Want to watch Matt Dillahunty savagely demolish some poor innocent pro-lifer? It’s kind of like the ghastly video she shows near the end of her segment — rhetorical body parts and virtual pools of gore everywhere.
Only sadists will click play on this video.
Does that mean that only people who are already sadists will click it? Or that, by clicking play, I have become a sadist?
You know, I wouldn’t want to watch graphic videos of people taking a shit, but I sure am glad to have one myself when the need arises.
I think you misspelled “masochists” there, PZ.
Questions whether I’m a sadist or not aside, I started listening to the video.
Oh boy. I’m 20 minutes in, Kristine Kruszelnicki has barely started talking, and I already need to stop for a minute because the amount of bullshit is making me want to puke.
Does she really want to formulate it like this? Really? Because, that means that she actually says that women shouldn’t be trusted and we shouldn’t respect the right to privacy among other things.
*eyeroll*
If by “innocent” you mean “doesn’t respect the bodily autonomy of anyone who is, has, or will have the capacity to become pregnant”, then yes.
A few minutes in and she is full of crap already. Being undifferentiated cell doesn’t make it special. And who cares if it is alive! My skin cells are alive, I don’t care how she is saying I am not committing genocide to my skin, by her logic, I am.
Also, why the power point? Sorry, I know it is irrelevant to her argument, but still.
There are a number of times were she almost had a point. Within inches. But then through excessive use of loaded terms Or poor logic fell into the bullshit religious argument, only without dog. we should keep the debate going and challenge ourselves because we could be wrong. And when we Are not, we see logic prevail as it did here
preborn
preborn
preborn
*sigh*
I’d wear a shirt saying “predead corpse”, but everyone would just think I’m a fan* of The Walking Dead.
*which I incidentally am
So is there a secular argument that can stand for pro-birth?
*And I say pro-birth because the arguments never really go past the birth. These people fail to see that a child needs to be taken care of and this will last an entire life time.*
Oh boy, more naturalistic fallacy crap.
Gah, that was horrible. I wanted to listen to something that might have challenged me intellectually.
He slaughters her because she’s a twit and a terrible speaker.
Oh wow, the penalty to abortion should be same when a woman kills her child. She actually said it.
So… if someone will die if I don’t give them a kidney I should be required by law to give them my kidney, since not doing it will kill that person?
At least that’s what I got from that jumble at 37min.
Got to that part.
O.O
If I were Dillhaunty, I would be more direct. Fetuses are not people. Although of course, such determination is irrelevant to his argument.
Wow. Most anti-choicers wouldn’t dare to say it. They get all mealy-mouthed about what they would do to women who got abortions if abortion was illegalized. They scream about how abortion is murder but are consistent in their lack of willingness to punish abortion as if it were murder. The fact that she is more extreme on the issue than the average anti-choicer might shed light on why she performed so poorly in the debate.
#17 – More direct than noting, in the opening that I think it’s stupid to attribute personhood to the fetus? I wasn’t going to get any further side-tracked by irrelevancies. :)
@Dillahunty
Oh yeah, oops. :)
Is she comparing slavery to abortion?!
@anteprepo #18
Yeah, you’re absolutely right, this exposes a lot of tepid thinking behind the antichoicers.
@Matt Dillahunty #19
I am very glad that you decided to ignore the stupid thinking there and concentrate on showing that even accepting that personhood starts with conception *groan* she has no place to stand on. Thank you.
Finally I have to say that when I reached the Q&A portion of the debate things became more interesting since she seemed to find her spine and fire
abortion is ageism
abortion is ageism!?
*snort*
PZ’s question is my favorite.
ibyea:
Thank you for watching the video so I don’t have to.
Well, let’s give her points for honesty, I guess.
If you think you’ve heard the worst of it, well…
I went up to her after the post debate dogpile, and feeling a bit sorry for her, asked a little about her background, how long she had been an atheist, etc., and then off-the-cuff asked what the most prominent thing she learned from the exchange, and her answer was that she wished she had been more familiar with Matt’s arguments beforehand, because she felt they had talked past each other much of the time, but she remained convinced she had a strong case.
I’m just glad I had to run an errand in the middle and missed the fetal gore show.
I would have asked Kristine the following hypothetical: How would she feel about having to choose between:
1) sentencing a non-pregnant woman to death
and
2) ‘sentencing’ a very recently pregnant women to having an abortion
Her logic implies that fliping a coin would be just fine… since they can both be classified as Homosapien.
Maybe this can be more clearly/convincingly framed as “1) signing off on a non-pregnant woman being executed or 2)signing off on a very recently pregnant woman having an abortion”?
I think it’s an excellent point you make. I’m just twitchy about any language that suggests even remotely that the pro-choice ideal could be about imposing abortions on women, especially since so many anti-choicers either believe or pretend to believe that it is.
/nitpick
Worst part of the whole debate at 0:49:37. When Matt is asked to define abortion he does so very specifically, accurately (in my opinion) and honestly. Cheers to Matt, great debate.
Her definition: “An act of violence that dismembers, decapitates and kills a human being.” What a dishonest non-answer. Lost all respect for her at that point (I hung on when she showed the irrelevant video hoping for something more substantial). Would have liked to see someone note that by her definition (this is entirely irrelevant) Louis XVI was aborted.
Really? What the FUCK? How do you become so dedicated to one side of an issue that you give talks on it without ever being aware of the other side’s most basic arguments? Ye gods, I just boggle.
Kristine loves bad analogies.
atkelly,
Apparently medication abortion isn’t an abortion after all, at least according to that sensationalist definition of hers.
Beatrice,
Great point, hadn’t even thought of that! Its a trivial point to lock on to I know but it irks me how irrational her answer was.
Why is the audio so fucking shitty? There are microphones right there in front of the faces of the speakers and this shit is recorded bouncing off the walls and into somebody’s phone? What a piece of crap this is.
atkelly,
Most things she said that evening were irrational. Locking onto just one is probably your brain’s way of coping with the barrage of idiocy.
Ugh, that video was painful.
That depends. Do you consider women to be actual human beings capable of making their own medical decisions?
A few years ago during some “snowflake baby” kerfuffle, someone pointed out this choice to a pro-birth person:
If you were in a lab that caught on fire and you could only save ONE of the following which would it be?
1. a container of 50 fertilized human ova on a counter
or
2. a 3 year old child in hiding in a corner
You can probably guess they never answered it and danced around and diverted the subject.
“Anti-choice.”
And no.
Not only was she horribly unprepared to argue against Matt, but her video clip and ridiculous (hilarious?) definition of abortion shows that she didn’t understand her audience at all. That kind of shit may fly at the Thursday Afternoon Ladies’ Bible Study, but at a freethought convention, it was just embarrassing to watch. I wasn’t cringing at the imagery, I was cringing at the Office-level lack of self-awareness.
I’ve been thinking about this one all day, as a question I’d like to have posed to Kristine (my version was just a slightly modified one of yours):
If you were in a building during a fire and had a chance to save only a) the five-year old girl in your arms who tells you her name is Cheryl or b) the set of petri dishes on a counter containing 5 embryos, would you put down the kid and rush to rescue the embryos instead?
Frankly, I wouldn’t believe anyone who would say yes.
Only if you want to argue that sometimes slavery is justifiable. That would be a very heavy burden of proof to overcome.
The only scenario I can imagine in which an argument for restriction of reproductive rights might even be seriously entertained is when either the human population is too high for the planet to sustain or so low that we’re in danger of going extinct. Even then, you would have to prove that a) extinction or a natural cull due to disease etc. isn’t the better outcome b) there’s no other method of achieving the goal that doesn’t involve stripping people of their rights. Tough to do. And rather pointless to argue about at this point since we’re nowhere even close to either circumstance.
Ibis3, just out of curiosity, what makes you think we are “nowhere even close” to an unsustainable population level?
Great debate, brilliantly argued Matt. I have a question I’d love to get some opinions on (prefferably Matt’s if he’s still following the thread but feel free to chip in.)
I totally agree that we cannot force someone to sacrifice their own health, wellbeing or the rights to their own body to save the life of another and I think the kidney analogy is brilliant – even in the case where a pregancy is simply unwanted – not a question of the health of the mother.
But what about someone who repeatedly finds themselves in this situation by choice or negligence and either refuses, is ignorant of or simply unwilling to take steps to avoid it time and time again? A ‘serial-aborter’ to put it bluntly (and maybe hypothetically, I won’t ever have first hand experience of it but I believe the idea of an abortion ever being so ‘trivial’ is pretty unlikely)
How would people feel about the following (and not saying I propose or support any or all of them):
Imposing a financial disincentive for women seeking repeat abortions (increasing the cost of the procedure, applying a levy to health insurance, maybe even a fine?)
Mandating education – similar to anger management classes or driver training but involving contraception etc.
More drastic measures such as sterilisation? Is there ever a point where you would say “Ok this woman is unable to take responsibility for her actions (maybe as a result of mental fitness?), the state will now take action to stop her getting pregnant”?
@43
Jesus fuck what is wrong with you.
A) if abortion isn’t wrong why would you deter serial abortion?
B) the hypothetical woman isn’t your fucking pet…you can’t punish her or get her spayed for not living as you’d like to
C) what the flamming fuck is wrong with you?
@jamescarlton
There is nothing wrong with having an abortion.
There is nothing wrong with having another abortion. Or a third. Or a thirtieth.
Having an abortion is taking responsibility for one’s actions.
And what about all those poor and homeless who refuse to get jobs!? Its justifiable to enslave them right?
Be careful ladies…you have rights but if you exercise your rights too much Carlton your doorman will take them away!
jamescarlton:
What part of ‘choice’ is confusing to you?
(Her body, her fucking choice)
Replace “abortion” with “root canal” and change other terms to match. Then let’s hear your answer.
Jesus fuck, jamescarlton, what is so hard to understand about “women have REASONS for getting abortions”?
You can’t fish with that net, it’s full of holes.
Carlton really wins the “most horrific fascist idea of the night” award. Well done.
@42 Our population is high now, but not close to the level it would have to be to start thinking about the possibility of worldwide forced sterilisation or abortion policies. From what I understand, our main problems are resource distribution, unsustainable demand for dirty energy, destruction of non-human habitat, and lack of access to *voluntary* contraception and birth control, not overpopulation per se.
(And there are far better means of resolving those issues than *forced* birth control. Of course, our high population means one less reason to try to limit voluntary birth control in any way; rather we should be encouraging it as a safe and moral good.)
Education for women and increased wealth are the two best proven methods for reducing the fertility rate. If you really want the world’s population to decrease or even stabilize, promote women’s rights.
@54
Just not too much or else well have to spay all the bitches
I guess that answers my question then…loudly in one case.
I think I almost entirely agree with you – if you read my whole post I was looking for opinions on the question, not opinions of my character – as I didn’t link the two.
But to give you some more background, or maybe just more ammunition.
Yeah I do think there is something wrong – at least in some sense with someone having thirty abortions as compared to one, or three. Do you really believe that abortions shouldn’t at least be discouraged?
I can’t force you to run into a burning building to save a person’s life, but if you own a chain of hotels that keep burning to the ground killing people, I think it’s valid to inquire whether you are taking proper precautions to avoid this (and aren’t just extremely unlucky). Not a perfect analogy I know.
And no, I don’t think you should enslave homeless or jobless people – but I do think it’s ok to put some conditions on giving them welfare. Not draconian measures, not extreme things, but requiring them to prove they are seeking employment or receiving education and so on – and these things are pretty common.
So fire away. Reasons and evidence preferred but abuse is always worth a giggle.
What makes you think it’s even a merely bad analogy?
[meta]
jamescarlton:
(sigh)
@asshole
Should we kick hobos in the shins to discourage poverty too?
Not like an operation is some triviality, its the patients decision. And no abortions shiuld not be discouraged…save for promoting prevenative medicine…like all fucking operations.
What do you want to do with someone on their 4th heart attack? Wire a joy buzzer to their pacemaker?
Oh btw, no my assesment of your character was accurate. Sadistic ass
James,
Seriously. How is carrying a pregnancy to term ever the responsible choice for anyone who doesn’t want that experience? Who are they serving and why?
What sort of entitlement do you have to have to sugest “can’t we just spay the bitches like dogs?” And then call reponses “abuse”.
@43 Wow. I can’t even…
Let’s see if I can try.
1. Abortion is a medical procedure. There’s no moral element to it. That goes for the first one or the fiftieth one.
2. Children ought not to be punishments for “bad choices”.
3. Having an abortion is a responsible response to an unwanted pregnancy.
4. Any reason a fully-informed, consenting woman has to have an abortion is a good one.
5. Who are you to judge what someone else who is causing harm to no one wants to do with their own body?
What reason and evidence is expected in response to “can’t we just commit a LITTLE attrocity? For no reason other than I’m a meddling judgematic vendictive candycane”
If Carlton keeps writing stupid hateful shit someone is justified in stealing his computer right? That’s how it works in Trollslvania?
If you truly believe this:
then the only possible answer to this
is “No.” or perhaps, “Hell no.”
This is not a new issue.
I noticed a lot of you seem to think that I believe that should you go over some allotted number of abortions, the evil state of jamescarltonistan will strap you to a bed and force you to carry pregnancy X to term.
No. Never. Nuh uh. Seriously, why did you go there?
But maybe someone should at least step in and make sure you know about contraception, and other ways to prevent an abortion in the first place,
Oh and if you’d like me to answer my own questions:
Financial disincentives?
Maybe, but purely on a dull and unlikely financial hypothetical. This partly answers the root canal question. If we start seeing headlines like “Root canal costing state eleventy bazillion schmoleans a year” then yeah I think it’s time for the government to start discouraging people from getting cavities. Same with abortions – and no I don’t mean with jackbooted abortion police.
Mandatory Education?
Unnecessary in an ideal world where everyone receives adequate sex ed anyway… but until then, why shouldn’t we want people to be informed if it appears they are not?
Sterilization?
This was a big ‘ol red button, and boy a lot of you pushed it. No. Just no.
Well, I dunno, speaking just for me I would be loath to have a lifetime limit on my abortions because THEY’RE JUST SO DAMN MUCH FUN.
jamescarlton:
How about you take one step back and look at why women may be “serial aborters” (jeebusfuck what a clueless stupid phrase!).
Some women can’t afford birth control.
Some women may not have access to birth control — particularly in rural and/or highly religious areas where pharmacists like to use “conscience clauses” to prevent women from controlling their own fertility.
Some women may have medical reasons for not using birth control.
Some women may have partners who sabotage their birth control.
Some women may be in abusive situations that prevent them from using or insisting on birth control.
Some women may not have any education about types of birth control and the proper use of each.
Women don’t seek abortions because they’re easier. They seek them because circumstances — which only they know — make it necessary, for whatever reason.
Everybody knows you prevent people from getting cavities by fining them for each filling they need.
Not, you know, concluding that maybe there’s something wrong with the availability of dental resources in the area and working to correct that shortcoming.
Nope. Nuh uh.
… have been raised from childhood to believe that using birth control makes you a slut no decent person would want to be near to.
@56
I think I almost entirely agree with you
No. I don’t think you do. I don’t think that women are imbeciles that have to be controlled for their own good.
Do you really believe that abortions shouldn’t at least be discouraged?
No, I don’t. Abortions should be encouraged for any woman faced at any time for an unwanted pregnancy. In fact, not only should they be encouraged. They should be fully funded and at least as accessible as maternity facilities.
I can’t force you to run into a burning building to save a person’s life, but if you own a chain of hotels that keep burning to the ground killing people, I think it’s valid to inquire whether you are taking proper precautions to avoid this (and aren’t just extremely unlucky). Not a perfect analogy I know.
Not any kind of analogy. First, there are no people being killed during an abortion. Second, there is no moral difference between preventing implantation and removing an implanted embryo. It’s all happening within the woman’s uterus and is none of your fucking business. Having an abortion *is* taking proper precautions to end an unwanted pregnancy.
James, please answer the question. If abortion is not wrong, then why would we want to deter serial abortions? Do you think abortion is wrong? If not, how could you come to your second conclusion? What is it that’s bothering you. . .what’s the undisclosed assumption? What’s the wrong?
kristinc:
Excellent point!
Also, some women may have been misinformed or straight-out lied to about the safety of birth control.
Ok how about this then.
Do you believe women should be encouraged, where possible, to get abortions early?
As opposed to leaving it till late when the procedure is much more invasive and risky?
james:
Do you believe women are competent, sentient beings worth trusting?
None of your Mother Fucking Business when and if a woman has an abortion, or how many. Welcome to reality, where your OPINION is irrelevant to the facts; you and your OPINION are superfluous.
james: do you think that, if women live in a society where early abortions are already easy to obtain*, we NEED to be “encouraged” to have the abortions we want earlier rather than later?
You may or may not regard women as walking wombs, but jesus christ, you sure don’t think we’re very fucking smart do you?
*ie no financial barriers; no lines of protesters to cross; no bullshit hoops to jump through; no legal restrictions; no shaming
What do you want to do with someone on their 4th heart attack? Wire a joy buzzer to their pacemaker?
(Derail). You don’t want to know how close this is to true…People who are at high risk of sudden cardiac death, i.e. those who have had lots of heart attacks, often get an automatic internal defibrillator, which will, in fact, shock them at certain times. Mind you, those times are when they’re experiencing a life threatening heart rhythm and are almost certainly already unconscious, but still just too close to your scenario…Ok, end derail.
Why not have serial abortions? Because there are simpler and safer methods of birth control out there and most women will choose one of them. Other than that…I don’t see any issue.
jamescarlton:
Are you really that ignorant?
From Guttmacher:
Mandatory Education?
This is the only one of your “solutions” that doesn’t infantilize and treat women as though Big Daddy needs to look after them and their poor pink ladybrainz.
Only problem is that it is coming too late. Your mandatory education should start in elementary school. For everyone. Not just those sluts who can’t keep their legs closed and can’t seem to figure out how babies are made, even after their somethingteenth abortion.
Also, with mandatory education should come free contraception: condoms, pills, IUDs, and for adults vasectomies and tubal ligation.
James, please answer the question. If abortion is not wrong, then why would we want to deter serial abortions? Do you think abortion is wrong? If not, how could you come to your second conclusion? What is it that’s bothering you. . .what’s the undisclosed assumption? What’s the wrong?
Josh because it’s not black and white.
An abortion is not murder. It’s not evil, as the fundies would have us believe.
But it’s not great either. It’s sad, and depressing, and I believe it’s something we’d want to prevent where possible – and we have the means to.
