who has the right to say no to God? Who can say they have a better grip on timing than God?
She’s honest, I’ll give her that, but she’s sailing off into loony-land with this stuff. I don’t quite get how she’s drawing that conclusion: does the Bible describe every pregnancy that ever occurred in the history of the world? I know people who reflexively assign every good thing that happens to them in their life to their god; that doesn’t mean he exists or that he’s responsible, it just means that’s what they believe. And face it, the Bible is the unvarnished, over-the-top hagiography of the Judeo-Christian deity…it credits him with everything, but that doesn’t mean it’s credible.
If I give Ms Stanek the benefit of the doubt, though, and take her claim as a given, doesn’t it lead to a different conclusion than she wants? If her god has absolute, complete control over whether one becomes pregnant or not, than contraception is irrelevant. If her god wants you to be pregnant, he’ll do so whether a condom is used or not; if he doesn’t want you to be pregnant, never mind what the fertility clinic doctors do. It’s that easy. Why not just assume that contraception is the mechanism of god’s will?
Oh, well, logic doesn’t matter, that’s simply not the basis of any argument she might make. All that really matters are her goals:
Pro-aborts are right. Contraception is next issue after abortion. And pro-lifers must work it through.
Let’s keep that in mind when dealing with these kooks.
(via Feministe)
Yes, she’s a kook, but at least you realize that there are women who sincerely believe that crap. There isn’t a conspiracy of men who want to control women (which is the usual explanation by leftists of anti-abortion and anti-contraceptive lunacy)
There is another aspect to this – for people like her who believe that God is in control of all reproductive events, then they have to make sure that they are only having sex when God wants them to, to ensure that they aren’t going against his will for them (e.g., she’s fertile, god doesn’t want her pregnant, but she has sex anyway. Consequences of free will, don’tcha know). This would require a lengthy prayer vigil by both parties and complete agreement about whether it is the proper timing every time they want to fuck. Think she does that?
What I’d like to see is a barrier contraceptive that can be instlled and forgotten until the user desires it to be removed. Method that rely on people to actually think will have a high failure rate due to the obvious.
Abortion should always be available, though I’d like to see widespread use of the above-mentioned contraception, simply because abortion-for-convenience is an ethically cheapening act. Better to prevent the need for it.
***
There isn’t a conspiracy of men who want to control women – Jonathan B.
I dunno. Abdul al-Stoning-For-Rape seems to be giving it the old college try.
The thing that gets me about the whole “against God’s will” is, isn’t this God person supposed to be omnipotent? Wouldn’t it be impossible to engage in sexual acitivity, much less procreate, against the will of God?
Moreover, who is Stanek, or the Pope, or anyone else to say if it is God’s will or not – what if he decided that the best way to prevent a whole slew of conceptions was via contraception? Isn’t it God’s will if someone uses a condom, or doesn’t? Couldn’t it be just one more mysterious way in which he works?
Of course, the reason that the whole line of thought is so odd is that it’s based on complete nonsense.
There isn’t a conspiracy of men who want to control women
*********************************************************
Read or watch the Handmaids Tale- this may not be a conspiracy of men who want to control women, but in the Handmaids Tale it was women who were responsible for making women conform to societal norms. I don’t think that is acceptable either. I have written about a friend who was denied Plan B by a pharmacist- guess what? She was a woman. I don’t really care what sex you are- you have no business making my sexual decisions for me. None. Period.
The problem is, whether we like it or not, we live in a pluralistic society. Homogeniety is pretty much a thing of the past whether it be race, culture or religion based. One philosophy cannot fit all people. When it does we become like China. Micromanaged to death if you are one of the faceless anameless masses without power and prestige. Christians always talk about free will, yet at every opportunity they seem to want to stifle any choice that can be made. Why is that? And why is it that a Christian theocracy is any less abhorrent than a communist dictatorship?
Can we agree to live under common law? Sure, as long as it is not based on religion. And as much as anyone wants to say so, our laws are NOT based on the Ten Commandments. Nor should they be.
Back to women keeping other women in check. Back in the eighties I went to a religious school. I had more than one friend sent home for wearing something “THAT WAS TURNING THE MALE TEACHERS ON”. Direct quote. While talking about this, it became apparent that women were responsible for policing the dress of other women because men were unable to control themselves as they were “visual”. So in order to keep them in check an elaborate system of rules for appropriate dress were developed. If you broke them you were sent home. If you dressed androgenously (think Madonna in a suit) you were expelled.
They have tried this at the public school my daughter attended. I freaked. Men teachers were demanding that the girls hold their arms in the air to see if the girls tops rode up past the waist of their jeans. Women teachers were sending girls home or asking girls to cover up with jackets in order to prevent them being sent home by the woman vice principal. I told the actual principal that if I was told to reach for the sky by a male boss, I would have a sexual discrimination suit going so fast……
The practice was halted.
Clothing restrictions for women only, birth control restrictions for women only, and the like are tiny steps towards the slippery slope. They are terrible and need to be stopped. I have never been an abortion advocate, but I understand the direstion life can go with unplanned pregnancy. There is a blog called STOP MY ABORTION that a pregnant woman has put up saying give me money or I abort my kid. Not something I would do. But the reality is, an unsupported unplanned pregnancy can result in disaster for young women who have no safety nets- education, money and family. There is a lot of people who say that they would adopt- but that is only if the child meets certain criteria. A lot of kids do not meet those criteria. Or, I know of cases where I am from where Native Bands have halted adoptions of Native children to white couples because culture is more importan than a consistent loving environment. WTF??? There are thousands of older kids who need to be adopted, but no-one on the right is willing to step up and take these kids in because of their age and their (insert problem here).
What to do? What NOT to do?
Does Stanek refuse to look at the “Don’t Walk” sign and close her eyes as she steps off the curb? If not, who is she to second-guess God’s intent with regard to that oncoming steamroller?
In what way does a woman believing that contraception is wrong let men off the hook? Is her church run by women? Did she receive her education from women only? Did the patriarchy have no role what so ever in her life?
You assume that if a woman says it, it has nothing to do with sexism. Historically, many women have sought to support the very patriarchy that holds them down. It’s called indoctrination and it works.
abortion-for-convenience is an ethically cheapening act
What??
I think you may want to try unpacking some of the assumptions there. Here’s one obvious one: abortion is never a decision undertaken merely for ‘convenience’. It’s more like necessity.
And as for the ‘ethically-cheapening part’…I think I’ll let you work out on your own what’s wrong with that.
I base my thinking on several Biblical concepts. The foremost concept is that God is always described in Scripture as the sole procreative decision-maker. To my knowledge, every incident in Scripture describing pregnancy or barrenness gives God complete credit.
Splendid. Then can Ms. Stanek point out to us the millions of women who get pregnant without having sex that her theory implies?
Sorry if I’m being dense or ignorant or totally unwithit but how are we supposed to pronounce the vertical bar character in the title?
(As a UNIX hacker, I tend to pronounce it “pipe,” or “pipe output into” but I doubt P.Z. meant to say “I pipe my output into Jill Stanek.”)
I think it’s pronounced like ‘eye’. You know, the first person singular nominative pronoun.