Why would we not want to encourage the simple, easily available and safe methods for avoiding pregnancy and discourage the more complicated and potentially more dangerous method of abortion and its consequences?
(POTENTIALLY more dangerous… please read this PLEASE. I know the average abortion is probably less dangerous than crossing a road)
Against my better judgement, I’m going to play devil’s (christian’s?) advocate here:
In “The Greatest Show on Earth” – which I highly recommend – Dawkins constructed a thought experiment where you took a time machine and went back 10,000 years to find your great-times-500-grandparent, and then another 10k, then another 10k, and so on and so forth. Half a million years later, you’d have a creature that was humanlike and apelike but certainly not a homo sapien, not a human. But everyone aboard the ship/time-machine could mate with their 10,000-year removed ancestor/descendant. And at no point would there be a clear delimiter between human and non-human. Continue 10 million years back and clearly that ancestor isn’t human. But there was still no undeniable inarguable line between species.
He then went on to make the analogy of that process of development to the day-to-day growth of a human infant into adulthood. Clearly the two are very different, but if you just look at day-to-day change, it’s so insignificant as to be undetectable. But the aggregate is a massive change.
Everyone agrees that a one-year-old is a person. No one (who is reasonable) believes a sperm and unfertilized egg is a human. At some point (or grey area) between fertilization and a year after birth, this glob of cells becomes a human. Look at a picture of a fetus a day before birth, and then the infant a day after. Other than the umbilical cord and the content of their lungs and stomach, what’s the difference? Why was birth a useful delimiter in determining person vs non-person?
I ask because I disagree with Matt: Whether or not a fetus is a person is an important distinction. If it isn’t a person, and we can establish this fact undeniably, the discussion ends. If it is, then we have to continue. End the debate early and often, if we can.
@80: So encourage other safe and effective forms of birth control: Make birth control free and readily available, research methods of refining it further, get people to stop smoking*, etc. Expand choices, don’t limit them.
*No, really, I didn’t throw that one in out of habit. Smoking greatly increases the risk of blood clots and other complications of hormonal contraceptives.
That was not an answer. You simply re-asserted that abortion was wrong or not to be desired. I’m asking you WHY. Sad and depressing because of what? For whom?
Jesus, you really have no idea how much of an ass you’re being to women do you? You really, really need to re-think this and start listening to what they’re telling you.
Or, to rephrase:
Do you believe women are, on average, as competent, intelligent, and trustworthy as people who would hypothetically be called on to make their decisions for them?
Just for the record, if I made the two lines turn blue tomorrow (hypothetically, I have no actual reason to pee on a stick) I flat guarantee an abortion would be complete happy fucking joy joy for me. And if jamescarlton hung around informing me of how sad and depressing it all was, I would be almost as thrilled to put my fist in his face as I would be by my abortion.
My last response to James tripped the wire. I’m now in moderation.
Do you believe women should be encouraged, where possible, to get abortions early?
If by “encouraged” you mean “provided with easy to access and free upon demand abortions whenever during a pregnancy a woman wants to terminate it and let women make up their own minds,” then yes.
james, where are these women?
Where are the vapid nitwits surrounded by feasible birth control methods who choose instead to have 5 or 8 or 26 abortions, in a row, for funsies?
Where are the twits who want an abortion, have unrestricted access to one from the moment they learn they’re pregnant, but keep the fetus in an extra 6 weeks or so, just because (maybe they think they’ll get bonus mile points)?
Where the fuck are they?
They’re down at the AbortionPlex getting mani-pedis, Kristin. That is if they’re not in the pre-school area. Whores be starting young these days.
Pregnancy is unpleasant and sometimes debilitating from about the second week. I can’t imagine anyone continuing one a moment longer than they had to if they didn’t want to get a baby out at the end. Better access will result in a trend towards more early abortions.
kristinc:
As someone who was 42 and saw the fucking blue lines show up last summer, 5 weeks before I was supposed to move to Minnesota and start school, my reaction was more like HAPPY! HAPPY! JOY! JOY! *KERMIT HANDS* Mifepristone is our friend.
I was lucky. I lived within easy driving distance of a Planned Parenthood clinic, I recognized the symptoms early enough to receive a medication abortion, and I had the money on hand to pay for it.
Had any one of those factors been different, I would have been one of those women jamescarlton thinks should be encouraged to go earlier.
@82 stormtroopervii
Before: entirely dependent on the gravida; care not transferable to others in society
After: independent individual; care can be transferred to any member of the community or to the government
Wasn’t that simple?
We can never establish this fact undeniably because most forced-birthers are religious and for them, personhood means “having a soul”. Since there’s no such thing, we can never win on that ground.
Also, it’s an insulting red herring to argue about the personhood of a foetus when *it doesn’t matter* because any rights you grant to a foetus take away from the bodily autonomy of an undeniable person. Stripping away that right of the woman constitutes a form of slavery. So, in effect, you want to have some kind of theoretical, insoluble, pointless debate while ignoring real world consequences for the life and health of women. That’s morally repulsive.
Do you believe women are competent, sentient beings worth trusting?
All women? Absolutely not. Since when did your gender automatically make you trustworthy and competent on anything?
Same goes for men by the way.
Do you believe women are, on average, as competent, intelligent, and trustworthy as people who would hypothetically be called on to make their decisions for them?
Much trickier. I am a rare animal who believes in good government and yes I think it’s not out of the question that you could find a group of people who could. Is that the most likely outcome? No idea. Very tough to answer.
———————–
Josh, I did answer you.
This isn’t a binary scale.
Am I allowed to rate something out of ten on the good-vs-bad-ometer?
Abortions aren’t a ten, or a one.
———————–
I think we’re on a bit of a roundabout here.
I’m saying lets avoid abortions with education and contraception where we can and then reading a lot of people yelling at me for daring to suggest such a thing but by the way education and contraception are a great way of preventing abortions.
I think we might disagree with the extent to which we encourage people to avail themselves of these methods. Been fun though.
WHY are abortions wrong? That’s a reasonable question and it’s outrageous that you won’t answer it.
@53
Well, I would mostly agree with you, but I might put it like this:
Because there are so many of us in a limited environment, our main problems are resource distribution, unsustainable demand for dirty energy, destruction of non-human habitat, and lack of access to *voluntary* contraception and birth control.
I guess it’s just a matter of framing. I didn’t mean to suggest I thought it was time for some forced sterilization. I’m not sure we would ever go there, because we would put up with a lot of increased death from other causes not directly related to population (but maybe one of those other problems) before we would consider forced sterilization policies. But the single greatest threat right now out of all the ones you mentioned is the dirty energy, and the rate at which we’re releasing c02 is directly related to how many of us there are, regardless of resource distribution.
I was only disagreeing with the statement that it would be time to start thinking about forced sterilization when population was too high for the planet to sustain, because it implies population is not unsustainably high already.
No, you know what? Fuck you. Fuck right off. All you’re doing here is shitting on people who have to endure things you never will. You’re either stone ignorant if you think US people live in a country where women’s health is seen as a priority or that getting access to birth control is just something that needs to be *encouraged* for stupid women.
Or you’re a goddamn liar. Fuck out of here.
I wonder whether there is overlap between “dear precious embryo” and antivaccs ” mummy intuition”…
jamescarlton:
So there are some women you think cannot be trusted to make their own medical decisions based on their personal circumstances?
So you think that sometimes it would be okay for a panel to make decisions for women, regardless of their opinions or circumstances?
No. You came in asking if “something oughta be done” about those women who have more abortions than you’re comfortable with, and you were rightly called on it.
Yes, we agree that education and contraceptive access is important. No, we do not agree that women should be blamed or penalized in some fashion for not having that education or access.
Bloody fucking hell. Am I actually reading this?
I’m going to have to echo Josh, OSG. Why, why is terminating an unwanted pregnancy a bad thing?
And then PZ came in at the end for the mercy blow, the kaishakunin of this seppuku.
More @ james
It’s sad, and depressing,
For who? You?
Even with all the slut shaming and baby-killer shaming that goes on, do you know what the overwhelming majority of women report as their post-abortion emotion? Sadness? No. Depression? No. Relief. (Giving birth on the other hand, is a well-known trigger for depression.)
and I believe it’s something we’d want to prevent where possible
Why?
Why would we not want to encourage the simple, easily available and safe methods for avoiding pregnancy and discourage the more complicated and potentially more dangerous method of abortion and its consequences?
First, you’re overestimating the complication and risk of abortion (generally, only very late term abortions could be classed as dangerous, and those are, in almost every case, performed when there are unavoidable complications in a wanted pregnancy). Second, there is no need to discourage abortions. Sadly, they’re being discouraged more than enough by anti-choice/religious propaganda and obstacles to access. We need more women to know that abortion is a moral choice and one they should demand be provided for free.
@92 Ibis3
I’m sure the men referenced in this article:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/taslima/2012/07/14/our-men-throw-acid-in-our-faces-destroy-our-lives-but-we-never-stop-loving-men/
would object to being called “assholes”. “Dickheads”. “Living pieces of shit”. Their offense to such insults are inconsequential to their truth. As is yours. Make your argument without an appeal to emotion, without whining about being offended, lest you succumb to the irrational trap of bullshit promoted by the religious right.
To the point about before birth being “entirely dependent” and after being an “independent individual”: if, a day before what would have been natural vaginal birth, the fetus is removed in a c-section, with the intent being to preserve its life, it would then be an “independent individual”, and would likely continue to live. A week before, same story. So, you’ve made the argument that every abortion should start as an intended c-section. If the “independent individual” survives on their own accord outside the woman’s body, given the chance, then they may continue to live in care “transferred to any member of the community or to the government”. Perhaps universal healthcare would solve the problem of the cost of this route. Bodily autonomy of the woman is perserved to the extent possible.
“Stripping away that right of the woman constitutes a form of slavery”. Yea, we are all slaves to our biology. We need air, water, food, a place to piss and shit. If given no other route outside, sperm will spontaneously be ejected from a man’s body after a while. If an egg is not fertilized, it will cause bleeding in a woman for a period of time. These are inconvenient truths. Their inconvenience does not diminish their truth. The fetus is a slave to the woman’s desires, its dependence on sustenance from her constitutes a slavery to its own biology, and the woman’s. The woman is a slave to the unconscious functions leading to the implanting of the egg inside her. Which is worse? If they’re slaves to each other, we must justify clearly our preference for the temporary (pregnant) condition of one to the permanent condition (death) of the other.
So no, it wasn’t simple. Life or death rarely is. And remember: devil’s advocate. Articulate your argument logically, without ad-hominem-ing me, because I’m on your side until you cover my face in shit.
jamescarlton @43:
You’re not framing this well.
It’s not about not forcing a woman.
It’s about realizing that every woman is a human being entitled to bodily autonomy. They have the first and *only* say in what happens to their body. To deny women the freedom of choice is to rob them of a fundamental human right:
(lest anyone try reinterpret any of this: a fetus is NOT a person)
It doesn’t matter if a woman chooses to have one abortion or 5. She retains full bodily autonomy at all times. You’re asking this question from the perspective of someone who clearly has a negative opinion about abortion. If you stop thinking about this in terms of what appears to be a dislike of abortion (on your part) and think about this in terms of a woman’s right to be the only one in charge of her body, you’ll see that pro-choice is the only position to have if you’re truly concerned about human rights.
WHY are abortions wrong? That’s a reasonable question and it’s outrageous that you won’t answer it.
Ok I’ll spell this out. Some of these are pretty cold reasons, but they’re still valid.
They’re (usually) a medical procedure. Any medical procedure comes with risks.
They cost money. The mother and/or the taxpayers.
They can be distressing to the mother and/or the father (no not always, but don’t try and tell me I’m flat out wrong here.)
Occasionally in the case of late term abortions, as whatshername in the original debate so crassly made everyone watch, they can be pretty brutal. If you think that’s not worth at least avoiding where ever possible, then I am sorry for you.
Stunning. I want to meet this abortomaniac woman who has too many abortions for poor Carlton. Did you read about her in the New York Post? World Net Daily? See her on Fox News? Did a Republican tell you about her? Really . . . I want to know. And what’s today’s limit? And this disinegnuous implication that those of us here would object to sex education and contraceptives because we don’t find abortion “wrong” is just bizarre.
Actually it is. You have no say in telling a woman what to do with here body. End of story. If you can’t shut the fuck up, you have an ego problem thinking you have a say. Show me your recent signed letter from your imaginary deity giving you permission to make that decision for someone else. Everything else is bullshit, and you know that.
jamescarlton:
Except, and here’s an important point, abortions performed after 20 weeks account for only 1.5% of abortions, and most are performed when the mother’s life is in danger or when there are serious fetal abnormalities.
Avoiding them would be great since, in almost all cases, they are the result of a wanted pregnancy going very wrong. Too bad it’s impossible.
I think I found it. By this quote:
(bolding mine)
Xe is showing that it offends their sensibilities that they might actually have to pay money for someone unworthy to have an abortion.
nnoxks @95
Yeah. A difference in framing.
it implies population is not unsustainably high already.
See, I’d frame “unsustainable demand for dirty energy” not as a population issue, but as primarily as a capitalism issue, and secondarily as a technology issue. As long as governments put the short-term interests of corporations over the interests of the long-term health of the planet, the population could drastically fall and we’d still be in trouble. And the end-use consumer would be happy to run everything on clean energy as they are now to use dirty energy (actually, I think most people would be happier), if the technology were affordable. Meanwhile, the most populated regions can theoretically go straight from pre-industrial to post-industrial cleaner tech without having to go through a long, dirty time in between. A decrease in population growth will happen naturally as quality of living improves (and women are educated and given access to birth control). Or at least that’s the way I see it.
jamescarlton:
You may want to quit while you’re in this hole.
You’re trying to get people to agree with your hypotheticals. That’s a bad idea on a blog frequented by people who value science, logic and reason. Your silly what if’s aren’t going to sway people. Period. Your hypotheticals be damned. It’s not about the fetus. It’s never about the fetus. It’s about the the freedom of choice that all women have.
[meta]
I really have got to stop reading threads like this right when I’m intending to go to bed.
[/meta]
As for your other “thoughts”:
Root canals come with risks. Root canals cost money, sometimes even taxpayer money. Root canals can be distressing.
Yet, oddly, no one is trying to limit root canals and suggesting that maybe those people who have them should be encouraged to brush and floss better and educated about using toothpaste and brush in the proper manner.
Wow. Now I’m apparently a theist, Fox News watching Republican. Ouch, that’s probably the first thing that’s actually hurt.
Were you guys feeling left out because a crazy fundie nutjob hadn’t showed up yet so you grabbed for the next best thing and filled in the blanks?
As a fact I do have a say in telling women what to do with their bodies. I can say, should I choose in a very particular instance and circumstance “Can you not have quite so many?”
They have a say in telling me to go fuck myself.
Yay, freedom of speech.
Where we disagree is whether or not the state should be able to do something similar to suggest, educate and encourage women in a similar fashion.
stormtroopervii:
When you start with:
1-women have full bodily autonomy
and
2-no one has the right to demand the use of another humans’ body
there is no more debate.
It’s not about whether or not a fetus is a person. That’s irrelevant. Hell, even if the US government declared that fetuses are children tomorrow, it wouldn’t change the two starting points above.
Consider yourself told.
jamescarlton:
Sure you can say that til you’re blue in the face. It doesn’t matter*.
There’s nothing wrong with abortion.
Women have full bodily autonomy.
No one has the right to the use of someone else’s body. Whether you’re a fetus or 43 years old.
*Well it matters inasmuch as it’s none of your fucking business. Ditch this moral view of abortions and you’ll understand how dreadfully wrong headed you are.
Yes, I want a government big and intrusive enough to let me know I have had too many abortions and can have no more.
Just where is that thin blue line that I cannot cross?
(As a side note, I fucking hate these hypothetical situations about how and when abortions should be forbidden when our reals rights are being denied by a combination of violence and restrictive laws.)
But not you, right? You’re perfectly qualified to tell these poor, simple women what medical procedures should be allowed on their own bodies, and what they should be forced to go through if they don’t comply, right?
I love how when there’s plenty of women who get pregnant because they can’t afford birth control, and pregnancies/raising children are one hell of a financial burden, he thinks making abortions even HARDER to afford is a solution. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you felt that impoverished women somehow deserved huge financial burdens because they dared to have sex.
You realize what you’re suggesting is going to make women seek other means of abortions that are potentially more dangerous, and is going to lead to a shitton more injured or dead women than if they have ready access to legal abortion whenever they need one, right? But who cares if those women get sick and die, right?
@stormtrooper
I’ll let the others take your screed apart because it’s past midnight and I’ve got to go get some sleep. But for the record, I never called you any names, use emotional appeals (unless you want to count my moral opposition to slavery), and WTF did you link to the post about acid-victims for?
jamescarlton
So basically abortions are fine except for stupid sluts wasting your hard earned tax dollars? Go fuck yourself James
jamescarlton:
Your sense of entitlement is duly noted.
(Had I such, I’d tell them to do what they think is best for themselves, not what is good for my sensibility.
Because I’m unlike you)
You’re already well and truly fucked in the head.
(So long as we’re speaking freely)
Educate, sure.
But you apparently fail to understand that education is about imparting knowledge, not about imposing values — which is what encouragement and suggestion are all about.
(Tricky things for such as you, are these things called categories)
—
BTW, from which comment did you get the (mistaken) impression that people here think those who have abortions do it merely because they fancy them or are uninformed, rather than as a matter of need?
We’ve noticed.
Please do. Immediately.
And no, it hasn’t gone unnoticed that you’ve consistently ignored those who’ve replied to (and refuted) your musings with facts, in order to whine about how mean some people are in telling you that your pwecious widdle thoughts aren’t original, aren’t interesting, and aren’t at all based in reality.
Heart surgery is a medical procedure. Any medical procedure comes with risks.
Heart surgeries cost money. The patient and/or the taxpayers.
They can be distressing to the patient and patient’s family (no not always, but don’t try and tell me I’m flat out wrong here.)
Occasionally in the case of emergency heart surgery, they can be pretty brutal. If you think that’s not worth at least avoiding where ever possible, then I am sorry for you.
Soooooooo, james, how about you mansplain to us all about where the limit is on heart surgery.
No? Doesn’t involve enough uteruses to need your control? What a shame.
jamescarlton:
You believe women should be slaves to the state then?
You appear to be advocating a position where the state gets to determine what a woman can or cannot do with their bodies, no? If so, that means that women would not be considered full human beings with 100% bodily autonomy. They would be considered something less. 2/3 of a human perhaps? Hmmm…
I honestly can’t believe you’ve dug the hole this deep. You’re 2 degrees of separation from saying women in some circumstances should be slaves. You’re disgusting.
@ James “hear my uterus roar!” Carlton
Abortion of any sort is several orders of magnitude safer than carrying to term and then birthing.
Ask any American woman how much the average pregnancy+birth costs James. I can tell you now that lt’s more than the $6-7000an elective abortion costs.
Here in the UK abortions (and all contraception) are free on the NHS. Why? Because even the most complicated abortion costs the taxpayers less than a pregnancy+birth+lifetime care of a new person.
>blockquote>
They can be distressing to the mother and/or the father (no not always, but don’t try and tell me I’m flat out wrong here.)
Chemotherapy’s distressing. Should we stop doing it? Post-partum depression and post-partum psychosis literally kills both women, and babies. Should we stop people giving birth altogether?
Good job nobody’s forcing you to watch then.
Thing is James, procedures done at 20+ weeks are almost always wanted pregnancies that have gone terribly wrong. If you think that second-trimester (up to 26 weeks) abortions are “brutal”, then brain haemorrhage+DIC caused by HELLP will terrify you.
You know what I think is worth avoiding? Petty little “Devil’s Advocate” comments like yours, that state the equivalent of “Abortion is icky and I don’t like it, so I’m pro,choice BUT…”
There is no “but”. Women either have bodily autonomy, or they don’t. Simple.
Don’t have an abortion if you don’t like them, James, but don’t use shallow, easily-refuted arguments to try to shame people into agreeing with your “BUT!”s. It’s typical manipulative anti-choice behaviour.
I think this is bull. You made it clear from your very first post that your real issue is that you want them to stop spreading their legs so much.
“I’m an ally just as long as you play by my rules and kiss my ass hard enough, otherwise fuck y’all.”
Using your “ally status” as a bargaining chip just shows that you aren’t actually an ally at all. Go fuck yourself, stormtroopervii.
So James, why do you want police forcing people down, presumably either sedating them against their will or strapping them down for an operation they don’t want. You did suggest sterilization right?
Perhaps you can set out traps and do catch, spay and release like they do with cats!
@114 tony
You have a good argument, and overall I agree with it. But I don’t think you’ve answered all questions.
Let’s assume that technology exists that can incubate successfully a fertilized egg from the point of fertilization until full gestation (9ish months), at which point it can be removed from artificial incubation and becomes no longer dependent on life support from an umbilical cord, and is now dependent on life support provided by blankets and bottles of formula. This technology doesn’t currently exist, but if you believe it will be absent fifty years from today, assuming current progress, you’re – quoth the House – an idiot.
So that removes the bodily autonomy argument.
Abortions are performed on fetuses such as this:
http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/i-will-lie-to-patients-well-only-if-they-are-having-an-abortion/
and we can all (reasonable people; so O’Reilley aside) agree that that’s the lesser of two evils.
But if we have the opportunity to save a human life, we should do so. In this case, the distinction between “human” and “no human” is indeed a factor. Should we attempt to preserve human life? If yes, at what point do we define “human”? And at what point does “fully bodily autonomy” of one person outweigh “full bodily autonomy” of another?
kristinc @123:
I’m really curious to see how he draws a distinction between heart surgery and abortions. I have my suspicions, but we’ll see (assuming he even addresses it).
It doesn’t.
Therefore your argument is pointless and crap.
@128
Let’s hypothetically assume that instead of shit we poo cookies. You agree now that you should go eat shit right?
Arse.
Was what I meant. I shouldn’t type at 5am.
[meta]
stormtroopervii:
Well-trodden ground, these spurious hypotheticals.
Here: August 2012 Molly: Alethea H. “Crocoduck” Dundee
After reading stormtroopervii’s comment denying an adult woman’s bodily autonomy, I think I just threw up a bit.
So I am going to attempt to go to bed. However, I suspect that my SIWOTI may kick in and keep me from sticking this flounce.
So stormtrooper…
imagine we have a noble prize winner in astrophysics who invented a laser to shoot down asteroids but has slipped into a coma. We can revive him and should because a doomsday meteor is heading right for us! But he’s a rare blood type and needs a new heart…you match. Is it ok if we strap you down and gut you like a fish? All of humanity is at stake now I remind you?
@119 Ibis3
“I never called you any names, use emotional appeals (unless you want to count my moral opposition to slavery),”
I was referring to your words “insulting”, “slavery”, and “morally repulsive”. These are indeed intended to invoke an emotional response. To claim otherwise is bullshit.
Asking “wasn’t that simple?” is an attack on my intelligence, implying I’m not capable of understanding even the most simple of concepts.
The point of the acid victims was that someone can think that their judgement, their action, is “moral” and/or “justified”, while reasonable people could disagree.
Are you shiting me?
Take you straw Vulcan bullshit to someone who still has a taste for bullshit.
@jamescarlton:
How many abortions is “too many”, anyway? Ten? Five? Three? What makes X abortions moral and X+1 immoral?
What do you propose to do with a woman who breaks the limit?
Prevent them?
“Oops, sorry, you had too many abortions, now your personhood is revoked”? That’s punishing women with pregnancy, exactly what the religiots do.
Fine them?
“Sorry, you had too many abortions, you will receive a legal penalty”? Why? Are they fucking criminals? See the problem with punishment above.
Not to mention that such a method will impact disadvantaged people much more, since they tend to have more abortions (and more late-term abortions) and have less resources to pay.
Shame them?
“Stop having abortions, you dirty whore! Hey everyone, let’s sneer at the dirty whore who aborts all the time!”? That’s basically a given. Since you want to discourage people from aborting, it follows that people who insist on aborting must be wrong somehow.
If you don’t think anything should be done, why even bring it up? Why would you think it’s relevant at all?
So, someone hates “emotions” enter into a field. A field where most of the opposition is based on an emotional response. And that same person is basing an argument on a hypothetical technology.
Nothing but clear thinking all the way down.
“Stop pointing out that the repugnant shit I’m saying is repugnant! It hurts my feelings!”
There is no “but”. Women either have bodily autonomy, or they don’t. Simple.
Totally in agreement. Women have bodily autonomy. No buts. Where in my past posts did I say otherwise?
Does encouraging (not forcing) women to avoid unwanted pregnancies and then abortions count as a but?
It’s the same with heart surgery. When a patient is on their fourth bypass isn’t it ok to wonder if they’re really taking the proper precautions so they don’t end up on the table for a fifth time?
Granted heart bypass surgery is a hell of a lot more severe a procedure than an abortion and there’s things like waiting lists. If someone’s on their fifth bypass because they can’t stop scarfing cheeseburgers I think I’d rather the cardiologist does the operation on the kid needing a heart transplant first.
Ah there’s the answer to my question “refuse medical aid”
You’re a monster
stormtroopervii
Arguing with passion/= appeal to emotion.
This is just as annoying as those who conflate insults with ad hominems.
@130: Today, the technology doesn’t exist, and the argument is “pointless and crap”. When I’m a great-grandparent, the technology will exist, and the argument won’t be pointless crap. The human condition won’t have changed; we’ll be biologically identical. Our ability to work around our genetic deficiencies will be removed. So we can wait 50 years before considering the problem, or we can nip it in the bud and avoid the bullshit altogether.
@131 mmmmmmm coookies.
@133 your quote is cute, but doesn’t actually answer any question I’ve posed. I never claim to be the owner of anyone. I simply claim that: 1) if a fetus is NOT a person the debate ends, and 2) if the fetus IS a person, we must weigh their rights against the rights of the person providing their life support. Our decision should be logically and morally justified.
@135 if that person were me, I’m fucked anyway right? I die by asteroid or I die by your hand. So what does it matter to me? Nothing. What does it matter to everyone else? Everything. By killing me, you’ve inflicted the lesser of two evils. Your analogy is an argument FOR the killing of one human to save another(s), not against.
stormtroopervii:
Oh, I see.
Somehow they don’t have to get the woman’s permission to do anything to her body. They can just go in and do what they please.
Fuck that shit.
And fuck hypotheticals.
1- yes we should do our part to preserve human life, where possible. I’m talking about existing human beings that are not still dependent upon using the body of a woman.
2- I don’t know. When it comes to rights, I don’t feel a child has any until birth.
3- I cannot envision a situation where this would be possible*. No one’s bodily autonomy outweighs another. Again, no human being has the right to demand the use of anothers’ body. Full stop.
I think you must have missed part of my initial response to you. Here:
I have no idea what your point in linking to that article was. That woman decided to get an abortion after she and her husband had all the relevant information. The abortion wasn’t evil or even “lesser of two evils”.
Nowhere in that definition of abortion do you find the words good or evil. In fact, there are no moral qualifiers used.
*Not in a world where every human being is supposed to be treated as equals. You know, like ours.
Great now let’s change the scenario. He really really really wants to see you hit in the face with the shovel from a backhoe… that’d be ok right?
@ JamesCarlton:
But we live in a world where women are already discouraged from having abortions. Discouraging them more would simply lead to even more unwanted pregnancies and births. It’s not like there’s an either-or choice here. It’s not like we can only either encourage birth control in order to prevent unwanted pregnancies OR argue that women should be able to get abortions safely and easily if they choose to. We can do both. And doing both is clearly the cheapest and fairest way to do things.
Right here:
Also here:
And… well, the ENTIRETY of your first post, especially this part:
—
So if someone isn’t living the lifestyle YOU want them to, it’s totally okay to just let them die.
BUH?
shorter stormtroopervii: I’m in favor of women having basic rights… but only if nobody is mean to me. I think it’s perfectly reasonable if I decide that women are cattle because someone told me to fuck myself.
Fuck you.
What’s the number? Who knows, depends on the circumstances.
As for what to ‘do’ with women. I thought I covered this. About the only thing I’d support right now is mandating some form of education on preventing pregnancy if that is considered a factor.
Oh and murdering a kitten every time someone has an abortion – because that’s how us totalitarian women hating megalomaniacs roll.
@144: You want the answer to your stupid hypothetical?
If you can raise fetuses in a jar, then they aren’t depending on the woman’s organs for survival. Those fetuses are irrelevant to the problem of women’s bodily autonomy.
Satisfied? Can you go back to reality now?
But it is today. Look, if someday in the future this technology comes about, then maybe that example of yours will be relevant. But we are here and this is now. And most of us are more concerned about the bodily autonomy of women here and now than we are about your science fiction hypotheticals.
Besides, if in your future experiment fetuses no longer have to be incubated in women’s uteruses in order to survive and can be removed from the womb at any point in the pregnancy without being killed . . . well, then, women can get the thing removed and no one needs to be upset about how some more fetus got killed. So the “oh no, but you’re murdering the poor fetus!” argument couldn’t be used against women who want to terminate a pregnancy early.
What’s the point of your thought experiment here? Is this a case where we’re trying to imagine a perfect world that’ll make everyone happy? I don’t see what the problem is that we apparently need to deal with now so that we don’t have to deal with it in 50 years.
So you want abortion restrictions, but are completely unable to articulate what they should be, or what should be done to people who violate them aside from “some kind of education”.
Tell me, are all your ethical stances as poorly-thought-out as this, or is it just that you don’t want to think too hard about abortion?
Because, you know, there are a lot of women who don’t have that privilege. This isn’t some abstracted debate to them, it is quite literally a matter of life and death.
And in the meantime, all those women who need abortions should do what?
I’m glad this is fun for you, playing these little intellectual exercises for shits and giggles. Meanwhile, REAL PEOPLE RIGHT NOW have to deal with what they’re going to do about their unwanted pregnancy.
Not hypothetical people, not virtual people. Real people. RIGHT NOW.
Yes, I can just imagine the banks upon banks of artificial uteruses, filled with gestating fetuses, nearing the point of full development–birth, or, in this case, decanting–is near. Are there happy parents lined up to take care of them? No. Some, but not all. But soon they will emerge into the world, parentless and vulnerable, because some asshole in the government decided that the state has a compelling interest in ensuring that every fetus that’s conceived gets a chance at fucking up this overpopulated world. Yup. That sure is a much better outcome than having a few million 8 – 15 week old fetuses die.
I love how you think that the only reason these women are snarking at the shit you say is because they’re being irrational, somehow.
@150:
So, it’s arbitrary. Do you think it’s right to leave a woman’s bodily autonomy to the whim of other people?
Just to be clear, I don’t think the banks of fetuses is an argument for or against abortion OR “rescuing” fetuses from abortion. It’s just an observation of the likely outcome of applying such a technology in this culture.
Gestating fetuses in jars removes the conflict between a woman’s bodily autonomy and a fetus’ need for nutrients and oxygen and perfectly-timed spurts of hormones and such. That’s all. Further observation: if the procedure for transplanting a fetus to a jar was much more risky and dangerous than simply aborting it, then it would still remain the woman’s choice about which procedure to have. If they were exactly as risky, I don’t know. I suppose I wouldn’t have a BIG problem with government mandating fetus preservation over fetus death. But seriously, this is so FUCKING ridiculous. Fetuses don’t have inherent value. They’re only as valuable as the people who long to parent them make them. If there’s nobody longing to parent a particular 12-week fetus, then what the fuck is the point in keeping it alive? It makes NO DAMN SENSE. Fetuses aren’t people. They’re potential people. Not actual people. I want to live in a world where every person alive has doting, caring, non-abusive parents and aunts and uncles and teachers. I want every child to grow up in an environment filled with support and education and fun. This is the priority, not the abstract suffering of entities that lack the capacity to understand suffering. Some people’s priorities are fucked the fuck up.
Curse those meddling blockquotes!
jamescarlton @141:
It was only everywhere you started with “but what if…”
Don’t you get it yet (and stormtroopervii):
Women have full bodily autonomy. First and most important thing to understand.
No one ever has the right to demand the use of another human beings’ body. Second important thing to understand.
There’s no further debate needed.
It doesn’t matter how many abortions a woman has had.
It doesn’t matter if the technology existed to remove a fetus after it was fertilized.
The *only* thing that matters [if you truly believe that women have bodily autonomy]:
1- a woman’s right to her own body means that no number of abortions is “too much”.
2- a woman’s right to her own body means that even if the technology existed to transport her fetus, she still must giver her permission.
jamescarlton:
You don’t even know what you’re talking about, but you’re sure you’ve come up with this AMAZING insight and if only women could be made to follow your advice, all those abortions you’re so uncomfortable with would stop happening.
In truth, most (maybe all?) clinics that perform abortions already discuss contraceptive options with their patients during their follow-up visits.
Can you try to understand that although they counsel women on contraceptives, explain how they work, and offer options, some women, because of their personal circumstances, are not able to take advantage of those options?
OBVIOUSLY the ONLY solution is to tie her up and force her to give birth against her will. In prison.
(Dredging up old thread, I know, but I had to say it.)
Ok I’ll articulate an entire medical plan in five minutes based on numbers I’m making up without all the facts. If you’re cool with that. Just don’t bite my head off… ha… I actually LOL’d typing that.
On a woman’s secondythirdish abortion doctors should provide them with educational material on contraception and preventing pregnancy. Read this pamphlet, visit this website and so on.
On a woman’s sixfth-or-so abortion, and provided there are no extraneous circumstances such as medical reasons for her and her partner being unable to use contraception. A woman should be legally required to undertake counseling and/or education programs as to why she continues to get pregnant and then having abortions (maybe it’s her asshole husband raping her? That’d be a good thing to find out and stop right?)
Matt’s argument was that women have full bodily autonomy regardless of whether a fetus is a person or not and regardless of whether you think they’re morally wrong or right because of their actions. I totally agree.
But is it possible to think, that in some select cases, if you do think it’s morally wrong it’s ok to do something about it that does not affect a woman’s bodily autonomy?
Maybe the argument is whether that’s even possible – and I’m not sure it is.
No no no you misunderstood Carleton. He wants to spay them not force them to give birth. That’s totally not the same thing!
@143: passion /= emotion. Agreed. Passion is what you have when you care. Emotion is what you appeal to when logic is lacking.
Insults /= ad hominems???? BULLSHIT!!! Insults are ad hominems are insults. If they weren’t insulting, they’d just be logical arguments. And no one with soft skin could parry logical arguments with “waaah”. I’m not, and no one should.
@145:
My argument isn’t that you don’t get the woman’s permission to operate on her. My argument is that there are two people with a stake in the decision and one who can actually make a decision. I’m not making a legal argument of whether or not to deny the one person who can make the decision the ability to make the decision; I’m making the moral argument that if we can save the person not competent to make any decision, we should attempt to do so. But if the fetus is not a person, then the debate ends and no further argument is necessary.
And sometimes hypotheticals are all we have. Hypothetical: you have a heart condition and no insurance. You attempt to get insurance. Should that insurance company be allowed to deny you coverage, because it’s a “pre-existing condition”? Purely hypothetical. Obamacare says “no”. I emphatically agree. It’s a moral argument that does not require the involvement of real people, but affects what we do to/for real people once codified into law.
“No one’s bodily autonomy outweighs another.”
Holy shit. You’ve made the pro-life point for them. Bodily autonomy of a fetus is equal to bodily autonomy for the pregnant woman? Neither outweighs the other?!? FUCK!!!! Now what?
“no one has the right to demand the use of another humans’ body”
What is “use”? If I desire to not have children, am I therefore “using” the death of the body that I’ve fertilized as a means to that end? This is why “is a fetus a person?” is an important distinction. If they are, then the discarding of their body for the desires of another (pregnant woman’s) body is indeed a case of the woman demanding the use of the fetus’s body as a by-product of birth control. That woman’s desire, their demand, is to remain childless. And the bodies of their offspring are being “used” as trash in meeting that end.
For the record, I mostly like your definition of abortion. It belies both Matt’s and “whatshername”‘s definition of abortion, in that neither is medically full or accurate. It isn’t just “the termination of a pregnancy”, because a vaginal birth of c-section does that as well. And it isn’t necessarily (if ever) “murder”.
But “Prior to viability”. WTF does that mean? Now we have to define “viability”. *Penn Gilette voice* FUCK!!!
@146 now he’s just being a dick. There’s a big difference between “need” and “want”. If you WANT to be a dick then fuck you. If you NEED to be a dick to save the human race, my legs are open.
@149 bullshit. I’m in favor of ALL people having rights. Is a fetus a person? If no, then argument over. If yes, then they have rights. And their rights must be weighed against the woman’s rights, with the most logical argument triumphant. We are all atheists. We all claim to be reasonable. If there is a reasonable nontheistic argument then we should articulate it clearly and consistently and FUCKING LOUDLY in the public sphere. Only then will we convince joe six pack and jill soccer mom that we’re on their side.