Paul,
What OS are you using where you see a “|” (vertical line) where I see a “⥔ (heart)?
Your browser must not translate html entities: that’s a ♥, which is supposed to be rendered as a ♥
I’m using Mac OS 10.4 and Firefox 1.5.0.3.
I just noticed that the heart comes out as a heart in the title bar of this window, and in this text-entry field, but in the regular comments part of the window, it’s an especially long and bold vertical bar. So I’m guessing this Mac understands it, but Firefox itself sorta doesn’t without some tweaking.
And you shouldn’t wear a seatbelt, because it’s up to God whether he wants you to die in an automobile accident or not.
And Christian construction workers shouldn’t wear hardhats, because it’s up to God to decide whether your brains are to be bashed in or not.
And you shouldn’t use an umbrella, because it’s up to God to decide whether the raindrops hit you or not.
And you shouldn’t plow fields, plant seeds, or irrigate crops because it’s up to God whether you have food to eat or not.
You shouldn’t seek prenatal medical care because it’s up to God whether your child is stillborn or not.
Somehow I don’t think this woman applies this logic consistently in every aspect of her life.
“I pipe my output into Jill Stanek.”
If you’re going to do that you should probably use some kind of contraceptive.
The column Savage Love has been talking about this lately, too.
“In particular, and not to put too fine a point on it, they want to change the way Americans have sex,” Shorto writes. “Contraception, by [their] logic, encourages sexual promiscuity, sexual deviance (like homosexuality), and a preoccupation with sex that is unhealthful even within marriage.” Shorto quotes Judie Brown, president of the American Life League: “We see a direct connection between the practice of contraception and the practice of abortion. The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an antichild mind-set…. We oppose all forms of contraception.” And there’s this from R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary: “I cannot imagine any development in human history, after the Fall, that has had a greater impact on human beings than the pill… Prior to it, every time a couple had sex, there was a good chance of pregnancy. Once that is removed, the entire horizon of the sexual act changes. I think there could be no question that the pill gave incredible license to everything from adultery and affairs to premarital sex and within marriage to a separation of the sex act and procreation.”
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove
“Contraception, by [their] logic, encourages sexual promiscuity, sexual deviance (like homosexuality) …
Contraception encourages homosexuality?
Talk about being out of touch with the birds and the bees.
Moreover, who is Stanek, or the Pope, or anyone else to say if it is God’s will or not – what if he decided that the best way to prevent a whole slew of conceptions was via contraception? Isn’t it God’s will if someone uses a condom, or doesn’t?
I see this as one of the primary (non-ontological) problems with many organized religions. Sure, they’re wrong in general about God and in particular about people, but you’ll never convince them of that. What can occasionally be effective (I’ve never seen it work, but the boyfriend has pulled it off) is asking “why are you putting limits on a God you claim is omnipotent?” It’s even better if you can jettison atheism for long enough to get really worked up — “how dare you presume to tell God what he does and doesn’t want?” Apparently you’ll occasionally be rewarded with a flicker of doubt.
I think high school nurses should have a big jar of condoms that they hand out to any student who asks for them.
I would go further than that and say that high school nurses should keep a big jar of condoms in the bathroom attached to the nurse’s office, so that the students can take as many as they want without anyone seeing. Free dispensers in the girls’ and boys’ bathrooms, too.
If you want abstinence to work, you have to raidse your kids to be geeks – it’s the only sure-fire way to know they’re not having sex….
My sixteen year old is at an all nighter – at a computing gaming store….
Yes, and that connection is that if you use contraception, you don’t need an abortion. Seriously, these people are insane. Though I guess you could breastfeed your child every two hours until they’re eighteen to space out the births.
*eyeroll* I grew up a geek and I was having sex at 17. The geekiest of my immediate acquiantances started at 15 and 16, I believe…
…come to think of it, the problem with your logic might just be that you assume all geeks are male (incidentally one of the friends referenced above is not).
-rose fox
Good idea, but I can see one potential problem: condoms are obscenely expensive, and schools are rather squeezed for money as it is, so it’s going to be a severe hardship to the school when immature boys repeatedly empty the dispensers just to show off to their buddies how many condoms they need. That and many of the condoms are going to just wind up being used for water balloons, so this could be construed as the school being an accessory to multiple instances of littering.
-MegaTroopX
I certainly agree that the circumstances which result in abortion should be prevented. I also agree that viewing a pregnancy as purely a matter of convenience (in the commonly understood meaning of the term) would be “ethically cheapening.” Now, could you please demonstrate that any such thing has ever occurred.
I can think of one example; a friend of mine ran into someone online who claimed to have had upwards of 20 abortions as a result of her choosing to have unprotected sex repeatedly specifically because she enjoyed the “thrill.” I would definitely call that “ethically cheapening” and a less printable things besides (as a parent, I find the callousness and selfishness of this woman’s alleged behavior completely appalling–though they argue strongly against her suitability as a parent. Bitch shoulda just had a tubal ligation. But this person may or may not have been telling the truth and bears absolutely no resemblance to the reasons behind the overwhelming majority of people who have in any case.
As an example of a more typical reason, this encounter, above and beyond its sheer creepiness, royally pissed the friend in question off, a fact about which I heard at great length, since her rationale for having an abortion when she was 17 was twofold: 1, she felt she owed her child a better life than the one she would be able to provide and would not consider the life she could provide to be a worthwhile one, a fact corroborated by her observations of others who had been raised by incompetent parents; and 2, she was not willing to sacrifice her future and her plans for her life, especially for such an outcome, nor deal with her family’s reaction to the pregnancy. This is hardly a matter of “convenience.”
Quoting myself from a NoGodBlog comment (is that a sin?):
My unresearched theory is that all the fuss made by religions about sex has to do with outbreeding the other tribes. ‘May your tribe increase’ would actually be one of the highest blessings possible. Wealth, power, genetic success are all implied. And the religious meme that best supports this strategy is likely to become dominant over weaker ones.
My theory predicts that homosexuality, non-coital intercourse, contraceptives, abortion, etc. will all be proscribed by such a religion.
In these terms, the primary benefit of marriage to society is that it increases the survival rate of a woman’s children.
Unfortunately the last thing the world needs now is groups trying to outbreed each other in order to achieve world dominion. The Vatican, for example does not love the world so much that it will give up this ancient and now counter-productive strategy.
Then there were the Jehovah’s Witnesses who cornered me in my front yard and explained that God wanted people to propagate rapidly and indefinitely. The reason being, the more bodies, the more souls and the more souls that could then be ‘saved’, the happier God would be.
In response to my mention of finite resources on earth versus their geometric growth ideas, they said the solution was to expand into space. First the galaxy, then the universe. They left me, still claiming that humanity could grow in numbers forever and nonplussed by the idea that there were a finite number of carbon atoms available for incorporation.
Tsk
“The thing that gets me about the whole “against God’s will” is, isn’t this God person supposed to be omnipotent? Wouldn’t it be impossible to engage in sexual acitivity, much less procreate, against the will of God?”
See, the thing is, God gave us free will so he could give candy to the people who do good, and sizzle those who do evil. That’ll teach us.