You’re a fucking idiot.
Stormtrooper’s name is accurate…cause hell if he could even hit the point.
Well, okay, if you like. Given the fact that women aren’t fucking stupid I think this would probably be a waste of time, but whatever. I think that most women know that contraception exists, but I suppose it couldn’t hurt to make sure that they weren’t misinformed. It might be better to make sure that the woman can actually afford the contraception that this pamphlet is telling her about. Information on contraception does nothing if the woman can’t afford to use it in the first place.
Look, I don’t think that simple ignorance is likely to be the issue here. Because, you know, I don’t think women are just freaking stupid. Women don’t go and get five or six abortions simply because they don’t know about contraception.
Insults aren’t logical arguments because they aren’t really arguments at all. If someone were to say to me “Anathema, you idiot, your argument was completely illogical. Here let me tell you why . . . ” and then proceeded to explain their argument, then that wouldn’t be an ad hominem, but an insult followed by a logical argument. But if someone said “Anathema, you’re an idiot so your argument is wrong” then that would be an ad hominem.
See the difference?
stormtroopervii
Way to misrepresent what I said on the first point and you’re just flat out wrong on the second one.
Ok if you’re cool with assigning people traits purely based on their gender, you go for it. Personally I think gender gives you a vague idea on whether or not somebody sits down to pee and that’s about it.
Hearing stories from the doctors, nurses and midwives I know leads me to believe there are more than a few freaking stupid people out there when it comes to all kinds of health issues and that the percentage of them that are women is a bit under %50. (I think studies have shown women know more about their health than men on average but it’s not by a huge margin)
You fucking idiot
Well CLEARLY the thing to do is to lock them up in prison and shackle them to a hospital bed until they give birth, to prevent them from slaughtering anymore innocent fetuses! That’s what stupid people who have the temerity to be in possession of a fertile uterus should get for their stupidity!
Oh, now it’s MORALLY wrong! Maybe no one cares about your ass-backward morals?
You apparently don’t know what an ad hominem is.
But not too loudly. Otherwise you’ll take your ball and go home. :c
@152 the point of the question is: where is the delimiter between “a person” and “not a person”? Discard all arguments of the fetus’s rights vs the pregnant woman’s rights. Yes, I deleted the word “mother” and replaced it with the wort “pregnant woman”, attempting to make it the most accurate and least emotionally loaded. At what point does a fertilized egg go from a lump of shit to a fully autonomous and independent individual? ctrl-f “stormtroopervii” and read all of my comments, please.
My point is to say: asking whether or not a fetus is a person should be insulting to no one. And there is a correct answer. And there is scientific and medical evidence in favor of that answer. What is that answer and what is that evidence? And how do we clearly articulate it to the people in line at starbucks who don’t know what a fucking latte is??? (aka: the undecided)
And, given that answer, how do we continue to deliver the convincing arguments in favor of a woman’s right to choose over the fetus’s right – but inability – to choose?
@154 “And in the meantime, all those women who need abortions should do what?”
Ooh. “need”. This word. I do not think it means what you think it means. No reasonable person denies that some women NEED an abortion. The (non-religious) debate exists surrounding those that don’t need it, but want it anyway.
“Meanwhile, REAL PEOPLE RIGHT NOW have to deal with what they’re going to do about their unwanted pregnancy.”
Remember the acid article? “Unwanted” describes EVERY woman attacked. Every woman who was a victim of an acid attack was unwanted by the man who attacked her. So does labeling a person “Unwanted” – whoever does the labeling – justify their torture and/or execution?
NO
Two people.
… If a fetus is a person…
Is a fetus is a person? Why or why not?
And if “yes”, is their state of “unwanted” by their parent sufficient to justify their death?
Now we separate woman from fetus, and the pregnancy is ended. Nobody is impinging on the woman’s bodily autonomy. She is free to do what she wants. Similarly, nobody is impinging on the fetus’ autonomy. It is free to do what it wants. What’s that, you say? It can’t breathe on its own? Why, it’s almost as if, in order to survive, the fetus requires the USE of a pregnant woman’s placenta in order to obtain a supply of oxygenated blood.
Derp.
Right. Yeah. And that debate revolves around whether it would be okay to imprison or fine those society determines don’t NEED, but only WANT, abortions, so that they are forced to carry the pregnancy to term, against their will, and endure labor and birth, or perhaps a c-section, also against their will.
What’s your proposal for dealing with these stupid people who want, but don’t NEED, abortions? Seriously. Are you gonna lock them up, or are you just going to preach at them? Because if it’s the latter, then why not have the honesty to admit that you’re pro-choice, but you’re also a moralizing asshole, and pack your shit up and go home. Nobody wants to hear your moralizing bullshit.
jamescarlton:
Way to attempt to evade the point; the reason women are mentioned rather than people is because only women can have an abortion, hypothetical future technologies aside (i.e. in reality).
Care to try again?
Here, I shall rephrase anathema’s point (without loss of generality) so as to obviate your specious retort: “
WomenPeople don’t go and get five or six abortions simply because they don’t know about contraception.”(You may now address the point, if you dare)
So it’s unreasonable to assume that women have the ability to decide what to do with THEIR OWN BODIES?
That’s sex, not gender.
Uh no.
Right, because acid burn victims lived inside the men’s bodies and that’s why the men didn’t want them, because the men didn’t want to donate their blood and organs for nine months. PERFECT analogy. Reminds me of how black people used to live inside the bodies of white people, which is actually what slavery was, white people kindly donating their blood and organs to helpless, non-sentient black people until the black people just needed more space or something. Love this line of argumentation.
Mak, uh, yes.
(Care to name but one man who has had an abortion (when they were a man?))
Pregnant men.
1.) A woman is a person. A fetus is not.
2.) The woman is not violating the fetus’s bodily autonomy. But in an unwanted pregnancy, the fetus is violating the woman’s bodily autonomy. The fetus is using the woman’s body to survive, the woman is not using the fetus’s body to survive. This is not as complicated as you seem to think it is.
Do you just not know what bodily autonomy is or what?
And now you’re just playing with semantics. Let’s say that someone desperately needs a kidney transplant and you happen to have the right blood-type. Is it okay for a doctor to strap you down to the operating table and remove one of your kidney’s against your will in order to save the life of the person who needs the transplant? By your logic, the person who needs the transplant isn’t “using” your body any more than you would be “using” the death of his body to keep your kidney if the doctor refused to perform the operation against your will.
Do you really think that the other patient’s use of your kidney against your will is equivilent to your “use” of his death?
Yet no one is questioning the personhood of the individual who needs a kidney transplant. And yet it would still be illegal for anyone to strap you down on an operating table and remove one of your kidneys against your will. Yet by your logic, you are demanding the use of the body of the person who needs a transplant in as a by-product of your goal of not having your kidney torn out.
Dude, get a dictionary.
Soooo Ing. Tell me what’s wrong with that? In what way does being female automatically make you intelligent and knowledgeable on health issues?
Does being male automatically makes you good at fixing cars and and taking out the trash?
Chuck some personal attacks and righteous indignation in there while you’re at it cause I know you’ve got some left. Try coming up with something you haven’t regurgitated on the last fifteen people who dared oppose you. Bonus points if it rhymes!
What an awful suggestion. I wouldn’t say it too loudly, there’s people in here who don’t take kindly to your type round here. I didn’t say anything even close to what your suggesting and half the internet just tried to strangle me through my screen.
It’ll happen eventually.
So saying that women aren’t inhumanly stupid is now “assigning people traits based purely on their gender”, but assuming that women are complete and utter morons isn’t. Good to know.
Now we remember that the Bodily Autonomy ™ insurance policy does not cover the use of human bodies as life-support machines, and realize that even ascribing full autonomy to the fetus does not grant the poor widdle non-sentient critter legal protection from abortion.
In order to sarcastically pretend to be thick-witted, you must first not be thick-witted.
So, coward, do you disagree with my proposal or not? Have the spine to say what you think. Get down off the cross and share with the class.
181:
Holy mother of Nayru, I missed that reply.
When he posted that shit earlier, I highly suspected that was what he was saying, but then I wondered if maybe I was misreading it and decided to give the benefit of the doubt. Jesus fuck, I was right the first time.
Stormtroopervii seriously, SERIOUSLY thinks that women DEMANDING RIGHTS OVER THEIR OWN BODIES is on the same level as MEN THROWING ACID ON WOMEN FOR NOT BEING SUBSERVIENT ENOUGH.
What the fuck? Do you think men OWN women like women own their bodies? Is it because women equivalent to little clumps of cells to you?
What the fuck is your malfunction, Stormtrooper?
@155 So your argument is that their execution is justifiable because they’re a drain on society? Well then shit, let’s drop our unemployment to 0%!!! Sally knows the way… Fucking moochers.
@158 “Fetuses don’t have inherent value”, “nobody longing to parent […] what the fuck is the point in keeping it alive?”, and “Fetuses aren’t people” are the money quotes. Scientific evidence, please. Did Barack, as a two-year-old, have no “inherent value” because his sperm donor didn’t value him? Do bums/vagrants/homeless have no “inherent value” because “there’s nobody longing” to “keep it alive”??? If it’s a person, we as a society should value it. Whether or not we judge its value lesser to another value, we should still value it and not dismiss it as nothing. If it is nothing, then please let’s establish that.
“Some people’s priorities are fucked the fuck up.”
+1
@166 “You’re a fucking idiot.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
“ad hominem, is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or unrelated belief of the person supporting it”
My idiocy is unrelated to the question “is a fetus a person?” or “how do we weigh the rights of the fetus versus its human incubator?”. Props, though, for answering both of those question.
Oh wait, you haven’t. Blow me.
@167 the “stormtrooper” comes from the game “Jedi Knight” where I played a white-armored stormtrooper in multipleyer mode. I wielded a red lightsaber, and after seven (vii) attempts I settled on a set of force powers that I judged to have maximum badassery. But if I had a blaster and not a lightsaber, you’re damn right I couldn’t hit the point of anything to save the emperor’s life.
@170 I see your “waaa” and raise it a “ptthhbbb”
I could get pregnant RIGHT NOW and at least try to have an abortion, if you’re willing to wait a few weeks. But maybe I’m not man enough?
I didn’t realize taking out the trash and fixing cars were men’s version of what medical procedures they should be allowed to have on their own bodies.
This is a truly, epically dishonest reading of the objection you’re purportedly responding to – straw man fallacy.
Examined in isolation this appears to be entirely irrelevant, since the dividing line proposed is not based on fetal development at all but rather on the binary condition of “in another human’s body” vs. “not.” I think I see where you’re going with it, sadly, and it does not follow…
Yep. This has no relevance to abortion as it actually occurs even if its premises are granted, and they’re problematic at best as noted.
This is a fallacious equivocation and you know it. Biological dependence is not what is meant by “slavery” in the sentence you quote – and you know it.
Unused sperm are spontaneously absorbed, not ejected. Still doesn’t make this relevant – irrelevant conclusion again. Also possibly a naturalistic fallacy – you leave a great deal of your reasoning unstated, so this could be quite a crowded kitchen sink of fallacies. (I’m pretty much just dumping some soap in there, leaving the water on, and calling it a day.)
Bodily autonomy is absolute. Also, all other things being equal you should defer to the person who will actually have to experience the condition in question, and I’ve never heard a single complaint from an aborted fetus.
Here it is, masturdebating aside.
This is dishonest gerrymandering, since you’re splattering fallacies left and right while lecturing your opponent about “making your argument logically”; you’re misusing the word “logical” to mean expressed in a certain tone, not being sound or valid. The fact that you apparently care more about the tone taken with you (and feel entitled to unilaterally impose restrictions regarding it), the fact that you’re treating the non-Spock-like responses of people this issue actually affects (hint: having an emotional response to things that affect you is entirely rational) as rhetorical flaws, and the fact that you’re playing devil’s advocate with an issue that is cut-and-dry in practice even if the premises underlying your abstracted what-ifs were granted and profoundly affects a large number of people who aren’t you (really is this some kind of GAME to you? Do you really not see why people it affects would legitimately have a problem with that?), indicate that you are not on our side at all.
Apparently, in Stormtrooper’s world, the mere existence of women living their own lives as independent individuals somehow infringes on the bodily autonomy of men in exactly the same way that a fetus growing inside of a woman’s uterus, draining nutrients from her blood, forcing her body to go through all sorts of hormonal changes, and putting her life and health at risk does.
Creating valid analogies clearly is not one of Stormtrooper’s strengths.
My bad. You’re right.
Not sure I’ll give you that, but I don’t know the stats. It wouldn’t surprise me but I’m a bit of a cynic.
Well, it could be unrelated – idiocy is the most charitable explanation for you pretending this is still an open question.
We don’t have to be charitable.
No.
We don’t.
So you accuse us of making emotional appeals for saying things like “insulting”, and yet you call flushing a clump of cells an execution? Is extracting rectal polyps an execution, too? What about cancer treatment?
Do you know how many fertilized “people” are naturally aborted? Should we have funerals for all of them?
Okay. But what about fetuses?
[meta + OT]
stormtroopervii: @165:
<snicker>
(Is your admission of your idiocy similarly unrelated to your idiocy, pervii?)
Look, James, it’s simple.
1. Yes, sex ed and contraception are good things.
2. Yes, not getting pregnant in the first place is better than getting pregnant, then having an abortion.
HOWEVER
3. All 1 and 2 mean is that sex ed and contraception should be offered. As in, made available, not mandated or “encouraged” under the threat of withdrawing health care. Under the assumption that patients know 1 and 2 and are capable of figuring out what’s good for them, and even if they’re not, making decisions for them is a dangerous road to walk down. That’s all.
Fetuses are not persons. A “person” is a legal category that denotes legal rights. It also is a cultural category that denotes sentience. A fetus has neither sentience nor legal rights. The latter assertion requires no scientific evidence, since it is easily verifiable–well, except in a few states, primarily in the benighted Southeast of the US, where women are, as we speak, being prosecuted for having miscarriages. That’s what you are aiming for, right? Policing women and locking them up if they make the wrong choices? As for the former assertion, the scientific evidence that fetuses are not sentient is that the oxygen level in their blood prior to birth is not sufficient sustain consciousness, much less sentience. This is also easily verifiable, so if you start whining about links that you’re too lazy to look up yourself, bite me. You’ll have to wait until morning.
Why are you comparing two-year-old Barack Obama to an embryo or a fetus? You must think we are all as stupid as you. I feel sorry for you.
No, they have inherent value because they are conscious, sentient persons with memories, dreams, aspirations, relationships, struggles, and so on.
Nice vague general platitude. What does it mean to “value” something? We don’t “value” born infants much, we expect people to care for them without any monetary recompense. We probably ought to “value” infants and children more than we do now–but then, that would require “valuing” what we often call “women’s work”, that is, gestating fetuses and giving birth and feeding and nurturing babies and children. Something that’s clearly not high on your list of priorities. I might get on board if “valuing” fetuses meant that pregnant women got plenty of paid time off before and after giving birth.
Blah fucking blah. Fetuses are worth different things to different people. The only definitive thing you can say about their value is that it does not exceed the value of a woman’s right to bodily autonomy.
Fetuses aren’t sentient. Fetuses aren’t sapient. That’s why we don’t consider them people in any meaningful sense of the term.
Two-year-olds are sentient and sapient. And moreover, they don’t need to infringe on anyone else’s bodily autonomy in order to survive.
The same is true of the homeless.
Look, I don’t care whether or not you value a fetus or not. You can value it all you want, so long as you don’t value it more than a woman’s right to her own body. As long as you aren’t arguing that the life of a fetus is more valuable than a woman’s bodily autonomy, I don’t care whether or not a fetus has any value or not. It’s not relevant.
That’s right. Your idiocy is completely irrelevant. No one ever said that it was relevant. If someone had tried to argue that you were wrong because you were an idiot, then that would be an ad hominem. But someone simply calling you an idiot is not an ad hominem.
I’m sorry Sally. I forgot to spell out my character traits in my username. Elite, facist and a genius! Hilarious! Which of those are you sarcastically pretending to be, which are you just pretending, and which is just you I wonder?
As I said before in my many, many previous posts. A woman’s right to choose is undeniable. The end.
What constitutes infringing that right to choose, and what doesn’t is all I’m arguing.
Hey, underinformed idiot. Do you always go into a debate so painfully ignorant of the subject on which you are so vigorously opining?
Do you realize that there are organizations that collect data on these subjects? And website that are dedicated to disseminating this information?
Apparently not. Pathetic, really. Pardon me, I just need to stand here and look down my nose at you for a minute. It’s not often that I get to feel so thoroughly superior to someone. Intelligence-wise, I mean.
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/
http://www.rainn.org/
http://www.guttmacher.org/
Bizarre. Does that much cognitive dissonance ever cause you to cross your eyes? I mean, surely it must have some kind of physical effect. Do you suffer from headaches often after discussing abortion?
@176 Given no technological advancements, it’s possible to keep a 4-month premature fetus alive artifically. Given the choice between that, and putting it on life support, which is the morally justified route?
Keep in mind that being on life support, in this case, is known to be a temporary condition. Contrast with the permanent condition of death.
Derp.
@177 anyone in prison is imprisoned against their will. I’ve said this twice but for the third time: I’M PRO CHOICE. But we need to have the debate to keep ourselves honest. And just because something is done to a person against their will does not mean that it’s morally unjustifiable. Or legally criminal.
“What’s your proposal for dealing with these stupid people who want, but don’t NEED, abortions? Seriously. Are you gonna lock them up, or are you just going to preach at them? ”
Universal health care. Free contraception. Free education involving that contraception. If the goal is to minimize the number of abortions – which the religious right ‘pro-life’ AND the reasonable ‘cut unneeded spending’ crowds agree on – we can do that by making abortions on the whole unnecessary. Some will still be medically necessary, but if we can minimize the harm, or do no harm, we can be in a better place financially and societally.
“then why not have the honesty to admit that you’re pro-choice, but you’re also a moralizing asshole, and pack your shit up and go home. Nobody wants to hear your moralizing bullshit.”
I am home.
And moralizing isn’t bullshit; it’s something we need to do if we care to prove not just to ourselves, but to the rest of the nation, that we have hearts.
If no one wanted to hear anything about moralizing, Sam Harris’s “The Moral Landscape” would have sold 0 copies.
@181 Fail. Just…. Fail.