Then he peppered the strata with big dino bones to test our faith, because that way otherwise moral people ight also get to be sizzled. What a trickster.
And then, omnipotent, he created cancer, but didn’t create a cure, because that would teach us the value of the life we are striving to leave for his Disneyland in the sky or something… or anyway, it all just looks cool from up there.
Basically, God is an antisocial little brat with an ant farm and a magnifying glass on a sunny day.
Ha. Nearly everyone on the internet believes this. But I’ve never seen anyone show any evidence. (No, I don’t count endless anecdotes as evidence. Like Azkyroth, I can supply plenty of counter-anecdotes. But dueling with anecdotes is unlikely to bring enlightenment.)
With no a priori reason to suspect a correlation between geekiness and not having sex, and no evidence, we are left with a widely worshiped urban legend.
“Contraception encourages homosexuality?”
Makes sense. Look at the figures over the last 40 years or so. Compare the number of women taking the pill with the number of men who say they are gay. Pound to a penny the curves show the same trend
This idea that Mr. G. is solely responsible for conception is ludicrous. That alleged entity seems to meekly go along with in vitro fertilization, for instance. And why not make people simply pop into existence full-grown? What a great demonstration of that alleged entity’s power that would be!
And what would happen if Mr. G. slacked off? Would sperm cells aimlessly wander near egg cells, awaiting the divine command to enter that Mr. G. fails to make?
And I wonder if Ms. Stanek would enjoy being reminded of the more sexist parts of the Bible, since she insists on pounding it so loudly. Or if she would gladly kill her children if Mr. G. wanted her to (think Abraham and Isaac).
What I don’t understand about Jill Stanek’s reasoning is that if God really wants her to get pregnant, it can always cause contraception to fail. Condoms and the pill both fail at a nontrivial rate (I think 0.03% per intercourse), so she can just have a lot of sex with contraceptives, and if God wants her to be pregnant, they’ll fail.
Popping back to the hearts issue, I think we’ve stumbled over a bug in MacOS X Firefox (v1.5 in my case). The four suits aren’t rendered correctly. The other entities seem to be, though, which is puzzling.
PZ, you’re a MacOS user. What browser do you use to view the blog?
This WDG web page is a good example. The suits are at the bottom of the page.
Hah! I’ve just upgraded to 1.5.0.3 (the latest formal release for Mac OS X. They’ve fixed hearts but not the other three suits.
I disagree with Jill Stanek over contraception and her position on God’s role in human reproduction is absurd. But the first paragraph of her online biography reads:
Given that experience, it is not difficult to sympathise with her opposition to abortion – I would have been as horrified as she was in that situation – but it does not have to be based on the tenets of any particular faith. Simply agreeing that no human life – not necessarily just that of an adult – should be taken without good cause is sufficient to render abortion-on-demand immoral.
The objection that a foetus is nothing like an adult human being is trivially true. But that adult cannot exist without having progressed through all the preceding stages of development. Consciousness or sentience or self-awareness or whatever other distinguishing attributes of humanity you care to name do not, as far as we know, appear ex nihilo; they emerge from the physical substrate of the body as part of a gradually unfolding event we call a human life. That individual life can be reasonably defined as having started at conception and interrupting that event at any point thereafter, without good cause, is equally immoral.
Omnipotent God?? I thought he had less power than the Assistant Secretary of Agriculture?
Given that experience, it is not difficult to sympathise with her opposition to abortion – I would have been as horrified as she was in that situation – but it does not have to be based on the tenets of any particular faith.
Well you would have to have the faith that she is telling the truth. If she were, then of course what that hospital she described was doing would be illegal. I strongly suspect that an even minimal investigation of what she is asserting, that “babies were being aborted alive and shelved to die in the soiled utility room,” will turn out to be as questionable as her logic regarding God’s will.
As for your argument asserting that life begins at conception, I won’t bother to go through all of that again. I have no doubt that you have, on many occasions, read all of the arguments suggesting that 1. this position is absurd and 2. beside the point. You obviously remain unconvinced for whatever reason.
I would ask you to consider however, given your implied position on contraception, that precisely the same argument could be made about the immorality of birth control. In fact, this is essentially the rationale underpinning the Catholic Church’s position on contraception. Life cannot begin without sperm or the egg and so artificially terminating either is immoral. This is also similar to the argument regarding masturbation being immoral because it is wasting the seed. Anti-feminist organizations have argued for years that it is immoral for women to perform physically stressful jobs or participate in most sports because it can potentially harm their child-bearing capacity. All of these arguments and quite a few more are based upon the same essential premise as your argument. In other words, if you really want to apply this argument consistently, you will need to apply your moral judgement across a much wider range of human activity than just abortion.
Consistent in other parts of her life? This woman isn’t being consistent in the one thing she’s brought to our attention: her attitudes towards sexuality.
It wouldn’t matter if the failure rate for contraception were so low that for all practical purposes they were 100% effective. A God such as the one she claims to believe in would still be able to cause pregancies to occur. If for some reason this God’s activities were restricted to inducing pregnancies after sexual intercourse, then the more often people had sex with absolutely effective contraception, the more often God would have the opportunity to override that contraception and induce pregnancies that He desired.
Her conclusion doesn’t even follow from her premises.
Obviously, the patriarchy played a role in her church and education, but blaming the idiocy of female zealots on that is a cop out. People are ultimately responsible for their own beliefs. After all, most current Western atheists were raised in non-atheist households (for the simple reason that atheism is a decidely minority position in the West).
I’m sorry, but if you were having sex in high school, you were *not* a geek. A geek POSER maybe. POSER! POSER!
That’s odd, because I’m using 1.5.0.3, too, and it’s not rendered correctly. Looks right in Safari, though.
Women who uphold anti-woman sexism could be described as quislings.
After Vidkun Quisling, Norway’s leader during the Nazis’ occupation of that country in World War II.
The anecdotal data I know about geekiness makes is consistent with the hypothesis that geeks merely brag less about sex and that sort of stuff. Also, I have been told that often the most attractive kids are actually left out, because they can be intimidating. Of course, I have no idea who conventionally attractive people are supposed to be other than by people telling me, since I seem to have rather skewed perception that way.
And I can confirm the FireFox / MacOS X bug.
PZ:
Well, I think if a four year old asked for Mommy’s pills, it would be reasonable to refuse on the grounds that they won’t do them any good and could conceivably cause them harm if swallowed–plus, on the general principle that you are allowed to deny kids their full constitutional rights at times in the interest of guardianship.
Ever take a walk through an old cemetery? Eighteenth, nineteenth century perhaps? My, my, look at all the headstones for young women of child-bearing age. (Not to mention the legion of tiny headstones for “infant” or “baby.”) That ol’ procreative decision-maker God made an awful lot of really bad decisions in the era before modern medicine. Each headstone is testament to a slow death in terrible pain. But I guess those woman had it coming. Probably used the Lords name in vain one too many times or some such transgression. The Lord truly works in mysterious ways.
Ian H Spedding:
This assertion fails on two counts. First of all it is not so simple to agree that no human life, without exception, should be taken without good cause.