@184 Your point #1 is an assertion for which you (or anyone) has provided 0 evidence.
point #2: the woman violates the fetus’s bodily autonomy when the does a deliberate act known to induce its death. If no violation is to occur, then the medical procedure to remove the fetus must not necessarily end in the death of the fetus.
unless the fetus isn’t a person, in which no violation has occurred. Still waiting for an answer to that one.
Semantics? Ask a lawyer. Fucking everything is semantics. If I shoot you in the face and kill you, semantics will determine the difference between me being considered:
– not guilty, reason of self defence
– not guilty, reason of insanity,
– guilty, involuntary manslaughter
– guilty, voluntary manslaughter
– guilty, murder I
– guilty, murder II
– guilty, probably some other shit
Do I get no prison? A year? 5? 10? life? death?
Semantics matter.
and damn this is getting tedious. If I don’t respond to a specific comment against my arguments: it’s not because I don’t notice or care. Well, maybe it is. But also they’re like fucking tie fighters. Too many of them!!
Fair point. I’m sold.
Not all moralizing is bullshit, but yours certainly is.
Whichever one you choose, or whichever one the woman in whose body the fetus was gestating chooses.
Any more simple questions?
jamescarlton:
How can you be THIS fucking dense?
As long as you keep up with these godamned stupid ass hypothetical scenarios, you do not believe that women have 100% bodily autonomy.
You keep coming up with these what if scenarios where women lose the right to choose what happens to their bodies. When you do that, NO MATTER HOW THE FUCK YOU TRY AND JUSTIFY IT, you no longer agree that women have full bodily autonomy.
It’s not this fucking hard.
Shit.
jamescarlton:
Duh. Attempting to influence their choice to suit one’s predilection (as you advocate) whether by commission or by omission would constitute an infringement of it no less than an outright disallowance of it (if to a lesser degree).
(I’m guessing (based on what you’ve written so far) that the distinction between qualitative and quantitative influence is lost on you)
From RHReality Check. It’s right on the front page.
Stop promoting discrimination against women, you heartless sexist fuckers.
Now that’s moralizing. And it ain’t bullshit.
You’re also a liar.
Bullshit. Letting women die of dangerous back-alley procedures, forcing them to endure miserable and dangerous pregnancies and births, filling orphanages with children that get shuffled through the system and then kicked out onto the street at eighteen, and forcing incredible financial burdens on families is not showing that you have hearts. It only shows that you hate women.
The people who think we don’t “have hearts” will not be swayed unless we become forced-birthers ourselves. Fuck that noise.
Where’s youre compassion for the poor rectal polyp?
Fetuses have no bodily autonomy. They aren’t people. They’re clumps of cells.
Did you not yet read the replies that pointed out a fetus isn’t a person, or did you just ignore them?
Oh awesome! This is a real debate! SWEET! I thought I just asked a question to the internet at large and then got yelled at for four hours. Jim Lehrer must be moderating.
Thanks for the links though. I’ll go check them out sometime. I’ve still got a lot of backlog catching up on the stats behind every other internet argument I’ve taken up. You think you guys have a long reading list try discussing military history sometime.
To no one in particular:
Why I hate the kidney argument.
Stated:
Person A is about to die of kidney failure. Person B has a kidney that can be removed, and used to save the life of Person A. Moral arguments aside, should Person B be legally compelled to undergo the invasive surgery to remove his kidney to save the life of person A?
My answer:
No.
Why the argument sucks:
It’s a shitty analogy.
This is NOT the situation we find ourselves in when a woman is pregnant. Let’s modify this hypothetical situation, keeping in mind all the whiners in this thread railing against hypotheticals while supporting Matt’s:
Person A is about to die of kidney failure. Person B has been compelled by an external force to give up his kidney to save Person A. Person A has no choice in the matter, and remains unconscious. Person B has a conscious choice: he can a) do nothing, and allow his overlords to induce suffering upon himself that ends in the saving of the life of Person A, or b) without legal consequence, he can kill Person A and remove from his own future months of suffering/recovery/hardship that would have resulted from kidney transplant surgery while ending the life of Person B.
That’s the difference.
“Do nothing” is the “pro-life” choice. It allows the fetus to gestate and grow into an infant/human. In the hypothetical, Person B lives. “Do something” requires the deliberate action of killing a fetus. Person B dies.
Is a fetus a person? Why or why not?
If yes, abortion is wrong.
If no, it’s totally cool.
We atheists should have a clear answer, with scientifically validated evidence, and not just a rote assertion. What is that answer? What is that evidence?
Oh, so you were just JAQing off, then?
You poor, poor dear. Why, that sounds even worse than the time that I almost missed paying my rent because my state-funded healthcare didn’t cover abortions, because of abortion stigma, to which YOU have been ACTIVELY CONTRIBUTING throughout these four hours. If it’s unpleasant you can always go offline. I didn’t have that option.
A fetus is not sentient. It is not sapient. Therefore it is not a person.
Liar. “Pro-life” is ANTI-CHOICE. “Pro-life” is I know the answer, even though it’s not my kidney that’s involved, and I’m going to impose it on you, on pain of civil or criminal fines.
Pro-choice is just that: choice. It’s your kidney. You do what you want with it.
Fucking dirty liar.
Abortion is totally cool either way, for the reasons already laid out above. The fact that you don’t like the reasoning doesn’t make it invalid.
Also, note: constructing a new human being out of the very cells of your own body, enduring hours upon hours of extremely painful labor, or possibly an invasive surgery–all that is “DOING NOTHING.”
No worries, pregnant ladies, all that discomfort you’re feeling is all in your heads! Stormtrooper is here to tell you that building a baby from scratch is “DOING NOTHING.”
Women’s work, indeed.
Sexist fuckwit.
@ 214:
The point of the kidney analogy is to show that we live in a society with a legal system that values bodily autonomy over life; it makes no sense to suddenly reverse this and start valuing life over bodily integrity the moment the life involved happens to be the life of a fetus.
But okay. Fine if you don’t like it. I’m fine with using your modified version of the analogy instead.
And in your version of the analogy, is it now legal to force the person to “do nothing”? Has it suddenly become moral to keep the person from doing something to save their kidney?
I don’t think so. Under your modified version of the analogy, my point still stands.
@190:
men do not own women. Neither do women own their gestating offspring. No one owns anyone. But, when one human-being(tm)/person(tm) has a legitimate claim to one set of rights, and one human-being(tm)/person(tm) has a legitimate claim to a similar but varied set of rights, whose claim do we value as triumphant?
Matt made the argument: We should grant right, and then remove them as required. And if we’re going to remove someone’s rights we need to have a DAMN GOOD REASON. I agree.
What’s you’re damn good reason for removing the fetus’s rights, over the pregnant woman’s rights?
Keep in mind that if you claim the fetus is not a person, we’re still lacking in evidence for that.
@193 I agree with none of what you’ve stated. Also, I’m pro-choice. I’ve taken pains to either express my opinions spockly, or ask question which could then (but were not) answered spockly.
“you are not on our side at all”
When did I make an argument to put people who have had an abortion in prison? Never. When have I made an argument that we should shame anyone who has had an abortion? Never.
I have no delusions that this is a game. Nor do I particularly care if some anonymous douche sprays me with douchewater (oddly.. not considered by chrome a misspelled word) that I myself have ejected. Real people are really feeling real consequences of real decisions in the real world. They all matter. Are some of these people also fetuses? If so, they feel these consequences as well. If not, they are of no import.
People are important. People matter. I care about people. Never will you ever see me say otherwise, even if I’m so drunk I can’t tell yo mama from a sausage.
@194 F. My point is: People cannot impose their will on other people. I think we can agree on that. Now here’s the tricky part: Is a fetus a person? No? Done, nuff said. Yes? Well, does an abortion impose the will of the mother on the fetus? If no, why not, and if yes, why is it ok to do so?
Your analogy to a real-world concept is somehow flawed! Let me instead posit a surreal hypothetical scenario that relies on ill-defined external forces!
Sorry to hear that.
Not really sure how you show a lack of sarcasm using text but that is genuine.
I don’t live in a country where that is the case but the various exchanges today don’t fill me with confidence that change is going to come for your part of the world quickly.
Many would disagree but I genuinely think our opinions are pretty similar – apologies if that makes any of you physically ill. To your most strident opponents I’m no better than any other godless, baby murdering fiend but there are a lot of people in between that need convincing before you can enact change and I’m not sure this all or nothing stance and the wall of outrage is helping.
Was fun though. Take it easy everyone :)
stormtroopervii:
Ok, we’re well past the third post rule.
No more being nice.
You’re conflating displaying emotion during the course of an argument with appealing to emotion to WIN an argument?
By all the non existent gods of Asgard that some stupid ass shit you just spewed.
You display your ignorance so well.
Do you have much practice at this?
Insults ≠ ad hominem attacks.
I think you’re an asshole.
I don’t believe your position on women’s rights is wrong because you’re an asshole.
I think your position on women’s rights is wrong because it denies women full bodily autonomy.
Now you’re arguing dishonestly you little fuck.
What I said:
I made it clear I do not believe fetuses are people. That’s made clear in the bolded portion above. Let me state it clearer:
I do not believe fetuses are people. I do not believe in personhood.
The point keeps whistling past your head.
It doesn’t matter if the fetus is a person or not.
The woman is the existing person that this fetus-the non existent person-is dependent upon. The existing woman has rights (this doesn’t change even if you were to somehow make the fetus a person). Full bodily autonomy is one of those rights. No one can co opt the use of someone else’s body. You don’t get to demand my kidney even its to save your life.
Your faux victim posturing is genuinely disgusting to me. I get that you’re being sincere, and I am unimpressed.
And, let me add, it is precisely your squeamish concern for the opinions of my “strident opponents” that lends legitimacy to their attempts to curtail my rights. Or did that whole thing about ABORTION STIGMA just sail right over your head?
Stop pretending like there’s anything wrong with getting an abortion. There isn’t. Abortions are fucking awesome.
Stop promoting discrimination against women.
So you do this whole “engage in arguments without even a cursory knowledge of the subject” thing often, then?
What’s your damn good reason for removing the woman’s rights over the fetus’s? Why is it okay for the fetus so impose its will (which it doesn’t have) on the woman? Why have you not thought any of this through?
Because someone’s right to their own bodily autonomy outweighs someone’s right to life. (This is the entire point of the kidney example that you so dislike.)
Me? A white male from a wealthy english speaking background playing the victim? Seriously, give me a little credit. Ask yourself how you honestly read that from what I said.
Try not looking for enemies so hard Sally.
stormtroopervii:
You really can’t seem to fathom that you’re missing the point.
Given the fact that a pregnant woman is an existing human being with full bodily autonomy, and that another living creature is seeking to co opt her body against her will, you have every right to make the choice that you feel is best for you.
Even *if* that fetus were considered a person, they still wouldn’t trump the pregnant woman’s rights. The fetus does not have the right to demand the use of the woman’s body just as no one has the right to demand someone donate their kidney.
*grumbles* passive-aggressive smiley face douchebag motherfucker…
Yeah, seems fairly plausible.
stormtroopervii:
Part of women’s bodies, embryos and fetuses are, grown from their own tissues.
(You don’t think women own their own bodies?)
—
Liar.
—
Uh, yes. White straight dudes do this ALL the fucking TIME.
You said:
It’s a theme, dipshit. If you didn’t mean to come across as a whiny jerk who loves to play the victim, well, you failed completely.
And you are still ignoring what I said about abortion stigma, how it affected my life, and how YOU have been PROMOTING abortion stigma right here. And how you could stop promoting discrimination against women by ending your willingness to promote abortion stigma.
Couldn’t give a fuck about what the bible bashing fundies think but good luck convincing Jane and Joe Voter with “Abortions are fucking awesome.”
Wow, you just contradicted yourself in the space of one sentence. A short one, too. Umm… congratulations? Maybe there’s a Guinness category for that.
“So fire away. Reasons and evidence preferred but abuse is always worth a giggle.”
“Wow. Now I’m apparently a theist, Fox News watching Republican. Ouch, that’s probably the first thing that’s actually hurt.
Were you guys feeling left out because a crazy fundie nutjob hadn’t showed up yet so you grabbed for the next best thing and filled in the blanks?”
“Oh and murdering a kitten every time someone has an abortion – because that’s how us totalitarian women hating megalomaniacs roll.”
“Chuck some personal attacks and righteous indignation in there while you’re at it cause I know you’ve got some left. Try coming up with something you haven’t regurgitated on the last fifteen people who dared oppose you.”
“I thought I just asked a question to the internet at large and then got yelled at for four hours.”
“I genuinely think our opinions are pretty similar – apologies if that makes any of you physically ill.”
Noooo, you weren’t playing the victim AT ALL.
Seriously? “Maybe if you just quiet down a little, people will be more willing to take your rights seriously?”
And a nice dose of “Let’s make compromises on your rights”, too. Gee, go figure.
Jury is still out on the straight part in my case… but yeah you’re right.
And I stand by my opinion that abortions are not “fucking awesome” or even a “Good Thing” just as they aren’t a “Bad Thing” or “Satan’s Grand Plan”. They are what they are and I believe if you want to actually help the next person to be in the situation you were in, maybe there’s a better way to go about it.
jamescarlton:
Because Jane Voter would never, ever appreciate being able to have the choice.
The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion
@196 “idiocy is the most charitable explanation for you pretending this is still an open question.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo-QIY7ys-k
Question everything. Everything. Always question everything. If not, you and we all “stroke each other” and end up in a circle-jerk of bullshit. If we question nothing of what we say we end up in an asshole of self-righteous crap to which the only bottom is the rectum we’re crapped out of.
And you call me an idiot?? FUCK YOU!!!
I’m the one keeping us honest. You’re just parroting self-righteous bullshit.
@197 If you remove a fetus, after sufficient gestation time, from its host, it will breathe and shit and bitch about the weather. Cuz its fucking cold being wet and naked.
Polyps don’t do that. Like your arguments, I’ve had some pulled from my ass. They ain’t people. Neither is a tumor.
“Natural abortion” is not up for debate. I call that “miscarriage”, as any reasonable person would. It’s the same as if PZ died of his next heart attack: unfortunate, but no one’s fault and not a crime.
@198 is that comic sans or are you just happy to see me?
@200 so if our “cultural category” claimed that any female could be killed by her father until she’s married, would that then be “ok”? If no, then “culture” is not to be used. If “yes”, then the taliban culture is justified.
Apparently I’m stupid now too, for asking questions. You could just answer them. But apparently that’s above you.
So bums are conscious sentient persons with memories and dreams. My point was that there are no relationships but ok lets continue. If you get drunk and pass out… you’re no longer conscious. Your lumped state is not reasonably sentient. And your memories are of no import because you can’t prove that you have them. And dreams? Well, a fetus can make a dream-o-meter wiggle too. So that must not matter.
Can I kill your unconscious drunk dumb ass because you don’t know about it? Is that ok? No, because consciousness is not a sufficient or necessary condition for personhood. Unconsciousness is a temporary condition that can be overcome given time, be it overnight or overmonth.
‘What does it mean to “value” something? ‘
ooh, tough question. you got me. let’s make the religious right right, and value nothing. that’ll show em!!!
‘We probably ought to “value” infants and children more than we do now–but then, that would require “valuing” what we often call “women’s work”, that is, gestating fetuses and giving birth and feeding and nurturing babies and children. ‘
Naw lets just let them die like Terry Schaivo. Even though they’ll grow out of their illness, unlike she did.
Cost is not a useful argument here. I’d give up lots of fucking money to save my wife or daughter. The question is: do we value the life and by how much?
‘Something that’s clearly not high on your list of priorities. I might get on board if “valuing” fetuses meant that pregnant women got plenty of paid time off before and after giving birth.’
You know what’s high on my list of priorities? People. At the top are my family and I.
In france, women get a year of paid leave when they have a child. Seriously, cost is not an argument for pro-choice. cost is an argument for universal health care.
“Fetuses are worth different things to different people”
As are cars. And a college education. And a life without children. And chocolate. And disobedient daughters.
“The only definitive thing you can say about their value is that it does not exceed the value of a woman’s right to bodily autonomy.”
Why not? Why can’t we have the argument that the fetus’s bodily autonomy is greater/lesser than a woman’s bodily autonomy? We make that assumption. Why is it wrong to question it, Mr Buchannan?
“Hey, you New Atheists maybe should shut up and stop being so aggressive and shit, us Nice Friendly Nonbelievers are trying to butter up the Religious Right and they’re SO CLOSE to almost being friends with us! They even called us human! Yes, we’re so sorry that those mean people called your religious beliefs false, do you think maybe we can do something about not screwing up the science education so much? No? Oh, okay, maybe later.”
“Hey trans people, you’re scaring off the moderates with your weird gender bending and stuff. How ’bout you take your rights to medical care and anti-harrassment laws and sit this one out for a bit? Baby steps, you know! That’s a sport.”
Couldn’t give a fuck about what the bible bashing fundies think but good luck convincing Jane and Joe Voter with “Abortions are fucking awesome.”
well, an obvious question but… How would you know whether they are or not?
as to your initial question:
Is a fetus is a person? Why or why not?
persons are defined by an arbitrary set of rights assigned to them by their communities.
answer your own question.
Countries could promote and invest into sexual education, but it’s better to put that slut who had her x-th abortion (first?second?fifteenth? who knows) on the spot and shame her into never having an unwanted pregnancy again.
Countries could provide free contraception, but it’s better to make abortions more expensive because then…. people won’t have sex? will keep the pregnancy (because that’s cheaper for everyone)?
And then James wonders why his suggestions weren’t welcomed with cheers.
No one claimed they did. However, the gestation itself requires the ongoing consent of the woman, which can be withdrawn at will, regardless of consequences.
A person trying to murder you may have a right to life, but you would still be justified in killing them if self-defense requires it.
A person being raped or murdered can impose their will not to be raped or murdered on their assailant, even at the cost of the assailant’s life.
A person offering Gestation Services ™ to another can impose their will to discontinue said Services to the beneficiary, even at the cost of the beneficiary’s* life.
Using force to stop an unwanted interference is not equivalent to initiating an unwanted interference.
*under the strictly hypothetical “a fetus is a person” scenario, with which I do not agree.
maybe there’s a better way to go about it.
…and it’s also quite obvious that you’re deliberately wasting everyone’s time, since YOU HAVE NO CLUE WHAT THAT WAY IS.
run along, little boy.
“I understand that abortion is a horrible, vile deed. A murder. But please, sir, could I have one?”
So how’s the sound and fury working out?