More importantly, though, it’s vacuous, because there’s no explanation or justification for what constitutes a “good reason”, and absolutely no justification for the implicit assumption that not wanting to carry around an unwanted person in your uterus for nine months does not, in fact, constitute a “good reason”. All this assertion does is move the debate from what constitutes a “human” life to what constitutes a “good reason” for ending a human life.
Jonathan Badger:
Your logic is entirely invalid here and your conclusion unsound. The presence of a female advocate for a position is entirely irrelevant to the presence or absence of some consipiracy of men for that position. The two cases are not mutually exclusive.
Second, a “male conspiracy” is not the usual explanation of leftists. We are well aware of female opponents of birth control, abortion, and full civil rights for women (hint: Anita Bryant, Phyllis Schlafly, etc. ad nauseum).
Some remedial reading on both leftist politics as well as basic logic seems warranted.
Only one thing to say on the geeks and sex issue: geeks do it better. Way better. I had sex with a non-geek once: worst sexual experience of my life. Not all geeks are good in bed, of course, but it’s practically a prerequisite.
I’ve worked in hospitals most of my adult life and I’ve never heard of this sort of thing happening. Of course, I’m an oncologist, so I don’t get to the ob ward often. I suppose they could be eating babies there for all I know. On the other hand, my step-mother, who is a semi-anti-abortion ob nurse, tells me that she’s never seen anything even vaguely like this in her life either. It’s hard to imagine a hospital that disposed of dead fetuses, muchless live ones, in the dirty utility closet passing its unannounced JACHO inspections. Or remaining unsued for long. It’d be an improper disposal of biohazardous material even ignoring the moral issues. And entirely unnecessary: a fetus that survived an attempted abortion (probably an early induction of labor) is unlikely to survive long without extraordinary measures. Even assuming that “evil abortion doctors” were out to kill the newborns, why not just put them in a bed and let nature take its course? I’m afraid PZ needs to revise his opinion of Ms Stanek’s honesty.
Last I heard, Stanek was employed as “pro-life coordinator” for Concerned Women for America of Illinois. CWA is headed by Beverly LaHaye, wife of Tim LaHaye, a televangelist best known as co-author of the “Left Behind” agitprop novels, but who deserves more recognition for establishing the secretive Council for National Priorities and as a founding patron of the Institute for Creation Research.
Interesting how the hyperChristians’ various causes run together, isn’t it?
After failing to parlay her 15 minutes of fame (as a nurse battling against policies of the hospital which employed her) into a campaign for the Illinois House of Representatives, Stanek has focused on generating heated rhetoric. Prof. Myers’s quotes above don’t give the, ah, effervescence of her rants in full tongue, so here are a few characteristic excerpts:
Oops, my attempt at formatting failed. The first paragraph in my post above is a quote from Stanek.
I came over to post Furlong’s great comment from Jilltard’s site, but he done beat me to it.
I have two phones. One is the equivalent of a yahoo.com email spam trap. It gets cited or listed whenever I’m required to cite one, and so when that line rings, I know it’s no one I actually know. But I do occasionally answer it, just because I sometimes feel like messing with telemarketers. And I do get surveys on it sometime, which I always take, since it’s good to get one’s position known.
A few moments ago, an automated survey called me. It asked me about my position regarding abortion. Press One, it said, if you are Pro-Life. Press 9 if you are in favor abortion rights.
Okay, so far so good. I’m a 9, as it happens. I pressed.
The response: “Thank you for being Pro-Life. Now more than ever we need like-minded people to help us reach our goal in the next congress.” And went on from there in a self-congratulatory glurge about how great it was that I thought like they do and how if they could just mobilize the five million pro-life families they could get their program through.
I wondered if somehow I had misheard or pressed the wrong button.
Now, I have my position here and other people have different ones, but that’s not what this is about. What it’s about is that now someone has paid for a survey in which I will be cited statistically with a position not my own.
The recording then offered me the opportunity to help ‘us’ reach our goals by pressing 3.
I waited. There were no other options. After a bit, I pressed 3. Maybe I’d get to talk with someone. The survey explained (surprise!) that they wanted money. Press 6 to arrange to donate.
That was again the only option. This time, I pressed 0.
Thank you, said the survey, for your offer to donate. You will be contacted by mail very soon.
That’s when I realized: It didn’t matter what button I pressed. If I pressed any button, the survey would record an affirmative.
At the beginning of the call, it did say that if I didn’t want to take a survey, I could hang up. Apparently they only wanted to survey those who agreed with them and arranged the survey so that disconnecting was the only option if you didn’t.
No organization was named in the call, no talking points were uttered. It was an attempt to find people who could then be solicited for funds and undoubtedly to my mind, to generate statistics to threaten politicians with.
So now I’m in a Pro-Life mailing list. I am now going to engage in a personal vendetta against any whoever sends me a request for donations. I swear I will cost those people more money and time than they can afford by any legal means at my disposal. And I’m posting this around to interested places.
Steve “And I’d do it to anyone who tried to exploit me” James
Only in the very literal and non-interesting case. Similarly, both a weather balloon and an alien spacecraft could have crashed in Roswell in 1947. They aren’t mutally exclusive either. But once you accept the weather balloon, the spacecraft seems unlikely.
It certainly *is* a common explanation, particularly on this blog. PZ in particular likes to state that the issue is about motivated by the desire to control women and not by religious belief. I fully agree that the religious arguments are completely bogus; however, I think it is important to understand that many people (including women) sincerely believe in these mistaken beliefs — they aren’t a smokescreen for hidden true beliefs.
So now I’m in a Pro-Life mailing list
A suggestion: If they send you any requests for donation and include a postage paid envelope stuff the envelope with their propoganda and send it back. Or attach the envelope to a large and heavy book and send it back. Perfectly legal as long as you don’t send any threats and they have to pay the postage.
Just because people hold beliefs that ultimately are not in their own self-interest doesn’t mean that they’ve been brainwashed by an external, malicious force. They could instead be brainwashed by well-intentioned forces within their own group.
In societies where Female Genital Mutilitation is performed, it’s often the girls’ mothers who force the procedure and women who conduct it, just as men carry out Male Genital Mutilitation. It’s not women being brainwashed by men, or vice versa, but people being brainwashed by their culture, learned standards of normality, and fear of deviance.
I thought this was an appropriate item to post given the Christian reliance on the Bible when asserting what is right and wrong. If you’ve already seen it, my apologies for reposting it. I think it clearly demonstrates the degree to which the Bible is selectively applied.
Dr. Laura Schlessinger is the talk radio personality who offers advice (and opinions) to people who call into her radio show. She has been quite vocal in her criticism of the homosexual lifestyle. In one of her programs she said that homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and that it therefore must not be condoned under any circumstances. The following is an open letter to Dr. Laura that was posted on the internet. It’s funny as well as informative. It does a good job of pointing out the selective use of Biblical quotations used by individuals with particular agendas.
Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the other specific laws and how to follow them.
1. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord – Lev 1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness – Lev 15:19-24. The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
4. Lev 25:44 states that I may indeed posses slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination – Lev 11:10 it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?