Do you actually have anything left when the real whack-jobs come along?
Compromise is a fact of life. Yeah, even with rights. How our those rights at this point in time by the way? Shitty? Why not start by making them less shitty and then move on to making them ok, passing through pretty good junction before a final stop at fucking awesome?
You don’t have to settle at settling.
[meta]
pervii:
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
You do realize that US already has some abortion rights, but they are being constantly fought against by fundies? For example, a whole state having a single abortion provider so that women have a hard time getting to them, or are required to travel multiple times to various “counselings”.
Abortion laws in US right now are a compromise, a compromise which is every single day being pushed and stretched into something a bit more anti-abortion instead of turning into something better. I fully support US women in deciding to fight back and ask for full rights.
Seriously, the allowed tags needs to describe how to blockquote. It would help things out sooo much.
stormtroopervii:
The fetus doesn’t have bodily autonomy because it’s not a human. It hasn’t been born. It’s not a person.
or
The fetus doesn’t have bodily autonomy because it’s a creature that depends on it’s survival within the body of another human being-a human being with bodily autonomy. Remember the point about no one having the right to co opt the body of another for their personal use? It doesn’t matter if the fetus is a person or not.
and with that, I think I’m done. This is just going back and forth.
Until both you and jamescarlton recognize that there is no situation that justifies robbing a woman of full bodily autonomy, you’re assholes.
If her unconscious drunk dumb ass is infringing on your bodily autonomy in some way that can’t be resolved without killing her, then yes. Otherwise: congratulation, you’ve crapped out another useless fauxnalogy.
Oh dear oh dear. My, you really are stupid. Of course you can have the argument. You are having that argument right now. You are also losing that argument. I think you are confusing having an argument with winning an argument, so, now that you are losing, you are nonsensically complaining about not being allowed to have the argument which you are currently engaged in.
There is no class of human beings who get to conscript others into donating blood and/or organs against their will. What makes fetuses special?
And your opinion as someone who will never have to endure one is worth exactly shit.
And up until that point where it breathes and shits and bitches about the weather, it is little different from a rectal polyp.
More JAQing off.
The rest of your post was stupid, belligerent, nonsensical, ignorant bullshit, which really isn’t surprising, since that’s usually where this crap stems from and where it usually ends up again.
Especially this part:
In france, women get a year of paid leave when they have a child. Seriously, cost is not an argument for pro-choice. cost is an argument for universal health care.
WOW, A FUCKING YEAR. That TOTALLY covers the eighteen-plus years of feeding, clothing, educating, and medical coverage it takes to raise the child into adulthood and independence. Assuming the child and parent are both reasonably healthy and not suffering from debilitating health conditions that would be an even bigger financial drain, and assuming higher education isn’t going to happen, and assuming the family is even functional enough that the child is properly able to be cared for.
Naw, it’s not like raising kids is expensive or anything. Especially a child that was completely unprepared for.
Stupid privileged misogynist dumbass.
Lots better than the previous couple of decades of mealy-mouthed capitulation and “compromises” like the Hyde Amendment, which, I will remind you, is directly responsible for difficulties I encountered in my life, and which was essentially written for guys like you, who say they’re pro-choice BUT BUT BUT.
But thanks for asking.
Hi, I’m a dude on the internet at 3am.
@201 “Fetuses aren’t sentient. Fetuses aren’t sapient. That’s why we don’t consider them people in any meaningful sense of the term.”
Infants aren’t sapient or sentient. In my birthing class I saw a video of a doctor referring to an infant’s first 3 months as the “4th trimester” because they are so fetus-like. The difference between a fetus 2 days before removal from incubation, and an infant 2 days after, is not sentience or sapience. I’ve seen a 2 day infant. It’s less sentient or sapient than my dog. But it’s a person. Why?
I referred to the homeless and Obama because of the argument-ad-no-one-cares. Just because no one cares about a person doesn’t make them less of a person. You seem to agree with that. The person who said this:
” Fetuses don’t have inherent value. They’re only as valuable as the people who long to parent them make them. If there’s nobody longing to parent a particular 12-week fetus, then what the fuck is the point in keeping it alive? It makes NO DAMN SENSE. Fetuses aren’t people. They’re potential people. Not actual people”
disagreed, and seemed to think that a person’s value was derived at least in part by others’ desire to care for them.
“Two-year-olds are sentient and sapient. And moreover, they don’t need to infringe on anyone else’s bodily autonomy in order to survive”
Touche. Except that if I stopped feeding my two-year-old and she died, that would be considered criminal negligence and I could be prosecuted. Going out of my way to send her to an adoption agency because I don’t want her would violate my bodily autonomy, because my lazy ass doesn’t feel like doing that.
The bodily autonomy argument is good. But, the problem is that pregnancy has already compromised it. So your choice is to kill a fetus to restore it, or do nothing, and the situation will resolve itself given sufficient time. Given that this is the only life we will ever have, if you’re robbing a person of the only life they will ever have, when it’s just barely started, you better have a damn good reason.
Unless a fetus isn’t a person. Then it doesn’t matter.
Seriously, bedtime. nighty night
Do you really think ANY civil rights have been won by being nice?
Do you think ANY were won without anger and aggression and lots and lots of loud, consistent demanding?
Shut the fuck up and quit telling women how to fight their battles.
You’re a fucking dumbshit.
hey asshole. Being pregnant and giving birth is a damn far cry from “doing nothing.”
Because we all know that a calm debate, civility and, above all- compromises, work great with “real whack-jobs”.
Women are nothing to Stormtrooper. Just walking incubators. Pregnancy is nothing. Labor is nothing. Birth is nothing. C-sections are nothing.
Women are nothing.
Even if that “person” has never known that it’s alive, and so would be unable to miss what was “robbed” from it.
Even if we seem to have no problem with “robbing” the lives of millions and millions of sperm and eggs by not trying to impregnate every single woman we come across, every time they no longer are pregnant.
Even if a vast majority of “people” are naturally flushed from the womb with no deliberate effort from the womb-owner, and no one seems to be crying for them.
Even though millions of “people” are “robbed” of life in IVF clinics across the world.
Even though you only care about life if it’s not a pregnant woman.
I can call the adoption agency for you, Stormtrooper. Unlike pregnancy, it’s a task that can be transferred from person to person.
Likewise, I’m sure someone at the adoption agency could send a driver and a car over to pick up your daughter. Again, unlike pregnancy, driving a little girl from the home of an unfit parent to place her in the care of the state is something that can be done by any person. And it does not require the donation of any tissue from anyone, nor entail any special health risks, merely a bit of time out of their life.
But you are a fucking dumbshit, as we have seen, so I expect this will be too much for you to process.
The person themself cares about themself*. That’s not “no one”. And since their existence is not an infringement on anyone’s right to their own body, their right to go on living is really cut-and-dry.
Because since it doesn’t need to infringe on someone’s body to exist, and in an environment with low infant mortality, it’s safe to draw the somewhat-arbitrary line between “not yet person” and “person” at birth.
No it wouldn’t. You sound as stupid as the “paying taxes is indentured servitude” people.
Sounds like a good choice.
You’ve already been told that building a fetus inside one’s uterus is not “doing nothing”, and that pushing a baby out of yourself through excruciating pain or invasive surgery is not “the situation resolving itself”. You have ignored that argument, apparently because it’s inconvenient for you, and continued to pride yourself on being the brave skeptic challenging the status quo and keeping the discussion honest. Pitiful.
Abortion is no more “robbing a person of the only life they will ever have” than successfully using contraception, and it is motivated by the same desire NOT TO MAKE A PERSON.
And bodily autonomy is “a damn good reason”.
*a fetus doesn’t, since rudimentary sentience is required.
So, typing as I watch…
Wait, she thinks that she’ll win over the audience by citing the creationist crap of “reproduces after its own kind”?
So, a “human with great potential”, like the great potential to be simply flushed out with the next period? The great potential to be spontaneously aborted? And the comparatively small chance to actually grow into a baby? Yeah, and every baby has the great potential to win a Nobel Prize…
Talking about science, she obviously didn’t learn the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions…
And no, my children are not dependent on me the way they were as fetuses. They don’t literally suck my blood.
And she doesn’t understand the difference between differences in quantity as opposed to differences in quality.
As for the pictures: Was that a human being? Because it could as well have been a cat or a dog. I’m wondering why she didn’t show the pictures a woman actually took of her own abortion.
Yes, how do we value human beings?
How much do you value women, Christine?
What that is their uterus? So, is that their blood as well? Their calcium? Their kidneys? Because yes, Ms. “Biology”, fetuses make heavy use of women’s kidneys. Their heart that beats for them? Tell me, if I agree to let them take out the uterus as well, can I have an abortion?
Put that building on fire? Sluts, keep your legs shut!
And yes, a woman’s body is just like a man’s wallet. We know, we know, the MRAs tell us so.
So, if the doctor makes the call, does he go to jail if she dies?
And financial health? Asshole. Oh and obviously permanent severe damage is just not enough. Who cares if she ends up in coma…
Matt just hammered her.
“The woman put that child into that place!”
Sluts, sluts, sluts, slut!!!!!
Continuing after having a root canal done, which was considerably less painfull than watching this…
Great questions from the audience and lots of wiggeling on her side. She just tries to dodge all those inconvenient questions about miscarriage.
But let me ask it again, and let me ask it personally:
Am I guilty of manslaughter because my body didn’t provide for the embryo? Because if abortion is murder like killing my 3 year old would be then this would be akin to letting my 3 yo starve.
Does she have an answer? Of course she hasn’t, just like she doesn’t have one for the “remove one of the eight cells to see if it’s healthy” szenario and just like she automatically agreed that you can freeze fertilized eggs…
I hope somebody puts the 2 yo vs. 2000 frozen blastocytes in a burning building dilemma before her…
++++
“To help women in better ways than killing their children?”
Because we all know that women just wants children, lots of them. It’s really the one thing we were made for.
+++
“That’s an excellent question”
“She has caused this being into existence”
WAit, I completely did that on my own? I thoughtthere was somebody else involved.
Capatain in a plane?
Hello, a woman is not a thing something you seem inable to understand…
Consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy, but our consent is totally not of any important.
Now we’re boats…
+++
Wonderful question. Should I be in prison?
“Sex has consequences”
Sluts, sluts, sluts, keep your legs shut!
“You’re not making any sense!” Yes, best thing said so far.
“Fetuses are just like black people!!!!”
“Life starts at conception!!!!”
Life started quite some billion years ago. And yes, each persons life started when mummy egg and daddy sperm met. Or when mummy’s egg was formed when she was just in utero, or…
Yes, for a simple definition life starts at conception, enbryos are human beings, what else should they be?
What has that to do with the question?
“from basis of science”
No, you didn’t
“Differences between the “preborn and the toddler and the teenager are the same!!!!”
No, they aren’t, you’re just too stupid to understand.
All in all she just argued for special fetus rights. Because fetuses are just more important than women.
And a quote from the known late misogynist Christopher Hitchens. Yeah, that’s just the thing to sum it up…
“Fetuses are just like black people!!!!”
O.o
Continuing after having a root canal done
damnit, I am now reminded of the tooth-work I need done myself.
ugh.
Do you actually have anything left when the real whack-jobs come along?
I’m genuinely curious exactly how you differentiate yourself.
The fetus doesn’t have bodily autonomy because it’s not a human. It hasn’t been born. It’s not a person.
you might want to clarify.
being defined as “human” and being defined to be a “person” are two entirely different things.
one is an issue of species, the other an issue of rights.
Why did I just plough through all that?
For the passive-aggressive confused, here’s the deal.
Even in a perfect world with excellent sex education, good advice and accesss to supplies within walking distance of every residence and also no stigma, no religious nonsense, no rape, no bullying and no domestic violence there will still – once in a while – be an unplanned pregnancy.
Now, that pregnancy may be more or less inconvenient, more or less threatening to the well-being of a family, more or less danger to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman.
Whichever it is, the woman will be best placed to know all the facts. Whichever it may be, a decision is required – to continue the pregnancy or to abort.
The woman is capable of making that decision. The foetus is not.
End of story.
And, no, I don’t have any problem with the pregnant woman consulting her mother, her partner, her friend. I don’t think anyone here does.
I do have a major problem with people trying to impose their notions on me.
I have an even bigger problem with people claiming that they have some right to impose their decision on me. Doesn’t everyone have a problem with that or is it only us uppity women?
Um, the fact that you can send the hypothetical child away means that they’re not encroaching on your bodily autonomy.
The fact that you’re hazy about this strongly suggests that you don’t understand what bodily autonomy means.
Good enough for who, exactly?
Good enough for you?
Or good enough for the person who’s actually involved?
If it’s the former, you’re going to have to demonstrate your superior judgement in all possible cases, over all possible women. You’re going to have to demonstrate that you’re vastly better at assessing their physical, mental, and emotional capacity for carrying and birthing a child better than they themselves are. You’re going to have to demonstrate that And, superiority regardless of the resources a woman, has, and the advise she seeks, if any. In short, you’re going to have to show that you’re better at being a pregnant woman than the pregnant woman herself.
And, of course, you’re going to have to enforce your superior judgement on her. Including how she will be punished should she defy your will.
If it’s the latter, and we can actually agree that a woman is capable of making this decision… then she doesn’t answer to you.
Not when she gets pregnant.
Not when she learns she is pregnant.
Not when she makes her decision about what to do about being pregnant.
So, which is it?
Does your opinion override the woman’s?
Or does her’s override yours?
What, do we need a translator to stupid now?
FETUS NEED TO BE IN WOMAN TO SURVIVE.
FETUS OUTSIDE OF WOMAN DIE.
WOMAN NO NEED FETUS TO SURVIVE.
IF FETUS IN WOMAN, WOMAN GET SICK.
REMOVE FETUS, WOMAN GET BETTER.
IF WANT BABBY, NO REMOVE FETUS.
SORT OF LIKE TAPEWORM, IF TAPEWORM GREW INTO BABBY.
Is it that hard?
greenspine
I would argue that she doesn’t understand pregnancy at all. Her whole gobbledock about the uterus being the natural environment of the fetus and therefore not belonging to the wman but the fetus? You can’t get biology more wrong than that. And it ignores, of course that the fetus makes use of all of a woman’s body, from the heart to the kidneys. The whole dancing around the subject of maternal health shows that she doesn’t have a leg to stand on: She doesn’t want parents to be forced to donate kidneys, but she’s apparently fine with pregnancy damaging a kidney to making it useless…
james carlton
Biology is always a question of the health of the mother. You’re never in a better condition afterwards than before. And the fact that everything went fine and dandy for 9 months doesn’t mean you’re not ending up in a life-threatening condition at birth.
So what?
Clearly, not getting pregnant in the first place is the better thing health-wise than getting pregnant and then having an abortion.
But so is not getting a tatoo or piercing or nose job. Why do you feel the need to regulate a woman’s health decissions in a way you don’t do with anybody else?
Wether abortion is ok or not is totally irrelevant on the question whether it’s a once in a lifetime event or something you do twice a year.
Your questions makes a statement on your character. It’s not a nice one.
Stupid bitches! The men need to educate you!
Women must be pretty stupid and irrational creatures in your world. Not really human beings…
You’re an idiot.
You act like all women had full access to information, education, birth-control and early abortions when we live in a world with abstinence-only education, lack of access to birth-control and even more lack of access to abortions and you act like the problem were irresponsible sluts who spread their legs for every idiot while declining all his nice offers of wearing a condom and then waiting unnecessarily until you need a surgical abortion because it’s just more fun.
Yeah, if they bother you that much, just don’t have one, how about that and for the rest of it let women make their own decissions.
Wrong. If you had just said that, we wouldn’t have an argument. But you made your case to force women to do XYZ because you seem to believe they’re too stupid and lazy to do it on their own.
Funny when your whole argument was about forcing women to do XYZ…
Wow, I didn’t even know I was a lesbian married to another woman…
Ibis
Thing is that biggest population growth actually happens in dirt poor countries where women have no acces to birth control whatsoever. We know that by just offering birth control (and making the catholic church STFU) the problem more or less solves itself. Because actually most women aren’t very keen on having 10 children of whom 3 don’t make it to age 2 and the rest of them being dirt poor and sick.
stormtrooper
Then just stop already. We’re sick and tired for people to get a kick out of hypothetically treating us like cattle when we’Re actually in danger of being treated like cattle.
Another person to discard the woman involved as a necessary evil.
It isn’t. But birth is the point when said entity doesn’t make use of another’s body anymore.
Duh.
So, you think it’s OK to decide that women should be cut open with major abdominal surgery whether they want that or not?
Fuck you.
Wrong. You are totally allowed to use whatever means you have to mitigate those effects. Why shouldn’t women be allowed to do so, too?
No, you’re definetly not. If you were you’d see that you’re only helping the forced birthers.
So, hey, we end the problem: We magically beam the embryo/fetus out of a woman’s womb who is fine with you doing so thus giving her an abortion (as Matt defined it so nicely: a procedure that ends pregnancy) and let the fetus grow in a vat.
So, why aren’t you working on the artificial uterus right now?
Somebody really needs to learn their terminology…
Fucking idiot.
If I’m pregnant and don’t want to be I need an abortion. If I’m hungry and don’t want to be any longer I need to eat something.
Remember that none of those women literally sucked the blood out of the man?
I think if a woman were doing so and the man just had some acid at his hands I guess nobody would disagree with him using it…
Yep, because pregnancy and childbirth are really things we don’t do actually…
+++
I have two planned kids I love to death. But becoming a mother and primary caretaker set me out on a path of self-destruction and depression and mental health problems. Yeah, butterflies and unicorn poops.
@ stormtroopervii 165
The limit of viability appears to be defined as the point at which 50% of neonates will survive given extraordinary medical care not respective of prognosis otherwise. It’s currently 24 weeks and unclear whether that will continue to be the limit; before that point, the lungs aren’t developed enough to allow the neonate to breathe even with assistance and breathing is pretty important.
Google is your friend. And your English is terrible, in that semi-literate native speaker sort of way. Maybe you’d like to fix that.
And fuck Penn Jillette.
Re viability: The “viable” definition refers to a healthy fetus. The average second or third trimester abortion is not performed on a healthy fetus. Even when the official indication is a maternal problem, such as HELLP or AFLP, the maternal compromise means that the fetus isn’t getting sufficient blood and nutrients and will quickly be distressed and in poor condition if it is born. Remember the Angela Carder case: the fetus was something like 26-27 weeks. Most otherwise healthy premature births at 26-27 weeks result in a baby who goes home from the ICU eventually, frequently with minimal sequelae. Carder’s baby probably died without ever taking a breath because it was born to a severely ill mother and did not develop normally. So it’s unlikely that a fetus aborted for maternal issues at 20, 24, or even 28 weeks would have had much of a chance of doing anything but dying expensively and painfully in an ICU if it had been born.