7. Lev 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20 or is there some wiggle room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev 19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blends). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them – Lev 24:10-16? Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws – Lev 20:14?
I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.
Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.
more observations here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
Comparing removal of the foreskin to hacking off the clitoris with an unsanitary blunt instrument and sewing the labia shut is a category error of the first order. Show me a society that routinely hacks off boys’ penises, and sews the opening shut, leaving a tiny hole for urine to dribble out–and not in infancy in the hospital, but in unsanitary conditions when they’re old enough to experience and remember it–and then we’ll talk about “Male Genital Mutilation”.
And why do the mothers do this? In a male-dominated society, the girls have to be pleasing to–surprise!–males, or they won’t be marriage material. And marriage to a male is pretty much their only option in these societies, as education and a career are shut off to them.
So that women who love their girls want them not to be thrown out of a society dominated by male economic, political, and social power, and that they therefore comply to a barbaric custom of mutilation in order to ensure their acceptance by that male-dominated society is hardly an example of women freely choosing out of all the options available to them to oppress other women.
A suggestion: If they send you any requests for donation and include a postage paid envelope stuff the envelope with their propoganda and send it back. Or attach the envelope to a large and heavy book and send it back. Perfectly legal as long as you don’t send any threats and they have to pay the postage.
Oh, yeah. I’m thinking of a brick, but possibly some old textbook might work. Or a heavy shipping envelope full of sand. Not white sand, lest they scream anthrax. Well, they might anyway. Old cigarette butts aren’t heavy enough, but might be added for flavor. Any other suggestions?
Steve “Call me a hater. Go ahead” James
I take it she won’t be taking advantage of modern medicine either, then?
It is surely against the will of God for children to be immunised – most of them shouldn’t be making it to adulthood.
Come on – be fair: how’s god supposed to send a plague or maybe a pestilence if we keep killing his microscopic angels of death?
A false dichotomhy is not merely a “very literal and non-interesting case; it is a common logical fallacy.
You are correct that some statements are mutually exclusive. If it is the case that accepting the weather ballon entails the unlikeliness of the alien spacecraft, then these statements are mutually exclusive. In fact, they are mutually exclusive precisely to the degree that the likelihood of one entails the unlikelihood of the other.
But the fact that some statements are mutually exclusive does not entail that your own dichotomy is mutually exclusive.
You would need to show that the presence of a female advocate makes it unlikely to believe that a conspiracy of males exists at all. Which, of course, you cannot do.
But this is beside the point. I offered the original criticism merely because I believe that careful logic is good per se and that poor logic, even if it is outside the main thrust of the discussion, deserves criticism.
The main thrust of the discussion is that intelligent people on the left do not believe that a male-only conspiracy bent on oppressing women is the sole and exclusive motivation behind anti-abortion, anti-contraception and anti-feminist ideology. Your comment would be relevant if and only if a belief in the exclusivity were the predominant position of the left. But, aside from a few moron outliers, this is simply not the case.
Many people on the left, such as myself, believe that there is a numerous contingent of people (mostly, but not exclusively men) who are in fact publicly (not “conspiratorily”; nice job of poisoning the well with prejudicial language there, BTW) intent on promoting political subjugation of women, and use issues relating to sexuality to promote that subjugation.
We don’t say that such men are the only people against abortion, etc.. It’s possible that we might be mistaken about even this narrower position. Regardless, pointing to one wingnut woman does nothing to argue against our position.
Logical Fallacies
It is interesting how Great Awakenings and attendant anti-evolutionary movements appear close on the heels of advances in women’s equality: e.g., the right to own property (19th century), the vote (early 20th), or demands for full sexual and economic equality (late 20th and early 21st)?
Much of what is considered essential religious belief and practice may be motivated by evolution. In a situation where males can’t be sure their own sperm is doing the fertilization, they will attempt to preclude female choice about their mates.
Utter nonsense. There are places in Africa where they’re carried out with pieces of twine and machetes. (There were also once places where ALL of the skin was quite literally flayed from the penis.)
I don’t suggest that male circumcision is as utterly harmful as female circumcision. It is, however, comparable. It would be more closely equivalent to removing a quarter to a third of the clitoris, then excising the most sensitive parts of the labia.
The fact that an atrocity is routinely committed against women does not mean that a lesser atrocity routinely committed against men is somehow excusable.
Or, they argue that because they went through it, their children must also go through it. It’s the same sort of infectious malice that’s responsible for hazing.
Emphasis mine.
What exactly would constitute people “freely” choosing to oppress? If there’s any kind of social or cultural inclination, does that make choices less free?
Your arguments are apologetics, designed to eliminate the cognitive dissonance in recognizing that males are not solely responsible for bigotry, violence, cruelty, and oppression.
Just to nitpick, that kind of thing has been quite popular throughout history, and I understand the practice of castration is still extant in India and Bangladesh.
Where is it that that happens? And you are referring to a society doing that to its own boys routinely, or as a punishment, or is that an atrocity visited on males of a different tribe?
If you have an example of a tribe routinely doing that to their own boys, then I would agree with you that that is comparable to FGM. But the existence of that limited example does not make the much more widespread Western variant of circumcision equivalent to FGM.
(I’d also like to see the cite on that, because I’m having a hard time imagining how a tribe that routinely excises the next generation’s penises gets much farther than just that next generation, but I’m willing to read the sources you provide.)
Anatomically, yes, that’s fairly accurate. But if a parent here checks “no” to circumcision in tick box on the hospital consent form, that doesn’t doom their son socially and economically for the rest of his life (except perhaps in certain religious circles, but feminists are hardly the ones enforcing that social code).
And as sucky as it is to inflict unnecessary surgery on infants under anesthesia, it’s not comparable to the trauma of being held down forcibly by people you trust and being mutilated without anesthetic when you’re old enough to carry the memory with you.
Finally, an infant being circumsized in a hospital has access to sanitary measures, while many girls undergoing FGM die of tetanus and other causes.
So while the anatomical correlation you cite may be fairly accurate, you trivialize the comparison by failing to include the associated epidemiological and social toll. Your African tribe that excises penises may be comparable (although I’d still like to see the cite on that), but not Western circumcision.
I never argued it did, and in fact I agree with what you just said. However, you’re the one who argued that one was “just as” the other, and as I pointed out, equating the “lesser atrocity” to the greater one is a category error that trivializes the role of male domination in women oppressing other women out of lack of other options.
(Hell, even Stanek can’t argue that she had no other options–she was educated as a nurse, so she had the opportunity to learn about the wider world, and to make different economic choices, had she wanted to. But women who subject their daughters to the worst kinds of FGM don’t have the option of nursing school or other careers to choose among. Going along with FGM to ensure that their daughters are marriageable is about it for options for them.)
That that category error serves the purpose of men who want to restrict women politically may or may not have been your intent, but that doesn’t make it any less the case.
Show me where I ever once said “solely”. Of course these things are multifactorial; I never once said they weren’t.
As for apologetics, my arguments are based in the anthropological and epidemiological literature, not the apologetics literature. If you’ve got a better argument than just committing another category error to dismiss mine, let’s debate it.
I am a Protestant who opposes contraception, not only because some of its forms may cause abortions, but also–moreso–because the thinking behind contraception makes it the forerunner to abortion.
Which, of course, leads to dancing…
Is that a serious question? Do you think people reinvent themselves every minute, independent of any social or cultural influence or pressure?
Assuming the question is serious, yes, choosing to express yourself is harder in a culture that provides no support for you than in a culture that does. Of course, it’s neither linear nor unifactorial, but going against social pressure tends to be harder than going along with it.
The women who participate in the worst kinds of FGM literally have no other economic or prefessional choices than marriage. They oppress their daughters by participating in mutilation because the daughters will have no chance of marriage otherwise. And unless you’re seriously arguing that women came up with the idea of FGM, I think it’s pretty clear that that’s a patriarchal practice they’re colluding in.
Wingnut Exhibit A above (Stanek) is much more obviously a sell-out. She’s perfectly happy to oppress other women in the name of religion, even though she had oppotunities to go to school and to learn something different. But for whatever her personal reasons are she’d rather keep her mind closed, and so she’s really nothing but a quisling.
So I think we can provisionally say that the women who collude in FGM faced more patriarchal pressure and their decisions are correspondingly less free than Stanek faced. Therefore, I would say Stanek is freer and more personally reponsible for her destructive decisions than the women are in practicing FGM. They’re both influenced by patriarchal pressures, but the degree of pressure is anisotropic, and the freedom of their response (with a lot of variance thrown in for individual factors) is correspondingly different.
So where did I ever say men were “solely” responsible for everything bad in the world, again?
As I understand it, one of the main reasons that some women oppose contraception as well as abortion is that they fear, not entirely unrealistically, that giving other women control over the reproductive process will make it easier for their own husbands to cheat on them. Most authoritarian/reactionary beliefs ultimately stem from a lack of trust.
Hey, thanks steve s. Compliments are nice, and doubly so from plush stuffed world-travelling pandas!
“I’m sorry, but if you were having sex in high school, you were *not* a geek. A geek POSER maybe. POSER! POSER!”
That’s kind of like saying a black Londoner born in England a “European” because he’s dark-skinned. While he doesn’t match certain elements of the popular idea of “European” he nevertheless matches the actual definition of the term. It’s completely beside the point.
Call someone born in England a “European” and you’re asking for trouble, regardless of the colour of their skin.
allastair wrote:
This is a transcript of her testimony before the US House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee :
http://www.nonprofitpages.com/mcfl/jstanek.htm
Just how accurate this account is may be open to question but it is broadly consistent with other descriptions I have read of abortions.
My position is that there are no universal, natural or God-given rights. What we call human rights are privileges, permissions, entitlements and immunities which a society grants to its individual members and which apply only within the domain of that society. You or I have a right to life only in the sense that no other human being may take our life unlawfully. By contrast, a virus or lion or earthquake may kill us without any law being broken or any of our human rights being breached.
In this view, only existing individual human beings are entitled to these rights. Human sperm and egg cells have no ‘right’ to come together and form a human individual. Once they have, however, the entitlement to rights of an individual exists since the fusion of sperm and egg is the point at which the existence of the individual can be reasonably viewed as beginning.
PLP wrote:
The alternative would be to allow that at least some human lives may be taken without good reason, which, lacking further qualification, means that you or I could be killed without good reason. I suspect neither of us would have much difficulty rejecting such a view.
Many of our moral, scientific and legal systems embody what might be called a principle of sufficient cause which requires that no claim or accusation be believed, no hypothesis accepted and no action taken unless there are good reasons for doing so.
Human rights are an expression of this principle in that they define legitimate human interests – such as survival, justice, freedom of belief and expression – and assert that they may not be injured without good reason.
What constitutes “good reason” or justification for infringing on an individual’s rights should be decided by society on the basis of common interests. For example, the vast majority of us have no interest in dying before there is no alternative so it is in our common interest to prohibit the killing of each other. However, knowing human nature, we recognize that there may be occasions when the only way to prevent a murder or some other serious crime being committed is to kill the perpetrator. In those exceptional circumstances, we allow that there is good reason – or sufficient cause – to override the general prohibition against killing.
In the specific case of abortion, there are two questions: first, does an embryo or foetus have a right to life and, second, is the discomfort or inconvenience of the mother a sufficient reason to override that right?
My view is that an individual human being is most accurately understood as an event that unfolds over the period of his or her lifetime. Each stage in that event is dependent upon – and inseparable from – the preceding stages. If an adult human has a right to life it makes no sense to deny that right to the child – whether born or unborn – since that adult would not exist without having passed through those stages of development.
Consider the case of a time traveller like Dr Who and assume that he was married. He becomes disenchanted with his wife and decides to get rid of her. If he were to kill her in the present he would obviously be guilty of murder. To get round that, he considers getting into his TARDIS and travelling back to a time before he had even met his wife and killing her then. The problem with that scenario is that if he were unlucky enough to be caught back then he could still be charged with murder. But what if he travelled further back to when his wife was just a foetus in her mother’s womb. He could slip his mother-in-law-to-be something something to induce a miscarriage and, by pro-abortionist standards, no crime would have been committed. Yet the intention, action taken and effect of that action would have been the same in all three cases. The evil Dr Who would have been relieved of the encumbrance of an unwanted wife.
Is there good reason or sufficient cause for regarding two of those cases criminal or immoral but the other not?
RavenT: an example would be the Dowayo of Cameroon. I don’t know if it’s still the case, but it was certainly true in the 1970s.
I’d refer you to Nigel Barley’s books on studying the Dowayo, “The Innocent Anthropologist” and “A Plague of Caterpillars”. They’re also very well-written and entertaining.
Jonathan Badger: IIRC, PZ never says it is men who want to control women when birth control and such is restricted. It is perfectly reasonable to hypothesize that it is, in fact, both.
Thanks, ajay! I will look for them.
Wow–arguing abortion rights from a time-travel perspective. The conversations I find myself in on this blog…
Anyway, Ian, your time-travel example overlooks that you are arguing from posterior probabilities, where the fetus’ chance of becoming a fully-fledged human being are known to be 1.0 after the fact.
In the only time-frame in which we can currently make decisions (i.e., the present), all we know is that the prior probability of it becoming a full-fledged human being is somewhere between 0.0 and 1.0. However, the mother’s prior probability of being a fully-fledged human being is already 1.0.
So your argument essentially comes down to privileging the rights of a being with a lesser prior probability of becoming a fully-fledged human being over the rights of the being with an absolute prior probability.
While I wouldn’t frame it that way myself, at least not as my primary argument, I think that in your way, the probabilities and the subsequent privileging of rights don’t work out right.
Just how accurate this account is may be open to question but it is broadly consistent with other descriptions I have read of abortions.
The only people tnat I have ever seen describe abortion in this way are people who are advocating against abortion rights. Anyone else who has ever witnessed or been around a clinic or hospital where abortions are performed can testify to the dishonesty of these sorts of descriptions. In other words, I am quite certain that this is not an accurate account however consistent it is with other inaccurate accounts.