@Mak 190, 197, 212
Not clumps of cells! Differentiated tissue! Organ development! Embryology is awesome, plz not to elide it.
Unless you’re talking about the possibility of EC preventing implantation. Blastocysts, not quite clumps, but close enough for government work.
The difference between a fetus 2 days before removal from incubation, and an infant 2 days after
Basic biology lesson time: Do you know how a 40 week old fetus is different from a newborn? I can think of a dozen or so ways right off, most of which should be known to an educated lay person who takes a few minutes to think things through. At least one difference is suggestive of differences in level of consciousness. Know what I mean yet?
@SallyStrange
Come now, that’s a bit unfair. Our rights, indeed our very lives, provide him for great amusement and intellectual* masturbatory fare. So I imagine that we’re at least as important to him as wanking over the possibility of a Dyson sphere.
*This word seems inaccurate, but I can’t think of a better one.
You speak truth. I apologize, I should have noted that.
Been there, done that, you add nothing I haven’t heard or thought about since Roe v. Wade. Typical concern troll loser, thinking it is adding to, not just repeating, the discussion carried out over the years. Why are you even showing us your idiocy?
Easy. Birth is the dividing line between person and non-person. Biggest difference, it is now independent of of the woman, with several irreversible changes occurring during the birthing process. Period, end of story. Thems the facts. The state even gives you a certificate. What a stupid question pretending reality doesn’t exist and is trumped by hypotheticals (mental masturbating). Reality always wins over hypotheticals.
I’ve had my knee operated on 12 (I think) times. Do you think that I should be subjected to a ‘disincentive’ so that I don’t have any more knee surgeries? Or is this question only applicably to women and reproductive rights?
I lucked out and was in bed before Carlton showed up and shit all over the place. Still didn’t get a good night’s sleep, but I was in bed by 9:30pm.
What makes you think that you have the right to tell another adult human being what medical procedure she can, or cannot, have?
Well, you think that you do.
Because the only possible explanation is that women are ignorant. Gotcha.
See, Carlton? There’s the one who needs your forced education programme.
Unless, for some reason, you feel uncomfortable with her right to choose.
No, you are arguing that, in some situations, a woman can no longer be trusted to make decisions.
Part of me wants to cheer. The cynic in me is going to keep reading to find out if that stuck.
Which sounds suspiciously like someone who is dismissing the requested statistics to avoid being shown that he is wrong.
My degree is in military history and I am a public historian/cultural interpreter dealing with labour, industrial, economic and transportation history. Your point being?
Obviously one of those ‘serial root canal’ people. Not that root canals are bad, but we need to do something about those who have too many. Not that I’m trying to step on Giliell’s right to bodily autonomy, but if Giliell has more than one, that just shows a need for education and a financial disincentive.
There are limits on how often one can have certain surgical procedures. For example, once you’ve cracked the chest twice, you’re pretty much done: there’s too much scar tissue for a third procedure to be practical. As far as I know, there’s no particular practical limit on the number of abortions one can have since scar tissue doesn’t form from removal of the products of conception.
In the category of competing anecdotes, there are people who have had 10+ separate cancers removed from their bodies. Should we stop doing surgery on them because they’re serial cancer formers and probably smokers?
I would due to things like risks to the mother, cost, the fact that I don’t want a child and don’t want to give a child up for adoption either…So yeah even with such technology I’d still opt for an abortion because it’s my body, my right and the fetus isn’t a person til birth. End of story.
——————————
Do you demand and want to legislate the same thing for women who instead of having 6 abortions, has 6 kids? Make them take sex ed and force them to abort the next time around? No? Do you have enough brain cells to figure out why that is?
——————————–
QFFT.
———————
Nope. Abortion can be sad and depressing, like when the fetus has a terrible disease or puts the mother’s life at risk and is wanted.
If it is not wanted though? Abortions are a great solution.
Check out the site, which Caine usually plugs, I’m Not Sorry.
@jamescarlton:
Pretty good actually.
NO oppressed group ever got their rights by sitting on their asses and waiting to have them magnanimously granted from above. They had to demand, they had to fight, even die in order to make every single baby step.
Do you actually have anything left when the real whack-jobs come along?
@JAL
Indeed. One of the reasons why I’ll never carry a pregnancy to term if I can help it is that I don’t want to pass on my genes. Bad enough that I got stuck with them; I’d hate to inflict them on a human that I created.
Of course, one could say that any offspring of mine aren’t guaranteed to have unpleasant health issues and should [obnoxious voice]at least be given a chance![/obnoxious voice] But would that hold for, say, a person with Huntington’s or similar?
I know right, Nepenthe? I didn’t find out til after I had Little One all the medical issues I could be passing on, like MS. It fucking sucks and worry so much for her already while I’m going through my issues along with dealing with my mother’s issues. Little One is already terrified of hospitals and worries like crazy. If grandma is there to pick up the Little One like she promised she freaks out and doesn’t calm down until she sees grandma again. Talking to grandma placates her a bit but really, she needs to see grandma home, safe and sound again.
That’s terrible for her and I’ll be damn if I have another kid to put through this ringer as well.
I’m not opposed to the idea of some education for women who have had an abortion, as long as it goes something like this:
Scene: Woman has completed the abortion and has completely recovered from anesthesia.
Health care practitioner (nurse, doctor, even social worker): Before you go, would you like to hear more about birth control options?
Scenario 1: Woman says yes and looks interested.
HCP: So here are some possibilities…(discusses condoms, IUDs, hormonal contraceptives, etc including risks and benefits of each option.
Scenario 2: Woman rolls eyes and looks impatient.
HCP: Ok, I can see you’ve heard this all before and aren’t interested. We’re done then. Check out on the left.
In other words, offer information, but don’t try to force it on anyone.
@288: What’s with me and blockquotes? It should be
They’re already here.
I said I’d not have a BIG problem with government mandating fetus preservation, if and ONLY if the risks were identical to termination that results in fetus death… I can’t see that that would ever be a realistic possibility, though, removing something without concern for it being intact is always going to be simpler and safer than trying to keep it intact throughout the process.
And I’d still have a problem with it–just not a HUGE one. For reasons like the ones mentioned above, we should be able to choose whether to pass our genes on or not. We should be able to make a judgment that, hey, if this fetus is removed and placed into an artificial incubator, probably nobody is going to adopt it and it will have a miserable life in foster care and I don’t want that. And so on and so forth.
Or, you know, we could just let Carlton make all those decisions for us. Since we’re so ignorant and whatnot.
Oh, I know. I just had a feeling that one sentence of yours was going to be picked out by the fuckfaces to be all “See you don’t like abortion either” and simply used it as a jumping off point into my own opinion. Sorry if it came off as jumping on you.
Er, I was responding to Sally there.
I really need to work on adding names in my comments.
Just talking about [strange voince]the distant future[/strange voice] in which you can beam embryos into artificial wombs, does anybody actually think that in that scenario unwanted pregnancies would even still happen?
It’s just one of those nonsense “let’s talk about unrealistic hypotheticals in improbable scenarios so we can treat women like lifestock here and now” tactics.
Ogvorbis
But I really do floss.
@277 you’ve finally answered my question by giving a dividing line. That’s what I was looking for.
@all:
Pregnancy isn’t nothing. But it is involuntary. That’s what I mean by “do nothing”: no voluntary action is taken. Not that I want a woman to be a slave/incubator/jerkoff-tool.
So let me respond to all the insults thrown my way, about how I’m a shit misogynist asshole who thinks women exist for my masturbatory amusement. A claim I can in no way see as justified from anything I’ve said, but whatever. Also that I’m a LIAR and fuck me.
There’s nothing wrong with debate, asking questions, reframing arguments, etc. Except in this one, where questioning the dogmatically held conclusion of pro-choice makes you a moral monster, apparently. And stupid.
Abortion is a voluntary medical procedure. The reason I’m pro-choice is simple: whether or not to have one is a medical decision. Even Romney/Ryan (fuck them, but I digress) would agree that judges and politicians and lawyers and juries should not be the ones determining the medical necessity of a medical procedure for any person for any procedure. The person on which the act is to be performed – or their power of attorney if the person is unable to decide – has the final say on medical necessity, and whether or not to proceed. If a fetus is a person, the woman carrying it has final power of attorney. If it is not, the situation is even more cut-and-dry.
See? Reasoned, rational argument arriving at a conclusion. No namecalling. No lying. No hypotheticals. No bullshit.
And it’s an argument that we can use against the religious right by pointing out that granting their premise, and given that abortions can be medically necessary, we must allow the mother to make that decision, because she and no one else is competent to make her medical decisions, and the fetus is not competent to make anyone’s.
If We™ Mandatorily Edumacated males to not have PIV sex without a condom there would be 90% fewer unwanted pregnancies.
Pregnancy is only involuntary if women are not allowed to get abortions. Hmmm.
By framing a woman’s decision to either get pregnant or to continue a pregnancy as “doing nothing,” you are in fact positing that women are slaves/incubators/jerkoff tools.
There isn’t a hell of a lot to add here, but here we go:
Abortions are fucking awesome!
Actually, they are. Ok, there’s some bleeding and cramping afterwards in the case of surgical first trimester abortion. (I can’t speak for the experience of medication abortion, but it sounds like for most women it’s pretty easy.) Oh, and you can’t take a bath or go swimming for a few weeks. But it was fucking awesome that I had that choice and didn’t have to become a 15 year old mother. It was fucking awesome that a little procedure and my life was mine again.
While it wouldn’t have been “awesome” when I was pregnant with my third to have been forced into a situation where I would have had to end a very much wanted pregnancy during the second trimester, it would have been amazingly beneficial to have the option open. Trisomy 18 is fatal, and if the fetus makes it to term there is a 90% chance of dying within the first month, and the infant will never attain any meaningful consciousness.
So yeah. Abortion can be, and is, fucking awesome.
So what, going to doctors appointments, changing eating, sleeping, drinking habits, and preparing for the infant, be it nursery or adoption, is involuntary?
Or you mean like, just let the pregnancy run it’s course regardless of the heath of the mother or fetus. Like a tumor, let it run its course, it’s all natural and an involuntary after all.
Just like we get all uppity about gay marriage. There’s no debate. This is real lives, real suffering, real deaths due to this issue. It’s not funny and not fucking right to sit here and be all Mr.Spock playing bullshit hypothetical, regarding a real fucking issue. Would you tolerate someone playing devils advocate for killing starving children? Or Nazis and the Holocaust?*
Don’t you fucking get it? I could honestly foresee being forced to have an illegal abortion due to inability to receive a legal one. I could fucking die. Millions of women are already screwed with having children they don’t want, having medical issues or dying from this. My mother went in for an abortion and only got one because it was an ectopic pregnancy. Do you realize how scary it is to know that the religious hospitals near you will chose to let you die because you’re playing host to a ball of cells in your uterus?
Of course, you don’t know what it’s like. Of course, you could shut the fuck up and listen to us, but NOOOO. Mr. Spock who doesn’t know shit about being a woman or medicine needs to play bullshit hypothetical. Fuck you.
This is at odds with everything you’ve said in this thread.
Every other fucking post of yours has been fucking bullshit. Why do this? Why play this fucking game? Fuck you. You deserve and earned all the hatred you received in this threat because it doesn’t matter if you believe it or not. You said some reprehensible bullshit and you got treated like anyone who says it, regardless of what you really believe. How else do we know what you believe? We go off what you say in your posts. So yeah, again, FUCK YOU.
*sigh* You dumbass, you know what their response is to you?
“Well, yeah do what you have to do to save the mother if needed, but no abortions if there’s no medical reasons for it.”
How do we know that? Because that’s what they have said before and will say again. We’ve been through this ringer more times than I can count. Seriously, you haven’t solved shit with your little argument.
It’s about a woman’s right to choose whatever, whenever she wants to in regard to her body, period. Making it all about a medical procedure will gain only the medically necessary qualification, which we already have in place.
—
* I hate using this, especially with…Audley(?) pointing out how frustrating and tired it is for the Holocaust to be brought up and used as a tool. Everything gets compared to it. I’m sorry, I was just grasping for something so heinous the dipshit would get the point how repulsive it is to play Anti-Choice for shits and giggles. I’m hope this example isn’t offensive or wrong.
Let’s reframe this, since you’re so fine with it:
How about castrating all men?
Since most rapists are men, and male sperm are necessary to cause pregnancy, we could just tackel this problem the other way round:
When teens become sexuall mature, they get to jerk off into some tubes which we then freeze for further procreation. It’s when their sperm is best anyway which means we probably even reduce the number of misscarriages. The we take them and castrate them.
Why are you so opposed to this and why are you clutching your crotch?. Hey, I’m just asking questions, we both want to find a solution to this, don’t we, hey, I’m on your side!
Only that you can laugh about it because it’s nothing that’s going to happen to you, nothing your father can tell you about.
Yet women know that you’re discussing our very humanity and human rights and that there’s a quite realistic chance for this to happen to us.
Except you had no reasoned argument for your idiocy overnight. That was full opf lies, bullshit, hypotheticals, and and fuckwittery. You did nothing to aid or further the discussion. You were a idiotic failure. That is a reasoned and rational conclusion.
There is no fucking debate to be had. You don’t get to debate the basic rights of other people. The. Fucking. End.
So. In the end you’re just another tone troll devil’s advocate bullshitter, who thinks being nice trumps being moral, and treats an issue of life and death for real women as if it were some fucking game. You deserve every insult thrown at you.
No, it can’t. Because any compromise is just a window for them to put more hoops in the way of all women trying to terminate a pregnancy. Sorry to burst your bubble, but your insight isn’t novel, it isn’t even particularly intelligent, and you spent all this time playing devil’s advocate for nothing.
stormtroopervii,
No hypotheticals, you say. Nobody is talking hypotheticals – no-one except you. For most of us, as others have said, this is real life.
Example 1: I was 25 by the time the Abortion Act 1967 came into force. By that time I had seen the effect of illegality on 3 – yes, three – friends. One became pregnant and was bullied into marriage with the man who was not the father of the child: just imagine the chaos when the truth came out and how many lives were ruined. Two went to the university health centre who confirmed the pregnancy – end of career. Three was abandoned by her family and offered support by a dreadful, prison-like home in Croydon on condition that she gave up the baby for adoption.
Example 2: many of the women who post here have direct experience of trying to get an abortion after rape. Others live in states where abortion is severely restricted and where a mad dance of preachers and legislators is trying to make abortion impossible.
These are people’s real lives and painful memories you are playing games with. Do not be so callous and do not make a sport of what you clearly do not understand.
And don’t say again that you were only joking. This is one of the cases where, as JAL says, saying that makes your behaviour – all your behaviour – infinitely worse. There are no prizes for ignorance in this debate.
And by the way, take your straw Vulcanism and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine. You think we’re angry? Damn right we are angry at you for disregarding the personhood of women. It’s their bodies and lives on the line.
Well done in the debate Matt!
One thought I wanted to get out there – I think Matt missed a clean “checkmate” move. I went back through the video to capture the exact point where Kristine really set herself up for annhiliation. Here’s what she said*:
Given that statement, I cannot fathom how she could answer the following: “Assuming it were phsyiologically possible, should it be legal for a pregnant woman to disconnect her kidney from the uterus?” If she answers yes, then she’s just said the legality of abortion is based on the methodology of the procedure; if she says no, then she’s contradicting herself (or would have to adopt the incredibly bizzarre stance that the entire pregnant woman’s body belongs to the fetus). Naturally, that’s my viewing the question from my own biased perspective. I’m curious, can anyone (feel free to play Devil’s advocate) imagine a response Kristine could’ve used to get out of that? Following the chess analogy, does anyone see how this wouldn’t have been a “Mate in one” move?
*Quick aside – hats off to all the transcribers of the world. I didn’t realize what a undertaking that can be until having to do it directly.
I did say it was against my better judgement, and in retrospect, I did spend way too much time on it.
And why do it? I was curious if I could come up with a good atheist pro-life argument that was in any way convincing. Turds at a wall.
The hoards have spoken.
You misspelled horde.
whoops. damn you autocorrect!
Although hoard still kinda works…
@stormtroopervii:
You know, playing devil’s advocate doesn’t absolve you of the responsibility to respond to arguments made to you which you seem to have spent a lot of time doing.
Also, the original version of the “kidney” thought experiment is the violinist thought experiment in which your objection is dealt with: in that version you wake up in a hospital with the violinist surgically attached to you. So in the thought experiment to retain your right to bodily autonomy you actually have to make the choice to disconnect the violinist; “doing nothing” (one of those points whose rebuttals you consistently ignored, btw) would constitute a violation of your bodily autonomy in that scenario.
@307
Well, females are designed by
Godevolution to be baby-makers, so the answer is clearly “Yes, the entire pregnant woman’s body belongs to the foetus.”Just to be a dick one last time: I am not compelled to respond to any arguments made, as forcing me to do so would violate my personal autonomy. I choose not to.
I missed the violinist part though. So yeah, that deals with the objection. My understanding of it was that you let the person with kidney failure die, and not that you have to detach him from you.
Still though: I’d argue that the legal argument is much more persuasive than the “fetus is not a person” or the “you’re a dick” arguments.
Oh my god, Sally, jesus christ, doesn’t that take the fucking cake.
DO NOTHING and eventually THE SITUATION WILL RESOLVE ITSELF.
Our timers will go off — bing! — and our oven rack will automatically slide out, allowing Our Lords And Masters to remove the actual human being we have gestated before setting us to preheat once more.
ASKJASGHAHFSDAHGF I can’t even fucking express the rage.
FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE. I AM A PERSON. I AM SELF AWARE. I HAVE VALUE OUTSIDE OF INCUBATING. PREGNANCY AND BIRTH AFFECT ME. THEY ARE WORK.
It is painfully, ridiculously, astonishingly, radiantly, starkly, absolutely crystal fucking clear that this stormtrooper moron has never experienced pregnancy.
Anti-choicers are plenty capable of doing the advocating themselves.
But you did choose to play devil’s advocate. You can’t choose to play devil’s advocate, ignore salient arguments, and then cry foul when people point out you’re being an asshole. Or you can but that just makes you a hypocritical asshole.