More importantly, as I said in my first post and as others have noted, if this was an accurate account, this hospital would be violating several laws and leaving itself open to tremendous civil liabilities. Making sure such things wouldn’t happen would therefore be a simple matter of enforcing current laws rather than advocating for reduced rights for women which is exactly what Ms. Stanek is doing.
In this view, only existing individual human beings are entitled to these rights. Human sperm and egg cells have no ‘right’ to come together and form a human individual. Once they have, however, the entitlement to rights of an individual exists since the fusion of sperm and egg is the point at which the existence of the individual can be reasonably viewed as beginning.
Again, the point, which ought to be rather obvious to you, is that 1. this definition of when life begins and especially 2. the moment at which said life is to be granted certain rights, is completely arbitrary. Anyone can, and most do, define the incipience both of these stages quite differently than you do. Moreover, I will point out again that the underlying conditions that you use to define beginnings – that later stages of humanity cannot exist without these prior states – can just as easily be applied to sperm and egg. There is nothing in your definition which particularly privileges the moment of conception other than the fact that that is the point that you have chosen. Why you believe that ought to form some sort of definitive fulcrum for morality versus immorality remains a mystery.
One of the principle flaws in your argument is that you assume that there is no higher priority than life for its own sake, as opposed to, say, quality of life. How would you respond to the case I cited above, hmm?
And I find your characterization of having a child one is unable to support or adequately parent as “discomfort and inconvenience” appalling. Pregnancy and childbirth are extremely draining physically and emotionally, childbirth itself is quite painful, and both present significant potential risks to the life and health of the mother. And even if one is able to provide economically for the child–which many of the women who have abortions are not–caring for the child consumes an enormous amount of time and energy, and generally prevents the mother from pursuing much of an education, and limits her employment, unless help is available, which it often isn’t. Characterizing this as “discomfort and inconvenience” is like characterizing the bullying I experienced in grade school as “teasing,” when it would have been grounds for harassment and assault prosecutions if my parents had been a little more vertebrate. Yes, technically the meaning of the word applies, but the connotation of the words used in both cases imply a situation orders of magnitude less severe than is actually the case. If you believe the connotations of “discomfort and inconvenience” accurately describe the situation encountered by people who are economically or personally unable to care for a child and stupidly choose, or are stupidly forced, to have one anyway, than you’re either unbelievably ignorant or unbelievably callous. Which is it?
To say nothing of the effects of having an unfit parent or parents on the child>. Even if you really are as unfeeling toward the plight of unwilling or incapable mothers as you seem, the scars from such an upbringing are hard to believe. Would you honestly contend that it’s worth a child suffering like this for the end of mere biological existence?
I must say, I hadn’t read your time-travel analogy until just now. The mind reels at the many logical and ethical problems with your scenario but just for the sake of argument let’s take it at face value. You write:
Yet the intention, action taken and effect of that action would have been the same in all three cases. The evil Dr Who would have been relieved of the encumbrance of an unwanted wife.
Ok. A little ridiculous and what you have simply glossed over in this construction is that “the action taken” in your pre-birth scenario is the same as in the post-birth scenario. This is precisely the source of the dispute. For many, many reasons, we don’t agree that the “action taken” is the same.
But I’ll play along so lets take it back further. What if the time traveler simply slipped his wife’s mom “Plan-B” without her knowledge? Still murder then? How about if he simply encouraged her grandmother to willingly participate in an activity he knew was likely to make her sterile? Still murder then? What if he encouraged the great grandfather to marry someone else? Still murder then? What if he goes back to the 16th century and makes sure that her ancestors never migrate to the same place that his ancestors do? Still…well you get the point. Your scenario still applies in all of these circumstances but I don’t think many of us would agree that any of those constitute a homocidal act. You know why? Because your stubborn insistence that potential life is essentially the same as actual life is without foundation.
You don’t seem to see that your choice of the moment of conception as the beginning of human life is simply a personal choice that you have made and not one with some sort of fundamental, a priori, logical underpinning that we all must agree to.
“Last I heard, Stanek was employed as “pro-life coordinator” for Concerned Women for America of Illinois. CWA is headed by Beverly LaHaye, wife of Tim LaHaye, a televangelist best known as co-author of the “Left Behind” agitprop novels, but who deserves more recognition for establishing the secretive Council for National Priorities and as a founding patron of the Institute for Creation Research.”
Given that fact, in conjunction with the bizarre nature of her allegations (which as many have pointed out, would be entirely illegal), it looks like false memory implantation to me, a la John Mack and his UFO abductees. Possibly unintentional (as Mack is, right?), but there nonetheless. I could see that she ended up with an anti-abortion counselor, urging her to revisit the memories, and subtly twisting it back and forth between the two until she was remembering putting live fetuses on a closet shelf behind the towels. Wouldn’t be unheard of.
Me:”I’m sorry, but if you were having sex in high school, you were *not* a geek. A geek POSER maybe. POSER! POSER!”
Azkyroth “That’s kind of like saying a black Londoner born in England [is not] a ‘European'”
Not really. Unless we are using words differently, which we may be, if you are relatively young. When I was in HS in the 1980s, “geek” was an insult — basically a synonym for “nerd” — a freakish person with no social skills (the term “geek” originally referred to a type of freakshow performer).
These days I know it has a more positive meaning — something along the lines of “someone good at math & computers” (maybe because many of us geeks/nerds in the 1980s found solace in computers). Is that what you meant when you said you were a geek in HS? Certainly you had to have pretty good social skills if you were having relationships so early.
I concur. By the accepted usage in my high school (also mid-80s), a geek by definition would be someone who wasn’t getting any. Other traits were of course included in the definition, but lack of experience with the opposite gender was definitely a requirement.
It’s all relative, however. I teach at a very computer-nerd-centric college, and I’ve had students here who marvel at the fact that they were “nerds” and “geeks” at their high schools, but now in the midst of real geekdom (LAN parties are the biggest campus draw) are considered the jocks of campus because they actually play sports now and then. You say geek-ito, I say geek-ahto…
Exceptionally poor social skills, coupled with a high degree of technical and literary aptitude. And for the sake of argument, “sex” doesn’t necessarily mean “relationships,” though it did in this case. Albeit only one, which is extant.
I hope you’re not arguing that there’s some correlation between reality and HS insults.
In high school, if you’re sufficiently different and your differences are not concealable, it doesn’t matter how good your social skills are; you don’t have the opportunity to exercise them. Conform or be cast out.
If your differences are concealable but you decide you’d rather be honest than popular, the result is the same. Is it fair to characterize this decision as “no social skills”? I guess that depends on whether you consider HS society’s demand for conformity reasonable.
However, if your high school is big enough, there may be a splinter community of people who are different in the same way you are… or are different in *some* way and reject conformism because of its effects on them personally.
Furthermore, it doesn’t take much social skill to get along with a small number of people you actually like. Social skills are all about getting along with people you *don’t* like without letting them know you don’t like them. (At least in high school.)
RavenT wrote:
I know, as Allastair pointed out, it does raise some fascinating logical and ethical issues.
Not so, I have always argued for a medical exemption, that where carrying the fetus to term is a threat to the mother’s health then abortion should be permitted. In other words, where there is a direct conflict of interest, those of the mother should take precedence over those of the unborn child. Where there is no alternative, we take into account the reality that the mother will already have established a life and have relatives and friends. The devastation caused by her death would be much greater than that caused by the loss of the child she is carrying. It is the lesser of two evils.
RavenT wrote:
I know, as Allastair pointed out, it does raise some fascinating logical and ethical issues.
Not so, I have always argued for a medical exemption, that where carrying the fetus to term is a threat to the mother’s health then abortion should be permitted. In other words, where there is a direct conflict of interest, those of the mother should take precedence over those of the unborn child. Where there is no alternative, we take into account the reality that the mother will already have established a life and have relatives and friends. The devastation caused by her death would be much greater than that caused by the loss of the child she is carrying. It is the lesser of two evils.
(Sorry about that, had to correct the formatting :))
Me:
Ian:
No, you miss the point. Your argument is that it makes sense to extend the rights of an adult human being backward in time to when it is an embryo or fetus. My argument is that you are confusing the embryo’s posterior probability of being an adult human with its prior probabilities in doing so, and that the mother’s prior probability of being entitled to the rights of an adult human are already 1.0. The embryo’s prior probabilities are less–somewhere between 0.0 and 1.0, so I am arguing that you ignore the mother’s prior probability of 1.0 in favor of the embryo’s necessarily lesser probability, and that seems backwards.
The prior probability of risk of death to the mother is independent of this probability I am delineating, so that means that not only are you confusing the embryo’s prior and posterior probabilities of being a fully-developed human being; you are also confusing two independent probabilities (that of being a fully-developed human and that of pregnancy risk) with each other as well.
Jill Stanek is a hypocrite. Unless she has a kid for every 1 or 2 years she’s been married, she and her husband are practicing some form of contraception.
I’ve long thought that a lot of our attitudes towards sex are due to that…
allastair wrote:
As I said, I have no way of verifying these accounts, but if you look up abortion procedures on the Web they are not exactly pleasant. Of course, that in itself is not an argument against them – I suspect most surgical procedures would be stomach-turning to the average layperson – but we are entitled to ask whether they should be performed other than where absolutely necessary, given that they involve the termination of a human life. And please note that I wrote “human life”, not something like ‘fully-fledged adult’. The embryo and fetus are alive even if they are unable to survive for long, independent of the mother.
I agree that, in the absence of any edicts from a Supreme Mandator, the definitions are arbitrary. What is not arbitrary, however, is that if there is no God and, more importantly, no “afterlife”, then this life we have now is all we get. It is our only shot. So why terminate it unnecessarily? There are so many ways human lives are cut short, why add to them if you do not have to?
Life, in general, is a continuous process proceeding from generation to generation. The life of an individual human being, however, only begins under normal circumstances when the sperm and egg fuze together. Sperm or eggs separately do not initiate the development of an individual.
Since, as I have argued before, rights are granted to actual individuals, not some abstraction like “life”, the question arises as to when that entitlement should begin. Why not be generous and extend them – or some of them, at least – to the very earliest stages of individual existence? What would it cost us?
Azkyroth wrote:
There are clearly occasions when the quality of life is so bad that existence for its own sake becomes intolerable. But who, other than the individual concerned, is entitled to make that decision?
If an adult, either through injury or illness, loses the mental capacity to make such a choice it devolves to next-of-kin or the courts if it is judged that there is no possibility that he or she will ever recover that capacity. But a fetus, given the chance, might well grow into an adult who is capable of deciding whether life is worthwhile for itself. Should it not be given that chance? The mother might well believe she is unable to give her child a decent life but the child might be content to be with a mother who loves it or, alternatively, it could be put up for adoption by people who could give it a better life. Surely, it deserves the chance, at least.
I did not mean to make light of the burden of pregnancy, childbirth and child-rearing born by the mother – I am sure that “discomfort and inconvenience” does not do it justice – but the question has to be asked: what has the unborn child done that it should pay with its life to relieve the mother of those stresses?
Even under the absolute best-case scenario, pregnancy is hard on the mother’s body, and it carries a significant risk of death or permanent side effects. Your proposal costs the right of a fully-developed human being to the bodily autonomy to decline to submit herself to those risks.
allastair wrote:
I agree that any action taken by the evil Dr Who against his wife’s grandmother or any more distant ancestors would not constitute the crime of murder of his wife – although he could be guilty of offences against those individuals – he could only be guilty of any offence against his wife after she had come into existence as an individual.
And, far from arguing that potential life is the same as actual life, I am saying that rights should only be extended to actual individuals, with my case turning on the point at which that actual individual can be said to have come into existence as such. I take conception as the starting point because, prior to that, the sperm or egg separately do not produce an individual, only after the two have fuzed does that individual begin to develop.
As we have agreed, the point at which the individual becomes entitled to human rights is an arbitrary choice and the law and society in general has taken a different view from that of people like myself. But, like I asked before, would it really cost us so much to allow that an individual life begins at conception and that thereafter it should not be ended without good cause – such cause being threat to the life of another?
RavenT wrote:
And where there is a serious and specific risk of death or permanent injury to the mother then abortion is permissible. But the statistical risks of such events which attach to all pregnancies are not, in themselves, sufficient justification for abortion.
The right of a full-developed human being to bodily autonomy should not mean that a mother has the power of life and death over the fetus nor that it abrogates the right of the fetus to be allowed to develop into an adult human being just as the mother was.
>I am saying that rights should only be extended to actual individuals
Does that mean only one of a pair of identical twins get rights? Or do you give each half-rights? What rights do you offer to blastocysts in fertility clinic? Does each fertilized ovum have a right to be implanted?
>The right of a full-developed human being to bodily autonomy should not mean that a mother has the power of life and death over the fetus
Well, then who? Someone’s got to have that power, and be responsible. If it isn’t the owner of the body then who is it? You’re going to let potential mothers off the hook “where there is a serious and specific risk of death or permanent injury”, right? Well, who is going to determine that? Who, if not the woman, is going to decide how serious a risk is, and how specific?
And if you’re going to use a time-traveling Dr. Who as an example, could you offer one good reason why he can’t just get a divorce? Why would preventing his wife from existing be necessary?
I can’t heart Jill Stanek. The “some of its[contraceptions] forms may cause abortions” argument is sloppy. If contraception may cause abortion, then isn’t it, by definition, an abortion, not contraception?
Kaethe wrote:
Each of the identical twins is a distinct individual so both are entitled to human rights.
A blastocyst is an early stage in the development of an individual and also entitled to life.
And, yes, I believe a fertilized ovum has a right to be implanted because, like the blastocyst, it has the right to life.
It would be for the doctors to decide whether there is a sufficient risk to the health of the mother to justify abortion. The mother is entitled to refuse an abortion, just as she is entitled to refuse any other treatment, but the doctors are most competent to decide what is the best medical course of action.
There is no reason why Dr Who could not sue for divorce. I was just using the story to illustrate my view that an individual life has value in its entirety and should not be terminated at any point without good reason.
Yes, it is.