Not sure what you mean by “the legal argument”. The “fetus is not a person” argument is fine since “personhood” has no non-arbitrary definitions but not very effective for the exact same reason. The “you’re a dick” arguments were probably because you were simultaneously playing devil’s advocate and ignoring arguments (which when you think about it is pretty much equivalent to trolling).
Can you choose not to be a dishonest troll?
Ichthyic:
You’re right. I should clarify. I was a bit tired and frazzled last night.
A fetus is *not* a “person”. It *is* a homo sapien.
Ibis3 @109
Well, this thread exploded overnight. If you are still reading, I just wanted to say, I hope you are right. But it seems to me that we are not getting through this century without a reduction in population, and I don’t think it will be a result of a natural decrease in growth as quality of living improves.
Dirty energy is not the only problem, although it is the most serious since extinction is a potential consequence. We are already straining resources on multiple fronts; oil, water, and soil quality being perhaps the most pressing. The world’s fisheries aren’t in great shape either. These strains on resources aren’t a result of capitalism, they are a result of there being lots and lots of people.
And we are expecting 2 billion more of us in the next 30 years or so. That may be a low estimate. Whether we can provide an improved quality of life for these additional members of the human family is very much in question. Hell, whether we can provide enough food is very much in question. Yes, we could do it in a theoretical technological utopia where every human being has a fundamental right to and is provided with food, shelter, health care, and the resources to live an autonomous and fulfilling life. But that sort of political change seems to me unlikely.
More likely, I think, is that we are already in population overshoot, and the resource crunch has already begun. Perhaps our only hope now IS capitalism. If, as you suggest, sustainable energy technology becomes cheaper than our rapidly depleting fossil resources, the switch will happen blindingly fast. That’s what my free market optimist friends think, anyway. I’m not sure I agree with them either.
I know I’m a bit late to the party, but there’s an argument that keeps getting made in this whole abortion debate that I find revolting.
Do nothing? Do nothing?!
Anyone who can call carrying a baby to term and giving birth ‘nothing’ demonstrates a contemptible lack of understanding of pregnancy and birth, or an even more contemptible disregard for it.
It’s a process that involves a huge amount of work, unavoidable and permanent changes to the mother’s physiology, and a not insignificant risk of permanent injury or death. When you call this process ‘do nothing’, you out yourself as someone who is either so ignorant of the process that you have no right whatsoever to even be discussing it, or a person with blatantly misogynist tendencies.
So before you bust out that argument again, ask yourself: Am I an idiot? Or am I a misogynist? Because you’re about to be taken as both.
I told myself I’d stop posting here, but I just gotta share the link: http://www.theonion.com/articles/mother-mary-was-essentially-raped-mourdock-says-wh,30083/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=standard-post:quote:default
Stormtrooper go fuck yourself
You are a bad person, Stormtrooper, and you should feel bad.
Gee, stormtrooper trolls (plays devil’s advocate) and receives fuck off advice afterward. Not unexpected, as it is not an intelligent way to introduce oneself to the shark tank. Downright stupid in fact.
this is not categorically true.
JAQing off about whether AGW is real? Harmful, since it confuses people and causes doubt and delays in necessary actions
JAQing off about whether atheists are fully human? Harmful, since it literally puts atheists’ humanity into the category “questionable” or “arguable”
JAQing off about whether gays should be put to death? same as above.
JAQing off is harmful in that it diverts resources to useless, circular “discussion” and can normalize certain ways of thinking about humans; also, it’s often a wedge to get these bullshit opinions validated as a “reasonable” position to hold (especially true given the atrocious state of modern journalism)
[OT + meta]
pervii:
So, you were wrong yet again.
(No surprise there)
—
* Not only are you either too lazy or merely just incapable of using an anchor tag, but your naked link includes extraneous parameters (everything after the numeric parts is redundant).
No justification, eh? Let’s have a look:
Indeed, as I said above, you consider women’s rights, experiences, lives, and deaths to be mere fodder for your “intellectual” masturbation. Hope you had fun… also hope that you catch a wicked case of giardiasis.
Just to be a dick one last time: I am not compelled to respond to any arguments made, as forcing me to do so would violate my personal autonomy. I choose not to.
the short version you should have thought to post instead:
…
(read that as a blank post)
so easy a caveman could do it.
:)
So yes, it is a game to you.
Just think, statistically speaking at least some of the fetuses aborted might otherwise have grown up to be as profoundly, gut-wrenchingly lacking in empathy as you are.
James, still think abortion is unfortunate?
@330:
That’s what comes to mind when I think of cavemen and babby…
FWIW, the catholic congregation that did our preparation for Confirmation (over several months of weekly meetings that culminated with a 2-night retreat) showed a similar video at the retreat (from what was described, I’m not watching it). It was one of the most “powerful” talks which “turns” most people. It was blatant emotional manipulation, and it does work for most when the right mood and the right state of mind from the audience is set. I’m pretty sure it’s something standard with these types of religious groups.
She was an idiot not only for showing it as an argument, but for not knowing this.
Wow. I finally got through the video. I had to keep pausing throughout the day because I could only stand to listen to a statement or two at a time. Investigate miscarrying women for manslaughter? Yes! Death penalty for having an abortion? Yes, where local law permits! But the embryo is just a young baby, so allowing you to kill it is just ageism! The uterus is the baby’s natural home so it doesn’t belong to the woman! Why do I think this? Science! Science says the foetus isn’t genetically a wombat or a flamingo, but human, so get out the citizenship papers at conception! Everything reproduces after its own kind, just like Kent Hovind says!
I expected her to be a little naive (I was too at that age), but she floored me with her ignorance.
[meta]
Ibis3, what appears to be ignorance is probably motivated reasoning based on an ideological presupposition.
(In the spirit of kindness, may she never be in the position where reality challenges her ideology due to personal circumstance)
stormtrooper:
You actually did make a very good atheist pro-life argument. What’s interesting is that you never successfully refuted it.
There is no good pro-life argument period, much less a good atheist pro-life argument. Makes everything you say lies and bullshit since you refuse to acknowledge bodily autonomy, and that your fetus is never the equal in person to a woman. Which is why you sound like a demented idiot.
Sure there is. You just have to assume that women are not capable of making decisions regarding their bodies and it is all clear.
*baacks slowly away from that idea, keeping a nervous eye out for Kninja Knitters*
Nerd:
That was meant as sarcasm. Sorry. Fail.
I understood that, so you didn’t fail. I was trying to be funny too.
I am pro abortion and agree 95% with Matt, but I don’t agree with his logic in one of his arguments. Under his reasoning, if a drunk driver crashes and maims or kill someone he shouldn’t be held responsible for that because he only consented to drunk driving, not getting into a car wreck.
If you say that the fetus counts as a person and should have rights, then unless the pregnancy is the result of a rape, the rights of the fetus trumps the rights of the mother because the mother’s actions resulted in the creation of the fetus. Fortunately though, it is ridiculous to consider the fetus a person. A fetus shouldn’t have any more rights that the animals we eat.
Only if you accept the anti-choice framing that “being held responsible” entails being denied appropriate medical care.
“Held responsible” in this case are weasel words. Would you forcefully remove this drunk driver’s kidney if someone injured in the accident needed one? What does being held responsible actually ensue?
It’s all the slut’s fault for spreading her legs, right?
Wait, what if the woman (not “mother”) was having lots of unprotected consensual sex just before the rape? Should we make her get a DNA test to decide whether we should force her to give birth or not?
The rape exception idea seems stupider with every time I think about it.
Why?
This seems like a complete non sequitur to me.
Also, too: The rights of the
motherwoman trumps the rights of the fetus because the fetus’s actions resulted in the enslavement of themotherwoman.You’re right Nepenthe: it’s a complete non sequitur.
“Held responsible” in this context translates to “punished”.
And of course everyone knows that raising a child is a completely appropriate punishment for having sex. /sarcasm
the rights of the fetus trumps the rights of the mother because the mother’s actions resulted in the creation of the fetus.
translation:
slut shaming.
That’s what comes to mind when I think of cavemen and babby…
ROFLMAO
thanks for that.
In the spirit of kindness, may she never be in the position where reality challenges her ideology due to personal circumstance
in the spirit of kindness??
I saw what you did there.
The rights of man trump the rights of god because god’s actions resulted in the creation of man, no?
Someone should make a religion based on this tenet….
god has rights?
I’m having trouble even parsing that idea…
If the victim could live long enough without the kidney for the drunk driver to have his trial, I’d have no problem with forcing him to donate his kidney. If he is responsible for the lose of the his kidney then why not?
Just curious, but do you believe that increasing taxes on the rich is punishing them for being successful? This is the same kind of argument you are using.
It isn’t about punishing the mother; it is about doing what is right for the fetus if you grant the hypothetical that fetus is a legitimate life form (which I don’t). Regardless of whether or not the mother wanted the child, her and the fathers actions are responsible for creating it. That puts the moral responsibility on them to do right by it – or at least not kill it if it is an inconvenience.
Just curious, but do you believe that increasing taxes on the rich is punishing them for being successful? This is the same kind of argument you are using.
no, it really isn’t.
I’m not sure I can even communicate correctly with someone who thinks that they are.
can’t parse how your brain works there, old boy.
Rob, plz to answer my question. How do you get from “responsible for creation of thing” to “thing’s hypothetical interests completely override actual interest of creator”?
That puts the moral responsibility on them to do right by it – or at least not kill it if it is an inconvenience.
no, it doesn’t.
any more than it puts the moral right on a rich person to pay more taxes because they are rich, to use your own very poor analogy.
That is fuckwittery. Increasing taxes on them is to increase overall revenue. Period, end of story. Quit telling lies.
If you believe in a creator god, do you think he has the right to destroy us if we are an inconvenience? Maybe I’m mistaken, but I believe the Marcion Christians believed that the creator god was evil.
I didn’t say completely override the interests of the creator. It would just override the interests of the creator that would involve killing the life created. It is about taking responsibility for actions. If we were to grant that the old testament were true, did that God have a moral right to commit genocide as he saw fit?
did that God have a moral right to commit genocide as he saw fit?
fuck me, don’t go there, now you’re going to get involved in a debate over the definition of evil.
sorry, but you’re just not interesting enough to even correct.
I think you accidentally a whole clause somewhere because this sentence makes no sense to me. Interests aren’t actions.
And anyway the initial question was why? Why does responsibility for creation entail abrogating any of the rights of the creator?
Since god doesn’t exist, moot point for mental masturbaters. You know, the noisy people who can’t come to an evidenced conclusion…
robwilson:
No.
Next question.
robwilson:
You can reframe this all you want, but at the end of the day, you’re punishing the mother if she doesn’t want a child.
“Doing what’s right for the fetus”? The fetus isn’t a person.
The pregnant woman is a person, and if she doesn’t want to carry the child to term and chooses abortion, THAT is the responsible thing to do. Why does the world need another unwanted child?
In addition, the pregnant woman’s body is being used by the fetus for its needs. This isn’t a symbiotic relationship. The mother’s body changes against her wishes. If she doesn’t want the child, then effectively, she’s got a parasitic organism using her body against her desire. No one human has the right to demand the use of another humans’ life. No matter *what* the reason.
You’re couching this abortion argument in thinly veiled anti-choice BS. Stop thinking about the fetus as a person (it’s not).
Remember the woman’s right to bodily autonomy is *always* in effect.
@Robwilson
You know drunk driving is illegal. Do you want to make sex illegal too?
How about we put heavy fines on men who sire an unwanted child?
You know drunk driving is illegal. Do you want to make sex illegal too?
what he wants, is to make it so that if you are arrested for drunk driving you have stay drunk for the next nine months.
it’s the only responsible way, dontchyaknow.
I never said it was. I am pro-abortion. I think abortions should be easy to get and publicly funded. I am speaking in the hypothetical that the fetus is an intelligent and aware life form that as Matt claims PZ put it “Can write poetry.”
I am speaking in the hypothetical
fuck me. NOT ANOTHER ONE.
go away, seriously, you may think you have some insight, but you’d be dead wrong.
FFS!
Can we have a moratorium on hypotheticals?
A violation of bodily autonomy is not just an “inconvenience”.
robwilson:
But why the drunk driver? Why not any compatible kidney donor? You claim to be talking about responsibility, but your analogies reveal that what you mean is punishment.
Here’s what I mean…
The people who are required to pay high taxes are not the people who are personally responsible for whatever situation the tax moneys are needed to fix, they are just the people who can afford to pay high taxes. It’s not about blame at all: the manufacturer of much-needed goods, a pop singer and the CEO of a bank that contributed to a stock collapse all pay the same amount of income tax if they make the same amount of money.
Therefore, your insistence that the drunk driver (of all people) is forced to donate a kidney “if he is responsible”, and that women who were raped be exempt from forced gestation because they did nothing to cause the pregnancy, actually reveals that your scheme is about punishment.
Also, you didn’t answer my question regarding rape exemptions. I repeat:
Sorry, Tony…
Increasing tax rates on the rich is not a punishment. It is the elimination of an entitlement.
Because that is what the ridiculously low tax rates on the highest income brackets in the US are. An entitlement, and a relatively recently given one.
And one that the US can no longer afford.
Hmmmm…let’s imagine that we did that, but then needed to come up with a fantasy role playing campaign setting. How would we go about that?
Tony–Queer Duck Overlord:
I see a comparison to rape, there. (That Tony may not have intended.) It makes me think of the conservatives who say that raped women should have to carry the rapist’s baby — there’s really no difference, is there?
I’ll be thinking of that while I try to sleep.
(BTW, do they not realize what’s going to happen to marriage if a guy can *force* a woman to have his children?)
Hmmmm…let’s imagine that we did that, but then needed to come up with a fantasy role playing campaign setting. How would we go about that?
Bambi VS Godzilla?
shortest RPG in history.
“Look, I agree with you guys, but I’m doing mental gymnastics to try and find a way for you to be wrong that isn’t true.”
In your hypothetical situation, I’d suggest we ask Princess Celestia what to do. As the wisest of alicorns, she’d be sure to know.
…what? My hypothetical is just as valid as yours.
It looks like this thread is done, but I only just now had time to watch this debate.
Matt Dillahunty said at the beginning he acknowledges the irony of a man discussing the abortion rights of women. I appreciated that because my opinion about this issue has always been that “I don’t have a right to have an opinion because I will never have to make such a difficult decision and can never know what it’s like to have a fetus growing inside my body.” But then he follows that up with, (paraphrasing) “Yes, I do have a right to my opinion. I have a wife, and potentially can have daughters, so this is an issue that effects everyone.”
So if my wife gets pregnant, but doesn’t want to carry to full term, I would have to respect her in whatever she chooses to do. OR DO I have a say, as the potential father in the matter? I mean, my DNA would now be in her body. Do I have any ownership over that DNA? I don’t believe that I do, but I know that if the issue should arise, I would have an emotional response to it.
Whose body is it in? That is where the “ownership” lies. End of story.
jaredwolf, it’s pretty simple.
Taking what you’ve written arguendo, you would have an emotional response to it and would have to respect her in whatever she chooses to do.
(There is no dichotomy — so what is your point?)
Jared: you’re entitled to an opinion, which will be the opinion of a person who never had to fear becoming pregnant, and will be weighed accordingly. That is not the same as saying that you have a vote in anyone else’s decision regarding abortion.
@John Morales,
I suppose my point is, I have a very personal connection with the fetus that has been conceived, because I may feel that it is a part of me, my offspring. (Although the word offspring may be loosely defined.) And I question whether or not it is 100 PERCENT up to my wife whether or not she wants to carry to full term, OR do I have at least some say in the matter. As the male that fertilized that ovum, is it not partly mine?
All said and done, if my wife was adamant that she wanted to terminate the pregnancy, I would probably try to convince her otherwise, but would express to her that it is ultimately her decision.
My point is, before I read this thread, I assumed that the decision would be 50/50. It is MY seed, and her EGG, and we have equal ownership over this enterprise. But now I am thinking maybe, no matter how connected my wife and I are, she gets veto power over any vote I may have.
I guess I may be just waking up, so to speak.
*Hands tankard of complementary grog to Jaredwolf*
Can parents make demands of you right now because they both own 50% of your DNA, or are you a reasonable person and don’t conflate genetics with the self?
Or better yet. Does your identical twin have a say in whether your wife gets an abortion. Does he have a say in his DNA?
OT pedantry in song form
“To make one me you just add
Half of mom and half of dad
That is what I once believed
But I know now that I was wrong
I got so much more from you mom”
@ Nephenthe
Well yes but I was making a different point. Pointing out that the male DNA would not make a commanding share of baby is a good point though.
Sorry you can get a say but the mother has a majority share holding so it doesn’t matter
Precisely so. Because it is not and never has been a 50/50 enterprise. Because it is her uterus, her cervix, her varicose veins, her fluid retention, her gestational diabetes, her pre-eclampsia, her endometrium, her ano-vaginal fistula.
She gets veto because she is the majority shareholder.
@Ing
Yeah, I know… any excuse to use that video though.
Jared, if you care that much then you can offer to have her implant the fetus in your abdomen for gestation. Odds are that you and the fetus will both die but hey. It’s your offspring, so it should be worth it, right?
[meta]
jaredwolf,
Kudos.
Your current thinking is right, because it’s not about whose DNA it is and whose gametes these are. If your wife (or, indeed, anyone) was a surrogate mother carrying the embryo of other people, she would still have a right to abort the pregnancy.
jaredwolf:
I’m not married.
Never have been.
So I don’t have a married perspective on the following.
I think that if a husband and wife conceive and are uncertain if they want to keep the child or abort it, they should talk to one another to decide what is best for the two of them. I hope that many wives would seriously listen to the input of their spouse on what choice of action is best to take. At the end of the day though, the woman is still the one carrying the fetus. She gets the final say. Just as you get to decide what happens to *your* body, so too does she. That’s not the same as saying your opinion doesn’t matter though.
Between you and ryanwilkinson, wow. Seeing the progress made in your case (and the sincere apology in his) is gratifying (even for one like myself, who played no role).
Beatrice @10:
The only word she kept using that was *more* annoying than preborn—> ultimately. So perhaps a shirt that says “And ultimately…PREBORN”
****
Having finally watched the video, I can see Kristine doesn’t understand the differences between a fetus and an independent human being. With her ridiculous complaint about ageism, it’s clear she doesn’t get the distinction between a fetus and a 2 year old.
It’s also clear that she doesn’t fully understand bodily autonomy.
Even if the fetus was a person and living in the womb’s “apartment” it would still be the woman’s womb and, as landlady, she would be in her right to serve it with a prenatal eviction notice.